Legend (Legend, Colorado 1)

And two hours later, after more lovemaking, Kady did fall asleep in his arms.

But when she awoke the next morning, Tarik was gone. Thinking that he had gone outside, she dressed and went out, but search as she might, she could not find him. By the early afternoon she gave up hoping that he was going to appear on his horse with some reasonable excuse as to why he had left her alone, so she started down the mountain.

By the time she reached Legend she had decided that she hated all men everywhere, especially men named Jordan, who constantly disappeared without a word of explanation. Had it been a game with him, just to see if he could get her into bed, then after he did, he left her? For all she knew a helicopter had picked him up and he’d returned to New York. After all, there was nothing to hold him in Legend, since Kady owned nothing and never had.

There was no one around when she entered the town, and she was glad of that because she had decided to pack her bags and leave. Tarik had been right, she thought, as she stormed up the stairs of the Jordan house and grabbed her suitcase. What could she do if she did return to Legend? And, besides that, why did she want to? What did the Jordans mean to her? A few months ago she had never heard of them, and—

She paused in her packing, a garment in her hand, as Luke staggered into her room—the room she was going to share with a man she now never wanted to see again. Kady was so angry that it took her a moment to actually see Luke; then disbelief kept her from moving as she stared at him.

His shirt was dirty and torn, and there was blood on his side. There was another bloody place on his head, a raw, red mark around his neck, and he was panting for breath.

Kady ran the few feet to get to him, then put her arms around his chest to help him to sit down on the side of the bed. When he seemed beyond being able to sit up, she gently pushed him back onto the bed.

“What’s happened?” she asked in fear. “Did a mine collapse? Is Hannibal trapped? What about . . .” Her eyes widened in fear. “Tarik?” she whispered, all animosity forgotten. When she saw Luke’s look, she knew that that’s what he’d come to tell her. Standing, she looked down at him. “There’s been an accident, hasn’t there? Is there a telephone here? Can I call for help? How do I—?”

“No,” Luke managed to rasp out. “There wasn’t an accident. Tarik and I—” Pausing, he put his hand to his throat, then motioned to a carafe of water on a bureau.

With trembling hands, Kady poured a glass of water and handed it to him. She tried to concentrate on how to care for Luke’s wounds because she could not bear to think that the look on his face might mean that Tarik was not alive.

It seemed an eternity before Luke finished drinking and handed her the glass. “We went through the door,” he rasped out, then put his hand to his throat. “Forgive me, but hanging plays hell with a man’s throat.”

At that Kady sat down on the bed and looked at him. “Did they hang him?” she managed to get out.

“They hadn’t yet when I left, but I don’t know how much time he has left.” He looked at her. “They may have shot him.”

At that Kady thought she was going to faint, and she must have looked like it, for Luke grabbed her shoulders to keep her from falling. “Why? How? How much time?” she whispered.

“Tomorrow at dawn, but who knows how much time that is in that place?”

Suddenly, Kady’s head cleared, and she started for the door. But Luke caught her before she reached the stairs. “Where—?” he managed to rasp out.

“I’m going to go get him, of course.”

“He said no, that you weren’t to go after him.” There were tears of pain in Luke’s eyes as these words hurt his throat so much, and Kady saw that his energy was draining fast.

Before she went back to Legend—if she could get through the doorway, that is—she ought to know what had happened and what she would be walking into.

Gently, she led Luke back into the bedroom, then went to the bathroom to get a pan of hot water and a clean cloth. While she cleaned the wound on his head, she managed to get most of the story out of him.

It seemed that on the day he and Kady had arrived in Legend, Tarik had seen that the door opened for him but not for Kady, so that night he had asked Luke to go with him. When the two men got there, they discovered that it was the day before the shooting of Cole and his family was to happen.

Kady listened while Luke haltingly told her how he and Tarik had tried their best to warn the Jordan family that they must stay away from the bank the next day.

“But they wouldn’t listen to us,” Luke said. “We tried everything. Tarik got into a bloody fight with some men at the Jordan Line.”

At this she halted in washing Luke. “With a knife?”

“A knife and an army sword that was hanging on a wall, and with his fists.”

No wonder he felt into bed beside her the next morning and went to sleep immediately, she thought. He should have been taken to a hospital and X-rayed.

“So what happened last night?” she asked as she began to wash the cut on Luke’s side. His shirt was hanging in rags, so she easily tore it away.

“Tarik said that since he couldn’t stop the Jordans, he could stop the bank robbers, so we waited in the bank all day.”

Kady could almost imagine what Luke was going to say next.

“We were strangers in town, and they . . .” He put his hand to his throat, his eyes shut in pain.