The Wedding Dress

by Kimberly Cates

  Emma’s eyes burned. “No,” she told herself sharply. “I won’t let that happen. I’ll never let that happen. She’s safe.”

  Safe? Drew’s anguished cry pierced her memory as he flattened his palm on the latest story. Don’t you get it, Emma? As long as anyone’s name is linked with you, their life will never be their own. It’ll be open season on any secret, any flaw….

  But even Drew hadn’t told her the most painful truth of all.

  Maybe Emma McDaniel’s husband could divorce her, marry another woman and remove himself from the public eye.

  Emma’s mother never could.

  JARED FOUGHT THE URGE to ram Joel Feeny’s head into the stone wall as he dragged the reporter down the tower stairs. It wasn’t as if the fool was using his brains anyway. Even Emma’s eejit of a dog would have had the sense to get the hell out of Jared’s reach before the last tiny threads holding his temper in check blew the roof off the whole damned castle. But Feeny was trying every trick he could think of to feed Jared’s fury.

  “Listen, Doc,” Feeny pressed, using his body weight to slow Jared down. “I know you’ve got a prime deal going on here doing the horizontal bop with a lady any man in the world would like to be screwing. But the hard truth is she’ll be dumping you out of her bed before your car needs its next oil change.”

  Emma’s sneer flashed in Jared’s head, her scornful words raking him. Give me a little credit for good taste…I don’t even like him….

  Why did those words sear his pride so badly?

  “I’m not in her goddamned bed,” Jared snarled, giving Feeny a brutal yank. “Don’t you understand English?”

  “Actually, as a rule, you Scots garble it up so badly, you make it damned hard. But I hear you, mate. Loud and clear.”

  Feeny staged a stumble against the wall, the rough stone rasping the skin off Jared’s knuckles. Jared swore.

  Feeny sagged toward the nearest step. “I’m trying to help you, mate!” he insisted, resisting.

  “Sure you are,” Jared snarled.

  “I can be your bloody fairy godmother if you let me. Do you have any idea how much money you can make? You can cash in on these rolls in the hay for hundreds of thousands of dollars if you play it right.”

  Jared cocked his fist back, imagining how damn good it would feel to break a few of Feeny’s teeth. “You filthy son of a—”

  “You really want to be front-page news, Butler? Hit me,” Feeny warned, survival instinct finally kicking in.

  Damn Feeny. The slimy worm was right. Jared forced his fist back to his side. The reporter scrambled to his feet, starting down the stairs under his own steam. “Right then, mate. I’m leaving. Just think about what I said. Someone is going to make plenty of quid selling news about Emma McDaniel’s love life. It can be you or the next lucky bastard she hops into bed with.”

  “Go to hell,” Jared growled.

  Feeny groped in his suit pocket as Jared herded him to the door. “Here’s my card,” he said, shoving it at Jared. “Ring me up. Night or day.”

  Jared crumpled the rectangle of paper in his fist and hurled it to the ground. “Stay away from my dig,” he warned. “Or next time—”

  “You think it’ll be clear sailing for the goddess up there if you scare me off, Butler?” Feeny jeered. “I just got lucky enough to draw first blood. If it’s not me, it’ll be some other reporter hammering at her in hopes she’ll break down and spill something that’ll make us a fortune.”

  “What kind of a parasite are you? Hounding a woman like this?”

  “Act all high and mighty if you want, but don’t kid yourself, Doc. Reporters like me made Emma McDaniel famous. She knows that, no matter how much she recoils from us now. She owes us.”

  Jared’s fist lashed out, but someone caught his arm, giving Feeny time to dodge out of the way. Jared wheeled, expecting to see Emma.

  Instead, Veronica’s face swam into focus. “Don’t!” the student cried, holding on for dear life. “Are you crazy?”

  Jared yanked himself free, his chest heaving, his jaw clenched. “Go get some of the lads. I need them to get this piece of garbage off the property. Now.”

  “I’m going. I’m going!” Feeny backed away, hands up, his tape recorder still whirring in one, camera swinging from its strap around his neck. “Just remember what I told you, Doc. You can ring me up any time. All three numbers are on my card. Office, mobile and home.”

