Stop it, Kady, she told herself. Her mother had told her, “If you allow a man into your life, choose him carefully.” Gregory was a carefully chosen man, perfect in every way.
And Cole Jordan was about as imperfect as a man could be, and she hadn’t chosen him. Fate had.
Chapter 9
MAYBE IT WAS BECAUSE KADY WAS CONTEMPLATING HER LIFE so intensely that she didn’t pay attention to her feet. She had paused on the trail to take a deep drink of water from a canteen and to tell herself that she had to keep her eyes off various parts of Cole’s extraordinary anatomy as he walked in front of her. When she started walking again she slipped a bit and the next moment she was sliding down the mountainside on her back, rocks flying all around her as she raised her arms to protect her face.
When she hit the bottom, she stayed where she was, trying to assess if anything was hurt. But she seemed to be all in one piece, just bruised a bit. Lifting her head, she looked back up the mountain and was shocked to see how far she had slid. Far above she could see Cole’s form, looking tiny, the late afternoon sun behind him. She raised her arm to wave to signal that she was all right, but she dropped her arm again when a sharp twinge went up her elbow.
With a sigh, she looked up the hill. Now she was going to have to climb all the way back up that very steep slope.
In the next second Kady twisted about as she heard Cole coming down the mountainside. She’d never seen anyone move as he did. He was completely heedless of his own safety as he ran straight downward, staying on his feet even as rocks and sharp bushes tore at him. Kady wanted to yell that if he slid down as she had, he’d have an easier time of it, but she could tell that he’d never hear her.
He seemed to reach her within seconds, grabbing her in his arms with the fierceness of the bear he had imitated. Kady could tell by the whiteness of his face that he was frightened; she could feel his body shaking.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I didn’t hurt anything. I—”
He ran his hands over all of her body in a detached way as he checked for broken bones and looked for blood. Except for a raw place on her elbow and a couple of tender places on her right thigh, she was unhurt. She must have slid down on her pack, and the distance between her body and the gravel had protected her.
But nothing had protected Cole. There was a bloody scratch on his cheek, a cut on his arm, his trousers were torn.
“Lie still,” he said, his voice low and full of fear. “I’ll carry you back up. Then I’ll run with you to the doctor and—”
“Cole!” she said loudly. “I’m all right. I’m not hurt.” She could tell by his face that he hadn’t heard a word she’d said, so she pushed away from him and stood. When he still didn’t stop looking worried, she jumped up and down a few times. That caused some pain to her bruised leg, but she’d have died before she let him see it.
Cole didn’t say a word as he stood, tossed her over his left shoulder, pack and all, then started the long climb back up to the top.
After the first few minutes of his carrying her, Kady didn’t bother trying to get Cole to listen to her assertion that she was unharmed. And when he reached the top and she saw how pale his face was, she didn’t say anything except to suggest that they make camp and spend the night right where they were. Cole made no protest.
Nor did he protest when she filled a canteen with water, then told him to remove his shirt so she could wash his wounds.
Maybe it was because the sight of his broad, muscular back made her hands tremble, but she started talking about her world. As she washed, carefully removing tiny rocks from the cuts in Cole’s arms and back, she told him about Onions, and about the President coming to eat. She also talked about Gregory and his mother. While she had Cole remove his trousers so she could tend to a bloody place on his thigh, she told him of the wonders of the twentieth century. Maybe if she remembered every miraculous invention that the twentieth century took for granted, she’d remember why she so desperately wanted to return.
“There,” she said at last as she wrung out Cole’s red bandanna that she’d used as a washcloth. “You don’t seem to be hurt fatally, but you’ll be sore tomorrow. Coming down that hill like that was a really stupid thing to do. I waved at you and told you I was fine. Why didn’t you—?”
She broke off as Cole put his head in his hands as though he was crying.
Without a thought, she went to him, and put her arms around him. He was naked from the waist up and wore only the torn long johns from the waist down. Abruptly, he went tumbling backward onto a grassy area, taking Kady with him, holding her very close to his nearly bare body.
“I have lost so many people,” he said raggedly. “I am afraid to love anyone because whoever gets close to me dies. It’s as though I’m a jinx on the people I love.”
“Ssssh,” she coaxed, stroking his hair, trying to calm him.
“Only my grandmother survived, and that’s because she went to Denver to live. Legend is cursed for the Jordans.”
His big hands buried themselves in her hair as he pulled her to him, holding her as close as he could without breaking her. “I’m afraid that if I love you, something horrible will happen to you too.”
She tried to pull away from him, but he held her too tightly for her to move. “Nothing will happen to me because I’m not from here,” she said, which, even to her, sounded dumb. “Cole, you don’t love me. And I don’t love you. I’m going to marry someone else, remember? I’m not even going to stay here. You are going to help me return, aren’t you?”
It was as though she hadn’t spoken, since he continued holding her in a way that felt safe and familiar. Maybe it was the unaccustomed exercise of the day, but Kady suddenly felt very sleepy. She should, of course, get up and build a fire and make some broth from the rabbit bones she’d saved, and she should put down some blankets between them and the cold, hard ground. But as she felt Cole’s body next to hers, none of those things seemed very important. She knew she should remember Gregory and her pledges to him, but at the moment all she could think of was Cole’s warmth and how good it felt to be in his arms.
