Rapunzel in New York
Nikki Logan
Once upon a New York minute… a Knight in shining pinstripe rushed to the aid of a beautiful Maiden. Galloping up a crumbling tower block, he crashed into the chamber where she was imprisoned! The Maiden gasped and said – that she was perfectly happy, thank you very much, and certainly didn’t need saving, especially by a smug, designer-suited billionaire, and why had he just kicked in her front door?It’s sometimes hard for a modern damsel in distress to admit she needs rescuing – but at least this heroine plans to rescue her hero right back!
Praise for Nikki Logan
‘Superb debut—4.5 stars.’
—RT Book Reviews on
Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss
‘Now, here is an Australian writer who manages to both tell a good story and to capture Australia well. I had fun from start to finish. Nikki Logan will be one to watch.’
—www.goodreads.com on
Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss
‘This story has well-defined and soundly motivated characters as well as a heart-wrenching conflict.’
—RT Book Reviews on
Their Newborn Gift
About the Author
About Nikki Logan
NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.
Visit Nikki online at www.nikkilogan.com.au
Also by Nikki Logan
A Kiss to Seal the Deal
Shipwrecked with Mr Wrong
Lights, Camera … Kiss the Boss
Their Newborn Gift
Seven-Day Love Story
The Soldier’s Untamed Heart
Friends to Forever
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Rapunzel in New York
Nikki Logan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
DedicationTo Carol and Marlon: I hope my Viktoria is the kind of woman you’d have wanted yours to grow into.
Acknowledgement To my friend Sandra Galati, and coffee-shop stranger Teresa Izzard, for your invaluable assistance discovering Manhattan. Sandra and I were meeting in a coffee shop halfway around the world from Morningside, NY, where this book is set, and the woman at the next table had lived there for a year. Talk about kismet! And to all the internet sites dedicated to New York City’s urban raptors. Thank you! I had a wonderful time researching this story and watching your beautiful birds every day.
CHAPTER ONE
“YOU’d better get up here, Nathan. There’s a woman about to jump from your building.”
Two sentences.
That’s all it took to tear Nathan Archer away from his Columbus Circle office and send him racing uptown. Ironic that the A-line was quicker than a cab or even his driver could get him up to Morningside, but the subway spilled him out just one block from the West 126th Street building he’d grown up in. Grown old in. Well before his time.
He pushed through the gathered throng, shaking his head at the impatient crowd. Was there a whole population of people who hovered in alleys and bars just waiting for some poor individual to be nudged too far in life? To climb out onto a bridge or a rooftop?
Or a ledge.
He followed their collective gaze upward. Sure enough, there she was. Not exactly preparing for a swan dive; more crouched than standing. She looked young, though it was hard to tell from this distance.
She was staring at the sky with an intensity strong enough to render her completely oblivious to the crowd gathering below. He lifted his eyes to the popcorn clouds. Was she praying? Or was she just in her own tormented world?
“The crisis team is mobilizing,” a nearby cop said, turning back to stare uselessly up to the tenth floor. “ETA twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes? She’d already been out there at least the quarter hour it had taken him to get uptown. The chances of her lasting another twenty?
Not high.
He glanced around at the many spectators who were doing exactly nothing to rectify the situation and swallowed a groan. There was a reason he was more of a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. Behind the scenes had served him well his whole life. You got a lot done when you weren’t wasting time as the center of attention. He paid people to do the limelight thing.
Unfortunately, none of them were here.
He was.
Nathan looked back up at the looming building and the woman perched precariously on it. Hadn’t these old walls contained enough misery?
He muttered a curse and his legs started moving. Had nobody thought of doing this sooner? He pushed past a gaggle of onlookers and headed toward the building, counting windows as he went. It took him three minutes to get into his own building and up to the eighth floor, and he passed three residents on the stairs up to the tenth—they had no clue about the drama unfolding in their own building. If they saw it on the news tonight they’d be kicking themselves they missed it. Not that it was making the news tonight, or any night while he still breathed. His development didn’t need the bad press. He hadn’t worked on it all this time only to have it turned upside down by a woman with a blown psychiatric fuse.
