“Kady,” he said softly. “I want you to tell me everything. I want to know what happened between you and Ruth.”
Looking at him, she sighed. “You’d never believe me. In fact, the more time passes, I don’t know if I believe what happened myself.”
“I’d like to hear, whether you believe it or not.”
For a moment she hesitated. Yesterday she would never have considered telling him or anyone else what she’d been through, but today he was no longer a stranger. She knew his body as she’d never known anyone else’s. And, if she was honest with herself, he had never been a stranger to her.
She took a deep breath. “On impulse I bought an old flour tin. I was going to put it in my new kitchen in the house I was going to live in with Gregory. Inside the tin was a wedding dress, a watch, and a photograph.”
She talked for over an hour. After a while, without interrupting her, Tarik got out of the pool, then helped her out, dried her off, and they both dressed. It was growing dark as they walked back to the cabin, yet still Kady talked. He made no comment, but she could almost feel how closely he listened to her. It was as though he were listening with his soul.
Only once did he say anything and that was to ask a question. “Did you love him?”
“Cole?” she asked, knowing that was whom Tarik meant. “I don’t know. I did in a way, but I guess I knew that it would never last between us, so I held back.”
“You’re good at holding back,” he said under his breath, then asked her to go on with her story.
By the time they returned to the cabin, Kady had told him everything about the time she’d spent in Legend with Cole.
Tarik led her to the round oak table where a few hours before they had made love. “You don’t believe me,” she said as she sat on the chair he pulled out for her.
“I believe every word you’ve said,” he answered. “Now, what do you want on your omelet?”
“It’s what a person wants in an omelet, not on it,” she said, unconvinced that he believed her. Who could believe a story like hers? “Here, let me do that,” she said as she started for the kitchen counter.
“Kady, my love,” he said as he put his hands on her shoulders and ushered her back to the table. “I did not fall in love with you because I need a cook. You’re my guest, and I’ll take care of you. I might not be able to turn out a meal like yours, but I can certainly make an omelet.”
Kady smiled up at him. No one anywhere, ever, volunteered to cook for her. Except Cole. Except Tarik. “Everything,” she said. “I want everything you’ve got on the omelet, and in it. Drag it through the garden.”
“One muddy omelet, comin’ up,” he said, turning back to the stove. “Now tell me about . . .” He hesitated as though the word were difficult for him. “About Gregory.”
Kady laughed. “Not until I hear about Leonie and Wendell and all the others.”
Turning, he gave her a grin that almost took her breath away. “There are so many women in my past that it’s going to take the rest of my life to tell you about all of them. I think that for now we better stick to your men. There are fewer of them.”
“Ha ha. There happen to be many men in my life.”
“Give me their names so I may slay them.”
She laughed as she looked at the back of him, and it suddenly occurred to her that at this moment, for the first time in her life, she was happy. All her life she seemed to have been searching for something, but she’d never known what it was. She’d never been content with what she was doing. When she’d been chef at Onions she had dreamed of being married to Gregory and having children. When she was in old Legend, she had wanted to be elsewhere. Then when she’d returned to her real life, everything she’d found there had made her want to get away from it.
But now she was where she should be and doing what she should be doing with the man she was supposed to be with.
“Want to share that with me?” Tarik asked softly as he watched her.
“Did you ever want to crystallize a moment? Did you ever say to yourself, ‘I want right now to last forever’?”
He put down his chopping knife and knelt before her, taking her hands in his. “Ever since I first saw you in my office I’ve felt that way.”
“Ha! You were with another woman when I went to your apartment. And before that you were rude and nasty and—”
“I didn’t say I liked the feeling,” he said, eyes twinkling. “I knew from the first moment I looked into your eyes that I was seeing the end of my freedom. No more wild parties. No more supermodels. No more—”
“All I hear is what a private man you are. In fact, people don’t even know your name. You can’t have privacy and still have parties and zillions of women.”
Smiling, he went back to his chopping board. “Did anyone ever tell you that women with brains are annoying?”
“Gregory did.”