The Wedding Dress

“You betcha, mister.” Emma tried with all her might to keep from shivering. “After all, who died and made you Mussolini?”

“Your director, as a matter of fact.” Butler rubbed his chin. “All right, Ms. McDaniel. Keep your tampons if you must. In the end, one small concession on my part won’t make any difference. You’re not tough enough to survive without all your luxuries. I’ll wager there are plenty of other things in that suitcase you’ll be missing before your time here is finished.”

The glow of triumph she’d felt at unsettling him vanished as the reality of his ultimatum struck her. “There’s no way I’m giving up what’s…There’s something else in my suitcase I…I have to…”

“What? Designer drugs? Your silk knickers?”

“It’s none of your business.” Emma faced him down, hands on her hips. “It’s something I need. Got it, Butler? Isn’t there anything you need? Besides a personality transplant, I mean?”

Butler’s green eyes blazed even hotter, but something in the taut line of his mouth betrayed him. She’d hit a nerve and damn, it felt good.

“One thing,” he snarled. “Got it? You can keep one thing. Agreed?”

Emma tried not to let him see the relief flooding through her. “Agreed.” Instinctively she extended her hand to shake on it. Butler gave her a long look, then his large, work-roughened hand swallowed Emma’s much smaller one in a grasp that was brazenly masculine, surprisingly straightforward. Her fingers, strong in their own right, tested in countless stunts over the years, felt almost delicate for the first time since she’d left her hometown when she was just sixteen.

Heat pulsed between Butler’s palm and hers. The archaeologist’s eyes widened just a touch; Emma’s breath caught. She pulled her hand away and flattened it on the front of her slacks, as if trying to erase the feel of that strange, hot throb.

“Maybe we’ll be able to work together without killing each other after all.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.” Butler folded his arms over his chest, palms against the nubby wool of his sweater, and Emma wondered if he felt the same strange compulsion to buff the feel of her off his hands. It made him seem a tiny bit more human.

“I’ll give you this much, Butler. At least we know where we stand with each other. Hate at first sight.”

“You have to care enough about somebody to hate them,” Butler said.

“Well, all-righty then. That gives me something to aspire to. I assume you have some work to do besides irritating me. So if you could show me where I’ll be staying, we can take a break from each other, at least for a little while.”

“I thought you’d like to stay in Lady Aislinn’s chamber,” he said so pleasantly that Emma knew damn well not to trust him. And yet, how bad could it be? Emma reasoned. Aislinn was the lady of the castle. It had to be the best room of all. She’d seen those old movies where the beds were draped in velvet bed hangings and the walls were hung with tapestries and fires blazed in hearths the size of garden sheds.

“Terrific,” she said, her teeth starting to chatter. “I don’t suppose there are any flashing neon signs to show me the way.”

“No. Just take those stairs up to the top of the tower. I guess we’ll see what you’re made of, Ms. McDaniel. After Sir Brannoc took the castle, Lady Aislinn spent three months in that room. Until Sir Brannoc forced her out. If you can’t manage to stay there for six weeks…”

“I’ll manage,” Emma insisted, her chin bumping up a notch.

“Some even claim that she hid the fairy flag right there.”

Emma’s eyes widened in fascination. “The one that was supposed to keep the castle from falling to an enemy as long as the flag flew inside its walls?”

“No. The other fairy flag. The one with Tinker Bell on it.”

Emma ground her teeth, knowing the man was pulling her chain on purpose, knowing, too, that the less she rose to the bait, the sooner Butler would give up his efforts to torment her.

“What? Nothing to say, Ms. McDaniel?” Butler asked. “Did you expect me to be impressed that you bothered to read the script? The fairy flag is an integral part of the legend.”

“A gossamer-thin piece of cloth brought as Lady Aislinn’s dowry,” Emma supplied. “A gift of the fairies to be passed down to the most beautiful daughter born to the chief of Clan MacGregor. A hundred suitors filled her father’s hall, all vying to win her hand in marriage so they could become invincible.”