Nate burst through the stairwell door and turned left, counting the windows he knew to be on the outside of the building. Nine … ten … eleven … On twelve, he paused for only a second before delivering a strategic kick right at the weak point in the door of apartment 10B. As fragile as the rest of the century old building, it exploded inwards in a shower of splinters.
Inside, the apartment was neat and carefully decorated but small enough that he was able to check all the five rooms in less than thirty seconds, even with a limp from the jar that had just about snapped his ankle. Three rooms had outside windows that were sealed tight—safety measures. But, apparently back at the turn of the twentieth century some architect had considered that only grown men needed to be saved from themselves, because every apartment had one more window—small and awkwardly positioned above the toilet cistern, but just big enough for a slight woman to wiggle through. Or a young boy.
He knew that from experience.
This one stood wide open, its tasteful lemon curtains blowing gently in the breeze, providing access onto 10B’s sheltered ledge.
Nathan’s heart hammered from way more than the urgent sprint up two flights of stairs. He took a deep, tense breath, climbed onto the closed lid of the toilet and peered out the window, sickeningly prepared to find nothing but pigeon droppings and a swirl of air where a woman had just been.
But she was still out there, her back to him as she stretched out on the ledge on all fours, giving him a great view of her denim-clad behind …
… and the tangle of ropes and rigging that fixed her more than securely to the ledge.
Frustrated fury bubbled up deep inside. Of all the stupid-ass, time-wasting stunts. He boosted himself up and half through the window and barked to her butt, “Honey, you’d better be planning to jump, or I’m going to throw you off here myself.”
Viktoria Morfitt spun so fast she nearly lost her careful balance on the ledge. Her reflexes were dulled through lack of use, but her muscle memory was still entirely intact, and it choreographed her muscles now to brace her more securely on the narrow stone shelf. Adrenaline pulsed through her bloodstream and her lungs sucked in an ache of cold air and then expelled it on a ripe curse as she spotted the man wedged in her bathroom window glaring at her like a maniac. His voice had drawn her attention, but his words whooshed away on the relentless New York sounds coming up from Morningside’s streets.
What the—? She shuffled backward as far as the ledge allowed and knocked against the peregrine nest box she’d just been installing.
The stranger lurched farther forward, half hanging out the window, enormous hands stretched out toward her, and spoke more clearly. More slowly. “Easy, honey. Just a joke. How about you come back inside now?”
She wasn’t fooled by those treacle tones for one moment. Or the intense eyes. Bad guys never turned up at your doorstep badly scarred, carrying violin cases and talking like Robert deNiro. They turned up like this: nice shirt, open collar, careless hair and designer stubble. Big, well-manicured hands. Good-looking. Exactly the sort of guy you’d think was okay to let inside your apartment.
Except that he’d already let himself in.
For one crazy second Tori considered leaping off the ledge. Her intruder could help himself to her stuff—whatever he wanted—and she could lower herself down to Barney’s ledge. He’d be home for sure and his bathroom window was perpetually open so he could smoke out of it. Her hand slipped to the titanium fixings at her pelvis. Her rigging would hold. It always did.
A sharp pain gnawed deep and low. Almost always.
She raised her voice instead, hoping to alert a neighbour. “How about you get the heck out of my apartment!” Tension thumped out of her in waves that translated into quavers in her voice. Could he tell?
He reached forward again. “Look—”
Tori slid hard up against the corner of the building, clambering around the nest box. Dammit, any farther and she’d knock it off the ledge and have to start all over again. Well, that and possibly kill someone walking below.
She glanced easily over the ledge and met the intense stares of thirty or so passersby and a couple of NYPD officers. “Hey!” she yelled down to the cops. “Get up here! There’s a burglar in my apartment—10B!”
The stranger surged through the window and made a grab for her foot. She kicked it away, then stole a moment to glance back down. Two of the cops were running towards her building.
Heat poured off the contemptuous look he shot at her. “You know what? I have a meeting to get back to. So either go ahead and jump or get the hell back in here.” With that, he disappeared back into her apartment.
