Heaven Can't Wait. Linda Turner

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СКАЧАТЬ her! And she wasn’t actually crazy about him, either. So how could she dream about him, ache for him, picture a future with him?

       You’ve been waiting for him for more lifetimes than you can remember.

      The softly spoken words whispered through her consciousness, sounding so familiar she would have sworn she’d heard them before. But where? When? Agitated, her stomach churning, she got out of bed. Without bothering to turn on a light, she started to pace restlessly in the dark. It was just a bad case of lust at first sight, she reasoned. An experienced woman would have recognized that immediately, but then again, she was hardly what anyone with even a smidgen of brains would call experienced. Up until now the men in her life had just been friends, pals, big brothers. Not a one of them had so much as raised her temper, let alone her temperature. So how could she have possibly known that physical attraction could be as volatile as a charge of lightning in an unstable sky? No wonder she couldn’t handle it.

      But lust didn’t explain the mysterious voice in her head. Sweet, loving, sure, it spoke with a conviction she couldn’t shake. And that, more than anything, was what scared her. She wasn’t one of those imaginative, daydreaming women with her head in the clouds all the time. She was practical right down to her white cotton underwear, and she didn’t believe in fairy tales, reincarnation, or voices that spoke to her in the middle of the night. So why was her heart knocking like crazy in her breast?

      Feeling as if she was losing it, she threw herself across the bed, reached for the phone on the nightstand and quickly dialed Kansas City. It wasn’t until she heard her mother’s sleepy voice on the other end of the line that she glanced at the bedside clock. “Oh, God, Mom, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize the time—”

      “Prudence?” Cynthia Sullivan gasped in alarm. “It’s after two! What’s wrong? Are you all right? You never call this late.”

      Already hearing the panic in her mother’s voice, Pru wanted to kick herself for not checking the time before picking up the phone. “It’s nothing,” she assured her quickly. “I’ll call you back in the morning.”

      Her mother only clicked her tongue at that nonsense and said dryly, “This is your mother you’re talking to, honey. I know when something’s wrong—I can hear it in your voice. Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

      In the background, Pru could hear the grandfather clock down the hall from her parents’ bedroom striking the hour. Suddenly homesick, she could do nothing to stop the sudden tears that stung her eyes. “This is so screwy.” She laughed shakily, swallowing the lump in her throat. “I don’t even know where to start.”

      Like a dam that had suddenly cracked open, the words came pouring out in a jumbled rush, unedited and flustered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said after describing the dream and her working relationship with Murdock. “I hardly know the man, and he definitely doesn’t like me. And then that voice...I tell you, Mom, I think I’m losing it.”

      Cynthia Sullivan laughed gaily. “Honey, you’re not losing anything! Didn’t I ever tell you about the first time I saw your father? I knew right then he was the man for me.”

      “But what about the voice? And all this stuff about different lifetimes?”

      “Who knows? It’s a strange world, sweetheart, and some things just can’t be explained. The question is, how do you feel about Murdock?”

      Pru hesitated, but the truth wouldn’t be denied. “I don’t know,” she blurted. “I just know my heart started skipping the minute I laid eyes on him and I can’t get him out of my head. And now he’s in my dreams.”

      “Then maybe you should find a way to get better acquainted with him,” her mother suggested. “If you’re still fascinated with him after you get to know him, you may have just found the man of your dreams.”

      She made it sound so easy. “Was it that simple for you and Daddy?”

      Even through the phone line, she could hear the smile in her mother’s voice. “It was just like falling off a log, honey. We couldn’t help ourselves. And if you and Murdock are made for each other, it will be that easy for you, too.”

      Pru wanted to believe her, but long after she hung up and went back to bed, she lay in the dark, too restless to go back to sleep, her thoughts tangled and unsure. Images flashed before her mind’s eye, images that were part of her dream, part of what could be. Her and Murdock together...always. The whole idea was crazy. She was crazy. But for some reason she couldn’t explain, it felt right. She didn’t know where a possible friendship with him would lead, but she had to find out. She wanted to get to know the man, to figure out what made him tick...and turned him on.

      * * *

      Feeling like she’d already waited forever, Pru wanted to put her plan into action immediately, but it wasn’t that easy. When she arrived at the site the next morning, Murdock was already there, defiantly pouring cement, his smile mocking as he silently dared her to just try to stop him. She didn’t. Instead she walked right up to him and offered him her hand. “We got off on the wrong foot yesterday,” she said easily, and had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes narrow suspiciously. Suddenly wanting to laugh, she struggled to hold back a grin. “So I thought we could shake hands and start over.”

      His eyes locked on her hand, Murdock didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink. He didn’t want to touch her, didn’t even want to think about touching her. But they were in full view of his crew and there was no way he could avoid accepting her handshake without looking like a jerk. Reluctantly, his fingers closed around hers.

      The heat was instantaneous, like the flare of a match, jumping from his hand to hers. Startled, he felt it and knew she did, too. He watched her eyes fly to their joined hands, felt her fingers tremble and his own heart slam against his ribs. With a muttered curse, he jerked his hand back, but it didn’t do much good. He still burned.

      Pru blinked and looked down at her hand as if she’d never seen it before. “Well,” she said, her voice catching revealingly, “I guess that takes care of the formalities. Maybe now we can be friends.”

      But when she looked back at Murdock, he only nodded stiffly, his shuttered expression not giving her much encouragement. “Sure. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to work.”

      It wasn’t the response she’d hoped for, but it was a start and not all that bad a one, she decided, considering how he felt about inspectors. Just because she generally knew what she wanted the minute she saw it didn’t mean that he did. She just had to give him some time. After all, it wasn’t as if either one of them was going anywhere. The project was a long way from being finished, and they would be dealing with each other every day. It would be much easier for both of them if they could manage to become friends.

      But even though he’d agreed to start over, it soon became apparent that he really had no intention of doing anything of the kind. He was an attractive man and when he was dealing with anyone but her, he actually smiled and laughed. For the first time in her life, envy stirred in her, turning her eyes greener than normal, and she didn’t like it. She knew she was being ridiculous—she hardly knew him. But she wanted him to be as relaxed with her as he was with his crew. She wanted him to see her when he looked at her—Pru Sullivan, the woman, not an inspector he was forced to tolerate. And she wanted him to smile at her, just once, as if he meant it.

      But it didn’t happen. The results of the core samples came in and the numbers were acceptable, but only by a hairbreadth. Murdock, so sure the test СКАЧАТЬ