LEGEND

by Jude Deveraux

  Only once did he say anything and that was to ask a question. “Did you love him?”

  “Cole?” she asked, knowing that was whom Tarik meant. “I don’t know. I did in a way, but I guess I knew that it would never last between us, so I held back.”

  “You’re good at holding back,” he said under his breath, then asked her to go on with her story.

  By the time they returned to the cabin, Kady had told him everything about the time she’d spent in Legend with Cole.

  Tarik led her to the round oak table where a few hours before they had made love. “You don’t believe me,” she said as she sat on the chair he pulled out for her.

  “I believe every word you’ve said,” he answered. “Now, what do you want on your omelet?”

  “It’s what a person wants in an omelet, not on it,” she said, unconvinced that he believed her. Who could believe a story like hers? “Here, let me do that,” she said as she started for the kitchen counter.

  “Kady, my love,” he said as he put his hands on her shoulders and ushered her back to the table. “I did not fall in love with you because I need a cook. You’re my guest, and I’ll take care of you. I might not be able to turn out a meal like yours, but I can certainly make an omelet.”

  Kady smiled up at him. No one anywhere, ever, volunteered to cook for her. Except Cole. Except Tarik. “Everything,” she said. “I want everything you’ve got on the omelet, and in it. Drag it through the garden.”

  “One muddy omelet, comin’ up,” he said, turning back to the stove. “Now tell me about . . .” He hesitated as though the word were difficult for him. “About Gregory.”

  Kady laughed. “Not until I hear about Leonie and Wendell and all the others.”

  Turning, he gave her a grin that almost took her breath away. “There are so many women in my past that it’s going to take the rest of my life to tell you about all of them. I think that for now we better stick to your men. There are fewer of them.”

  “Ha ha. There happen to be many men in my life.”

  “Give me their names so I may slay them.”

  She laughed as she looked at the back of him, and it suddenly occurred to her that at this moment, for the first time in her life, she was happy. All her life she seemed to have been searching for something, but she’d never known what it was. She’d never been content with what she was doing. When she’d been chef at Onions she had dreamed of being married to Gregory and having children. When she was in old Legend, she had wanted to be elsewhere. Then when she’d returned to her real life, everything she’d found there had made her want to get away from it.

  But now she was where she should be and doing what she should be doing with the man she was supposed to be with.

  “Want to share that with me?” Tarik asked softly as he watched her.

  “Did you ever want to crystallize a moment? Did you ever say to yourself, ‘I want right now to last forever’?”

  He put down his chopping knife and knelt before her, taking her hands in his. “Ever since I first saw you in my office I’ve felt that way.”

  “Ha! You were with another woman when I went to your apartment. And before that you were rude and nasty and—”

  “I didn’t say I liked the feeling,” he said, eyes twinkling. “I knew from the first moment I looked into your eyes that I was seeing the end of my freedom. No more wild parties. No more supermodels. No more—”

  “All I hear is what a private man you are. In fact, people don’t even know your name. You can’t have privacy and still have parties and zillions of women.”

  Smiling, he went back to his chopping board. “Did anyone ever tell you that women with brains are annoying?”

  “Gregory did.”

  “I bet he did. I imagine that at one time he thought he’d found his dream woman, someone who would cook and keep her mouth shut. I bet you shocked him when you told him you were never coming back, didn’t you?”

  Standing behind him, she smiled, for she knew that he was asking her a question. He wanted assurance that she had indeed left Gregory. “You’re right. He couldn’t believe it.” She paused for a moment. “I guess Leonie was a bit angry when you dumped her.”

  Turning, he gave her a look of puzzlement. “I didn’t know ladies knew such words. She used some I’d never heard before.”

  Kady was laughing as he set an enormous steaming omelet in front of her; then he put his chair near hers and they ate from the same plate, sipping white wine from the same glass.

  “I want to know about you,” she said softly, peering at him over the wineglass. “I’ve told you all there is to know about me, but I know nothing about you. What exactly does that company of yours do?”