Jump? She glanced back down at the crowd below, their expectant faces all peering up. At her.
Oh … no!
Heat surged up her throat. Someone must have called her in as a jumper when she was out on the ledge. He thought she was a jumper. But while most of them stood below waiting for the aerial show, only one had had the nerve to race up here and actually try to help her.
He deserved points for that.
“Wait!”
She scrabbled toward the now-vacant window and crouched to look inside. He was taller than he looked when he was squashed through her tiny window—broader, too—and he completely filled the doorway to her bathroom. Self-preservation made her pause. Him being good-looking didn’t change the fact he was a stranger. And she wasn’t much on strangers.
Tori peered in at him. “I’ll come in when you’re not there.”
He rolled his eyes, then found hers again. “Fine. I’ll be in the hall.”
Then he was gone.
She swiveled on her bottom and slid her legs quickly through the tiny window, stretching down until her feet hit the toilet lid. Then she unclipped her brace-line with the ease of years of practice, clenched her abs, and brought her torso through in a twist that would have been right at home in Cirque du Soleil.
As good as his word, he’d moved out into the very public hallway. But between them lay a forest of timber shards.
“You kicked in my door?” She hit a pitch she usually heard only from the peregrine falcons that circled her building looking for somewhere to raise their chicks.
A frustrated breath shot from between his thin lips. “Apologies for assuming you were about to die.”
He didn’t look the slightest bit apologetic, but he did look stunningly well-dressed and gorgeous, despite the aloof arch of his eyebrows. Just then two uniformed officers exploded through the fire-escape doors and bolted toward them.
“He kicked in my door!” Tori repeated for their benefit.
Taller than either of the cops, he turned toward them easily, unconcerned. “Officers—”
They hit him like a subway car, slamming his considerable bulk up against the wall and forcing him into a frisk position. He winced at the discomfort and then squeezed his head sideways so that he could glare straight into her flared eyes.
Guilt gnawed wildly. He hadn’t actually hurt her. Or even tried to.
He simmered while they roughly frisked him up and down, relieving him of his phone and wallet and tossing them roughly to the ground. He stared at her the whole time, as though this was her fault and not his. But that molten gaze was even more unsettling close up and so she bent to retrieve his property and busied herself dusting them carefully off while the police pressed his face to the wall.
“What are you doing here?” one asked.
“Same thing you are. Checking on a jumper.”
“That’s our job, sir,” the second cop volunteered as he finished searching the stranger’s pockets.
The man looked back over his shoulder at the first officer, his hands still carefully pressed out to both sides. “Didn’t look like it was going to happen before nightfall.”
“Protocols,” the first cop muttered tightly, a flush rushing up his thick neck.
They shoved him back into the wall for good measure and Tori winced on his behalf. Okay, this had gone far enough.
“Are you responsible for this?” The taller cop spoke before she could, leaning around to have a good look at the gaping entrance to her apartment where the door hung from just one ancient, struggling hinge. “This is damage to private property.”
“Actually I think you’ll find it’s my property,” the man gritted out.
All three faces swiveled back to him. “Excuse me?” the taller cop asked.
The man slowly turned, his hands still in clear view. “My name is Nathan Archer. I own this building.” He nodded at the wallet that Tori still held. “My identification’s in there.”
All sympathy for him vanished between breaths. “You’re our landlord?” She held his property out numbly.
One of the officers pulled the man’s driver’s license from the wallet and confirmed his identification. “This confirms your name but not your ownership of this building.”
He looked at Tori. “Who do you pay rent to?”
A money-hungry, capitalist corporate shark.Tori narrowed her eyes. “Sanmore Holdings.”
The stranger looked back at the cop holding his wallet. “Back compartment.”
The cop pulled out a crisp white business card. “Nathan Archer, Chief Executive, Sanmore Holdings.”
The cops immediately eased their hold on him and he straightened.
Nathan Archer. The man responsible for the state of her building. Probably living below fifty-ninth himself, and way too busy and important to worry about elevators not working or torn carpet under their feet. She played the only card she had left and pleaded to the rapidly-losing-interest police.
“It’s still my door. I must have rights?”
