LEGEND

by Jude Deveraux

  “Yes! Cooking classes. Poor people need self-esteem just as much as rich people! Not all the people on welfare are bums who are too lazy to work. Think how much better they would feel if they knew how to cook a simple, nutritious meal for their children. And the women could learn a skill that might get them off welfare.”

  For a moment Jane could only stare at her friend. Never had she seen Kady show passion. Oh, everyone knew she loved cooking, and she treated those knives of hers as though they were her children, but Kady had never been the type of person to fight for a cause. If there was a protest going on, Kady would probably say, “I’ll make lunch,” then disappear into the nearest kitchen.

  “Something’s happened to you,” Jane said softly.

  “No it hasn’t,” Kady snapped.

  “It’s Gregory, isn’t it?”

  “Gregory is just fine. Why does every woman assume that the cause of every other woman’s problem is a man?”

  “History?”

  When Kady smiled, Jane clutched her hand. “I’ve known you all your life and you’ve never been a crusader. You’ve always been content to stand in the background and let others walk all over you.”

  Gasping, Kady snatched her hand away. “That’s a horrible thing to say. I do not allow people to walk over me.”

  “Ha! That mother-in-law of yours—”

  At that Kady straightened her back. “I think this has gone far enough. I think I’d like to leave now.”

  Jane leaned toward her friend. “I don’t mean to offend you. I want to help you and—”

  Kady’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “I’d like to remind you that you are not my therapist nor are you my business manager. If you want to help me then keep your nose out of my business. Are you ready to go?”

  “Yes, of course,” Jane said just as stiffly. “I do indeed think it is time for me to go home.”

  Kady didn’t answer that remark but made her way out of the restaurant, took a left, and went to the parking garage to her car, Jane behind her. They drove back to Onions in silence.

  What is wrong with me? Kady wondered, not for the first time. Everything seemed to bother her. In the three and a half weeks since she’d returned from Legend, it was as though her whole life had changed. Mrs. Norman now got on her nerves so much she could hardly stand to see the woman walk into the room.

  Kady tried not to think this way, but it was as though her time in Legend had ruined her life. Things that she had once liked, she no longer did. It seemed that instead of accepting what was, now she was asking how things could be different—and did she want them to be different? In just a few weeks she had gone from being content to wanting . . .

  And that was the real problem. She didn’t know what it was that she really wanted, and not knowing was making her crazy. She’d told Jane she wanted to start cooking classes, and maybe she did, but that wasn’t all of it. There was something deeper that she wanted, and she had no idea what it was.

  For one thing, her recurring dreams of the Arabian man were beginning to bother her. In the past the dreams had been a curiosity, but now there was an urgency to them that haunted her even in the daytime. His eyes were asking something of her; maybe even pleading with her.

  It had been easy to figure out that the dark man had something to do with Legend; his appearance at the opening in the rock had shown her that. And while she had been in Legend she’d not had the dreams. Also, in her heart she knew her dream man bore a resemblance to Cole. That night with the eagles she’d realized how much alike the two of them were. He was connected with Cole and Ruth, and with all the people she wanted to put out of her mind, so she tried to tell the veiled man to get away from her. She wanted nothing further to do with going back in time and halfway falling in love with a man who never grew past age nine. Kady knew that all she really wanted was a home and a couple of kids, and at thirty years old she knew she couldn’t wait much longer. She didn’t have the time or inclination to dabble in time travel or whatever it would take to find out why some man kept appearing in her dreams.

  But if she knew what she wanted in life, why did she feel so restless? Everything with Gregory was perfect. He was everything a woman could want in a man: kind, courteous, even-tempered. She had everything: a home, the restaurant, Virginia was lovely. Her life was perfect, but she knew that if she didn’t behave herself and stop finding fault in every little thing that happened, she was going to lose it all.

