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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 her mouth. “Because if those core tests come back the way I think they will, you’re going to have to tear it all out. And if you don’t think I can make you do it, then you’re not as smart as I heard you are.”
They stood nose to nose, the electricity sparking between them so volatile, the air all but sizzled. Her heart slamming against her ribcage, Pru was suddenly struck by the wild, inexplicable need to touch him. Horrified, tantalized, fighting instincts she’d never had for a man in her life, she almost stepped back again. But he could only take that as a weakness and every instinct she possessed told her she was going to have to stand her ground when it came to dealing with this man.
Not budging so much as a muscle, she met his glowering gaze unflinchingly and forced a smile that didn’t come as easily as she would have liked. “Do we understand each other, Murdock?”
If she wanted a battle of wills, she had only to look into his grimly determined eyes to know that she had one. Nodding curtly, he said, “Precisely.”
Without another word, he stepped around her and walked away, leaving Pru staring after him. Her knees were shaking, her pulse jumping. Later she would be furious that she, who usually treated most men like they were her best buddies, let this one get her hot and bothered without half trying. But for now, all she could think of was that she should have touched him when she’d had the chance.
Two
The music was loud, driving rock, the patrons young and wild. Seated at a table with Laura, Pru stared unseeingly at the energetic dancers crammed onto the dance floor. At any other time she would have found herself a partner and been right out there with the rest of the crowd. But tonight all she could think of was a six foot four hunk of a man who was at least a generation older than the oldest dancer on the floor. He probably wouldn’t be caught dead there.
“All right, that’s it,” Laura said suddenly when Pru sent the sixth good-looking man away like a dog with his tail between his legs. Scandalized by her friend’s total disinterest in Grade A prime males, she set her margarita down with a snap and frowned. “You want to tell me what’s wrong or do I have to guess?”
Jerked back to her surroundings, Pru blinked in surprise. “What are you talking about? Nothing’s wrong.”
Laura only snorted at that, unimpressed. “Tell that to someone who doesn’t know you so well. Did you even look at that guy you just sent packing? He was gorgeous!”
Pru glanced blankly around, unable to even remember what the man looked like. “Was he? I didn’t notice.”
“I know! That’s what I’m talking about. Something’s obviously bothering you, Sticks. Come on, what is it? I’ve never seen you so distracted.”
Smiling at the nickname the pint-sized Laura had given her in college, she started to tell her about her crazy fascination with Murdock, only to choke back the words before they escaped. What could she say? I’ve met a man who might be old enough to be my father and I think we were meant to be together? Talk about being a few doughnuts short of a dozen! Laura would think she’d flipped out.
“It’s nothing,” she hedged, forcing a grimace of a smile. “I was just thinking about work.”
Familiar with her problems with Bruce James, Laura immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion. “I knew it! Your boss has been giving you fits again, hasn’t he?”
Pru’s eyes turned rueful. “I think he lies awake at night dreaming up ways to make me miserable.”
Always ready to jump to the defense of a friend, Laura scowled like a ruffled hen. “So what are you going to do about it? There are laws against harassment, you know. Old Brucie baby may not like you, and he probably resents like hell that someone else hired you, but that doesn’t mean he can take his frustration out on you. Turn him in.”
“He’s not an idiot, Shorty. He’s made sure he hasn’t treated me any differently than anyone else.”
Laura nearly strangled on her drink. “You mean he treats everyone like dirt?”
“Just about.”
Pru started to tell her about how Eric Thompson was fired, but she’d hardly begun when a tall, blond man appeared at her side and grinned down at her as if she’d been put on this earth just for him. “Hi, sugar. How ‘bout a dance?”
Pru almost rolled her eyes and sent him packing with the rest. But Laura gave her a pointed look and, with a resigned shrug, she rose to her feet. “Sure. Why not?”
For the next three hours she danced just about every dance and really did have a good time. Refusing to take any of her partners too seriously, she laughed at their jokes, shrugged off their flattery and graciously turned down all dates. And when she finally went home, she went alone, just as she always did.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in dating or finding a man of her own, she admitted as she let herself into her silent apartment and got ready for bed. She would love to have a husband and a real, honest-to-God home of her own with the man she adored. And children.
Something shifted deep inside her, something soft and tender and sweet, at the thought of a child. Her child. She could almost see it, a beautiful baby, its tiny features a fascinating combination of hers and its daddy’s, a treasured symbol of their love for each other. And if she closed her eyes and totally emptied her mind, she was sure it was only a matter of time before she caught a glimpse of him, the man who was going to give her that child.
But when she climbed into bed and closed her eyes, the only man she saw was Zebadiah Murdock.
She groaned, the defeated sound loud in the dark, quiet stillness of her lonely bedroom. She would not do this! she promised herself. The infuriating man had dominated her thoughts enough for one evening. It had to stop!
