Legend (Legend, Colorado 1)

On impulse, Kady took a piece of notepaper from an antique desk in a corner of the room and wrote a note.

Dear Mr. Jordan,

You do not know me, but I would like to talk to you about your grandmother Ruth and what happened in Legend.

Below this she wrote her New York hotel address, then folded the note and, with pleading eyes, asked the receptionist to please see that Mr. Jordan received it. “He will be very angry if you don’t,” she said as ominously as she could manage. This seemed to do the trick, for the woman took the note and left the room.

When Kady turned back, she saw there was a man now sitting in the waiting room, a briefcase open on his lap, and when he looked up and saw Kady, she could tell he was interested in her. A few weeks ago Jane had said that Kady had become a shameless flirt, so maybe she could use a little bit of what she’d learned in Legend to her advantage.

Kady took a seat across from the man. “Applying for a job?” she asked in wide-eyed innocence.

He gave Kady one of those up and down looks, and what he saw seemed to please him, because he smiled a bit and nodded his head.

Kady gave a sigh that was meant to say she was glad to have a friend. “I’m applying for a job, too. Maybe if you get your job, I’ll be your secretary,” she said as she fluttered her lashes and leaned a bit toward him. “You must know what he’s like. C. T. Jordan, I mean.”

The man took the bait. He gave a very macho stretch, then put on his wise look. “Private. Jordan is a very private man. Rarely seen in public.”

“The agency sent me over here, and I don’t even know what this company does.”

“Buys and sells. Owns things, you know, like states of the union, that sort of thing.”

Kady’s mouth made a round little . “My goodness, is he rich?”

“You don’t read Forbes magazine, do you?” the man said, chuckling.

“I’m more of a Cook’s Illustrated type.”

“Let’s just say that the elusive Mr. Jordan is a very wealthy man.”

“My goodness! You don’t say! And how does one get in to meet him?”

“By invitation only. No one knows when he’s here or when he’s not. He deals with only a few men who have worked for him for years—and his private secretary of course.”

At that moment the receptionist returned, gave Kady yet another hostile glance, then told the man Mr. Caulden was ready to see him. After the man left the waiting room, the receptionist turned to Kady with a smug little smile. “Mr. Jordan has gone home for the day, so he won’t be able to see you.”

Kady’s heart seemed to drop to her feet. “You gave him my message?”

“Yes, he says he knows no Ruth Jordan and has never heard of Legend, Colorado.”

Well, that’s that, Kady thought, then asked if she could use the rest room, and even at that the receptionist was reluctant. “Would you give me a break?” Kady snapped, making the woman look the tiniest bit guilty as she pointed the way down the hall.

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.