LEGEND

by Jude Deveraux

  Minutes later, Kady was washing her hands when she glanced up at the mirror and paused. She had put “Legend” on the note, not “Legend, Colorado.”

  “He’s here and he knows,” she said aloud. She didn’t know what Mr. C. T. Jordan knew, but it was enough that he’d allowed Kady to remain in the waiting room and enough that he’d refused to see her.

  Grabbing a paper towel, she quickly dried her hands, then crumpled it angrily. Ruth had given her six weeks to contact her descendants, and Kady was going to do anything she had to to give that lovely lady peace.

  Slipping out of the rest room, Kady did not turn left, toward the receptionist’s desk, but instead went right, toward the offices. It was after five, and the offices she saw felt empty. In fact the whole place seemed deserted. Brass nameplates were on each door, and each name rang of Harvard and Yale; there were numbers like III after some of the names.

  At the end of the long hall, before it turned and started back toward the receptionist’s desk, were double doors with no name on them. The doors themselves were impressive, made of ancient teak and carved with dragons and horizontally branched trees. Without a doubt in her mind, Kady knew that this was C. T. Jordan’s office.

  She didn’t think about what she was doing; she just grabbed the handles of both doors and threw them open.

  A man was standing just inside the doors in the sumptuously furnished reception area of the office. He was dressed all in black, as though for a martial arts class, with voluminous black cotton trousers, a black T-shirt, and he was pulling a black sweatshirt over his head. When Kady threw open the doors, he halted in pulling the sweatshirt on over his head, leaving it half on, half off, so only his eyes were visible. The lower half of his face was covered — almost as though his face were veiled.

  Kady stood utterly still, hardly able to breathe, and stared at him. She would know those eyes anywhere. He was her veiled man.

  For what seemed to be a lifetime she stared at him, her head filling with the hundreds of times she had seen him all through her childhood. Whenever she had been upset or worried, he always came to her, always soothed her, always made her feel less alone.

  Still with her breath held, she watched as he pulled the sweatshirt down, and for the first time, Kady saw his face.

  It seemed to be all angles, with sharp cheekbones cutting down to a square-tipped chin that was slightly cleft. His nose was straight, lean, with nostrils that flared out to the side, an aristocratic nose. The only softness on his face was his full-lipped mouth that Kady couldn’t help thinking was as soft as a child’s.

  But what else she saw deep within his eyes was pain, a pain so deep he probably had no idea where it had come from. But Kady knew.

  She remembered how she’d once thought Gregory looked like this man. No, she thought, Gregory did not look like this man. No one on earth looked like this man.

  “I take it you are Miss Long,” he said, and his voice was like in her dream, very deep, but at the bottom of it was a raspy quality, maybe even a growling quality.

  Kady thought that she’d better sit down before she fell down. With her eyes never leaving his, she clutched the rolled arm of a big chair covered in burgundy velvet and almost fell back onto it.

  “Now that you have forced your way in here, what is it that you want of me?”

  For the life of her, Kady couldn’t answer. All she could do was stare up at him, feeling exhilarated and frightened at the same time, for it was very strange seeing this man in the flesh.

  Frowning, C. T. Jordan stared down at the woman, wishing she weren’t so damned pretty. She had what looked to be several feet of silky dark hair pulled back into a braid as thick as his arm and it curled over the velvet of the sofa. Thick lashes surrounded beautiful dark eyes above a tiny nose, and her lips of dark pink were undisguised by cosmetics. As for her body! She had that concealed under yards of cheap fabric, but he could see the lush curves that, just looking at them, made his palms sweat. He had been accused of being a throwback to the past, for he liked women to look like women, not what seemed to be the current fashion, women with bodies like twelve-year-old boys topped by large, artificial breasts.

  Lust, Jordan, he told himself. You’re too old to allow lust to rule your head. He knew why she was here and what she wanted. After all, hadn’t he known all his life that this day would come?

  She had to stop looking into his eyes, Kady told herself. She had to get her mind back, had to think of her mission, had to remember who she was, where she was. Maybe if she made herself recite the recipe for brioche, she could concentrate.