The second cop looked her over lazily while his partner answered for him. “I guess you could get him for trespass.”
Archer immediately transferred the full force of his glare onto the second officer. Insanely, Tori missed the searing malevolence the moment it left her.
“Yes! Trespass. I didn’t invite him in.” She smiled triumphantly at her landlord for good measure.
That brought his eyes back to hers and her chest tightened up fractionally.
“I was saving your life.”
She shoved her hands on her hips and stood her ground. “My life was just fine, thank you. I was fully rigged up.”
“Not obvious from the street. Or from this side of the locked door,” he added pointedly, his blue, blue eyes simmering but no longer furious. Not exactly. They flicked, lightning-fast, from her head to her toes and back again, and the simmer morphed into something a lot closer to interest—sexual interest. Breath clogged her throat as he blazed his intensity in her direction, every bit as naturally forceful as Niagara Falls.
In that moment the two cops ceased to exist.
It didn’t help that a perky inner voice kept whispering over her shoulder, seducing her with reason, weaving amongst the subtle waves of his expensive scent and reminding her that he had been trying to help. She didn’t want to be seduced by any part of this man. At all.
She wanted to be mad at him.
She straightened to her full height, shook off her conscience and spoke slowly, in case one of those thumps his head had taken at the hands of the local constabulary had dented his greedy, corporate brain. “You broke my door!”
“I’ll buy you a new door,” he said, calm and completely infuriating.
The police officers looked between them, bemused.
Tori glared up at him. “While you’re buying stuff, how about a new washer for the ancient laundry? Or a door buzzer that works so we can quit calling messages up the stairwell.”
The heat in his gaze swirled around her. He straightened and narrowed his eyes. “Nothing in this building is below code.”
“Nothing in this building is particularly above it, either. You do just enough to make sure you meet the tenancy act. We have heat and water and electrics that aren’t falling out of the ceiling, but that’s about it. The elevator doesn’t even go all the way to the top floor.”
“It never has.”
“So that’s a good enough reason not to fix it now? The woman in 12C is eighty years old. She shouldn’t be hiking it up four flights of stairs. And the fire code—”
His eyes glittered. “The fire code specifies that you use the stairs in an emergency. They work fine. I know because I just ran up them to save your life!”
She stepped closer, her chest heaving and dragged her eyes off his lips. This close she could practically feel the furnace of his anger. “Not if you’re an octogenarian!”
“Then she should take an apartment on one of the lower floors.”
Tall as he was, he had to lean down toward her to get in her face. It caused a riot in her pulse. She lifted her chin and leaned toward him. “Those apartments are full of other old people—”
The shorter cop growled behind them. “Would you two like some privacy? Or maybe a room?”
Tori snapped around to look at the cop and then back to the man in front of her. Sure enough, she was standing dangerously close to Nathan Archer and the hallway fairly sparkled with the live current swirling around the two of them.
“I have a room,” she grumbled to the officer, though her eyes stayed on the tallest man in the hallway. “I just don’t have a door.”
Archer’s deep voice rumbled through tight lips. A rich man’s lips. Though she did wonder what they would look like if he smiled.
“I’ll have that fixed by dinnertime.”
Too bad if she wanted to take a nap or … relax … or something before then! “So you do have a maintenance team at your disposal. You wouldn’t know it from the general condition of the building—”
“There you go,” one officer cut in loudly. “Complete restitution. I think we’re done here.”
She spun back to him. “We’re not done. What about the trespass?” The officer looked apologetically at Archer.
Oh, please … “Seriously? One waft of a fancy business card and now the rich guy is calling the shots?”
All three of them looked at her as if she was mad. Pretty much where she imagined they’d started an hour ago, back when she was up the ledge. “I want him charged with trespass. He entered my apartment without my permission.”
Archer tried again. “Come on. I was trying to save your life.”
She tossed her hair back. “Tell that to the judge.”
“I guess I’ll have to.”
One officer reluctantly took her details while the other spoke quietly to Archer a few meters down the hall. He smiled while the cop shook his head and chuckled.