  “Makes money. We Jordans are good at making money. We’re bad at personal relationships, but then maybe that’s the curse that was put on us by the people of Legend for what they believed Ruth did to them. Or maybe it’s my great-great-grandfather, Ruth’s youngest son, who cursed all of us. Or, possibly, it’s my own fault, but I think that’s highly unlikely.”

  For just a moment Kady saw beneath the laughing, self-confident, cocky grin and saw the loneliness in his eyes. She also saw pain. Mr. Fowler had told her that C. T. Jordan was thirty-four years old but had never been married and now she wondered why.

  “Were you really going to marry that Leonie? Just to have children?”

  “Yes. I really was, because, you see, I had given up hope of finding you.”

  She started to ask him what he meant by that, but, actually, she knew. Putting her hand over his, she looked into his eyes. “I have to return, you know that, don’t you? As soon as the rock opens again, I have to go back to Legend.”

  Instantly, his eyes blazed anger. “And what can you do there? Can you change what has already happened? Do you want to bring your saintly Cole back to life so you can go back to him?”

  “No, of course not. I just want to do whatever I can to . . . to . . .”

  Standing, he glared down at her. “You have no idea what you want to do, or even what you’ll be able to. The only way to prevent the tragedy of Legend is for you to prevent Cole from getting shot. And how are you going to do that? By placing your body in front of his?”

  She hadn’t really thought that far ahead. “I don’t know what I can do. Maybe I can find Ruth before the bank robbery happens and warn her.”

  “And how are you going to get past the Jordan Line?”

  She looked up at him blankly, not understanding him. There was an open road between the wall that was the Jordan Line. All she had to do was walk down the road.

  Tarik went on his knees in front of her and held her hands; his eyes were pleading. “The Jordan Line is a stone wall that separates the town, the clean, pure, untouchable Jordans on one side, the riffraff on the other. Did Ruth tell you that the wall is patrolled by armed guards twenty-four hours a day? Did she tell you that any outsiders who try to get near the ivory-towered Jordans are shot at? Strangers can’t just go up to the royal Jordans and talk to them.”

  “Why do you say ‘is’ and ‘are’? Don’t you mean ‘was’?”

  Standing, Tarik moved away from her to go to the fireplace. “Of course I do,” he said softly. “You said that you were afraid to tell anyone your story because no one would believe it, but I do, and I can see the danger of it. You cannot go back, Kady. Even if the door in the rock opens, you cannot go back.”

  “I must,” she said simply.

  “No!” he shouted, his fist coming down on the mantelpiece. “I cannot allow it.”

  Perhaps she should have taken offense at his words, but she didn’t, for she saw the concern for her in his eyes, and she wanted to calm him. “I don’t think I’ll be given a choice, since every time I look, the door is closed.”

  At that he smiled at her, a warm, friendly smile, and he moved to put his arms around her. “Good, I hope it stays closed forever.” Pulling away, he looked into her eyes. “Will you marry me, Kady?” he asked sof
tly.

  She hesitated. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? But something held her back. Maybe it was that there had been three men in her life in the last few months and she was a bit confused about them.

  When she opened her mouth to speak, he stopped it with a kiss. “The offer will always be open,” he said, “so take your time. Take all the time you need,”

  At that she hugged him about the waist and held him tightly to her.

  “Come on,” he said companionably, “let’s go to bed and get some sleep.”

  “Oh?” she said, eyebrows raised.

  “If you can sleep while in the same bed with me, so can I,” he said as though it were a challenge.

  And two hours later, after more lovemaking, Kady did fall asleep in his arms.

  But when she awoke the next morning, Tarik was gone. Thinking that he had gone outside, she dressed and went out, but search as she might, she could not find him. By the early afternoon she gave up hoping that he was going to appear on his horse with some reasonable excuse as to why he had left her alone, so she started down the mountain.