  Pulling her eyes away from his, she began to think . . .

  But no recipe came to mind because behind him was a floor-to-ceiling lighted glass case, and inside, suspended from invisible wires, were swords of exquisite workmanship, from every part of the world, every historical period. They were the kind of swords one saw in slick auction magazines, then later read about having been sold to an “anonymous bidder” for a quarter of a million dollars.

  Turning back to look at him, she saw that he had not moved so much as a muscle as he stared at her. She could tell that under his clothes he was whipcord lean, and she had an idea that he knew how to use every one of those swords in the case.

  “I . . . I met your grandmother,” she managed to say.

  “My grandmother died when I was three, and I doubt that you were even born then.”

  “No, I . . . I met the one who died long before you were born.” Even to herself she sounded stupid, like some New Age guru.

  His patronizing smile said that he agreed with her. “Ah, I see. Am I right in assuming you mean the one my grandfather—when he was alive, that is—so affectionately called Ruthless Ruth?”

  Kady winced. “Ruth Jordan was a very nice lady, and she was only trying to protect—” She stopped because he was smiling in such a patronizing way that she couldn’t continue. For some reason, she could feel her anger rising, which made no sense, since she had invaded his office and so had no right to be angry at him. But his image had been an enormous part of her life. He—or his clone—had appeared to her hundreds of times. Shouldn’t he recognize her? Or at least feel some jolt at seeing her?

  But he was looking at her as though she were nothing more than a great nuisance and as though he were waiting for her to do something predictable. “I am beginning to see now,” he said slowly. “You believe yourself to be a clairvoyant, and you have come here to give me—what is it?—a message from the past? So tell me, how much am I to pay you for this information? Hundreds? Or are you after thousands? Surely, I hope it’s not more.”

  Kady’s lips tightened and her brow knitted. “I don’t want any money from you.”

  “Oh?”

  With that he looked her up and down, and when he looked back at her eyes, Kady felt her entire body break into a fine coat of sweat. The fire and intensity behind his eyes made her feel as though she were going to be consumed by him.

  Part of her wanted to run toward him, but another part of her was frightened and made her want to run out the door. Did he look at all women as he was looking at her?

  Patiently, but with one eyebrow raised in disbelief, he was waiting for her to continue.

  For Ruth! she reminded herself, then sat up straighter. “Ruth regretted what she had done to her son, and she wanted to make up for it, but she died too soon. He didn’t attend her funeral.” Even to herself she wasn’t making any sense. She took a deep breath to try to calm her nervousness. “She asked me to find her descendants and . . . well, just to contact them, that’s all. And I wanted to tell you that—”

  His lips curled into a cynical smile. “Are you asking me to believe that you met my long-dead grandmother and she asked you to come see me? Just to say hello?”

  Kady smiled ever so sweetly. “I not only met your grandmother, I also married Ruth’s grandson who died when he was nine years old.” Let him figure that one out, she thought.

  All Kady
had wanted to do was wipe that knowing look off his face. No doubt he was used to people who cowered before him and jumped at his every request, but she was unprepared when he looked at her with such anger on his face that she was almost frightened. But something else about his rage made her heart beat wildly. He’s jealous, she thought, then told herself that was ridiculous.

  With great, long strides, he went to a cabinet on the opposite wall, opened the doors to reveal a liquor cabinet, then poured a cut-glass tumbler half full of smoky single-malt whiskey and downed it one gulp. When he didn’t flinch, Kady thought he must either be a budding alcoholic or something had greatly upset him. She was well aware that he had offered her nothing.

  He turned back to her. “Miss Long, I don’t have time for this. And I can assure you that I am not going to give you any money, no matter how outrageous your story.”

  Stunned, Kady just sat there. He was a hateful man, so in love with his money that he thought everyone else was, too, but still, something kept her there with him. He was a stranger, but at the same time it was as though she’d spent most nights of her life with this man.