She wedged her hands to her hips again and spoke loudly. “When you’re completely done with the testosterone bonding …”
Her cop took a deep breath and turned to the taller man. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say …”
As the Miranda unfolded, Tori handed Archer his cell phone and tried hard not to meet his eyes. She had a way of losing focus when she did that. But her fingers touched his as he wrapped them around his BlackBerry and she flinched away from the intimate brush of skin on skin.
Her pulse stumbled.
“… if you cannot afford an attorney …”
As if. He probably surrounded himself with attorneys. His fine white business shirt looked like it cost more than he spent on this building in a year.
The cops walked Archer back toward the stairs, finishing up their legal responsibilities. At some point someone decided handcuffs were overkill—shame—but Archer limped obediently between them anyway, speaking quietly into his phone and only half listening as his rights were fully enumerated.
As the cops sandwiched him through the door to the stairwell, he glanced back at her, a lock of dark hair falling across his forehead between those Hollywood eyes. He didn’t look the slightest bit disturbed by the threat of legal action. For some reason, that only made her madder.
How often did this guy get arrested?
“Better save that single phone call they’ll give you in lock-up,” she yelled down the hall to them. “You’re going to need it to call someone about my door!”
CHAPTER TWO
“YOUR Honor—”
“Save it, Mr. Archer,” the judge said, “I’ve made my ruling. I recognise that you meant well in going to the assistance of the plaintiff, however, the fact remains that you broke into her apartment and did material damage to her door and lock—” “Which I fixed …”
The judge raised one hand and silenced him. “And that even though it was technically your own property, Ms Morfitt is afforded some protection under New York’s Tenancy Protection Act, which makes her suit of trespass reasonable.”
“If petty,” Nate murmured. His attorney, business partner and best friend, Dean, counseled him to hold his tongue. Probably just as well or he’d end up behind bars for contempt. This whole thing was a ridiculous waste of his time—time that could have been better spent at his desk earning a bunch of zeroes for his company. All over a broken door that had been fixed the same day. If all his building’s tenants were from the same planet as Viktoria Morfitt he’d be happy to see the back of them when he developed the site.
“I was trying to help her,” he said flatly, for the hundredth time. No one but him seemed to care.
“Your file indicates that you specialize in Information Technology, is that correct?” the judge asked. She said that as though he was some kind of help-desk operator instead of the founder of one of the most successful young IT companies on the east coast.
Dean spoke just as Nate was about to educate her. “That is correct, Your Honor.”
The judge didn’t take her eyes off Nate’s. Thinking. Plotting. “I’m going to commute your sentence, Mr. Archer, so that it doesn’t haunt your record for the rest of your life. One hundred hours of community service to be undertaken within thirty days.”
“Community service? Do you know what one hundred hours of my time costs?”
Dean swooped in to stop him saying more. “My client would be willing to pay financial compensation in lieu, Your Honor.”
Willing was a stretch but he’d go with it.
The judge looked at Nate archly, and he stared solidly back at her. Then she dragged her eyes to his left. “No doubt, Counselor, but that’s not on the table. The purpose of a service order is to give the defendant time to reflect. To learn. Not to make it all go away with the sweep of their assistant’s pen.” Nate could practically feel the order doubling in length. Or severity. She made some notes on the documentation in front of her, eyes narrowed. “Mr. Archer, I’m going to recommend you undertake your service on behalf of the plaintiff.”
His stomach lurched.Note to self: never upset a district judge.“Are you serious?”
“Nate—” Dean just about choked in his haste to silence him, but then changed tack as the judge leaned as far forward as she could possibly go without tumbling from her lofty perch. “Thank you, Your Honor. We’ll see that it happens.”
But Nate spread his hands wide and tried one more time. “I was trying to help her, judge.”
Dean’s hand slid onto his forearm and gripped it hard. The judge’s lips drew even tighter. “Which is why it’s not a two-hundred-hour order, Mr. Archer. Counselor, please explain to your client that this is a judicial sentence, not a Wall Street negotiation.”
Nate ignored that. “But what will I do for her?”
“Help her with her laundry? I really don’t care. My order is set.” She eyed the man by Nate’s side. “Is that clear, Counselor?”