  By the time she reached Legend she had decided that she hated all men everywhere, especially men named Jordan, who constantly disappeared without a word of explanation. Had it been a game with him, just to see if he could get her into bed, then after he did, he left her? For all she knew a helicopter had picked him up and he’d returned to New York. After all, there was nothing to hold him in Legend, since Kady owned nothing and never had.

  There was no one around when she entered the town, and she was glad of that because she had decided to pack her bags and leave. Tarik had been right, she thought, as she stormed up the stairs of the Jordan house and grabbed her suitcase. What could she do if she did return to Legend? And, besides that, why did she want to? What did the Jordans mean to her? A few months ago she had never heard of them, and—

  She paused in her packing, a garment in her hand, as Luke staggered into her room—the room she was going to share with a man she now never wanted to see again. Kady was so angry that it took her a moment to actually see Luke; then disbelief kept her from moving as she stared at him.

  His shirt was dirty and torn, and there was blood on his side. There was another bloody place on his head, a raw, red mark around his neck, and he was panting for breath.

  Kady ran the few feet to get to him, then put her arms around his chest to help him to sit down on the side of the bed. When he seemed beyond being able to sit up, she gently pushed him back onto the bed.

  “What’s happened?” she asked in fear. “Did a mine collapse? Is Hannibal trapped? What about . . .” Her eyes widened in fear. “Tarik?” she whispered, all animosity forgotten. When she saw Luke’s look, she knew that that’s what he’d come to tell her. Standing, she looked down at him. “There’s been an accident, hasn’t there? Is there a telephone here? Can I call for help? How do I—?”

  “No,” Luke managed to rasp out. “There wasn’t an accident. Tarik and I—” Pausing, he put his hand to his throat, then motioned to a carafe of water on a bureau.

  With trembling hands, Kady poured a glass of water and handed it to him. She tried to concentrate on how to care for Luke’s wounds because she could not bear to think that the look on his face might mean that Tarik was not alive.

  It seemed an eternity before Luke finished drinking and handed her the glass. “We went through the door,” he rasped out, then put his hand to his throat. “Forgive me, but hanging plays hell with a man’s throat.”

  At that Kady sat down on the bed and looked at him. “Did they hang him?” she managed to get out.

  “They hadn’t yet when I left, but I don’t know how much time he has left.” He looked at her. “They may have shot him.”

  At that Kady thought she was going to faint, and she must have looked like it, for Luke grabbed her shoulders to keep her from falling. “Why? How? How much time?” she whispered.

  “Tomorrow at dawn, but who knows how much time that is in that place?”

  Suddenly, Kady’s head cleared, and she started for the door. But Luke caught her before she reached the stairs. “Where—?” he managed to rasp out.

  “I’m going to go get him, of course.”

  “He said no, that you weren’t to go after him.” There were tears of pain in Luke’s eyes as these words hurt his throat so much, and Kady saw that his energy was draining fast.

  Before she went back to Legend—if she could get through the doorway, that is—she ought to know what had happened and what she would be walking into.

  Gently, she led Luke back into the bedroom, then went to the bathroom to get a pan of hot water and a clean cloth. While she cleaned the wound on his head, she managed to get most of the story out of him.

  It seemed that on the day he and Kady had arrived in Legend, Tarik had seen that the door opened for him but not for Kady, so that night he had asked Luke to go with him. When the two men got there, they discovered that it was the day before the shooting of Cole and his family was to happen.

  Kady listened while Luke haltingly told her how he and Tarik had tried their best to warn the Jordan family that they must stay away from the bank the next day.

  “But they wouldn’t listen to us,” Luke said. “We tried everything. Tarik got into a bloody fight with some men at the Jordan Line.”

  At this she halted in washing Luke. “With a knife?”

  “A knife and an army sword that was hanging on a wall, and with his fists.”

  No wonder he felt into bed beside her the next morning and went to sleep immediately, she thought. He should have been taken to a hospital and X-rayed.