  He was glaring at her, brooding, as he watched her. With a pounding heart, she got up, and with her back to him, she walked to the wall behind her. Just as in the wall case, here, too, was a display of knives, these smaller and very much like those Cole had often produced from inside his clothing. Since she’d spent most of her life with a knife in her hand, it was an easy thing for Kady to surreptitiously pick up one of the knives, whirl about, and throw it.

  With a gesture like lightning, he caught the knife by its handle in midair.

  And it was at that moment that Kady saw Cole. For just a second the dark, scowling man in front of her disappeared and there stood Cole with his laughing blue eyes, sunlight on his golden hair. As fast as the image came, it faded, and she was left alone in the office with a man she’d seen hundreds of times, always holding out his hand to her, always urging her to ride away with him.

  But this man just stared at her, with his hot eyes and his look of disbelief. “If you’re planning to faint, I must tell you that other women have tried that before, and I can assure you that fainting has no effect on me.” He looked at the knife in his hand. “However, no woman before has tried throwing a blade at me.”

  “More’s the pity,” Kady said, looking back at him; then she slipped her bag over her shoulder. “I’ve given you my message, so I’ll leave now.”

  “Are you sure? As you can see, I have other weapons you can throw at me.”

  She whirled to face him. “Mr. Jordan, your ancestors were the nicest, kindest people I’ve ever met. Cole Jordan was a man who knew how to love a woman, to love her so much that he created a whole world for her. And Ruth Jordan did what she did because she had loved too hard and been too hurt when she lost that love.” She glared at him. “It is disgusting that those lovely people could have given birth to someone like you, someone who thinks only of money.”

  Pausing for a moment, she looked at him in contempt. “And to think that I spent all those years searching for you,” she said softly before walking to the door.

  He stopped her as her hand was on the latch, standing to one side, very close, but not touching her. “Who was Ruth’s lover?” he asked softly.

  She was angry, but when she turned and looked at him she was not prepared for the impact his nearness would have. She may have thought she had felt love, desire, lust, other emotions for other men, but nothing had ever prepared her for how it felt to be near this man. Every atom of her body seemed to vibrate as she looked into his dark eyes, and she had the feeling she was falling into a bottomless pool, down, down, down.

  As though she were poison, he stepped away from her, and his action made Kady come back to her senses. She knew he was testing her. Ruth’s youngest son was believed to have been fathered by her husband. “He was the father of Cole’s friend, Tarik, an Egyptian man,” she managed to say in a hoarse whisper. “That’s why you have his name. And it’s why you’re dark when the rest of the Jordans were blonds.” With a shaking hand, she managed to open the door and leave the office.

  After Kady left the sumptuous offices of C. T. Jordan, she didn’t return to her hotel room right away but wandered around the city streets. Shock threatened to overwhelm her. She had recognized him, but he had felt nothing for her except, maybe, well . . . Perhaps she’d also seen lust in his eyes. But that didn’t matter. What was important was that she’d told him, and that was the end of it. She’d met him and she didn’t like him.

  But if she didn’t like him, then why did the idea of never seeing him again hurt more than losing Cole or Gregory had? While she was with Cole, she’d always known it wasn’t real, that what was between them wasn’t going to last. And when she’d been with Gregory, she’d felt more gratitude than love, grateful that such a man would be interested in her.

  But with her Arabian man, the man she’d always dreamed of, she had always believed that if she found him, she’d find True Love.

  But life does not imitate fairy tales. She’d found him, and he’d felt nothing. There was certainly no love-at-first-sight.

  So what now? she wondered. Now that her Legend adventure was officially over, what was she to do with her life? Get a job, try to save money to open her own restaurant or a cooking school or . . . Suddenly, she felt very alone. Her life now was just where it was after she’d graduated from cooking school, but then all the world had been before her. Now, years later, she was lower than the bottom. Now she was no longer the sought-after graduate, the—

  No! she thought. She was not going to lose herself in self-pity. She’d done what she could to help Ruth and Cole and Legend, so now it was time to go begging for a job. Correction, it was time to start a new life, with new adventures, with . . .