“It is, Your Honor, thank you.” Dean whispered furiously in Nate’s ear that a commuted service order was as good as invisible on his record.
“Easy for you to say,” Nate growled. “That’s not one hundred hours of your executive time.” Spent in a building he preferred not to even think about.
The judge with super hearing lifted one arch brow. “I think you’ll find that my time is just as valuable as yours, Mr. Archer, and you’ve taken up quite enough of it. Next!”
The gavel came down on any hope of someone seeing reason in all this lunacy.
Ten minutes later it was all over; Nate and Dean trod down the marble stairs of the justice building and shook hands. From an attorney’s perspective it was a good outcome, but the idea of not only spending time in that building—with her.
Viktoria Morfitt’s suit for trespass was ridiculous and everyone knew it. The cops. The judge. Even the woman herself, judging by the delicate little lines that had formed between her brows as the cops had escorted him from his own building.
But he’d spooked her out on the ledge and then made the tactical error of letting her know he was her landlord. If he’d kept his trap shut she probably would have let him off with the promise of restitution for the door. But no … He’d played the rare do-you-know-who-I-am? card, and she’d taken her first opportunity to let him know exactly what she thought about his building management.
Not very much.
And now he had a hundred hours of community service to think about how he might have done things differently.
“There’s a morning we’ll never get back,” Dean grumbled comfortably. “But don’t worry about it, I’ll get appeal paperwork straight off. Though you might have to do a few hours before that gets processed.”
“When am I supposed to start this farce?”
“The judge’s decree will be lodged after two-thirty today, but, reasonably, tomorrow will be fine. That’ll give the public defender time to alert your jumper to the order.”
“I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”
“I’m sure she won’t,” his friend said, turning and trotting down the steps with a chuckle. “But the Archer charm hasn’t failed you yet.”
The fact that was true didn’t really make things any better. One hundred hours with a human porcupine in a building he could barely stomach.
Great.
Tori filled her lungs behind her brand-new door and composed herself. The judge must have been having a badly hormonal day to task someone like Nathan Archer with community service. Either that or his smug confidence had got up Her Honor’s nose as much as it had irritated her last week. Not hard to imagine.
Now or never. She pulled the door nice and wide and made a show of leaning on it. Showcasing it. “Mr. Archer.”
The breath closest to her lips froze in its tracks at the sight of him filling her doorway and all her other breaths jammed up behind it in an oxygen pile-up.
Fortunately, he didn’t notice as his blue eyes examined the door critically. “Could they have found anything less suitable?”
She looked at the modern, perfect door which was so out of place in a 1901 building. “I assumed you picked it specifically. But it locks, so I’m happy.”
She’d forgotten how those eyes really felt when they rested on her. Like twin embers from a fire alighting on her skin. Warm at first touch, but smoldering to an uncomfortable burn the longer they lingered.
“Well, one of us is, at least,” he mumbled.
She couldn’t stop the irritated sigh that escaped her. “I didn’t ask for this community service, Mr. Archer. I’m no more thrilled than you are.” The last thing she wanted was to be forced into the company of such a disagreeable stranger, with the uncomfortable responsibility of tasking him with chores.
Silence fell, and the only sound to interrupt it was 10A’s television blaring out late afternoon Sesame Street.
He stared at her until finally saying, “May I come in?”
Heat broiled just below her collar. Leaving him standing in the hall … She stood back and let all six-foot-three of him into her home. “So how does this work?”
He shrugged those massive shoulders. “Search me, this is my first offence.”
Tori winced, knowing that—truthfully—he’d done nothing more than try to help her. But one hundred hours was a small price to pay for how he’d neglected the building they both stood in. “Hey, service orders are the latest celebrity accessory. You can’t buy that kind of street cred.”
He turned and shot her a dark look from under perfectly manicured brows. Every glare he used was a glare wasted. She really didn’t care whether or not he was happy. He was only her landlord.
She took his coat and turned to hang it on the back of her front door before remembering her new one didn’t have a hook. She detoured via the sofa to drape it over the back. The contrast between the expensive fabric of his coat and the aged upholstery of her sofa couldn’t have been more marked.
