The Wedding Dress

“Do I have to call security?” Emma demanded, searching for a uniformed guard.

“Go ahead. Try it.” His gaze pierced her. “I’m the one who nearly got a broken arm here. I figure I’ve already got you on assault, hands down.” Too late Emma could hear warning bells that sounded a lot like lawsuit, lawsuit.

“Listen, Mr…” She didn’t know his name, but he sure as heck knew hers. Not good, Emma. Not good. “I’d like to say it’s been nice talking to you, but that would be a lie.”

“Isn’t that what actresses do for a living?” he asked cynically. “Lie?”

Emma’s breath hissed between her teeth. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had made her this furious. Hadn’t felt any emotion this sharp since she’d plunged into the haze of regrets and grief, rejection and self-doubt that had plagued her for the past two years.

“Why, you pompous, arrogant…”

“Have you made enough of a scene?” he asked. “Or do you want me to have the PA system announce to the whole world you’re here?”

“I don’t want you to do a damned thing except leave me alone!”

“That makes two of us. But it looks like we’re stuck with each other.”

“No. We’re not. Because I’m leaving.”

The left corner of those wicked lips ticked up a notch. “You want to walk to the excavation site in those ridiculous shoes, it’s fine with me. I’ll see you sometime next month.”

“Excavation site?” Horror flooded through Emma. “Oh, God.” So much for rumpled suits bought sometime during the 1930s. The man standing before her hadn’t even been born then. And as for life’s work…how long could that amount to with this guy? All of ten years? “Please,” she said, knowing the axe was about to fall, “don’t tell me you’re—”

“Dr. Jared Butler at your service, milady.” He executed a bow dripping with sarcasm, ridiculous in the modern-day airport, and yet strangely suiting him better than a handshake ever would.

Emma’s stomach flip-flopped as his eyes narrowed on her.

“I own you for the next six weeks,” he growled, “or until you come to your senses and ‘cry hold, enough.’ Or did you skip MacBeth on the way to your spaceship?”

Emma couldn’t help but wince. Kids in high school drama class knew calling “The Scottish Play” by its name was bad luck. But then, could her luck get any worse?

“‘Lay on, MacDuff,’” Emma quoted the play, challenge in her eyes.

“The bottom line is this,” Butler said, ignoring her, “Barry Robards hired me to teach his lead actress how to live, how to move, how to breathe medieval Scotland. How to be Lady Aislinn. That’s right—it’s pronounced Ash-leen. You can start by saying her name correctly. You Yanks have been massacring it for two years now.”

“Well, this Yank looked it up in a Celtic baby-name book the first time she saw the script, so you can move on to more important things.”

“Fine. How about this, then? When Barry Robards asked me to take on the role of historical consultant, I figured I’d have a fair chance of success with Angelica Robards to work with. But you?” He snorted in derision.

Emma glared. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”

“I might as well.” He crossed his arms over that impressive chest. “I told anybody at the studio who’d talk to me that you’ll never be a believable Lady Aislinn.”

This arrogant jerk who spent all his time digging up dead people had been complaining to the studio about her being cast? Who did Jared Butler think he was?

“So now you’re an expert on acting?”

His scruffy-looking chin tipped at an angle that made her want to smash it. “I know what it will take to portray Lady Aislinn. Courage, intelligence, tenacity,” he asserted, a sudden distance in his eyes, as if he saw a world beyond the Scottish mist. “She held Castle Craigmorrigan for eight months, besting Sir Brannoc with no weapon but her wits. There’s a subtlety about her, a…”

“And you know this how? Did you have a chat with her sarcophagus? Or did some psychic channel her for you?”

Butler’s eyes flashed and Emma realized she’d managed to strike a nerve, get back some of her own.

But the good doctor was quick, almost as accomplished as Emma at shuttering vulnerability away.

“Why don’t you save us both a lot of trouble and just head for some ritzy spa on the French Riviera,” he challenged. “Go back where you belong.”

“According to Barry Robards, I belong right here. Playing Lady Aislinn. And if that means I have to deal with you for six weeks, I guess we’ll both just have to suffer. I have to admit one thing though, Dr. Butler. You are a brilliant teacher. I’ve known you all of five minutes and you’ve already helped me get into character. I can’t wait to get a sword up to your throat.”

Butler rolled his eyes. “I told the bloody screenwriter that part of the legend is rubbish. There isn’t a woman alive who could beat a seasoned knight and get a blade to his throat.”

If Butler had smacked her cheek with a gauntlet the challenge couldn’t have been any clearer. Adrenaline rushed through Emma. She was going to make the man eat his words if it was the last thing she did.

“You’re quite sure it’s impossible?” she inquired with acid sweetness.

“I’d stake my life on it.”

“Hmm.” Emma laid one finger along her cheek, considering for a moment. Suddenly her gaze dropped to the bulge in his brown canvas cargo pants. “Maybe I’ll just aim a whole lot lower.”

Ten minutes in Scotland and she’d already declared war.

Chapter Two

“NOTHING LIKE HATE at first sight to make a lady feel welcome,” Emma muttered under her breath as Butler all but rolled his battered Mini Cooper on yet another hairpin corner. The right shoulder of the narrow road plunged down in a boulder-strewn cliff, while a dozen yards to the left, a mountain soared skyward. If it weren’t for the biting chill that had whipped her raincoat in the airport parking lot and the lowering thunderheads gathering on the horizon, she might have been tempted to get out and walk to Castle Craigmorrigan.

Her legs ached from bracing herself against the floorboards, her fingers clamped in the upholstery to keep her arm from touching his. For God’s sake, could the man take up any more room? It was like being wedged in a clown car with MacTavish the Pissed-Off Scot Giant. Not to mention the fact that Butler’s testosterone overload was sucking up all the oxygen in the cab of this ridiculously small vehicle.

“Getting us both killed isn’t going to do you any good,” Emma said.

“You’re right.” The corner of Butler’s sexy mouth twisted. “I’m already in hell.”

Before Emma could think of a comeback, a fuzzy brownish-red hill loomed in their path. Emma choked back a scream as Butler swerved with annoying expertise, the car bouncing over the road’s shoulder so hard the top of Emma’s head hit the roof in spite of her seat belt.

She whispered a Hail Mary, sandwiched for a heartbeat between mountain wall and the weirdest cow she’d ever seen. She glimpsed long horns and terrified bovine eyes all but buried under a shaggy red topknot as the car sped past. Butler wrestled the toy car back onto the road, spraying gravel in his wake.

No doubt about it, Emma thought. She was going to die. But damn if she was going to give Jared Butler the satisfaction of knowing he was rattling her nerves before they’d even reached the castle.

“So, in between trying to give the local rescue team practice with the Jaws of Life rescue tools, why don’t you tell me exactly what books I’m going to be reading?”

“Reading?”

“Or do I get to sit around with you feeling the bumps on the old chicken bones you dig up? Archaeology 101: Observe, Ms. McDaniel, this piece of broken pottery we found when Farmer MacSomething was digging a loo.”

“I’m not going to have you contaminating my excavation site, do you hear me?” Butler slashed her the look his highland raider ancestors must’ve fired off when they were about to burn and pillage. “You’re not to go near the sections of the castle that are being excavated unless I’m with you. I’ll pack you back off to America faster than you can say Hollywood Boulevard.”

“And here all the tour books said people in the British Isles were supposed to be charming.”

“You want charming, head across the channel to Ireland. I have work to do.”