“Doesn’t look like they’ve done any good so far,” she said, turning away from him.
“I figure the kisses were never from the right woman.” He’d left the water and walked up behind her. “What’s in the basket?”
He was standing too close, so she stepped away. “Just bacon and biscuits and—” Her voice lowered. “A peach cobbler.”
“Oh?” He stepped close to her again. “Washed your hair, didn’t you? Like the soap I got for you?”
“Very nice.” She turned on him, glaring. “Get on that side of the blanket and don’t come near me.”
For some reason, this declaration made him laugh as he walked to the stream and pulled out a long string of trout.
I shall smoke them, Kady thought, then corrected herself. She was going home and wouldn’t have time to smoke fish. “Build a fire; I’ll go get a skillet and some wild onions I saw, and we’ll have lunch.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she heard him say as she raced up the hill, grabbing the onions as she went. What a cooking challenge, she thought as she ran. Here she didn’t have every ingredient known in the world at her fingertips, as she did in Virginia. No lemongrass, no star anise, not even any olive oil. Wonder if I could make—she thought, then made herself stop. She wasn’t going to be here long enough to make anything.
Be firm, Kady, she told herself. You must demand that Cole take you to the rocks tomorrow. And if he refuses, you must go by yourself. Even as she thought this, she realized that she didn’t know the way back to town, much less the way to a bunch of carved rocks.
By the time she got back with the skillet, Cole had the fire going and was lounging on the blanket, eating what looked to be his third buttered biscuit. Right away she noticed that he hadn’t bothered to clean the fish, but that was all right as Kady had her own way of cleaning and deboning trout.
“What do you need?” he asked when, minutes later, she had the fish in her hands and had glanced back up the hill toward the cabin as though dreading the necessary climb.
“A knife.”
“What blade?”
She smiled at his question. Considering the lazy way he was lounging, it was very nice of him to offer to return to the cabin and get a knife for her, not that she’d seen anything there except a rusty old paring knife. “An eight-inch boning knife, long, thin blade,” she said, smiling smugly. Let him try to find that!
A second later, a knife with a long, thin blade twanged as it stuck in the ground inches from her hand. Startled, she looked up at him, silently questioning where it had come from.
Cole looked away, his smile telling her that he expected her to ask.
But Kady would have died before she pleaded for information. “Thanks,” she said, then set about boning the fish and slicing the potatoes.
Working in a restaurant for so many years had taught her to be fast and efficient. Within minutes she set a skillet before him that was filled with sautéed potatoes flavored with wild onions and perfectly cooked trout, touched with a splash of vinegar and raisins on top.
The look Cole gave her when he bit into the fish was all the praise Kady needed. Sitting down on the blanket, as far from him as she could get, she pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them. It was one thing to cook for the President, a man who was used to excellent food, but it was another to cook for a man who was used to a monotonous, bland diet. Cole had looked at her food as though it were ambrosia, fit only for gods.
She sat in silence, watching the clear, unpolluted water, while Cole gave the ultimate tribute to a cook by cleaning his plate.
When the skillet was empty, he set it down and stared at her profile. “I never tasted anything like that,” he said, awe in his voice.
Kady just smiled, then nudged the basket toward him. “Have room for peach cobbler?”
Cole took his time on the cobbler, and when he was finished, he leaned back on his elbows and stared at the creek. “If I hadn’t already married you, I’d ask for your hand now,” he said, his seriousness making Kady laugh.
As she busied herself with cleaning the skillet and handing Cole a jar full of the crystal-clear creek water, she said, “What time do we leave in the morning to go find the rock where I came through?”
When Cole didn’t answer, Kady tightened her lips, then went to sit on the blanket by him, preparing herself for a fight. She knew without words being spoken that he didn’t want her to go.
“Kady,” he began. “I like you. I’ve never met a woman whose company I enjoy as much as yours. You have a wonderful sense of humor, you’re smart, you’re beautiful. And . . . and this . . .” He waved his hand at the basket, as though her cooking were indescribable. “I’ve never met anyone like you. Please stay here with me for just a few days. Then I’ll help you get back. I swear that I’ll do whatever I can to help you go anywhere you want. I’ll move heaven and earth to get you back. Just give me these few days. Three days. That’s all I ask.”
Kady knew she couldn’t do that. The temptation of a man who says he likes your sense of humor and thinks you’re smart would be too much for any woman to resist. She loved Gregory, but with each passing hour he seemed to be further away. She didn’t want to stay here in this time of no medical facilities, of no bathrooms, of no . . . Of no Gregory.
“I can’t,” she said softly. “Gregory might be looking for me.”
“You don’t know that he is. Maybe you could stay here six months or ten years, a lifetime even, then step through that rock and you’d be standing in your house wearing that white dress and not a moment will have passed.”
It struck Kady odd that he had not asked her many questions about her statement that she was from another time period. He had never asked for verification, and she had no idea whether he still disbelieved her story or not. But he did seem to believe that if she could find the rocks, she would disappear. “But I don’t know that, do I? For all I know Gregory will be frantic with worry now. There could be police looking for me.”
“Then when you return he’ll be doubly glad to see you.”