“Something’s been bothering me,” he said, turning those blue eyes on her. “About last week.”
Only one thing? Quite a lot had been bothering her about it. Her reaction to his closeness not the least.
“What were you doing out on that ledge?” he continued.
“Not jumping.”
“So I gathered.”
She stared at him and then crossed to the large photo album on the coffee table. She spun it in his direction and flipped it open. “These are Wilma and Fred.”
He leaned down to look at the range of photographs artfully displayed on the page. “Hawks?”
“Peregrine falcons. They live wild in this area.”
Deep blue eyes lifted to hers. “And … ?”
“And I was installing a nest box for them.”
He blinked at her. “Out on the ledge?”
She clenched her teeth to avoid rolling her eyes. “I tried it in here, but it just didn’t do as well.” Idiot.
Archer grunted and Tori’s arms stole round her midsection while he flicked through the various images in her album.
“These are good,” he finally said. “Who took them?”
“I did.”
His head came up. “Where from?”
She pulled back the breezy curtain from her living-room window to reveal spotless glass. “There’s another window in the bedroom. Sometimes I use the roof. Mostly the ledge.”
“So that wasn’t your first dangerous foray out there?”
“It’s not dangerous. I’m tethered at all times.”
He lifted aristocratic eyebrows. “To a century-old building?”
A century-old building that’s crumbling around you. He might as well have said it. It was perfectly evident to anyone who cared to look. The neglect wouldn’t fly in Morningside proper, but being right on the border of West Harlem, he was getting away with it. Of course he was. Money talked around here.
“I pick the strongest point I can to fix to,” she said.
He looked at the pictures again. “You must have some great equipment.”
She shrugged. Let him believe that it was the camera that took the photo, not the person behind it. “I’ve always enjoyed wildlife photography.” More than just enjoyed. She’d been on track to make a career out of it back when she’d graduated.
He reached the back pages of the album. “These ones weren’t taken out your window.” He flipped it her way and her heart gave a little lurch. An aerie with a stunning mountain vista stretching out in all directions behind it. An eagle in flight, its full wings spread three meters wide. Both taken from high points.
Really, really high points.
“I took those in the Appalachians and Cascades,” she said, tightly, but then she forced the topic back to her city peregrines before he could ask any more questions. As far as she knew, this court order didn’t come with the requirement for full disclosure about her past.
“Fred and Wilma turned up in our skies about three months ago, and then about four weeks ago they started visiting this building more and more. I made them a nest box for the coming breeding season so they don’t have to perch precariously on a transformer or bridge or something.”
So she could have a little bit of her old life here in her new one.
“Hawks …” He closed the album carefully and placed it gently back on the coffee table. Then he stood there not saying a word. Just thinking.
“So.” She cleared her throat. “Should we talk about how this is going to work? What you can do here for one hundred hours?”
His eyes bored into her and triggered a temperature spike. “I sense you’ve been giving it some thought?”
She crossed to the kitchen and took up the sheet of notepaper she’d prepared. “I made a list.”
His lips twisted. “Really—of what?”
“Of all the things wrong with the building. Things that you can fix in one hundred hours.”
The laundry. The elevator. The floors. The buzzer …
His eyebrows rose as he read down the page. “Long list.”
“It’s a bad building.”
His long lashes practically obscured his eyes, they narrowed so far. “So why do you live here?”
Her stomach shriveled into a prune under his scrutiny. “Because I can afford it. Because it’s close to the parks.” Not that she’d visited those in a long time. But it was why she’d chosen this building originally.
He continued reading the list. “Just one problem.”
“Why did I know there’d be a ‘just’?”
He ignored her. “The judge’s decree is firm on me not outsourcing any of this service. It has to be by my own hand. Most of this list calls for tradesmen.”
She stared at him. “It hadn’t occurred to me that you’d actually follow the order. You struck me as a corner-cutter.”
“Not at all.”
She matched his glare. “The front-door buzzer’s still faulty.”
“That’s not about cutting corners—or costs,” he said just as she was about to accuse him of precisely that.
