Heaven Can't Wait. Linda Turner

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СКАЧАТЬ “Fine,” she said indifferently. “I’ll get right over there.”

      Judging from the way his already thin mouth squeezed into a flat line of annoyance, her reaction wasn’t the one he’d been hoping for. But Pru could find little satisfaction in the triumph. Now instead of just working with one irritating man, she had to deal with two. And there was nothing funny about working with Zebadiah Murdock.

      Heading for the site, she tried to tell herself it wasn’t going to be that bad. She’d heard of Murdock long before she’d ever subbed for Eric Thompson, and what she’d heard, she’d liked. He’d started out as an ordinary carpenter, worked hard and learned fast, and gradually started his own small construction company. But with a talent for bringing projects in on schedule and under budget, he had become a success almost overnight. The Fort Sam project was his first with the government, but no one expected it to be his last.

      In spite of the problems with the cement, he had a reputation for being honest and straight as an arrow. As the contractor, he could have spent his days doing paperwork in the air-conditioned comfort of his office, but Pru had learned from his men that he liked to work side by side with his crew in the hot sun. Evidently he hadn’t forgotten his roots, and she liked that about him. But it was also common knowledge that he’d never met an inspector that he thought was worth a damn.

      They’d probably be at each other’s throats within an hour.

      Common courtesy dictated that she immediately search him out and introduce herself as soon as she arrived at the site, but as she parked and plopped her hard hat on her head, she knew she wasn’t going to do it. She hadn’t forgotten their conversation of yesterday and she doubted that he had, either. She’d give him a little more time to cool off...and give herself a chance to adjust to the sudden change in her working conditions.

      She learned from one of the plumbers that Murdock was handling a problem with one of the steel tiers in the west wing. Turning in the opposite direction, she intended to check the roughing-in the electricians were finishing at the other end of the building, but she’d only taken two steps when the distinct sound of a cement truck rolling onto the site stopped her in her tracks. Whirling, she turned just in time to see the truck rumble over to the west wing, where men were already waiting to spread the cement as it was poured.

      Stunned that someone would dare to countermand her order that there would be no more cement poured until the results from the core sample came back, she started to run. “Who ordered this cement? Stop right this minute! Do you hear me? I said—”

      Indignation blinding her to everything but the cement truck that was preparing to pour, she didn’t even see the man who cut across the compound with long strides to intercept her until she all but slammed into him. Staggering back a step, her breath escaped in a gasp. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t see—”

      The words died on her tongue, whatever she was going to say next lost forever as her gaze locked with the most incredible blue eyes she’d ever seen. Her heart pounding crazily in her chest and the cement truck forgotten, Pru stood dumbstruck, as dazed and disoriented as if she’d been run over by a train.

      He was tall, a good six inches taller than her own five foot ten, his body lean and hard and fat free in faded jeans, a navy T-shirt and work boots. The yellow hard hat he wore proclaimed him one of the crew, but even without that giveaway, she would have known he was a man who labored in the sun. His bronzed, weathered skin was stretched tight across his chiseled face, the crow’s feet that mapped the corners of his eyes and mouth a product of age and years spent working in the elements.

      With a touch of gray in the midnight black hair that peaked out from underneath his hard hat, he could have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty, Pru acknowledged dazedly. But by no stretch of the imagination could he be considered old. Rugged, too roughly cut to ever pass for a polished diamond, he was the kind of man who could make a woman pant.

      She knew him.

      Recognition came out of nowhere, grabbing her by the heart, stunning her speechless. Oh, she didn’t know his name and she would have bet she’d never seen him before—she would have remembered those eyes!—yet somehow she knew all she needed to know about him.

      He was the one. The one she’d been waiting for. The one she’d moved from Kansas to San Antonio to find.

      The absurdity of the thought nearly knocked her for a loop. The one? she echoed wildly. Good Lord, was she out of her mind? She hadn’t moved to Texas to find anyone. She’d just been standing out in the sun too long.

      Abruptly coming to her senses, she took a jerky step back, twin flags of hot color flying high in her cheeks. “Ex-excuse me,” she said huskily. “I—I didn’t s-see you.”

      She might not have noticed him, but Murdock had seen her the second she’d started running toward that damn cement truck with one hand flattened on her head to hold her hard hat in place. And he’d guessed immediately who she was. He hadn’t been expecting her, but he would have known that velvety rough voice of hers in the bowels of hell.

      So this was the hard-assed Prudence Sullivan, he thought irritably, surprised to find himself nearly eye to eye with her. His brows snapping together in a dark, intimidating line, he glared at her and realized too late that if the lady was hard-assed, you couldn’t tell it from looking at her. Dammit, why hadn’t anyone told him? Warned him? Dressed in khakis, she was tall and willowy, with her long, wavy, mahogany hair, caught up in a ponytail under her hard-hat, flashing fire in the sun. How she still managed to look soft and feminine in that getup, he’d be damned if he knew.

      His gaze slowly sliding over her cream-like complexion, his jaw flexed in reaction. She had the old-fashioned, porcelain features of a china doll and a sweet, vulnerable mouth that a man dreamed of—and ached for—in the dead of night. And if she was a day out of her twenties, he’d eat his shorts.

      Too young, he thought, taking a mental step back. He’d be forty-five next July, and he only had to look at the lady to feel like a lecher. Dammit, what was the government thinking of, assigning a woman like her to a building site full of rough, crude construction workers? Didn’t those paper pushers know the hard hats would eat her up with a spoon if given half the chance?

      Disgusted with himself for noticing anything about her, he said flatly, “You’re Prudence Sullivan.” It was a statement, not a question, one that only gave her a second to nod in surprise before he continued. “I’m Murdock.”

      Pru’s jaw dropped. This was Murdock? This devastatingly handsome, well-put-together hunk was the same jerk who’d yelled at her on the phone yesterday? He couldn’t be. There had to be a mistake.

      But a second, closer look at those incredible eyes that were lit with expectation, and she knew there was no mistake. This was Murdock, all right, and he was all set to tangle with her like he did every other inspector who crossed his path. More than willing to comply, her gaze shifted to the cement truck fifty yards away before swinging back to him. “Then I guess I don’t have to ask who ordered the cement, do I?”

      “That’s right. I’m in charge around here, and the sooner you get that, the better. Nobody shuts me down, Inspector. Nobody.”

      It was a taunt, pure and simple, his blue eyes so confident Pru wanted to slug him. Who did he think he was trying to intimidate? She wasn’t some piece of fluff who folded like a wimpy house of cards just because a builder dared to challenge her. And the sooner he got that, the better!

      “Waste your money, then,” she said airily, a smile starting to flirt with СКАЧАТЬ