“Ha!” Kady said. “Three hundred women will have taken my place by then. You haven’t seen what Gregory looks like. Even my bridesmaid, Debbie, who is married and has three children, has a crush on him. She just sits there and stares at him.”
“And what about you?”
“I don’t sit and stare at him, if that’s what you mean.”
“Mmmm. Sounds a bit as though you do. Are you afraid of him?”
“Afraid of Gregory?” she snapped. “That’s absurd. Gregory wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s gentle and kind and . . . and sexy.” She looked at Cole. He’d draped his shirt about his shoulders, but his washboard stomach was exposed and he was very appealing. “Yes,” she said fiercely. “Gregory is very, very sexy, and I’m mad about him.” She forced herself to calm. “I don’t want to spend three days alone with you or any other man, I want to go home to Gregory.”
Cole took a moment to answer. “All right, I’ll take you back in the morning,” he said slowly as he leaned toward her to remove a leaf that had fallen on the back of her hair.
But as he neared her, Kady jumped as though he were going to hit her.
“I can’t figure out what I’ve done to make you feel that you can’t trust me,” he snapped.
“The only way I’d trust you is if you were a eunuch,” Kady muttered, brushing the leaf from her hair.
For a moment Cole made no reaction to her remark, then, to her utter astonishment, she saw his eyes widen as his face turned pale. “How did you find out? Who told you?”
Kady was confused. “Who told me what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cole didn’t say anything as he began to hastily, almost angrily, gather up the cooking gear, and Kady couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
“I’m sorry,” she said, watching him. “I don’t know what I said that’s upset you so much. What is it that I’m supposed to have been told?”
Cole s
at back on the blanket. “It’s not you, it’s me,” he said. “I just can’t bear it when women find out. I know you will think this is horrible of me, but I like it when a beautiful woman like you pulls away from me in fear of what I might be seeking from her. I hate the way the girls in town feel so safe with me. They treat me like another girlfriend.”
Kady’s eyes couldn’t have widened any more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. How could a woman feel safe with a man who looks like you?”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” he said, turning his head a bit toward her and raising one eyebrow. “God’s little joke. He made me grow to man size, but he took away my manhood.”
“Your—? Your . . . ?” She tried to stop herself, but she couldn’t help glancing down at the fork of his legs.
Cole looked away from her. “The bullets . . . These,” he said, pointing to the five deep, ugly wounds that marred the upper half of his body. “They hit the lower half of my body too,” he said softly.
Kady sat back on the blanket hard. “You mean you can’t—”
Cole turned away so she couldn’t see his face. “Can’t make children? No, I cannot. This is why I’m thirty-three and not married. The women who know won’t have me, and the women who don’t, well, it wouldn’t be fair to them, would it? Women want babies,” he said softly.
“Not all of the women in my world want babies.”
Turning, he glared at her. “Well, all of them in this world do.”
Kady hesitated. She had, of course, read articles about what to do if a man is impotent. Be understanding, kind, and gentle seemed to head the list. “Are you just infertile or are you, ah, impotent as well?”
A quick look of confusion crossed his face, then he said, “Everything,” and took a deep breath. “Kady, I know that when I brought you to this cabin, I did a wicked thing, and I am sure I will be punished in heaven, but I couldn’t help myself. I was hoping that I could talk you into spending three days with me. Alone. Just the two of us. Maybe it will make you hate me, but I thought of many arguments to try to persuade you. Even if you were three days late in getting back, would it be so bad to make the man who loves you frantic with worry? Wouldn’t the homecoming be sweeter if you made him wait? You see, you are my only chance to have a honeymoon. I could find a woman who would marry me, but she’d hate me as soon as she found out the truth. But with you, because of your circumstances, I thought maybe you and I could, well, pretend that we were in love for a few days. A pretend honeymoon, so to speak. You wouldn’t be angry with me because your future and whether you have children or not wouldn’t depend on me. At the end of our honeymoon, you could return to the man you love, and no one would be hurt.”
Kady looked at him, seeing the sadness in his eyes. Was this why she’d been sent back, to give this lonely man three days of love? To give him something that he would not otherwise have? Who would her staying hurt? he’d asked. If she returned to Gregory, Cole would have been dead for over a hundred years. Besides, if she went back to Virginia and said she’d had an affair with an impotent cowboy, who would believe her?
She didn’t know if what Cole had said—that she could go back through the rocks ten years from now and no time would have passed—was true or not, but in the back of her mind she thought it might do Gregory a bit of good if he didn’t know where she was for three whole days. Once he’d laughingly told some people at a dinner party that he always knew where Kady was: in the kitchen at Onions. So what if she did spend three days alone with this harmless man? They could talk about their worlds. Maybe there was something he knew or she knew that could help each other’s worlds. There had to be a reason why she’d been sent back in time, so shouldn’t she at least make some effort to find out what it was before she returned?
She took a deep breath. “Three days,” she said. “Three days, then the morning of the fourth you take me back and help me find those rocks.”
It seemed that a thousand expressions crossed Cole’s handsome face, and every one of them was a form of ecstasy. “Oh, Kady,” he whispered, “you have made me the happiest man in the world.”