Flopping over onto her stomach, she punched her pillow into just the right shape and closed her eyes with a tired sigh. Exhaustion from a long, tense day of work and then hours of dancing came out of nowhere to swamp her senses. Her breathing slow and regular, she never knew when sleep overtook her.
Or when Murdock walked into her dreams.
Her defenses down, she never thought to question his presence there. He was just there, where he’d always belonged. Her lover throughout eternity, her soul mate, the man she was meant to go through time with, as much a part of her being as the familiar beating of her heart.
Entranced, she watched in fascination as a white mist swirled around him, obliterating him from view before suddenly parting to reveal the two of them together. Her breath caught in her throat, longing swelling in her as she watched herself move into his arms and gracefully dance to the faint strains of a melody that was hauntingly familiar.
Murmuring his name, she reached for the sensuous image, needing, just for one heart-stopping moment, to hold on to it. But her fingers encountered nothing but the empty space beside her in the bed and she came awake abruptly, the sensuous dream swept away on a devastating tidal wave of loss.
You’ve been waiting for him more lifetimes than you can remember, an unknown voice echoed in her head. Don’t let him get away.
Her heart thundering as if she’d just run a mile, Pru rolled onto her back and found herself blinking back hot, ridiculous tears. Stunned, she lifted her fingers to her cheeks and stared at the moisture that clung to them. Tears, she thought dazedly. She was crying for Murdock!
And hearing voices. Dear God, what was happening to her? she thought in growing hysteria. Murdock didn’t even like 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 results would come back heavily in his favor, was shocked and grudgingly admitted that the test was justified. He could no longer deny that she knew what she was doing, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it. Because every time she found something wrong, he just had another problem to solve.
For the next three days he continued to look through her instead of at her. Then, just when she thought she was going to have to grab the man by the ears and shake him to get his attention, she discovered that the electricians he had hired to wire the entire complex were not using American-made materials.
It was a mistake that shouldn’t have been made. Regulations required that the majority of materials used on government projects had to be American-made. She might have been able to believe another contractor doing a government job for the first time might not have known that. But not Murdock. He was too sharp to make that kind of costly mistake.
There had to be another explanation, she decided. She’d heard about the problems on the site, problems that evidently went all the way back to the first day when ground was broken. Other, less reputable builders had those kinds of problems all the time. Zebadiah Murdock, however, had a reputation that was head and shoulders above such men. From what she’d heard around the site, he didn’t normally have those kinds of headaches. So what was wrong? It was time she found out.
Not looking forward to the coming conversation, she went looking for Murdock and found him standing outside his minuscule office with his back to her, talking to Roy Wilkins. Her heart lurching in its now familiar way at the sight of him, Pru had eyes for no one but Murdock. She hadn’t been this close to him all day, and for a moment she completely forgot why she had sought him out.
Then Roy saw her and stopped talking in midsentence.
Surprised, Murdock whirled to see who’d approached and just barely bit back a groan. He’d been trying to ignore her for days now, but even if she hadn’t been the only woman at the site, she was hard to miss. She always seemed to be just within the corner of his vision, impossible to overlook. And even harder to forget. Every night when he went home, she was right there with him in his head.
And for the life of him, he didn’t know why. Just because he was a confirmed bachelor at forty-five didn’t mean he was a recluse. When he was in need of female companionship, there were any number of women he could call. Women who were older, more mature, women whose interests matched his. Women, when he thought of Pru, he didn’t call. It was irritating as hell.
Ignoring the sudden heat in the air that hadn’t been there seconds before, he never took his eyes from Pru as he told his field superintendent, “We’ll talk about this later, Roy. Go ahead and take a break. I’ll find you after I’m through with Inspector Sullivan.”
Roy, witness to more than one of their discussions, was quick to cut and run. In the tense silence left by his leave-taking, Murdock drawled, “Don’t tell me. You’ve gone over everything with a magnifying glass and you’ve finally found something to complain about. What is it this time? Measurements a thousandth of a millimeter off, or what?”
The quick retort that sprang to her tongue caught between her teeth, Pru only grinned. The last time she’d let a male push her buttons, she’d been twelve and Tommy Stinson had teased her for being flat-chested while all her friends were blooming like roses. She’d socked him then and learned the value of taking a man by surprise.
“Actually, I was wondering if you’d like to go to lunch with me,” she said easily, flashing her dimples at him. “What do you say? Are you game?”
Murdock couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d tossed a bucket of wet cement over his head. His brows snapping together, he eyed her warily. “For what?”
“Either it’s been a long time since a woman has asked you to lunch or I’m not doing it right. Lunch,” she laughed. “I’m talking about lunch. You know...food...that meal you eat in the middle of the day?”
“Let’s just put it this way,” he retorted. “It’s been a long time since an inspector’s invited me to lunch. This is business, isn’t it?”