With her mind drifting, she realized that one of the things she liked best about being near Cole was that when she was with him, she didn’t feel fat. When she was in the twentieth century, she seemed to be aware of what society termed “excess fat” every minute of the day. Maybe she felt small because Cole was so large, not like so many modern men who had so little flesh on them their cheekbones looked like razor blades. Or maybe it was because people in the nineteenth century didn’t seem to want women to have bodies shaped like pipe-cleaner dolls. Whatever the reason, Cole made her feel beautiful and voluptuous and so very, very desirable. She almost wished he would . . .
“Talk to me,” she whispered, her lips on the warm skin of his neck. If she didn’t have something to distract her, she would start kissing him.
He didn’t seem to notice the cold ground as he caressed her hair and her back, then moved one of his big legs over hers. “Three years after my friend Tarik’s death, his father struck it rich with a silver mine. He used the money to build the mosque in honor of his son. The place hasn’t had much use since Tarik’s father’s death, but I take care of it. I have a key and when we get back to Legend, if you want to, I’ll take you inside. It is a beautiful place. Serene and full of prayers.”
The last words trailed off as Cole fell asleep, his arms clasped about Kady. She started to pull away, but his arms were locked about her. She was hungry and there were things she needed to do, but the warmth of him and the quiet night quickly lulled her to sleep.
Kady awoke to the smell of frying fish. Smiling, her eyes still closed, she yawned and stretched and thought she must be in heaven. When Cole kissed her softly, it seemed perfectly normal when her arms went about his neck and she kissed him back in a sweet, closed-lip kiss.
“Good morning, Mrs. Jordan,” he said softly against her lips. “I loved sleeping with you in my arms. I have never en
joyed a night more.”
Kady just kept smiling, still not opening her eyes, her hands clasped about his neck. When his hand touched her hip, then moved upward, she let out a little sigh against his lips.
It was Cole who pulled away, frowning down at her.
“Oh!” Kady said, looking up at him. No doubt she had reminded him of what he could not do. Reminded him of—
“Breakfast is ready,” he said, turning away, his frown gone, and his good humor seeming to be restored.
It took Kady a few moments to recover herself, and Cole laughed at her when she found she was stiff from sleeping on the ground. He offered to comb the tangles out of her hair, but Kady refused to let him touch her.
“You look like a woman who is enjoying her honeymoon,” he said as he handed her two beautifully fried trout.
Kady almost said that she was enjoying it, but that statement might have been traitorous to Gregory.
Since they hadn’t really made camp, it was a quick matter to pack before they started walking toward the ruins that Cole had yet to tell her about. They hadn’t walked more than a couple of hours before the skies opened up and a freezing mountain rain came pouring down on them.
Though they took only minutes to get the tarpaulin up, Cole shouting orders over the noise of the rain, when they crawled under it, they were drenched. Wet and cold, they huddled under the tarp, a blanket draped around them.
“I’m hungry,” Cole said.
As though those words were a clarion call to Kady—which they were—she tossed back the blanket and prepared to go out into the rain to gather greens. With no fire, she couldn’t bake biscuits or roast anything.
Cole caught her arm, frowning. “You don’t expect much from men, do you?” he said with anger in his voice. “I am the provider. I will get the food.”
With that he grabbed his bow and arrows and slipped out into the rain. “And where are we going to build a fire?” Kady muttered as she watched the rain pour down around her.
Within minutes Cole returned with a couple of rabbits and set about building a fire under the tarp. Kady pointed out that the smoke from the fire would blow back on them and suffocate them, but Cole, with great patience, told her that if a man was a good woodsman, he knew how to position the fire so the smoke would blow into the rain.
His theory worked perfectly for about fifteen minutes; then the wind changed and the smoke blew back on them. To escape it, they tossed the blanket over their heads and hid under it. When Kady started telling him, “I told you so,” he began kissing her until they tumbled backward, their bodies entwined.
Kady, trying to remember where she was and who she was with, made attempts to push him away while keeping her body stiff.
When Cole’s kisses did not make her relax, he threw the blanket back, then rolled away from her, his hands clenched at his sides. “What can I do that would make you forget that man? Kady, do you love him so very, very much that you can see no other man? What did he do to earn every morsel of your love?”
Kady opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it. It wasn’t right to compare Cole to Gregory, but, truthfully, there had never seemed to be time enough with Gregory. Phones were always ringing, people always knocking on the door. And she was always so tired from standing on her feet all day that most of the time she didn’t care about romance. If Gregory gave her a kiss on the back of the neck while she was cooking, that was enough for her.
“All right,” he said, “don’t answer me.” She could see that he was still angry as he sat up and began to tend to the fire. The wind had shifted again, so the smoke was blowing away from them. In spite of herself, Kady thought with regret, No more huddling under a blanket.