  Jared ground the card under his boot sole. “I’ll see you in hell before I’d ever call scum like you.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Feeny said. “We’ll see what happens once the sex burns out and Emma McDaniel throws you in the shite heap.”

  “S…Sex?” Veronica echoed faintly, turning even whiter as her gaze flashed to Jared.

  He couldn’t stop himself from taking a menacing step toward Feeny. But Veronica dove between them.

  “Please,” she begged. “Mr….Mr….”

  “Feeny. Joel Feeny, Independent Star,” the reporter supplied.

  “If you’d just follow me.” Veronica stared at Jared as if he’d gone insane. Maybe he had.

  “Uh, Dr. Butler,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “After I escort this gentleman to his car, we need to talk right away. There’s a…problem at the site.”

  “It’ll have to wait,” Jared snarled. He turned and stalked back through the castle door.

  Chapter Nine

  JARED STRODE UP the stairs, his knuckles burning, his temper boiling, feeling more shell-shocked than he would have believed possible. The most disturbing thing in the whole nightmarish encounter was the fact that some of what Feeny had said was true. The press and celebrities did feed off each other. And even if Jared ever was lunatic enough to give in to what his body clamored to do every time he thought of Emma McDaniel’s lush curves, Feeny was right. She’d dump a man like him quicker than last month’s garbage.

  Not that she wanted anything to do with him anyway. She’d made that plenty clear. So why the hell had it hurt? Yes, damn it—hurt. But more than his pride. Something far deeper, in the place where her fleeting kiss had buried itself.

  Anger and confusion roiled inside him, mingled with a fierce protectiveness that scared the hell out of him. One more joke. He sneered at his own stupidity. As if the lady needed him to jump between her and this particular dragon. She’d been handling scenes like this one for six years without him. What if Feeny was right about that whole the lady doth protest too much attitude and Emma was actually using this encounter for her own benefit somehow?

  No. Emma had been genuinely shaken, Jared told himself. He wanted to believe that and yet…wasn’t it possible he had just imagined that hunted light in her eyes because that’s what he’d needed to see?

  Jared stalked into the tower room, expecting the ice queen. His heart tripped as his gaze locked on the figure huddled on the bench by the seaward window, her knees curled up like a child’s, her face haunted as she peered down at the glitter frame in her hands. So lost, so alone she didn’t even know he was there.

  “Emma?” Jared’s voice, almost tender, sounded strange to his own ears.

  Her head jerked up. Before she turned toward him, she scrubbed one hand across her cheeks.

  “I got some…some glitter in my eye,” she said. He cleared his throat, wishing he were the kind of man who could close the space between them, comfort her.

  “Feeny’s gone.”

  “He’ll be back.” She swallowed hard. “They always come back.”

  Jared clenched his hands, wishing to hell he could think of something to say. “Not on my watch,” he murmured at last. “I won’t let anyone—”

  He’d meant to say he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. But before he could squeeze that absurd promise from his throat, Emma cut in.

  “I know. You won’t let anyone like him trample through your dig site, shaking things up, distracting the students.”

  A muscle in Jared’s jaw jumped. “Right.”
<
br />   Emma set the frame back up on the table and stood, brushing glitter off of her hands. But her cheeks still sparkled with tiny flecks of purple and traces of tears. “I’m sorry this whole mess dragged you away from your work,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “I don’t blame you for being angry.”

  Did she really think work was the reason his nerves were so bloody raw?

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said, turning her back to him, walking toward the bed. “I usually handle reporters like Feeny much better than this. They won’t catch me off guard again.”

  Jared couldn’t stop himself from going after her. He curved his hand over her green-clad shoulder. Emma stiffened, but damn if he’d let her go.

  “They won’t catch you at all,” Jared swore. “Not in my castle.” In my castle? His cheeks warmed. He sounded like a raving lunatic. What was he doing? Playing the knight, vowing to guard his lady?

