LEGEND Read online

  When she awoke, he was gone from the cave, and by the time he returned, a load of damp firewood in his arms, she was sure that she had her emotions under control. She’d made a vow that no matter how provocatively he talked to her, she wasn’t going to be seduced by him. Had he chuckled with his friends that Kady was merely an unemployed cook and he could seduce her into doing whatever he wanted her to?

  “And what have I done to earn such a look of animosity?” he asked without hostility as he put the wood down, making a pile that could be used on the next visit to the cave.

  “Nothing. Are you ready to leave? If we leave early, we might make Legend before nightfall.”

  “Dying to meet Uncle Hannibal, are you?”

  “I just want to . . . to get out of here,” she said more fiercely than she meant to.

  Quietly, Tarik doused the fire, making sure that every coal was out, and when he looked back at her, his face was cold and hard, the face she had seen that first day but hadn’t seen since. “You want to tell me what it is I’ve done that has offended you?”

  Kady wished she had a list of complaints against him, but she didn’t. Except that he’d been too kind and too helpful and too nice and too funny and—

  “You don’t have to struggle,” he said coldly. “I don’t go where I’m not wanted. Are you ready?”

  Kady opened her mouth to explain but decided it was better to say nothing. It was better that they go to Legend, do whatever it was that she could to help Ruth, then get away from this man forever.

  They didn’t speak much on the way down the mountain, and as she followed Tarik, they moved fast. Twice he turned and asked her how her feet were, but other than that, they didn’t speak.

  When they got to the bottom, the camp was just the way they’d left it, Tarik’s jeep parked under the trees, his horse grazing happily in a fenced-in pen that Kady was sure had been built especially for Jordan horses.

  As they packed up the camp together, working side by side as though they had been together for years, Tarik suddenly threw down a couple of tent pegs with such force that they stuck upright in the ground. “What is wrong with you?” he half shouted. “What have I done?”

  “You haven’t done anything,” she yelled back. “You belong to someone else. You belong to another world.”

  For a moment several emotions skittered across Tarik’s dark face, then he grinned, showing strong white teeth, “Ah, I see, the class system. Well, you’re right. Men in my station in life use little girls like you; then we discard them. We marry horsey women like Leonie. Is that about it?”

  When he said it out loud, her complaints sounded Victorian. “Your mother . . .” she said softly, but didn’t finish her sentence. What could she say, that his mother wouldn’t want her son to marry a cook?

  “Ah, yes, the queen,” he said, and she knew he was laughing at her. “Her son the prince must marry a titled princess, right?”

  “I don’t like you very much right now,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “I think, Kady, my love, that only you see me as a prince. I can assure you that my mother does not.” With that, he turned away toward his horse, but Kady could hear him chuckling.

  Whatever he said, she thought, it was better to stay away from him. He was even better looking than Gregory, and she knew from experience that good-looking men only led to trouble.

  “Ready to go meet my uncle?” he asked moments later as he returned to camp, leading his horse behind him.

  Kady drew herself up to her full height and was still only staring at the middle of his chest. “I think we should keep all of this on business terms. I don’t think we should get involved with one another. No more holidays, no more overnight camping trips, no more—” She broke off because Tarik leaned down and kissed her sweetly on the mouth.

  “Whatever you say, habibbi,” he said, then motioned to help her onto his horse.

  Blinking, Kady got on the horse.

  Chapter 25

  “SHE’S MY WIFE,” TARIK JORDAN SAID AS HE SLIPPED HIS ARM tightly around Kady’s shoulders.

  “Your—” she began, but he tightened his grip on her so sharply that her “Ow!” stopped her words.

  “She’s a bit miffed at me now, Uncle Hannibal, so pay no attention to anything she says.”

  “I am not his wife,” Kady said to the tall, thin man in front of her. After she and Tarik had broken camp, he’d led his horse, not down the road, but up a winding trail that had to be a back road into Legend. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out that he was trying to sneak into the derelict town before anyone saw him. “I thought your uncle considered you family,” she said, sitting on back of the horse, holding on to him.

  “There’s family and there’s family,” he said cryptically.

  “I see. And what did you do to him that makes you worry that he may take a shot at you as well as a stranger like me?”

  Twisting around, he grinned at her. “You’ve got a brain inside that pretty head of yours, don’t you?”

  “Only for remembering ingredients and figuring out lying men.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. You certainly seem to allow men to dupe you. Gilford sure pulled one over on you.”

  “Gregory,” she corrected, then felt goose bumps rise on her arms as she remembered the way Cole had always pretended to not be able to remember Gregory’s name. “At least I got away from a man who wanted something other than love from me,” she said snidely.

  He didn’t miss her reference. “With legs like Leonie’s, who cares whether she loves me or not?”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  At that he chuckled and, with his free hand, held hers that were clasped about his flat belly. “You know, Kady, I never knew riding a horse could be so very, ah, pleasurable.” As he said this, he leaned back a bit so her ample breasts were buried even deeper against him, and when Kady, not mistaking his meaning, tried to pull away, the horse sidestepped and nearly threw her off. To keep from falling, she had to grab Tarik even tighter, which made him laugh. “Extra oats for you tonight, my good friend,” he said to the horse.

  Had the circumstances been different, Kady might have laughed, too, but she didn’t allow herself that luxury. She was not going to become closer to this man than she already was.

  But now, standing before his uncle Hannibal, who, with his burning eyes and long, scraggling beard, looked like a prophet from the Old Testament, she was ready to give up the whole idea of trying to help people who were dead.

  “Driver’s license says she’s named Long,” the forbidding old man said, looking down his long nose at Kady, as though she were a liar and a sinner and should be eradicated from the earth. Of course the only reason he’d seen her driver’s license was he’d stolen her handbag from her car. So, was stealing and shooting at innocent people okay in his book?

  As Kady opened her mouth to ask this, Tarik said, “We’re married and I have the license to prove it.”

  “Would you please release me,” Kady hissed, trying to pull away from him, but his grip was like steel.

  With amazement, she watched Tarik pull a piece of paper from under his sweater and hand it to the old man.

  “It’s a copy, of course,” Tarik said as Hannibal Jordan scrutinized it. “But it says that Miss Kady Long was married to Cole Jordan and, as you know, that’s my name. You can see that it’s all duly signed and witnessed.”

  “Let me see that,” Kady said, snatching the paper from the man’s hands. It was indeed a copy of her marriage certificate to Cole. She looked up at Tarik. “This is dated 1873.”

  “So it is,” Tarik said, as though he’d just seen the date; then he grinned at his uncle. “No doubt it’s a computer error. You know how those machines are.”

  “Don’t know, don’t wanta know,” Hannibal decreed. “Machines are destroying this once great nation of ours.”

  With a fierce twist, Kady freed herself from Tarik’s grasp. “That certificate was handwritten, a