LEGEND

by Jude Deveraux

  “You risked your life to protect me,” she whispered.

  “Of course. What else could I have done?”

  “Gone back to work and left me on my own.”

  “And lose a woman like you? One who’d give up millions because she didn’t believe it was rightfully hers?”

  “Speaking of all that money of yours, let’s get married in a community property state.”

  He laughed. “Oh? So you do want to marry me?”

  She just kissed his neck in answer.

  But he pulled her away to look at her, his face serious. “Kady, are you sure? What about your Cole? What about Gregory?”

  “I’m sure,” she said. “I don’t think I ever loved Gregory. I was just afraid I’d never get anyone else. As for Cole . . .”

  His hands tightened on her shoulders. “What about him?”

  She started to make a smart remark, but his eyes were too intense. “Cole could have loved any of a hundred women and they would have loved him in return. But you make me feel as though I’m the only person you could love. I think you might share things with me that you share with no other person on earth.”

  Slowly, he began to smile. “Yes, you make me feel like that, as though I have known you forever and that you are part of me.” Still smiling, he pulled back to look at her. “I’m not the easiest person in the world to live with.”

  “Really? And here I thought you were. You’re so even-tempered, so easy to get to know, so—”

  “Okay, so I have a few rough edges.”

  “I’ll whittle them down, sort of like carving something beautiful out of an onion.”

  Laughing, he kissed her again, then broke off with a great yawn. “I think I must go to bed. You wouldn’t like to join me, would you?”

  “Mmmm,” she said as though she were considering the matter “I might—”

  “What the hell is that?” he asked, lifting his head and listening.

  “I don’t hear anything.”

  “It sounds like a motor. A two-cylinder motor actually.”

  Kady glanced around them at the Jordan house in the distance, the outbuildings and barn. They were new, since they were in 1873. “We haven’t been transported again, have we?” she asked, half in jest; then suddenly, her eyes grew wide. “Wendell,” she whispered.

  Instantly, Tarik was alert. “What about her?”

  “I, ah, I forgot about her.”

  Tarik grabbed her shoulders. “What do you mean you forgot about her? You don’t mean that Wendell is here, do you? Please tell me that you don’t mean that.”

  “Wellllllll,” she said, taking a step backward.

  “With her motorcycle?” Tarik asked, eyes ablaze.

  Kady put her hands on her hips. “I was in a hurry, and she gave me a ride up the mountain, and she rode through the doorway behind me. Was I supposed to stop all six feet of her? Maybe you can deal with women like her but the only thing I could do short of roasting her is to tell her to wait for me. Which she did, but I forgot about her, and have you ever slept with her, your own cousin?”

  For a moment Tarik blinked at Kady in consternation, doing his best to understand her logic but gave up after about three seconds. “Stay here,” he ordered. “Do not leave this place. Do you understand me?”

  When he turned back toward the stables, Kady followed him, having to run to keep up with him. “What are you going to do? Maybe you shouldn’t call attention to yourself, because they might reconsider hanging you. Maybe I should go instead and—”

  At that Tarik halted and turned toward her. “Are you about to say that maybe I should stay here and wait while you go into a place where men wear guns strapped to their hips? Maybe I should allow you to try to calm down my large, enraged cousin?” He seemed to think this was a rhetorical question, because he started walking before she could reply.

  “How do you know she’s enraged?” Kady asked, running beside him. She was really feeling quite guilty for having forgotten Wendell.

  “My cousin is always enraged. She was born that way.” As he reached the stables, he glanced at her. “How could you have forgotten Wendell? That’s like a general forgetting that he brought an army with him.”

  “Or a circus owner forgetting his wild animals,” she muttered as Tarik began throwing a saddle on a huge, eye-rolling black horse. Wisely, she didn’t enter the stall with him.

  “How long have you been riding horses?” she asked.

  “Don’t change the subject. I want you to wait here, and don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone. When I return with Wendell, we’ll all go back to Legend.” He paused in saddling. “You didn’t bring Luke and Uncle Hannibal, too, did you?”