  His hand slid down Emma’s arm as she turned toward him. He drowned in eyes so vulnerable it broke his heart.

  “I’m grateful, Jared. Really. For…for your help today. But you mustn’t get tangled up in this. It would be better if you kept your distance. People…get hurt when they get too close to me.”

  “I’m not.” Not too close. Never will be. I’m broken inside… One corner of his mouth crooked up in a smile as he tried to hide how much he wanted to kiss her. “Give me credit for some taste, McDaniel. The truth is I don’t even like you.”

  He hoped to stir up the fire in her, the bravado he’d seen in her every morning they’d crossed swords. Instead, her lips trembled.

  “Most of the time the truth doesn’t have anything to do with what tabloid reporters write. You want a case in point? My divorce. All that blather about how coldhearted I was. Refusing to give my husband a baby. My career was more important—playing Jade fucking Star. And God forbid, I risk getting stretch marks or lose my figure for something as inconsequential as having a child.”

  Jared stood silent, helpless as pain wracked her. But she peered up at him with honesty so relentless it took his breath away.

  “You want to know the truth? I begged Drew to let me have his baby.”

  She had loved her ex-husband. Loss ravaged her beautiful face. Why did the knowledge knife deep into Jared’s gut? He let his hand fall away from her.

  “I wanted a baby so much, I even offered to give up acting in such high-profile movies. I’d try the stage, stay in one city doing theater. I’d be home every night, just…just like his new wife, Jessica.” She choked on an anguished laugh. “You know what Drew said?”

  “No.” Don’t tell me. Don’t trust me. Don’t. He was no man to share secrets with. He had too many of his own.

  “Drew told me it was too late. The media would always track me, hunting for any kind of news, any failure, any secret. Drew wouldn’t risk a child of his suffering through what he had because of me.”

  Jared wanted to reach for her again, but his hands felt too rough, too awkward to handle such honest, openhearted grief. “You can’t change yourself into something you’re not. Even for a husband or wife you…care about.”

  Why couldn’t he just say the word? Love. Because of Jenny? Because even when she’d been his wife, he hadn’t been sure…his feelings so jumbled he couldn’t tell what emotions lay beyond the hard crust of his resentment.

  “But I wasn’t just trying to tell Drew what he wanted to hear,” Emma insisted. “Jared, I meant it. I would have given up—”

  “Who you are? Work you love? A life you’ve struggled for years to build?” Jared gave an impatient wave of his hand. “Before you and Drew married, did you tell the man you wanted to be an actress?”

  Emma blinked. “Of course I did. He even moved to New York while I was in drama school so we could live together.”

  “So what was his gripe, then? You were honest about what you wanted to do. He supported you in it. Then he…what? Changed his mind?”

  Emma shrugged. “People do it every day.”

  Jared’s face hardened. “I’ll tell you what happened. He thought he’d play the role of supportive husband until you crashed into the wall. He counted on the probability that you would fail, like ninety percent of the kids who head into drama school with stars in their eyes. And when you had the gall to actually succeed, he yanked his support for your career, cheated on you and divorced you because he couldn’t handle your success.”

  Emma gaped. “That’s not…I mean, Drew didn’t—”

  “Didn’t he?” Jared crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe it’s a good thing he left you when he did. You’d have ended up hating him.”

  “No. I could never…” She nibbled at her lower lip. “Maybe after a while I would have felt…”

  “Cheated? There’s no maybe about it. I know damned well you would have. All those ugly feelings between you and the person who’s supposed to be your w—I mean, your husband.” He’d betrayed more than he’d wanted to.

  Her eyes flashed, belligerent. “Yeah, and my career thus far is so spectacular it’s been worth blowing off my marriage? I wanted to be…so much more, you know? I wanted magic and brilliance and…to touch people’s hearts. Change them. To leave some mark on the world after I was gone.”

  Wasn’t that what Jared wanted as well? To discover something brilliant, something historians would be studying centuries later? To win his own place in the legend of Castle Craigmorrigan and its courageous lady? But he would never tell a soul about those fantasies. Leave himself vulnerable. While Emma…

  So many dreams shone in Emma McDaniel’s eyes, battered dreams, broken ones. What was she thinking, sharing her wounds with him? A man who had scoffed at her talent, who had dismissed her as shallow, a waste of his precious time?