  Turning, she went back to her hotel, trying to lighten her spirits but not doing very well at it. When she opened the door to her room, the first thing she saw was the blinking message light on her telephone, and she wondered who had called her. For a millionth of a second she thought it might be Tarik Jordan, but when she checked, she was told that she had a package and could it be brought up now?

  Minutes later Kady was handed a large express package from Virginia, and her heart sank. How in the world had Gregory found where she was staying? Tossing the package on the bed, she took a shower, washed her hair, turned on the TV, and only then did she notice that Jane’s name was on the air bill.

  Curious, she opened the package. Inside were two legal-size envelopes, one thick, the other thin, and two letters. The first letter was from one of the young men who had worked for her at Onions, and as Kady began to read, her heart did indeed begin to lighten. He said that since she had left, business had been so bad that all the cooks trained by her were applying for jobs elsewhere. He went on to say how much he had learned from Kady and thanked her for keeping horrid little Mrs. Norman off their backs.

  Smiling, Kady called room service, ordered a bowl of onion soup and a fruit salad, then continued to read. The young man went on to say that since all of them would get a better job by putting Kady’s name on their résumés, they all felt they owed her, and they had found a way to repay her in a small way.

  At this Kady laughed out loud, for it seemed that snooping, spying, and amateur sleuthing were their ways of saying thanks. First they had haunted Gregory’s office, never allowing anything to be taken out of the office that they didn’t first inspect. “The fat envelope is the result of the first weeks,” he wrote. “We grew bolder after that.”

  With eyes wide from curiosity, she opened the thicker envelope and dumped out at least a dozen letters. Most were on the letterhead of a famous restaurant or hotel, and each was begging Kady to come work for them. Some were from people who wanted to open restaurants and were pleading with Kady to run them.

  For a moment, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The words “Please,” and “begging you,” and offers of money and ho
using and “will give you a free hand,” were in the letters. Two of the letters had been torn to shreds, but some dear person had painstakingly taped the pieces back together.

  When Kady realized what she was seeing, she began to dance about the room; then she called room service and ordered a bottle of their best champagne.

  “No job interviews,” she said. “No begging for a job. No . . .” She couldn’t think what else, but when the food and wine arrived, she tipped the man ten dollars, then opened the wine, poured a glass, and toasted herself.

  Amazing how the world could change in so short a time, she thought, glancing back at the letters on the bed. One minute she had nowhere to go and the next she had choices from all over the world, as one of the letters was even from London and another was from Paris.

  How did they find me? she suddenly wondered, then went back to the bed and looked at the second unopened letter. When she saw that it was from Jane, her heart nearly stopped. Was ever-sensible Jane going to lecture her about doing something as stupid as walking out of one job before she had another?

  Kady finished the first glass of wine and filled the second before she opened Jane’s letter. The first half page told in detail how much trouble Jane had gone to to find her, calling nearly every hotel in New York. She had found out that Kady was in New York by hinting to Gregory that she was going to try to get them back together. “That man certainly believes that every woman has the hots for him, doesn’t he?” Jane wrote, making Kady smile.

  “I envy you,” Jane wrote. “You have inspired a great deal of love from the people who worked for you. They risked a lot by going through Gregory’s trash, and when they called me, they knew that I’d do whatever it took to find you.”

  Kady ate some of her soup, then finished Jane’s letter. “Kady, maybe I haven’t made myself clear lately,” her friend wrote. “I know I tend to be bossy, heaven knows many people have felt the compulsion to tell me, but I hope you know how much I care about you. The only thing Gregory had going for him was his good looks. He treated you like a lowly servant—just the way my own family tended to treat you. I had to become an adult to see that. I want to tell you that I think you are the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever met in my life, and I feel I owe you for past transgressions. So when I see you with a man who isn’t worthy to eat at your table, forgive me if I say so. Whatever you do with your life, remember to take what is offered and don’t give everything away. When you meet another man, make sure he gives you something in return. You deserve it!!”