Body Heat Read Online Free

Her office had a courtyard window, but when was the last time she’d taken a good look out here? The ground was covered with scrubby grass which no one had watered yet this spring. There were a couple of lovely cherry trees in full bloom, but the half dozen other shrubs were in sorry shape.
    “Uh-huh,” he said.
    A man of few words. Not her favorite kind. She liked the intellectual type, articulate men who spoke in full sentences. Of course some of those sentences were the length of entire paragraphs, and she found herself drifting off in the middle—
    “Nice trees.” His voice broke into her thoughts. “But the rest is bad. Gloomy view for the old folks.”
    She raised her brows, surprised he’d spoken again, even more surprised he would think about the effect on the residents. “Yes, it is. We’ve discussed improving it, even talked about a pool and a miniature waterfall, but unfortunately we don’t have the funds.”
    “I can do that.”
    “You can do what?”
    “That. Pool, waterfall. Flowers, shrubs. Little Japanese maple over the pool.”
    He gazed up at the sky, then down again, and gestured to a corner. “Morning sun falls there. Put in a sitting area with a few chairs, couple of little tables for coffee. That cherry tree’ll break the sun.” He waved to the opposite corner. “Same kind of thing there, for the afternoon. They like to sit outside, right?”
    The sudden spate of loquaciousness left her gaping. “I . . . I guess so.” When the weather was nice, residents often perched on the wooden benches by the front door.
    He pointed toward the units that surrounded the courtyard. “No balconies. Lots of open windows. They like fresh air.”
    She squinted at him. He was observant and almost . . . considerate.
    Or maybe he was a thief and he was casing the joint, planning to steal precious treasures from people in the last years of their lives. “Yes, well,” she said, “that’s all very ambitious.” He clearly hadn’t paid attention to what she’d said about lack of funding. “Can you think on a smaller scale?”
    He grinned. It was so quick she almost missed it, but that sudden flash of white teeth in his dark face made her heart stutter.
    “Fix up the lawn and shrubs,” he said. “Flower borders around the edge.”
    “What would be involved?” She tried to ignore her racing pulse and sound businesslike.
    He cocked a skeptical eyebrow, but in truth she wasn’t having him on, or testing him. She’d grown up in Agnes and Timothy’s roomy condominium, now lived in her own small one, and hadn’t done an hour of gardening in her life. She was an indoors person. She gave him her best steely-eyed glare, and his eyebrow went down.
    “A few tools,” he said. “I gotta dig through this grass for the borders, turn over the soil. Fertilizer, maybe some peat. Depends how bad the soil is. Buy some flowers and plant them. Grass seed and fertilizer for the lawn.”
    “Lawn.” She frowned at the scruffy grass.
    “It can be saved. Gotta buy a sprinkler.”
    “We have one.” She was sure she’d seen one last summer, out in this courtyard. Gracie might know where it was.
    “Yeah?” He glanced pointedly at the dismal grass.
    She hated feeling defensive. She wasn’t in charge of the stupid garden. The old general manager really hadn’t been very efficient. Hmm. If she was responsible for getting the courtyard in better shape, it would win her brownie points with the Board when it came to winning the promotion. She waved a hand toward the scrubby bushes. “What about those? Can they be saved, too?”
    “Sure. Pruning, fertilizer.” He glanced at her. “Water.”
    She ground her teeth.
    He went on. “You got a couple of nice rhodos, lilac, japonica.”
    Lilac was a name she recognized, and she guessed rhodos were rhododendron. As for japonica, she didn’t have a clue. Maybe she should be taking notes. She put on her glasses, clicked her pen, and wrote the first two names, then paused.