LEGEND Read online

  Gregory’s face did not lose its hardness. “Are you going to cook or drink?” he asked coldly. “I’d like to know so I can inform our guests.” He made it sound as though Kady had a drinking problem and he was begging her to lay off the booze just for tonight.

  Kady didn’t flinch. After one had faced a hanging party, an angry fiancé didn’t seem too dangerous. “Perhaps I shall do both,” she said, her eyes never leaving Gregory’s.

  At that he backed down, his face softening as he took a step toward her, but Kady turned her back on him. “Perhaps you should join your mother in the office and leave my kitchen to me,” she said over her shoulder.

  For a moment Gregory looked as though he was going to go into a rage, but, with a glance at the employees, who were now openly staring, he gave a little shrug. “Sure, honey, whatever you say.” Then he winked in conspiracy at a couple of the men, as though to say, Women! and left the kitchen.

  * * *

  For a few moments after Gregory left, Kady felt shaky and frightened. She had an almost overwhelming urge to run after him and apologize, but then the feeling began to be replaced with a sort of buoyancy she’d never felt before.

  “Someone want to slice me three potatoes?” she said into the silence in the kitchen.

  “Me!” one of the men said loudly.

  “No! Me!” another yelled; then all four men, in an excellent imitation of the Three Stooges, ran smack into each other, and Kady laughed until she had tears in her eyes. After that the feeding of the customers went faster and more smoothly and certainly more pleasantly than she had ever before experienced at Onions. During the evening, one of her assistants kissed her cheek and whispered, “Thank you.” He didn’t have to say what he was thanking her for. The absence of Mrs. Norman’s constant complaining was like hearing the music of heaven.

  After the last meal was served, one of the waiters called out that “the boss” was waiting to see Kady.

  “By ‘the boss’ do you mean Mr. Norman?” one of the cooks asked. “I think that the guard may have changed tonight. You are looking at ‘the boss,’ right here,” he said, pointing both hands at Kady.

  The waiter guffawed. “Yeah, right,” he said, then went back to the dining room.

  Does everyone see me as a wimp? Kady wondered. Does no one think I can stand up to anyone? No one had thought that of her in Legend.

  “And I was the same woman then as I am now,” she whispered to herself as she headed for Gregory’s office.

  One look at his face and she knew that he was not going to let her off with a few sentences. As she sat down on the chair he silently pointed to, she knew she was in for a Serious Lecture.

  “Kady,” he said in a voice heavy with disappointment and “duty.” “I found your behavior tonight intolerable. I can bear the way you humiliated me in front of the help, but I cannot allow you to talk to my mother in the way you did. Right now she is upstairs lying down. I had to give her a sedative to calm her.”

  He was standing, his hands clasped behind his back, then he leaned over the desk toward Kady. “She was crying.”

  Kady knew this was her cue to say she was sorry, but for the life of her, her mouth would not open. She just sat there looking up at Gregory, waiting for him to continue.

  “My mother and I have been good to you; we have given you free rein in this restaurant. My mother—who is not a strong woman—worked very hard to bring Onions back to its former glory, which was difficult for her to do without a husband. But somehow she did it, and she has included you in every aspect of the rebirth of this restaurant.”

  His statement was so absurd that Kady almost laughed aloud. She, Kady Long, was responsible for the rebirth of the run-down old steak house, and what she’d managed to do she had done in spite of Mrs. Norman’s constant interference.

  Gregory seemed to be waiting for Kady’s apology, but she just continued to look at him, so he sighed heavily, then withdrew a thick file folder from an open desk drawer. “I wanted this to be a surprise.” He glared at her in reproach. “A surprise for our wedding night, but your conduct tonight is forcing me to forgo that lovely surprise.”

  At this Kady did feel the tiniest bit of guilt. What was it? Jewelry? Keys to a new car? Maybe he had put her name on the deed to the house. Or given her a third share in the restaurant that she had made into a success.

  With a gesture of disgust, he tossed the file folder onto Kady’s lap, and she opened it, but, truthfully, the papers inside made no sense to her. It looked as though Gregory and his mother were buying into something along with a lot of other people. But look as she might, Kady didn’t see her name anywhere on any of the papers.

  “Kady,” Gregory said in a heavy voice. “I have never told you this, but I have made great plans for us after we are married. Just recently you ridiculed me when I was hesitant about your welfare scheme. You assumed that I was a snob and a bigot, but you never asked me if the reason I was hesitant was because I had other plans for us.”

  Pausing for a moment, he pointed at the folder on her lap. “I am going to take some of your best recipes, especially the ones you’ve served the President, and mass produce them.”

  Kady blinked at him, having no idea what he meant. “Mass produce my recipes?”

  “Yes. But you have now ruined the surprise,” he said, not able to resist another dig. “I have been working with investors, all of whom have eaten here, and they are willing to put some big money into the Norman House Restaurants that will open all over the country. My surprise was to tell you on our wedding night that I was going to allow you to develop recipes that could be produced on a large scale and very cheaply.”

  It took Kady a moment to digest this information. “You were planning to franchise me?”

  Gregory didn’t seem to hear the horror in her voice. “Women all over America are complaining that men think of them only as someone to stay home and take care of the kids, but I have never thought of you that way, Kady,” he said with pride. “To me you are . . .” His face brightened. “Big business. Yes, to me you are big business.” The way he said it was as though it was the highest compliment he had ever given anyone.

  “You never loved me, did you?” she said softly.

  Gregory rolled his eyes as though to say that was unimportant, and his voice sounded bored with the whole concept. “Of course I did. I do love you. I love what we are going to do together, what we can achieve together.”

  “But what about passion? What about sex?”

  “Kady, really! In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am a very practical man. Oh, I know that my extraordinary good looks make women see me as a romantic figure, but I can assure you that I have a brain behind these eyes. And, let’s get real here, Kady, if I wanted a wife for passion and sex, I would have chosen a woman who is less . . .” He looked her up and down.

  “Fat? Is that the word you’re looking for?” she asked.

  “I don’t think we need to go into this now or at any time in the future, for that matter. Marriages based on passion end in acrimonious and expensive divorce. Our marriage will have a foundation of concrete.”

  Suddenly, it was as though a great weight lifted from Kady. She knew she should be devastated by what Gregory was telling her. After all, she was hearing that the man she loved, the man she planned to marry, had never really loved her. He’d only wanted to get her under contract so he would have the power to bully her into helping him force yet more greasy, nonnutritional food down the throats of the American people. And he was going to call them Norman House Restaurants. Wonder if he planned to give me even a slice of the action? she thought.

  But Kady wasn’t devastated. Instead, she had never felt lighter—or happier—in her life. She didn’t have to go through with her marriage with Gregory! Maybe she had known it wouldn’t work since that first day when she’d walked into the restaurant so glad to see him, only to be told not to kiss him. Maybe she’d even known while she was in Legend that she didn’t