A Love for All Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

first year out of high school. It shocked her into the realization that she was following her mother down the primrose path with a handsome rake who had no intentions of being true to her. After that at least three times a year some would-be seducer laid seige to her body, but Casey remained inviolate. And she was determined to make herself financially secure so she would never be forced to do the menial work her mother had done.
    But she’d never met a man who’d come evenclose to being anything like Dan Murdock, she realized suddenly. Bits and pieces of conversation kept coming back to her. Things about reincarnation, and about him knowing she was special to him. She wished her mind had been clear that night and she could have asked him what he was talking about. Suddenly she hoped it would be a long, long time before she saw him again. She didn’t need his pity. The thought of him looking at her as if she were a caterpillar crawling out of his salad caused her to close her eyes and clench her teeth. She went cold, then hot as she imagined how she must have looked to him—black ringed eyes, face swollen beneath the bandages, her hands like chicken’s feet! And that was the part of her he could see. The doctor told her she had over fifty stitches in her right breast. She had no intention of going bare breasted on a public beach so that part of her injuries had been relegated to the back of her mind, although she was acutely aware that she would never again be able to wear a sleeveless sundress, a low-cut evening dress, or appear on the beach in a skimpy bathing suit.
    The door opened and closed softly. Casey kept her face turned toward the window and blinked rapidly at the tears in her eyes. Miss Peachy-Complexion would be going off duty soon. She was sick to death of the girl hovering over her. She opened her mouth to tell her not to turn on the lights when a whiff of something masculine reachedher nose. An icy hand squeezed her heart and Dan’s deep voice said, “Hello, Casey.”
    She turned startled eyes toward him and at the same time burrowed her hands and arms beneath the sheet. Her eyes ran over Dan quickly before she turned her head away. The movement was too quick and she flinched from the pain as her ear and cheek pressed into the pillow. He was just as she remembered—a man totally in command of himself. Finally she remembered to return his greeting.
    “Hello.”
    There was silence. “May I sit down?”
    “Be my guest,” she said ungraciously, keeping her face turned away from him.
    “Thanks.” He carried the chair around the end of the bed and placed it so that when he sat down his eyes were only a couple of feet from hers.
    There was nowhere for Casey to look but at him. He was wearing a brown shirt with pearl snaps and tight-fitting, Western cut slacks of tan corduroy. It wasn’t his casual attire that held her attention, but the rugged planes of his tanned features, lean and strong. She had had no difficulty remembering his size or the dark glitter of his eyes, but she had forgotten about the unruliness of his thick, dark hair. She watched the straight, firm line of his mouth curve in a smile that softened the hard contours of his face.
    Casey lay stiffly, all her nerve ends tingling under the scrutiny of those eyes. She knew she hadnever looked as unattractive as she did then. There was no artificial cause for the color that tinged her cheeks as his gaze traveled over her face, taking in the bruises beneath her eyes, the unwashed hair pulled back from her face, and the dressing that covered her cheek and ear leaving the stitches visible across her forehead.
    Her gold-flecked eyes held a definite shimmer of defiance when she met his glance. All her defenses were raised. Casey didn’t fully understand this inner need to protect herself from him, it was just there and seemed to be purely instinctive. The strong mouth slanted its line, but it never made the full transition into a smile. His glance