As she looked at Cole’s broad back, bent over the fire, preparing food for them, Kady felt bad for the way she was treating him. He had been so good to her, taking care of her, even marrying her when she could find no way to support herself. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have starved to death in that ungenerous town. Her mind raced over all the nice things he had done for her: arranging a bath at the hot springs, always protecting her, risking his life when he thought she was hurt. And, as he’d said, this was the only honeymoon he was going to have.
“I like you too much,” she said softly to his back. “I have never had a man pay as much attention to me as you have. You spoil me, and I’m afraid that I like it.”
For a moment she didn’t think he’d heard her, but when he turned, a piece of rabbit in his hand, he was smiling at her as though she’d just given him the greatest compliment of his life. Feeling embarrassed, Kady looked down at her lap and not at him. Did he have to be so very good-looking?
When Cole had his own food, he stretched out under the tarp, propped himself up on one arm, his long legs seeming to curl around Kady; then he looked up at her with a bit of a smile. “I want you to tell me everything there is to know about you.”
At this statement Kady laughed, but when she saw Cole’s face, she knew he was serious. “I have led a very boring life, and it would probably put you to sleep.”
“I can’t imagine that anything you have to say would bore me. I want to know everything about you, and I want to listen.”
Maybe it was his sincerity or maybe it was that she wanted to sort out her thoughts and try to understand why what had happened to her had, but she started to talk and tell him about her life. She told him how she always knew she wanted to cook, that she had studied food instead of the other subjects at school. She didn’t know who the kings and queens or presidents were, but she knew the food from each time period, and who the famous chefs were. She went to college to study food, then on to New York on scholarship to study at Peter Kump’s Cooking School.
She told Cole how her goal was to open a small restaurant so she could experiment with food, and she wanted to travel and write cookbooks. When she was twenty-five, Gregory’s mother came to her at school and told Kady of her family’s steak house in Alexandria, Virginia. Mrs. Norman told how the restaurant was a dinosaur in the food world and she needed someone to turn it around. This appealed to Kady, so she set herself the goal to work at Onions for three years, even signing a three-year contract.
“And it worked,” she told Cole. “It took a while, but eventually people began coming to Onions for my food.”
“And was it pleasant working for Mrs. Norman?” Cole asked softly.
Kady hesitated before answering. “Truthfully, it was very difficult,” she said, then began to explain. Despite Gregory’s mother’s claim that she wanted to modernize the restaurant, she didn’t really want any changes and resisted all that Kady tried to do. And she was a true skinflint, refusing to purchase new equipment, so Kady had been stuck with a broiler that didn’t work half the time and a stove that had been bought used in 1962.
“Kady,” Cole said, “you were the whole restaurant. Why didn’t you threaten to leave if she didn’t buy you new equipment?”
Kady sighed, then looked skyward. “Why is it that everyone thinks I am helpless? And stupid?”
“I don’t think—”
“Yes you do, and so did everyone at school when I accepted Mrs. Norman’s offer, but I knew exactly what I was doing. I was offered jobs everywhere, but I knew that if I worked for someone like Jean-Louis, for the rest of my life people would point out that I had studied under a master and they would compare me to him. I took the job at Onions out of vanity. Pure, old-fashioned vanity. I knew that if I could take a horrible old restaurant like that, and turn it around, then I alone would get credit. And afterward I could get a job anywhere as head chef, not as an assistant, or I could obtain financing to open my own restaurant.”
Cole smiled at her in a way to acknowledge her intelligence and planning. “So what happened?” he asked.
“Nothing happened. I did what I set out to do.” She smiled. “And I got the boss’s son in the bargain.”
“Didn’t you say you’d been there five years? Did you get a new stove after
the three-year contract was up?”
Kady laughed. “Not yet, but I’m working on it. I don’t think Mrs. Norman can deny her daughter-in-law a broiler, do you?”
She’d meant the words as lighthearted, but Cole didn’t smile. “Kady, who owns this restaurant that you work at?”
“Don’t give me that look, because I know very well where you’re heading. After I marry Gregory, as his wife, I will own half of all he owns.”
“Did he ask you to marry him before or after your contract was up?”
Kady almost smiled at Cole’s refusal to say Gregory’s name. “After. But don’t start trying to make it seem that Gregory wants to marry me just to keep me cooking for him.”
Kady took a deep breath because Cole’s insinuations were beginning to anger her. “You don’t understand about Gregory and me. We are a team. Gregory gives me the freedom to concentrate on the food. Since we met, he’s worked hard for Onions. He writes to food critics and courts newspapers and magazines to get write-ups. He gives free meals to people of influence so they’ll spread the word.”
“I guess if all my income depended on one woman, I’d do everything I could to keep her, too.”
“Well, his income doesn’t just depend on me! He’s in real estate. Plus he and his mother could replace me in a minute.”
“Oh? And how many cooks did his mother try to hire before you agreed to take the job?”
Part of Kady knew she shouldn’t answer him, but why should she hide? He could say whatever he wanted to and it still wouldn’t change what she knew to be true. “Seventeen.”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Seventeen! Is that what you wanted to hear? Mrs. Norman went to three cooking schools and interviewed seventeen graduates, but not one of them wanted the challenge of that restaurant. But that’s because they had no vision. They all wanted to work for Wolfgang Puck or some other famous person.”
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