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