  In the long run, what did it matter that Gregory rarely made love to her? In the weeks since she’d returned from Legend, they’d had one very brief tryst in her bed in her apartment. And what did it matter that when Kady reached for him afterward, he’d rolled out of bed and pulled on his clothes? There was a great deal more to life than sex!

  But Kady kept thinking that she’d never noticed Gregory’s lack of sexual interest in her before because she’d had no one to compare him to. Maybe she hadn’t actually gone to bed with Cole, but she kept remembering the way Cole looked at her. It had felt good to tease with him, to giggle and have him chase her about the room. Even without consummation, when he’d looked at her, he’d made her feel beautiful and, oh, so very desirable.

  But Gregory made her feel secure. Secure was good, wasn’t it? So what if he didn’t tease her or nibble her neck and try to make her forget cooking and go to bed with him? Gregory loved her so much that he’d asked her to marry him. What better proof of his love did she need than that? Besides, what else did she have that he could want? It wasn’t as though she were a great heiress and he was after her money, so he had to have asked her to marry him out of love. Right?

  But in spite of all of Kady’s attempts at reason, yesterday she had turned on Gregory, almost in anger, and said, “Why do you want to marry me?”

  Gregory had smiled. “Is this one of those trick questions where no matter what I say, I’ll be wrong? I want to marry you because I love you.”

  This should have been enough for her, but Kady persisted. “Yes, but I need logical reasons. Reasons other than that I can cook.”

  “I think you will be easy to live with.”

  Kady had tried to hide her horror. What woman wanted to be “easy to live with”? “That’s good,” she said. “What else?”

  “You are quiet and undemanding and . . . and, what can I say? You don’t ask a lot from a man, and I like that.”

  “But what if I were to ask a great deal from you?”

  “Such as?” He was in the restaurant office, looking at a stack of papers, and he wasn’t really paying attention to her questions—which further annoyed Kady.

  “I’d like to be half owner of Onions, and I’d like to have my name on the deed to the house you bought. I’d also like to have my own accountant go over the books to the restaurant and see how much it is making, and I’d like to share in the profits.”

  For a moment, Gregory looked up at her, his eyes wide, then he threw back his head and laughed. “Kady, my dear, for a moment there you sounded just like that dreadful friend of yours, Jane.” Smiling, shaking his head, he looked back down at his papers. “If you want to buy anything, just let me or Mother know and we’ll make sure you have the funds. I think running the kitchen is more than enough for you to handle. You don’t need to start trying to become a bookkeeper as well.” Still highly amused, he looked up at her. “Stick to frying eggs, and I’ll handle the rest of it.”

  At that moment Kady knew that she had a choice, she could either start a blazing argument or let it die. If she started a fight, she knew she’d have to stick to her guns, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that. Why did she want to be part owner in the restaurant anyway? Was it just because Jane and Cole had made her believe she should be a part owner? What happened to her own convictions that she would be half owner of the restaurant when she was married to Gregory?

  Quietly, she had left Gregory’s office and cooked dinner that night just as always. But today, she had been restless to the point of being angry.
She had thoroughly disliked Gregory’s remark about her sticking to frying eggs. Is that what he thought of her cooking? That she was an egg fryer?

  After dinner she dismissed the four young men who worked with her in the kitchen, and she cleaned up herself. There was nothing better to dissipate anger than a towering stack of dirty pots to scrub.

  She was just finishing and wiping her wet hands when Gregory strode into the kitchen. “What are you doing here so late?” he asked.

  “Since I’m only good for frying eggs, why shouldn’t I do clean-up as well?” she said.

  “Just because you had a fight with your friend is no reason to take it out on me,” he said cooly.

  Again, Kady knew she had a choice. She could tell him that Jane was not the cause of her bad mood, or she could accept this way out. All in all, it was better to have peace with the man you loved, wasn’t it? “Sorry,” she said. “Jane and I did have a falling out.” When Gregory was silent, Kady thought, Cole would have asked me what the argument was about. “Don’t you want to know what we argued about?” she snapped, then regretted her tone.