“A good way to be certain your daughter was well treated once she was married and beyond your care. Husbands had total power over their wives then. The woman who dared put a gold circlet on Robert the Bruce’s head was imprisoned by her angry husband for four years in a cage shaped like a crown hanging outside the castle.”

“Nice guy. But then, you did warn me to head across the water to Ireland if I wanted charm. What happened to the lady?”

“The countess survived. God knows how.”

“A life lesson you should take to heart. Never underestimate a pissed-off woman. She hung on so she could make her husband’s life a living hell. But this whole fairy flag thing—obviously you’re a pretty big boy to believe in the little people, Butler. So what’s the story? Exactly what was the fairy flag really?”

“We’ll never know.” An intriguing light sparked in Butler’s intelligent eyes and for an instant Emma glimpsed an enthusiasm, a warmth, a wonder that transformed his face. “If scientists could get their hands on a piece of it now, we’d be able to test it, hopefully date it, compare it to cloth samples from ancient times all over the world. We might be able to make an educated guess…”

Passion. He radiated it, so hot Emma couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be the woman who inspired that zeal, that intensity. Her tongue moistened her suddenly dry lips.

In a heartbeat, Butler seemed to remember who he was talking to. The stony mask of dislike fell back across his face, leaving Emma even colder than before. “It doesn’t matter. The flag was lost forever when Lady Aislinn disappeared.”

“Maybe I’ll spend my spare time having a look around the room,” Emma said. “Find the fairy flag after hundreds of years.”

“We archaeologists would really appreciate it. After all, nobody in the past six hundred years has thought to look for the flag in that room. All those treasure hunters over the centuries, countless teams of scholars and experts—we all just wanted to leave it there for you, so you could make the cover of Hello magazine.”

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Emma tossed her hair. “Just think what a great promo it would be for the movie.” She snapped out the handle of her suitcase and started rolling it across the bumpy stone floor toward the stairs.

“There’s no point hauling that thing up three stories,” Butler warned. “Just take out whatever you need right here.”

Emma’s cheeks burned. Damn if she was going to let this jerk watch her rummage through her suitcase, let him see…things that were private, things that were precious, things that still made her heart ache. Chinks in the walls six years of living in the public limelight had forced her to build.

No way was she going to open herself up for more of Butler’s mockery. She was going to haul her suitcase far from his scornful gaze. She was going to slip out her treasure when she was safe, silent—alone.

If it was the last thing she did, she was going to get her suitcase to the top of the tower.

“Hey, I told you to open the damn thing here.”

“So you can sneak a look at my underwear?” Emma said, doggedly hauling the suitcase up the first stair. “Think again, bud.”

“I may be the one man on earth who doesn’t give a damn what color your panties are, you stubborn little…”

She smacked her bag against the stone as loud as she could to drown out whatever he’d decided to call her. But she hadn’t bumped the suitcase up half a dozen stone risers before she wondered if doctors in archaeology knew anything about CPR. The weight of the case was going to leave her with gorilla arms stretched down to her knees.

She heard a growled oath, heavy footfalls behind her. With an unladylike grunt, she was pulling the suitcase halfway up another stair when suddenly Jared Butler grabbed the handle away from her, his hand warm and rough, impatient and unyieldingly masculine.

For a pulse beat the narrow stairway pushed them together. His arm bumped against her breast. The smell of him—rain and spice and exasperation—filled Emma’s head.

“I can handle this myself!” she objected.

“Sure you can. Just like you can play Lady Aislinn.” He was already striding up the dim stairs, both his form and the beam of flashlight vanishing in the shadows ahead.

Emma did the only thing she could. Stormed up after him. Her lungs were sucking like bellows by the time she reached her room. But in spite of her vow not to let Butler see her sweat, she couldn’t hide the dismay that washed over her as he shone the flashlight over the chamber.

Moisture penetrated cracked walls with the kind of dampness that would never really get dry. A bed stuffed with God knew what was blanketed with…skins of dead animals…with the fur still on.

“What…what are those?” Emma asked, unnerved.

“Wolf pelts, stag skins. Whatever you could kill hereabouts in the fourteenth century. Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Thinking those skins used to be on some wild animal?”