  “No,” she said with a sweet smile. “I drugged Luke and left Uncle Hannibal meals in the refrigerator. I doubt if he’ll know we’re gone.”

  “Good,” Tarik said as he swung onto the horse; then he looked down at her, his face stern. “I’ve been riding all my life. Kady,” he said, “don’t leave here, please. I’ll be back as soon as I can, but Wendell is not easy to handle.” The horse danced around a bit, and it took him a few moments to get it under control. “Oh, and I’ve never slept with Wendell,” he said, then was off, heading toward Legend, where even Kady could now hear the roar of Wendell’s motorcycle.

  The instant he rode past the Jordan Line, Kady turned to look at the horses in the stables.

  “Looking for something to ride?”

  She was startled as a voice came from behind her. Turning, she saw Gamal standing in the shadows, his strong arms folded over his chest. Kady’s first thought was that he’d heard Tarik’s orders and he’d report on her to him.

  “I don’t know how to ride,” she said innocently, “and I was just looking at the animals anyway.”

  Gamal smiled at her, and she knew she was seeing what Tarik would look like at his age. Not bad, she thought. “Then I am to believe that you are the only woman in the world who does what she is told?”

  Kady grinned at him. “So which horse should I take? I can’t let him go alone. Heaven only knows what will happen to him in that town.”

  “Is this Wendell very beautiful?”

  “A knockout.”

  Gamal may never have heard the term before, but he understood its meaning. “Then may I suggest that we ride together? My horse is saddled and ready.”

  Moments later she was mounted behind Gamal. “If you hold me very tight, I think it will make young Tarik very jealous.”

  “Oh?” she said, laughing. “Like this?” She tightened her arms about him, which made her breasts press into his back.

  “Yes, exactly like that,” he said, smiling, and the next minute they were heading down the road.

  Chapter 30

  BUT KADY NEVER MADE IT TO THE CENTER OF TOWN, WHERE, judging by the sound of it, Wendell was giving a demonstration on what a twentieth-century motorcycle could do. Instead, she asked Gamal to let her off his horse when she saw two little boys walking toward the cemetery, fishing poles over their shoulders.

  “Here!” Kady said rather fiercely. “I want down here.”

  Instantly, Gamal halted his horse; then, turning, a smile on his handsome face, he held his arm rigid as Kady used it to swing herself down. The boys had paused in the road, staring up at the two people on the horse. Gamal said something in Arabic to the dark boy, who was unmistakably his son; then, after a polite nod and smile to Kady, he rode away.

  For a moment Kady stood on the opposite side of the road from the boys, and the three of them just looked at each other. Young Tarik looked from his friend, a nine-year-old Cole, then to Kady and back again, for Cole and Kady were staring at each other with great intensity.

  A man on a horse rode between them, looking at Kady with a grin of invitation, but when she ignored him, he shrugged and rode away. And when he was gone, Kady crossed the street, her eyes on the blond boy, who stood in frozen silence next to his dark-haired friend.

  At nine years old, Cole
was a tall boy, showing signs of the man he would grow into, and his big blue eyes and sun-streaked blond hair already told how devastatingly handsome he was going to be.

  For a moment, Kady just stared down at the boy, although he was nearly as tall as she was. He was going to live, she thought. Thanks to what Tarik had done, Cole and all his family were going to live. And Cole was going to be able to build his fine house and do what he could to help the town of Legend.

  “Hello,” she said at last, her eyes on Cole, but he just stared at her as though he’d never seen a woman before. “Going fishing?” she asked.

  Cole kept staring at her in silence, so Tarik answered. “Why were you riding with my father?”

  Kady turned to look at him and saw that he was very much like his father. Her Tarik was lighter skinned and maybe his features weren’t as round as this boy’s, but it was easy to see that they were related. “I’m here with a relative of yours. His name is Tarik, too.”

