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Jared looked her over. “You look like a stiff wind could blow you away.”
“It throws you arrogant caveman types off guard, and then—whamo. I get a perfect opening.” She slanted a “damn the duchess” glare up at him, but her eyes twinkled.
“Is that so?”
She straightened, still breathless, her breasts rising and falling from the exertion. “My grandfather served in special forces. When I was ten years old he taught me how to fight. Death shots and everything. Consider yourself warned, Butler.”
He grinned. “I’m pure terrified.”
“You should be. As soon as I find a way to use all that weight and upper-body strength against you in a sword fight, mister, you’re going to be on your butt in the dirt begging for mercy.”
A horrible yelp split the air from across the burn, followed by a cacophony of snarling that made the hairs on the back of Jared’s neck stand on end. Both horses skittered to one side. Emma caught her breath.
“My God!” she exclaimed. “What is that? It sounds like someone’s killing something.” She didn’t wait for an answer. Damned if she didn’t wade into the knee-deep water and slog toward the far bank!
“Emma, stay out of it! It’s just old Snib setting his dogs on some poor—”
She stumbled, fell, soaking her left side. Didn’t she know how wild the burn could be after a rainstorm? Full of swirling currents that could pull her under. Plunging after her seemed his only option.
That water was going to be so cold it would take care of any problems he might have being attracted to the woman. His ballocks were going to crawl up inside him and hide for a month!
He gritted his teeth on an oath as he plunged in after her, but she was already scrambling up the other bank. Just at that moment, the snarling tangle of what sounded to be canines boiled up over the rim of the valley that had concealed them thus far.
Snib’s two border collies were tearing into what looked to be a ball of mange not even half their size, as the crusty farmer with his tweed cap urged them on.
“Take the little devil, Shep and Digger. Snap his fool neck!”
Snib’s knobby old head suddenly jerked away from the fight, seeing the soaked woman stalking toward him with all the high dudgeon a straitjacket of wet wool skirts would allow.
“What the devil?” Snib swore. “You’re that film star person who—”
“Call off your dogs!” Emma bellowed, grabbing a fallen branch about as thick as her wrist. “They’re hurting him!”
“Hurting him? It’s killing him they’re after. I’ll not have a thieving stray sucking eggs in my henhouse!”
Emma thumped one of the collies in the ribs, trying to bat it away. The collie yelped, but with the intensity of its breed kept battling what it saw as a threat to its flock.
“Don’t hit the big dog, you crazy woman!” Jared yelled, clambering up onto the bank. “It could turn on you!”
Ignoring him, Emma whacked the second one while old Snib cursed her, but she might as well have been trying to knock out a swarm of bees with a cricket bat. Fangs flashed, tearing at the mangy dog, who fought back as if he were ten feet tall. One of the collies gave a yelp as the little dog launched itself and sank teeth into its shoulder. The bloody little fool held on tight.
Blood streaked the dogs’ coats. And for an instant Jared wished Emma McDaniel would do what she’d promised—and goddamn well faint. The woman passing out cold was the only thing he could think of at the moment that might get her out of danger.
Emma flung away her stick, but it wasn’t in surrender. Jared knew in his gut she was going to plunge headlong into the nastiest dogfight he’d ever seen and try to snatch the mutt to safety. Fear jolted through him as the image of Emma’s hands torn and bleeding flashed in his mind.
He reached her just in time, encircling her waist with his arms, dragging her back against him. The woman kicked and struggled as if he were trying to haul her into danger instead of out of it.
“Don’t! They’re hurting him!” Her voice choked. With tears? He’d never know. Her heel connected hard with his shin.
“I’ll get the damned dog if you settle down,” he promised with a fatalistic grimace. “I’ll heal faster.”
She stilled, her breath catching in her throat, her breasts soft against his arm. He released her. Cursing himself six times a fool, Jared dove into the fight.
Chapter Five
“HAVE YOU GONE daft?” Snib shrilled in disbelief.
Pain pierced Jared’s hand as one of the dogs bit him. Probably the little bastard he was trying to save. Another dog ripped at his shirt.
“Call them off, Snib.” Jared’s hands finally closed about the wriggling mass of fur. Jared booted the collie nearest him and pulled the little dog in to his chest. “Hey,” Jared yelped in pain as the mutt snapped his sharp little teeth into the only thing he could reach—Jared’s pecs.
“Down, Shep. Digger. Heel,” Snib commanded. The collies dropped, shaking from tail to snout as they fought the urge to finish the kill. But if their master had changed his mind, they’d obey him.
