Legend (Legend, Colorado 1)

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.