Before she could think, he’d put his arms around her and pulled her to his bare chest as he rained kisses on the top of her head.
The feeling that ran through Kady was so strong that she pushed away from him with much more force than was needed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that,” he said, releasing her.
Kady could feel her heart beating in her throat. Part of her said that she shouldn’t kiss him, but part of her remembered that in real life she was only engaged, not married. The rest of America seemed to be jumping into bed with three different men a night, so couldn’t she kiss another man before she got married? Besides, it was only for three days, and Cole’s condition made it impossible for her to be unfaithful to Gregory, didn’t it?
With determination, Kady put her hand behind Cole’s head and pressed her lips to his. It wasn’t much of a kiss, because, in spite of being a modern woman and being engaged, she really wasn’t too experienced in kissing. “We’re on our honeymoon, remember?”
With a beautifully tender smile on his face, Cole tucked a curl behind her ear. “You know, Mrs. Jordan, I think I may be falling in love with you.”
Kady put a finger to his lips. “Don’t say that. Don’t say or do anything to make me feel guilty about leaving you. If I think that my leaving will hurt you, I’ll have to go now.”
“No,” he said, pulling her close. “Three days, that’s all I ask.”
Chapter 8
COLE ROSE EARLY, QUIETLY BUILT UP THE FIRE IN THE FIRE-PLACE, then pulled out a chair so he could settle down and watch Kady sleep. It truly astonished him how much he loved her. In fact, he couldn’t seem to remember what his life had been like before he met her, and when he looked back at his life, he seemed to think of it all as waiting-for-Kady. Whatever he’d done, whomever he’d met, had been in preparation for that day when she leaped from between the boulders and hit one of Harwood’s men on the head with a rock.
At that moment, Cole had been strung to a tree, his neck stretched almost to the breaking point, but he was conscious enough that he could see her. Looking like an angel in a cloud of white silk, she’d leaped, brought the rock down on the man’s head, then stood there for interminable seconds trying to figure out how to fire a rifle. When she’d hit the trigger by accident, the bullet had whizzed so close to Cole’s ear that he’d felt its heat. Cole had been very thankful that his horse had remembered what he’d been taught and stood absolutely still. If the animal had moved by an inch, Cole would have died.
The woman’s shots sent Harwood and his men into turmoil as they tried to figure out who was shooting at them. Since the kick of the first shot had sent her hurtling back into the rocks, none of the murderers could see her. But Cole knew where to look. Barely able to stay conscious and opening his eyes only to slits, Cole watched as the woman tried to fire the rifle again. Cock it, cock it, cock it, he’d repeated in his mind several dozen times.
To his happiness, she pulled the lever down and fired again. This time she winged Harwood himself, and in an instant all the men were firing in the general direction of the rocks. Closing his eyes, Cole prayed that the woman wouldn’t be found or hit by a stray bullet. He’d rather they finished the job of hanging him than find her.
But Harwood and his men had no idea how many people were spying on them, so they shot in the general direction of Cole’s horse, then rode away. Again, much to Cole’s happiness, his horse stayed where it was, never flinching, even when a bullet grazed its neck. Extra oats for you tonight, old boy, he thought.
For the next several minutes Cole moved in and out of consciousness, and each time he came back to the real world, he saw unbelievable sights. The first time he saw that the woman was undressing, taking off her white wedding gown. The next time he came to, she was on the horse behind him, her breasts pressed into his back. It was then that he was sure he actually h
ad died and he was in heaven with this angel.
The next time he woke, he was on the ground and she was under him. Smiling in perfect happiness, he allowed himself to fade back into unconsciousness.
When next he awoke, he was sleeping with the woman in his arms. “You’re an angel,” he tried to say, but his throat hurt so much that not much of the words came out.
Sunlight woke him again, and he found that she wasn’t a dream but a reality, and he quite naturally started kissing her. Within minutes, she had pulled away and started telling him some outlandish story about being from the future and how she was going to marry some other man and all sorts of bizarre information.
All he could see for sure was that she didn’t know where she lived and some man had been stupid enough to let her out of his sight for five minutes. As far as Cole was concerned, finders keepers.
Had it been up to him, right then he would have swept her away to marry her and keep her forever, but little Elizabeth Kady Long had other ideas. First, she seemed to believe she was in love with another man. Cole had enough sense to know that when a woman believed she was in love with a man, no one could change her mind. At least not without a lot of time and effort—both of which he planned to dedicate to this project.
Maybe he’d been in an awkward position when he’d first seen her, what with a rope stretching his neck until he couldn’t breathe, but he knew what he felt from that first moment. Kady was brave and good; she had risked her life to save a man she didn’t know. As she’d said to Cole, she hadn’t known if he was a bad guy or a good one, but she’d saved him and taken care of him just the same.
Smiling, he thought of the way she spoke, with her odd phrasing and strange words and even stranger concepts. It was enough to make him believe she was from the future as she said. Almost enough, anyway.
Wherever she came from, it wasn’t from anywhere he knew about, as he was sure there wasn’t another woman like Kady in the state of Colorado. One minute she was fierce and strong, the next she was soft and innocent.
LEGEND Page 10