  The boy narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “We have no relatives in this country. My father and I are alone.”

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” Cole said, at last breaking his silence, and Kady turned to him with a smile.

  “Who are you? Who do you work for?” Cole asked.

  “Work for?” she asked, then paused. “Oh, I see,” she said, knowing he was referring to the houses of prostitution that were so numerous below the Jordan Line. How awful that he would assume that any strange woman worked in one of the houses. “I don’t work for anyone. I’m a cook.” It was silly to think that he would remember something that had never really happened, but part of her hoped that—

  “You didn’t cook for me,” Cole said, his lower lip jutting out in a way that she had seen him do as an adult.

  “I did too,” she said, laughing. “I cooked you a rat.”

  At that Cole went into paroxysms of laughter, and Kady laughed with him, while Tarik stood by in silence, staring at them as though they were crazy.

  On impulse, Kady hugged Cole to her, and at that moment all indecision left her. Until then she’d wondered if maybe her love for Cole would interfere with her love for Tarik. If she had a chance, would she have gone back to Cole? But the knowledge that he was just a boy had always been with her. Even when she’d been part of his dream and he’d been an adult, there had been something not-quite-adult about him.

  Kady pulled away from Cole and held him at arm’s length. In the distance, the motorcycle noise had abruptly stopped, and she knew that soon Tarik would be coming for her. “Listen to me,” she said, looking into Cole’s eyes. “I don’t have much time, and I need to tell you some things. You have a responsibility to take care of this town. Do you understand me?”

  Serious, his eyes wide, Cole nodded.

  “You own Legend, and you must take care of it, no matter what. These people look up to you, their very lives depend on you. Never allow anything or anyone to stop you from taking care of these people. Do you promise me? Word of honor?”

  Again Cole nodded.

  “What else?” Kady said aloud, searching her mind. Why hadn’t she prepared for this meeting? To her left she could hear the thundering of horses’ hooves, and she knew without a doubt that it was Tarik coming to take her back to her own time.

  “Be happy,” she said quickly. “You deserve it, and take care of your family, and say hello to your grandmother Ruth for me, and . . .” Turning, she looked down the road and blinked at what she saw. Tarik was riding toward her, and thrown across the front of his saddle was the unmistakable body of Wendell. And from the way she was hanging there, she was unconscious—if not dead.

  “I have to go,” Kady said, moving toward Tarik. Even at this distance she could see that he was furious.

  “Cole, marry a woman who can cook and . . . and put on a feast. The biggest feast Colorado has ever known. And build Tarik and his father a mosque and—”

  She broke off as she ran back and hugged Cole again, and she could feel him clinging to her. “I hope I have a son just like you,” she whispered, then kissed his cheek, and when she looked into his eyes, she remembered Mr. Fowler telling her that the mines were nearly played out. “If you need money,” she said with her eyes boring into his, “search for the old man’s face.”

  When he nodded as though he understood, she released him, then, and on impulse, she hugged Tarik, too. “Be nice to Ruth,” she whispered to him. “She’d make your father a wonderful wife.” Then she kissed him, too, released him, and began to run toward the horse that was rapidly approaching.

  When Tarik reached her, he hardly slowed the horse, but leaned far down, his hand extended toward her. Kady caught it, put her foot into the stirrup, and swung herself upward behind him.

  “Your grandfather’s son,” she said into Tarik’s ear as she put her arms around his waist and nodded toward the two boys standing beside the road, both of them staring in open-mouthed wonder. Tarik only glanced at the boys as he kicked the horse forward.

  As they rode away, Kady twisted about so she could see the boys, and raising one hand, she kissed her fingertips and sent the kiss to them. “I love you,” she shouted back but wasn’t sure they heard her, but she continued waving until the road bent and she could no longer see them

  Tightening her arms about Tarik’s waist, she pressed her head against his back and held on as he led the horse past the cemetery down the road that led to the Hanging Tree. She wanted to ask him about Wendell, sprawled across the front of the horse, still apparently unconscious, but they were traveling too fast to talk.