  But Gregory just smiled. “If I don’t, do I get labeled Insensitive Man?”

  Kady smiled, too. “It gets branded on your forehead.”

  “In that case, tell me. But first, could I have one of those things?”

  After handing him one of the bread puddings she’d made that night, she told him about her idea for teaching classes to welfare recipients. When she’d finished, Gregory was silent for a long while.

  “And where do you get funding for this project?” he asked quietly as he handed her his dirty utensils.

  “Funding? I’m not thinking of doing something on a national scale. At least not yet. I was just thinking of something on a personal level. Just me, one afternoon a week. Free cooking lessons, not to rich housewives who want to learn the latest technique for making focaccia, but something for women who’d like to learn inexpensive, healthful ways to feed their families.”

  “I see. And where would you hold these classes?”

  “Here, at Onions. On Sunday or Mondays, when the restaurant is closed. There’s plenty of room and lots of equipment.”

  “And what about ingredients? Who pays for them?”

  Kady drew herself upright. “I would.”

  Smiling at her as though she were a little girl, Gregory put his arm around her shoulders. “I think that is the noblest idea I’ve ever heard. However, I don’t think our insurance would allow strangers in here.”

  “Everyone who comes in through the front door is a stranger,” she said, incredulous.

  “I think we should talk about this later when you’re not so upset.”

  Kady moved out from under his arm. “You don’t mean strangers, you mean thieves, don’t you? You think all poor people are thieves. You would have hated every person in Legend.”

  It was the first time Kady had said the name aloud in the twentieth century, and hearing it seemed to release something inside her. Collapsing onto a stool, she put her head in her hands and began to cry.

  When Gregory put his arms around her and held her, she clung to him. “Of course you can use the restaurant for whatever you want,” he said softly. “Kady, please, won’t you tell me what’s wrong with you? You’ve been acting strangely for a couple of weeks now.”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Suddenly my life seems to have no meaning or direction.”

  “What’s caused you to say this? Has something happened that I don’t know about?”

  How could she tell him that sometimes when she looked at him, a blue-eyed face grinned back at her? How could she explain what she didn’t understand herself?

  When Kady said nothing, Gregory kissed her hair and said, “Why don’t you go home? You work too hard. Go home, spend a couple of days in bed watching TV. Do nothing for a while. Rest. Come back Tuesday and you’ll be a new person.”

  Rest, she thought, that’s exactly what I need. “Yes,” she said to Gregory, then stood as he kissed both her cheeks. “I think I will go home.”

  He helped her gather her things, then held the front door open for her, but he didn’t offer to walk her to her apartment, and he didn’t say he’d come by and check on her over the next couple of days. Kady thought, I should be grateful he’s not telling me I have to come back and cook Sunday dinner for him and his mother, but she stamped that thought down. All she needed was a little rest. A few days’ rest and she’d be fine.

  Chapter 18

  BUT KADY DIDN’T REST DURING THOSE TWO DAYS. WHEN SHE got back to her apartment, she seemed to be wide awake. Sometimes it felt as though being around Gregory and his mother drained the energy out of her.

  Even though it was one in the morning, she decided to write recipes down. She’d write about the food she had experimented with in Legend.

  She took a shower, got into her nightgown, and snuggled into bed, a clipboard on her knees, and began to write. But instead of writing recipes, she began writing the story of Legend, Colorado. She wrote down facts and dates, people’s names; she drew maps. Maybe if she wrote it all down, she could make sense of it.

  But as the hours passed and the pages accumulated, she could see that there was no sense to be made of any of it. Had she been sent back just to give Cole a chance at an adult life? Or maybe it was to give him a chance to revenge the deaths of his family.

  The sun came up, and she continued to write, but toward midmorning she fell asleep, and as always since she’d returned, she dreamed of the veiled man. It was exactly the same dream, not so much as a gesture in it had changed. He held out his hand to her in invitation, and try as she might, she could not reach his hand.