  Hell, Jared thought, his chest tightening. There were emotional depths to this woman he’d never have believed possible just by looking at her exquisite face. Considering what she’d been through the past few years, it was a miracle she was still standing.

  Jared reached deep inside himself for the gentleness he rarely allowed himself to reveal. He drew out the memory of other pain-filled eyes, another heart he’d seen broken. His father’s face, too soft beneath his craggy features, waiting, forever waiting for his highland Mary to come home.

  “It’s only human to want…things that are far beyond our reach,” Jared said at last. “There’s nowhere in the world that truth is plainer than it is right here in this tower. People died on this ground to possess something that couldn’t even exist. A magical fairy flag.”

  “But the legend. All the years you’ve studied it.” Emma tilted her head to one side, a puzzled crease between her delicate black brows. “I thought you believed—”

  “That the fairy queen got lost in the world of mortals and fell in love with a beautiful warrior slumbering beneath a tree? That she stayed with him, made love with him for a year and a day, though they were from different worlds?” The words rasped on Jared’s tongue, his throat dry as he stared into Emma McDaniel’s face.

  Emma spoke softly. “And she bore him a child, then wrapped the wee lass in her robe woven of spun moonlight, the queen sorrowful because she had to return to her kingdom. She left the babe with the man she loved. Swearing no castle that flew the cloth once bound about her tiny daughter would ever fall to an enemy, just as the fairy queen’s love would never fall to another, though the handsomest men in the fairy realm should lay siege to her heart until the end of time.”

  Her lips curled in a smile so piercing it lodged in Jared’s heart. “It’s a beautiful story, Jared.”

  “Aye, but a story for all that. The cloth held power only because people believed a flight of fancy to be true.”

  “So things haven’t changed so much after all in five hundred years. People will believe what they want to, whether in a legend or in one of Feeny’s tabloids. And as for sieges—we’d best prepare for a real one in the next five weeks.”

  “What are you saying?
”

  “There are bound to be other reporters.” She sighed. “I suppose I should have expected it. But…I was so careful. I hoped they wouldn’t track me down here for a while. I wonder how…no, who tipped them off this time.”

  She was right, Jared reasoned. Someone had to betray her whereabouts for the press to find her here, in the middle of nowhere. But the airport had been plenty crowded with people who might have recognized her and Jared hadn’t made a secret of his displeasure when he’d heard she was replacing Angelica Robards. He’d grumbled plenty—at the pub, the shops, over the phone to the studio and to the kids on site. Had he brought Feeny and the rest down on Emma’s head?

  Emma laughed wearily. “I don’t suppose there’s any way to attach a nice galvanized steel door at the bottom of that staircase? One with a very big lock?”

  “No.”

  “Then maybe I should call Jake.”

  Jake. The man she’d written to in the letter Jared had read. Irritation gnawed at him.

  “Jake could arrange a bodyguard.” Emma kneaded her temples. “But then he might come running over here himself. It would be heaven to see him, but—”

  “I’m not having your boyfriend tramping through here, creating even more chaos,” Jared growled.

  Emma’s hands dropped to her sides. She stared at him, incredulous. “My…Jake isn’t my boyfriend. He’s my stepfather.”

  Jared took a step back, telltale heat flooding up his neck. “Your stepfather?”

  “Despite what you might think, I didn’t spring fully grown out of a producer’s head like some Hollywood version of Athena. Jake was a private investigator when Mom met him, but he handles celebrity security now.”

  “I see.” Jared did see. Exactly how big a fool he’d just made himself look. And yet, even the thought of Emma McDaniel’s stepfather on site didn’t sit well with Jared. This was his site, damn it. Keeping people safe here at Castle Craigmorrigan was his responsibility. And Emma McDaniel was part of that responsibility for as long as she was here.

  You’re supposed to be trying to make the woman miserable, remember? So she’ll quit?