Jared’s hands dripped blood, the bite in his chest burned, the terrier eyeing him not with gratitude but plain old resentment for ending the fight.
Eyelids peeled back from black button eyes. The terrier showed its sharp fangs and yipped at his attackers as if to say “Let me at ’em, bloody cowards.” For God’s sake, with its lip curled like that it looked like an angry rat—the kind who carried distemper and bubonic plague. A rat determined to bite whatever happened to be in reach.
Jared shifted the dog away from its apparent target: Jared’s jugular. He didn’t need another souvenir from this debacle. Sensing a chance to break free, the little demon writhed in Jared’s grasp, flailing its spindly legs, its ribs so sparsely fleshed the bones seemed to grind together.
“Settle down, or I’ll strangle you myself,” Jared warned, holding on for dear life. Damned if he wanted to go plunging into the creek a second time in pursuit of the dog.
Emma swept off her surcoat, stepping close to Jared to cut off the mutt’s hope of escape. In spite of the squirming flurry of dog in his hands, Jared noticed the points of her nipples thrusting against the damp linen of her shift. “Let me bundle him up in this,” she said.
“He’ll 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 of her shapely bottom held Jared’s gaze. After all, what could just looking hurt? Her hair spilled over her shoulder as she crooned to the exhausted little creature, gently removing the muzzle. Jared couldn’t stop himself from wondering how that cascade of black curls would feel tumbling over his chest, all silk and fire, this woman a mix of passion and vulnerability more intoxicating than he’d ever known.
No wonder kids like Davey were mesmerized by Emma McDaniel. Jared was a grown man and he had a feeling his pants were going to get damned tight across the front whenever she was around.
“Where did you learn how to do that?”
The question startled him from fantasies so raw he felt his cheeks burn. “Do what?” he managed to choke out.
“Stitch him up. Clean the wounds and all.”
The dog. She was asking about the dog, Jared realized with relief. Simple question. Easy answer.
Then again, maybe not.
“My father taught me.”
Emma scooped up his razor, his toothbrush and shampoo from where she’d dumped them half an hour before. Feminine hands touched his most intimate objects, arranging them with a woman’s eye for order. “Is your father a doctor?” she asked.
“Hardly that.” Jared turned his back to her and busied himself putting the contents of the first aid kit back in their white plastic case. If only he could lock his emotions inside the container as well, covering up the sadness, the bitter sense of loss. It seemed he was a better actor than he thought or Emma was still too wrapped up in the dog to know how her question had affected him.
“What are you doing?” Emma asked, noticing the restocked first aid kit. “We haven’t taken care of your bites yet.”
“It’s nothing—”
“I would say you saved a damsel in distress, if the dog wasn’t a boy.” She indicated his hand, the fingers now crusted with dried blood. “The least I can do is patch up the injuries you got while doing it.”
“No.” Jared fought the impulse to jam his hands into his pockets, knowing it would hurt like fire. “I can handle this myself.”
“I’m sure you can. But we’re going to play fourteenth century. The lady of the castle did the healing.” She brooked no argument, grabbing the bottle of peroxide and a bowl he’d meant to return to the canteen. Indicating he should sit on the bed, she climbed up beside him, cross-legged again, her knees touching his left thigh as she pulled his hand palm-up into her lap. She ran her fingertips over the puncture wounds and Jared welcomed the distraction of pain burning up his arm.
“These are deep. Maybe we should take you to a doctor.”
“I’ll not be wasting my time driving forty minutes so the man can do what I can do right here.”
“All right then. All right.” She set the bowl between them. “I’m just going to flush the germs out with peroxide.”
Soft, feminine fingers curved gently about his wrist, turning his hand so the worst of the bite wounds were on top. “You might want to have a shot of Scotch yourself before I do this,” she said, and he wondered if her fingertips could feel his pulse racing.
“I’m saving that Scotch for an occasion to remember. Today is one I intend to forget.”
“Very funny.”
Emma tipped the brown bottle. Jared gritted his teeth as the antiseptic seared its way into the puncture wounds. The peroxide fizzed madly as it burned the wounds clean. He felt Emma watching him and looked up to see worried brown eyes.
“Really, they’re just a few little cuts,” he assured her.
“They’re not little. In fact they’re…they’re rather nasty.” Her voice wobbled.
He hated seeing the shadows of self-blame she was trying so hard to hide. Wished he could find a way to drive them from her face. But before he could think of something amusing to say, she spoke with forced brightness.
