The Wedding Dress. Kimberly Cates

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СКАЧАТЬ bite.” Jared gritted his teeth as one of those razor-sharp fangs slit his knuckle. A thump on the head from God, Jared figured. That’s what you get for staring at a Good Samaritan’s breasts.

      “He’s just scared,” she murmured, moving closer, crooning softly to the mangy creature. But she wasn’t a complete moron. She used the cloth to protect her arms as she took the quaking scrap of dog out of Jared’s grasp.

      “I don’t care how many rotten films you’ve been in back in America, lassie,” Snib groused, wrinkling his nose at Emma as if he’d stepped barefoot in dog droppings. “You keep that stray away from my land or next time I won’t bother me dogs, I’ll just shoot it.”

      “You’ll have to shoot me first!” Emma cried, outraged.

      “Don’t tempt me.” Snib gave a thunderous snort from his bulbous red nose. “I’ve got no patience for interferin’ women. You tell her that, Butler. Now get on your own side of the burn, all three of you!”

      Curving the arm that felt the least like a badly chewed sausage around Emma’s shoulders, Jared urged her back toward the water. This time the cold felt good. As soon as he was sure she had her footing, he plunged his arms into the water, letting the chill cool his pain and wash away the worst of the blood. He only wished the water was deep enough to cover his chest.

      By the time he joined Emma and the rat of a dog on the shore, the mutt had decided burying his nose in the nice lady’s breasts was a far friendlier pastime than being savaged by a pair of collies.

      Smart little bugger, Jared thought.

      “I suppose we’ll have to take the dog with us,” Jared said, more to himself than to her. “It’s stupid enough to swim right back over there to go another round.”

      “He’s hurt. His ear’s all torn. Is there a vet someplace close?”

      “We won’t be needing one.”

      “But—”

      Jared shot her a quelling look, then shook his head in bewilderment. “You, there. Dog,” he addressed the disreputable ball of fur. “What kind of eejit takes on someone so much bigger?”

      Emma’s grateful smile hurt Jared’s heart. “The same kind of eejit who gets between two dogs in a fight,” she said as if it were the highest accolade.

      

      EMMA MCDANIEL PERCHED cross-legged on Jared’s unmade bed, her shift hiked halfway up her golden-brown thighs so the excess fabric could form a nest for the half-drunk dog in her arms.

      She’d protested giving the mutt any alcohol at all, but since it was the only anesthetic available, she’d given in. Jared’s main objection was that the only liquor he had in his tent was the bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan Scotch he’d been saving for the day he made the vital discovery he sensed was hovering somewhere in the future of this dig.

      But wasting fine Scotch didn’t upset Jared’s equilibrium half as much as the presence of a woman in his tent did. For six summers the roomy canvas enclosure had been the kind of inner sanctum even Davey was forbidden to breach.

      The off-limits rule was a necessity Jared had settled on during the first summer he’d arrived as site director. Nothing like going to bed and finding a leggy blond graduate student naked under the sheets to convince an ethical teacher of the necessity of drawing clear boundaries.

      But here he sat, the site’s first aid kit open on the crate that served as his bedside table. The spotlight he used to read tiny print late at night aimed down at the most exquisite woman he’d ever seen and a dog who looked as if it had just crawled out of last month’s garbage.

      Emma filled the spartan confines of Jared’s tent like a bright splash of color where there had been only gray. His rumpled bed looked as if it had been put to far more sensual use than a lone man’s restless night, the tangled sheets beneath Emma whispering of a night of mind-blowing sex.

      And Emma herself, hair tousled, clothes in complete disarray, kept pulling his unruly imagination away from the task at hand and plunging him deeper into a train of thought that could only land him in trouble.

      Just because they apparently didn’t hate each other anymore was no reason to jump into bed together. Teaching her swordplay was fine as long as he stuck to the kind made of metal, and not the one the sight of her bared legs made stiffen beneath the fly of his pants.

      As if a woman like her would let you touch her anyway.

      But she watched intently as he tended the dog, observed his every move in a way that made him jittery as hell.

      Frowning, Jared gently folded the stitched ear so it lay on the top of the mutt’s head. He positioned a bright red button the size of a sixpence on the part of the ear that wasn’t tracked with stitches. Might as well put the dog’s head to good use, Jared figured, since it was obvious the animal wasn’t using it to store any brains.

      The dog gave a muffled yip through the gauze-band muzzle around its mouth, as if it understood the slanderous direction of Jared’s thoughts. Holding the button in place, Jared slipped the curved needle deftly through the button, the layer of ear and the skin at the crown of the mutt’s head.

      “You needn’t be giving me that filthy look,” Jared said. “I’d have left you to take your chances with Shep and Digger. She’s the one who decided you needed rescuing.”

      “But you’re the one who saved the day. Right, Captain?”

      “Captain? Oh, no,” Jared muttered as he tied off his handiwork and snipped the nylon thread. “This can’t be good for either one of us, dog. She’s naming you now.”

      “And you’re going to make him the laughingstock of the county with that big red button on his head.”

      “He’d scratch out those stitches before bedtime if they weren’t out of his reach. It’s the button or an Elizabethan collar around his neck. He’d like that even less, believe me.”

      “An Elizabethan what?”

      “A fancy name for a big plastic cone that makes the poor beast look like it’s tried to squeeze headfirst through the small end of a funnel.”

      “Oh.” Emma puzzled for a moment and Jared could see she was trying to picture the ridiculous image he’d described. “You’re right. He wouldn’t like that. It would be hard to watch for sneak attacks.”

      “Right. You never know when hordes of marauding collies might decide to raid the dig site. That’s what every archaeological excavation needs. A troublemaking, digging-obsessed dog mucking about.”

      “How do you know he digs?”

      “That’s what terriers do.”

      “Not this one. He’s going to be an angel.” Emma unfolded legs Marilyn Monroe would have envied and swung them over the edge of his mattress, sweeping gracefully to her feet. Carrying the dog to the bed she’d made for him by putting her surcoat in the wooden box she’d emptied of Jared’s sparse toiletries, she bent over to settle Captain in for the night.

      The sight СКАЧАТЬ