“No, Miss Long, it is I who owes you.” He did not look at her while he spoke. “I cannot in good conscience leave you here in the mountains alone, so I will take you into Legend. There I’m sure you can find employment and a place to live, and you can come back here to search for your Indian pictures whenever possible. Is that acceptable to you?”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly. It was perfect, but somehow, his suggestion made her feel as though she’d lost something. A friend, perhaps?
“Would you care to follow me, Miss Long?” he asked coolly, making Kady wince.
She very much wanted to make amends for having been so nasty about his marriage proposal, even if it had been made out of a sense of duty. “Mr. Jordan—” she began but broke off when he looked at her sharply, making her realize that she had not asked him his name. “The name Cole Jordan is written on . . . I mean . . .” She didn’t want him to know that she’d been snooping through his belongings.
The look he was giving her made her face flush, and she felt about two inches high.
“You have the advantage of me as you seem to know a great deal about me, while all I know of you is your name.” His mouth curled into a tiny smile. “And your birth date, of course.”
That smug little smile erased Kady’s guilt. “Since I did save your life, I guess the least you can do is give me a ride into town.” She took a deep breath and looked up at him. “Look, Mr. Jordan, I think we should make things clear between us. Whether you believe that I’m from another time or another town makes no difference. The truth is that I am engaged to marry a man I care for very much, and I’m not going to marry someone else just to get a roof over my head. Where I come from, women take care of themselves, and as it happens, I happen to be a cook, so I can get a job just about anywhere. Any year. So, please, forgive me; I did not mean to offend you, and I would like to keep you as my friend. But nothing more.”
As she made this speech, he’d stood there watching her, his face unreadable, but then he gave a slow smile that made her think she should get as far away from him as possible. She was engaged, but she was also human.
“All right, Miss Long, we’ll be friends,” he said, holding out his hand for her to shake.
In an instant he seemed to change from being overly concerned to being just what she wanted, a friend. In silence, she followed him down the mountain and back to camp, thus giving Kady time to think.
It’s best not to dwell on the horror of this situation and to look at it as an adventure, she told herself. Since she didn’t seem able to return to her home right away, she should do what this man suggested and get a job, a place to live, and as Cole, er, ah, Mr. Jordan said, spend her weekends searching for the petroglyphs that would show her the opening in the rock.
And while she was looking, she’d get involved with no one because without a doubt there was a reason why she had been sent here. It was just that she didn’t care what that reason was and had no intention of getting involved with it.
By the time they reached the camp, she was feeling much better. She was not going to allow this thing to defeat her!
“Perhaps you’d like to get yourself onto the horse,” Cole said politely. “I would not like to interfere with your independence.”
When he turned around, Kady made a little face at his back, then turned to look at the horse. She’d already climbed onto its back when she saved that ungrateful, unappreciative, overbearing, etc., man’s life. However, the first time she’d climbed onto the horse, she’d been wearing many fewer pounds of clothing. Mounting a horse while wearing ten pounds of satin, complete with a train, was for an expert, which Kady was not.
As she heaved herself up repeatedly, then repeatedl
y fell back to the ground, Cole busied himself in destroying evidence of the camp. When he was finished, he leaned against the cottonwood tree, produced a knife, and began to trim his nails.
“All right,” she said, not looking at him. “Maybe I would like some help.”
“I wouldn’t want to interfere. There’s no hurry.”
Turning, she looked at him, her eyes narrowed. “Exactly why were those men trying to hang you?”
She saw him try to hide a smile; then, slowly, as though he had all the time in the world, he resheathed his knife in his belt and moseyed over to her. For moments he stood looking down at her in puzzlement. “I don’t want to presume on our friendship, but am I allowed to touch you?”
Kady glared at him, then raised her arms for him to lift her. He did so, setting her down in the saddle with a teeth-jarring thump. Kady grabbed the pommel to steady herself while he mounted behind her. She was in the awkward sidesaddle position and felt that she might fall off any second. If the voluminous skirt hadn’t been trapping her legs, she would have slung one of them over the horse’s neck.
After he’d mounted behind her, Cole’s arms encircled her as he took the reins, but he kept his arms at a respectful distance. However, his big, strong body was pressed close to hers, and she had an urge to lean back against him. To distract herself, she decided to talk.
“What’s this town of Legend like?”
“Like most any mining town.”
“I’ve never seen a mining town in my life.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot for a moment. You’ve only seen—Exactly what is it that you have seen in . . . What year would it be now in your world?”
“Nineteen ninety-six,” she said tightly. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t laugh at me. A choirboy like you couldn’t survive in my world.”
“Choirboy?” he asked, and she could feel his amusement. “Tell me, has the future invented new crimes besides murder and war?”
“No, people have just refined them. In my time we have illegal drugs and atomic bombs and food critics. We have automobiles that travel at fantastic speeds and crash into each other, and serial killers and air pollution. And we have men who—” She cut off because she didn’t want to think of the things that she heard daily on the news. “Mine is a very fast world.”