  By the time they reached the foot of the mountain, the horse was straining from the weight of three people on its back, and halfway up, Tarik dismounted and began leading the animal, traveling as fast as he could.

  “Is she all right?” Kady asked, a bit concerned because Wendell still hadn’t stirred. The big woman was now belly down in the saddle, which had to be an improvement over having the pommel in her stomach, and Kady was straddling the horse’s rump.

  “Fine,” Tarik said tersely as he pulled the reins to make the horse go over some loose rock.

  “Did she have an accident?”

  “Yeah, she met the end of my fist,” Tarik said, his jaw rigid.

  “Oh,” Kady said, then looked at him with a grimace. “Are you going to make me tear every word out of you? What happened?!”

  “Wendell wanted to stay, that’s what. She likes a time period when men wear six-shooters on their hips. She said that they were real men as opposed to stockbrokers and bankers, who weren’t real at all.”

  “So you hit her,” Kady said softly.

  “Don’t you give me a look like that!” Tarik snapped. “Knocking her out was the only way I knew to get her to return. As I know from past experience, she never listens to reason, so it was no use trying to talk to her, so I did what I had to.”

  Kady wouldn’t have thought that anything could make her have sympathy for Wendell, but now she did. She knew too well what it was like to want to be somewhere you couldn’t be.

  When they reached the rocks with the petroglyphs, there was the opening back into the Legend of the twentieth century. Without pausing, Tarik led them, horse and all, through the opening, and they came out in exactly the place where they entered, except that it was a hundred years later.

  Tarik helped Kady dismount, then pulled Wendell down from the saddle. She was waking up, and when she saw Tarik, she started struggling.

  “Damn you!” she shouted. “I liked it there. I fit in with those people. I—”

  “You don’t belong there,” Tarik said calmly, holding her firmly about the waist and moving his head to one side when she tried to claw his face. “You don’t know what kind of damage you could do to history if you stayed. And there are diseases but no hospitals and—”

  “Shut up,” she screamed. “Just shut up.” With that the energy seemed to leave Wendell’s body, and she bent forward and began to cry.

  T
arik released her, then went to the horse. Kady had been watching Wendell so intently that she hadn’t noticed that the doorway into the past was still open, but Tarik had as he smacked the horse’s rump and sent the animal back to its owner. “Are you two ready to go?”

  Later, Kady didn’t know why she did what she did, but she’d learned that that doorway had a mind of its own. When she was the one supposed to go through, it opened for her. But later, when Tarik was to go through, it only opened for him. Now they had returned, the horse had gone back to its own time period, and by all rights, the door should have closed. But instead it stood wide open, gaping, as though it wanted something else—or someone else, Kady thought.

  Tarik had planted himself between the desolate Wendell and the doorway, and he was obviously waiting for both women to start down the mountain so he could follow. Kady could see that he wasn’t going to so much as blink until Wendell was away from that open doorway.

  Turning, Kady started down the path, but as she did so she passed Wendell and surreptitiously gave her hair a hearty tug. Kady had to give it to Wendell, because she didn’t yelp and let Tarik know what Kady had done. Instead, Wendell looked up at Kady in question, and in the next second Kady took a tumble that sent her rolling down the path. As expected, Tarik came running after her, and when he caught her, they both looked up to see Wendell diving through the doorway. And the instant she was through, the doorway closed with a solid thunk.

  Instantly, Tarik knew that Kady had helped Wendell escape, and he turned to her with a face ready to bawl her out. But when he saw Kady’s look of defiance, he lost his anger and, instead, shook his head in exasperation. “Are you going to defy me at every opportunity?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” he said, then put his arms around her and kissed her. “Was it true?” he whispered. “Or did I imagine all of it?”

  “I don’t know. I think we should go see what Legend is like now to see if anything has changed.”

  “No, I don’t mean that,” he said softly. “I meant about us. Still want to marry me?”