The Wedding Dress

“The rocks are always slick and some are unstable,” Davey added earnestly. “One of the undergrad students was playing around the first year the site was open and broke an ankle. Ever since, Dr. Butler has insisted this is off-limits. I’m surprised you didn’t, er, well, read the sign. Or notice the chain…”

Emma frowned. “Nobody ever comes back here? But I thought I saw…” A ghost. A warrior. A man. Oh, give it up, Emma.

Davey regarded her intently. “You thought you saw what?”

Emma flushed. The last thing she needed was this kid telling Butler she was hallucinating. The jerk would probably call the studio and insist she take a drug test.

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking…” Emma forced pure mischief into her smile. “Pity the castle doesn’t have a ghost. Just think what a great ending that would make, mentioned in the closing credits.”

“The script already has Lady Aislinn defeating a battle-hardened knight with a broadsword. Why not add one more ridiculous lie to the story?”

Emma stiffened, glanced over her shoulder. Butler. It wasn’t fair that such an asshole should sound so sexy. Not to mention how well he fit into those pants. Thank God he’d had the rotten fashion sense to pull on some kind of olive drab oilcloth coat to hide most of the green T-shirt that almost matched his eyes.

“Here he is at last,” she muttered, “the historical genius.”

Davey turned, completely flustered as he saw the man charging toward them. “Dr. Butler,” Davey stammered, the poor kid looking as if he’d just been caught burying chicken bones in one of the dig site’s graves. “I…I was just—”

“Davey was keeping me company.”

“Entertaining spoiled starlets isn’t in his job description. Last time I checked the schedule, Harrison, you were supposed to head the team sifting through the dirt where we found that intaglio ring. Or do you want me to assign it to someone else?”

“No.” Davey looked like Santa had just smacked him. “I’ll get right to it.” But instead of bolting in the wake of Butler’s wrath, the youth squared his shoulders and turned to Emma. “He’s not usually like this. He didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Jared’s cheekbones darkened. “What does that have to do with anything?”

The youth gave him a look full of empathy. “When that happens you’re a whole lot better dealing with dead people than live ones, I’m thinking.”

Jared growled a curse.

“Just remember how you felt after the accident, Dr. Butler.”

The archaeologist compressed his mouth into a hard, white line.

Emma tried to get her mind around what Davey had hinted at. Butler suffering guilt over Angelica Robards’fall from the horse? But then, it was only logical he’d feel terrible that the woman was on the injured list. Butler had made up his mind months ago that she made an acceptable Lady Aislinn.

Butler sucked in a deep breath reminiscent of Emma’s yoga instructor. “What does the accident have to do with…?”

“It’s the only reason I can figure you’re acting this way.” Davey faced Emma, exuding quiet dignity far beyond his years. “Goodbye, Ms. Mc…”

“Emma,” she corrected.

Davey gave her a ghost of a smile. “Emma.”

“I’m so glad to meet you, Davey,” she said, touching the boy’s arm. She hated to send Davey away with that worried expression on his face. Sensed the boy was serious beyond his years. She flashed him her grandfather’s ornery grin, made sure her eyes sparkled with mischief as she leaned toward Davey and spoke in a stage whisper Butler was sure to hear. “It’s nice to know someone around here gets up at the historically-accurate hour.”

David didn’t get the joke. “Oh, no, ma’am,” he began earnestly, “the chief—”

“The chief can speak for himself,” the Tyrant of Craigmorrigan said. “Get to work.”

Davey shrugged and headed out of the line of fire, casting worried glances back over his shoulder.

“Keep your eye on the rocks, lad,” Jared ordered. “I don’t have time to take you to hospital!”

Davey’s head snapped forward, eyes fixed front and center.

“Nice move, Butler.” Emma tossed her curls. “And now that you haven’t got anybody else to bully, maybe you could start the job the studio hired you to do. Unless you want to go back to bed?”

Dangerous, Emma. Thinking of Jared Butler and bed in the same sentence was a very bad idea. Especially since, at the moment, he looked all craggy and primitive, like one of those highlanders in the romance novels her aunt Finn loved to read. And with muscles like those, the jerk would have no problem flinging a woman over his shoulder and carrying her up the tower stairs. Of course, Emma would definitely scratch his eyes out the minute he dumped her amidst the made-in-China furs on her bed.

She brought herself up short. How had she ended up in Aunt Finn’s book? Luckily, Butler didn’t have a clue about Emma’s unruly train of thought.

“I’m always the first person awake on this site and the last person asleep,” Butler said.

“Not this morning, Dr. Sunshine. I’ve been up since…well, I wouldn’t know the time since my Rolex is off-limits. But the moon was just gorgeous out my tower window. I curled up on that charming stone bench and watched the sea for ages.”

Butler glanced up at the window Emma knew looked out from her room. Did the man actually look uncomfortable? What was that about? Certainly not concern for her. The Scot had all the sensitivity of her L.A. neighbor’s pit bull.

“Everything I read on medieval times said people were up at first light,” Emma said. “So I didn’t want to miss my curtain call.”

Lines carved deep between his brows and Emma was delighted to sense his irritation that she’d actually done some background research.

“So you can read then?” Butler taunted. “I was beginning to wonder, considering you obviously passed right by the danger signs I’d posted.”

“Yes, well, I’ve spent my whole career catapulting across volcanoes and climbing sheer rock walls with hordes of natives chasing after me. I thought strolling across a few rocks was no big deal.”

“You thought?” Butler took a step toward her. Damn if she was going to back away. She leaned deeper into his personal space instead, scowling back with Jade’s take-no-prisoners glare.

“Yes,” Emma said crisply. “I thought. I do it all the time.”

“Well you’re not doing it here. Do you hear me? No thinking. You do what you’re told, when you’re told. If I put up a sign that says jump, you ask off which cliff. And there is no ghost. Got it? I don’t give a damn what kind of Hollywood candy floss you want to stick all over this story. These are historical figures you’re dealing with now. Real people who deserve some respect.”

“Respect?” Emma echoed in mock astonishment. “Are you sure you know the definition of that word or did they forget to ask that question on your way to getting your Annoying Genius badge in Boy Scouts?”

“I wasn’t a Scout.”

“Pity. It’s been an amazingly civilizing influence on my cousin Will. Scouting just might have taught you manners. And as for there not being a ghost at the castle, that’s something I’d love to remedy. You’d make a great ghost, Butler. One little trip off the cliff and my problems would be over. Then I could just have you exorcised or banished—or whatever psychics do to make ghosts disappear.”

The corner of Butler’s mouth curled, so smug she wanted to slap him. “Priests exorcise demons. And psychics are a load of codswallop.”

Be careful, Emma, a voice inside her warned. Don’t let him guess…what? That she’d spent last night imagining a ghost? That part of her would always believe in magic. Even now, after her marriage lay in ashes, she wanted to believe in a love so powerful that even centuries couldn’t kill it. She wanted a happily-ever-after for the remarkable woman who had once lived in this castle.

Why couldn’t she keep herself from asking? “You don’t believe in ghosts?”

Shrewd green eyes flashed. “I’m a scientist. What do you think?”

“I’m not supposed to think, remember?” she reminded so sweetly she hoped Butler would get tooth decay. Rotten teeth. That was the perfect way to defuse the magnetism of Butler’s criminally sexy mouth.

White teeth flashed, his smile all crooked. It was flawed, damn it. Asymmetrical. She knew people in L.A. who would have raced to a plastic surgeon to have something like that corrected. Butler should have looked awful. Instead he looked like an X-rated dream.