  “So what happened last night?” she asked as she began to wash the cut on Luke’s side. His shirt was hanging in rags, so she easily tore it away.

  “Tarik said that since he couldn’t stop the Jordans, he could stop the bank robbers, so we waited in the bank all day.”

  Kady could almost imagine what Luke was going to say next.

  “We were strangers in town, and they . . .” He put his hand to his throat, his eyes shut in pain.

  “They thought you were in cahoots with the robbers,” she finished for him.

  Luke’s eyes widened. “Yes. They thought we were scouts for the thieves. They laughed at me when I said we had saved the whole Jordan family from death and that, actually, we’d saved the whole damned town. They said—”

  “Sssssh,” she said. “You don’t have to talk anymore. Just rest.”

  “No,” he said, “I have to go back. They were going to lynch us, but Tarik fought them all, and he held them off long enough for me to get back through the door. But they were shooting.”

  Kady would not allow herself to actually comprehend what he was saying. Right now she needed to keep her wits about her. “So you don’t know if he is alive or not?”

  “No,” Luke said as he fell back on the bed. “I have to go to him.”

  “Yes, of course you do. But right now I want you to rest while I pack some food for you to take back with you. And I want you to take a couple of aspirin. Will you do that for me?”

  His eyes closed, he smiled and Kady could tell what he was thinking, that she was a silly female who only thought of food even in times of crisis.

  But Kady had her own plans. Fifteen minutes later she had given Luke a couple of sleeping pills she had found in a kitchen cupboard, and now that he was sleeping soundly, she was ready to return to the old Legend. Wearing the clothes she’d returned in from her time with Cole, she left the room.

  But even as she was going down the stairs, she felt helpless. How was she going to rescue Tarik from a hanging? None of the people of Legend would know her, so she’d have no influence over them. She couldn’t very well ride a horse up to the jail, pull out a gun, and make them hand Tarik over to her. Could she?

  Standing outside was Wendell, rigged out in black leather that fit as though it had been painted on her, and the words “fast transportation” rang thro
ugh Kady’s head.

  “Can that thing climb mountains?” Kady asked, heading toward Wendell.

  Wendell looked as though something distasteful had just been put under her nose. “Depends on who’s driving it,” she said smugly. “I guess you’d understand it as a stove being able to cook all by itself.”

  Kady resisted a sarcastic remark. “Then why do you think Tarik said you just thought you could ride a motorcycle, but actually you didn’t even know how to shift gears properly?”

  It took a moment for the tall redhead to recover herself enough to speak. “Where is he?”

  Kady smiled sweetly. “I was just going to see him.”

  “Get on,” Wendell said, throwing a leg over the bike and kick-starting it. She roared off toward the Hanging Tree before Kady got her feet onto the rests.

  Chapter 28

  IT WASN’T UNTIL LATER THAT KADY REALIZED THAT WENDELL was on a different motorcycle than the big Harley-Davidson. This one had tires with two-inch deep rubber teeth that clawed their way up the mountain as soon as Kady said, “Petroglyphs,” and it was all she could do to hang on to the back of the bike as they went up.

  In the turmoil of flying gravel she didn’t have much time to think, but when she did, all that went through her head was, What if the door isn’t open?

  But when they reached the huge sheer wall of rock, there it was, open before them, and through it she could see the cemetery, with much fewer stones than the one in Ruth’s time had. And she could see that it was already past sunset. Luke had said that Tarik was to be hanged at dawn. Was that dawn tomorrow or the dawn of this day? Was he already dead?

  “Thanks a lot,” she said to Wendell as she got off the bike. “I appreciate it. I’ll, ah, cook something nice for you when I get back.” She practically ran through the opening and was instantly in Legend.

  Then, to her horror, she realized that Wendell was behind her, walking that big motorbike of hers and following Kady as she hurried toward the town. Stopping, she put her hands on her hips. “You cannot go with me! You must return to Legend.”