Warm Hearts Read Online Free Page B

defensive. At the same time, he’d be able to offer his own opinions without insisting that they were law.
    Open-minded. She figured that summed it up. He’d be open-minded, thoughtful and intelligent. His career? She straightened one leg on the seat and flexed her toes while she thought about that for a minute. He’d have to be in a caring profession. A doctor? Perhaps. Maybe a psychiatrist. That way they’d be able to bounce cases off each other. Then again, many of the psychiatrists she knew were weird. Chalk psychiatrist and put in teacher. Mmm, that idea appealed to her. He’d be involved with kids. Maybe college kids. She had her share of clients from local colleges and found her work with them to be particularly rewarding. They wanted help. They could respond.
    She brushed her arm over her forehead, pushing back damp strands of hair. The stranger didn’t move, other than to occasionally take a drink from the can he held. It was a light beer, she decided. He wasn’t really a drinker, but he needed something to quench his thirst and beer was the best. Light beer, because he didn’t want to develop a beer belly, though he was more health-conscious than vain.
    Health-conscious was a good thing to be at his age. It was a good thing to be at any age, but if he was approaching his forties, it was all the more important.
    She paused for an instant as a new thought struck. If he was nearly forty, tall, dark, handsome, self-confident, successful and caring, there had to be a good reason why he wasn’t married. Because he wasn’t. She didn’t fool with married men. Besides, if his apartment mirrored hers, it wasn’t suitable for two.
    Perhaps he was divorced. He may have married young and none too wisely—she’d forgive him that early innocence—then redeemed himself by ending the union before two lives, or more, were ruined.
    Maybe he’d never married at all. He’d been too involved in his career. Or—she rather liked this idea—he’d been waiting for the right woman to come along.
    Well, Tall-Dark-and-Handsome, here I am. But she didn’t have to tell him that. He’d know. One glance and he’d know. She wasn’t looking her best just then, but that wouldn’t matter to him. He’d want her for better or for worse. And worse wasn’t all that bad. Hadn’t Connie said she looked sexy?
    Well, Caroline decided with a fanciful sigh, so did he. There he was on his fire escape, tired and sweaty and, really, when she came right down to it, not much more than a full-bodied shadow. Still, she imagined that he was sexy as hell. True, her opinion was tinged by everything else she’d conjured up, but since she was into the fantasy, she’d do it right.
    He’d be the epitome of raw masculinity. One look at him close up and she’d feel those awakening tingles deep inside. She tried to remember when she’d felt them last. It might have been with Ben, at the beginning, when she’d been snowed by his style. Or it might have been with Jonathan Carey, her first and only other lover, but she suspected that what she’d felt then had had more to do with the excitement of being a freshman in college and finally “doing it.” Then again, the last time she’d felt those tingles, really felt them, might have been when she was seventeen and necking in Greg O’Malley’s Mustang. When Greg had grazed her breasts, her insides had come to life. It had all been so new then—new and mysterious and forbidden.
    It would be new with Tall-Dark-and-Handsome, too. New as in mind-boggling, heart stopping and soul reaching. He would be a stupendous lover. Caroline could see it in the way he held himself. His body was well tuned and coordinated. Ropy shoulders, tight hips, long, lean legs … sexy … oh, Lord …
    She clamped her thighs together and took a shaky breath, a little shocked by her