  When Kady awoke, she was sobbing, and for the first time since she’d returned, she allowed herself to think of how much she missed the people of Legend. Not just Cole, but everyone. “They made me feel important,” she said aloud. “They made me feel useful and as though I was needed.”

  She tried hard not to compare her life then to what it was now, but she realized that Gregory made her feel as though he were doing her a favor by marrying her. With a jolt that was almost sickening, Kady realized that before she had been to Legend, she had agreed with that idea. Before Legend, a hundred times a day she had asked herself why a gorgeous man like Gregory wanted to marry a fat frump like her. Sure, Kady knew she had a pretty face, but that was a cliché: “Such a pretty face . . . Too bad she doesn’t take more care with her figure.”

  She spent the weekend in her apartment, thinking about how she used to feel, how she felt now, and trying to come up with a solution to her dilemma. Had she been in love with Cole? Was she in love with Gregory now?

  And, most important, what did she want to do with her life? At one point she had been crystal clear in her lifetime goals. But somewhere around her thirtieth birthday she seemed to have changed and she’d started wanting a home and children. She began to think that there should be more to life than a kitchen.

  By Tuesday afternoon she had come to no decisions, had reached no conclusions. She trudged off to Onions as though nothing had changed, but somewhere inside herself, she knew that everything had changed. It was just that Kady didn’t yet know how these internal changes were going to manifest themselves.

  * * *

  The first thing that happened at Onions involved Mrs. Norman’s penny-pinching ways.

  As usual, while Kady tried to prepare dinner, Mrs. Norman hovered at her elbow. “Do you have to use that expensive extra virgin olive oil? Why do you have to use vanilla beans? Isn’t extract good enough for you? It’s much cheaper, you know. No, no don’t start wrapping fish in paper. If they wanted fish wrapped in paper, they’d go to a fish-and-chips shop.”

  It was an exceptionally busy night, and customers were lined up three deep outside the door, and Kady knew that tonight was not the time for any emotional hysterics, but she had reached her limit. “Out, out!” she yelled at Mrs. Norman. “Get out of my kitchen
!”

  For several moments Mrs. Norman looked at Kady in shock, started to say something, but when Kady’s face didn’t soften, she turned on her heel and left the kitchen in an enraged huff.

  The silence that permeated the kitchen after the little woman’s retreat was deafening. Then, one of Kady’s assistants said, “Three cheers for Kady,” and three times they all let out a loud “Hip hip hooray.” Then someone started singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (it was Virginia, after all), and two staff cooks grabbed each other’s arms and started dancing, while another banged pot lids and beat a rhythm on the stainless countertops.

  For a moment Kady was too stunned to move; then she started laughing, and someone grabbed her arm to do-si-do her around the kitchen. When a champagne cork popped and someone produced full glasses, it only added to the hilarity.

  It was the first time Kady had really laughed since she’d left Legend.

  “What the hell is going on in here?” Gregory bellowed above the noise as he entered the kitchen with a powerful swing at the door. Instantly all fun stopped, and everyone except Kady skulked back to his workstation. She was left alone in the middle of the room, holding a full champagne flute. Gregory’s dark eyebrows drew together into one black bar across his forehead. “My mother is in my office crying,” he said, his voice low and almost menacing. “We have a full house and a line two blocks long of people waiting, and you, Kady, are in here drinking the customers’ champagne and . . . and dancing.”

  Lifting her glass, Kady looked at the bubbles of the wine. “I tell you what, Gregory dear, if anyone complains, shoot him. Not much, just a little. Just enough to teach him to mind his manners.”

  At that Gregory was speechless, and the other cooks froze at their tasks. It was one thing to yell at dreadful little Mrs. Norman but quite another to defy the owner’s son. The staff was well aware that Kady was an employee just like them, and from the look on Gregory’s face, right now the couple’s engagement didn’t count for much.