“What is it, then?”
He folded his arms across his chest, highlighting its vast breadth. “It’s asset strategy.”
Her snort was unladylike in the extreme. “Is your strategy to let the building and everyone in it crumble to dust? If so, then you’re right on target.”
Was that the tiniest hint of color at his collar? He laid the list down on the table. “I’ve accepted the terms of the order. I’ll see it through. My way.”
“So what can you do? What do you do?”
His grunt was immediate. “I do a lot of paperwork. I sign things. Spend money.”
“Just not here.”
He ignored that. “I’m in the information industry.”
Tori threw her hands up. “Well, what’s that going to be useful for?”
It took the flare of his pupils to remind her how offensive he might find that. And then she wondered why she cared all about offending him. “I mean, here … in my apartment.”
“Actually, I have an idea. It relates to your birds.”
“The falcons?”
“Urban raptors are a big deal on Manhattan. There are a number of webcams set up across the city, beaming out live images to the rest of the world. Kind of a virtual ecotourism. For those who are interested.”
The way he said it made it perfectly clear of how little interest they were to him.
“I guess. I was just doing it for me.” And in some ways she’d enjoyed keeping the peregrine falcon pair a special thing. A private thing. Which was probably selfish. The whole world should be able to see the beauty of nature. Wasn’t that what her photography was all about? “A webcam, you think?”
“And a website. One’s pointless without the other.”
Flutters fizzed up inside her like champagne and the strangeness of it only made her realize how long it had been since something had really excited her. A website full of her images, full of her beautiful birds. For everyone to see. She knew about the other falcon locations in New York but hadn’t thought for a moment she might ever be able to do something similar in Morningside.
“You can design a website?”
His expression darkened. “Sanmore’s mailboy can design a simple website. As can half the fifth graders on Manhattan. It’s no big deal.”
Not for him, maybe. She turned her mind to the ledge. “I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to set a camera up on the ledge, focused on the nest box. If anything of interest happens, it’ll probably happen there.”
“How can you be sure they’ll use the box?” he asked.
“I can’t. But I’m encouraging them down every day. So I’m optimistic.”
His eyes narrowed. “Encouraging?”
Might as well tell it as it was. “Luring. They’re usually pigeon eaters, but mice are easier to trap. This building has no shortage.”
His lips thinned. “All buildings have vermin.”
Her laugh was raw. “Not this many.”
He stared at her, considering. “Excuse me a moment.” Then he stepped into her small kitchen and spoke in quiet tones into the cell phone she’d held for him the week before. When he returned, his expression was impassive. “You may need to find a new source of bird bait.”
She frowned. “What did you just do?”
“I took care of the vermin problem.”
“With one phone call?”
“I have good staff.”
One phone call. It could have been solved so long before this. “Good staff but not residential agents, I’d say. We’ve been reporting the mice for eighteen months.”
He thought about that. “I trust our agent to take care of code issues.”
“This is the same agent you trusted with my door selection?”
His eyes shifted back to the hideously inappropriate door and she felt a mini rush of satisfaction that she’d finally scored a point. But snarking at him wasn’t going to be a fun way to spend the next hundred hours. And as much as she’d like to make him suffer just a little bit for the torn carpet and clunky pipes and glacially slow elevator, she had to endure it, too. And she had a feeling he would give as good as he got.
“Anyway,” she said. “I’m sure raw meat will suffice in the unlikely event I run out of fresh food.”
“Then what? They’ll just … come?”
She slid her hands onto her hips. “Is this interest? Or are you just being polite?”
His left eye twitched slightly. “I have a court order that says I should be interested, Ms. Morfitt. No offense.”
She arched a single eyebrow. People like him had no idea how offensive their very existence was to people like her. To every tenant who scraped together the rent to live in his shabby building. To the people who went without every day so he could have another sportscar in his parking space.
Her birds had no way of making him money; therefore, they didn’t rate for Nathan Archer.
“None taken.” She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “I’m planning on moving the mice to the nest box tomorrow, to see how the falcons respond to it.”
“Might as well get the camera set up and operating straightaway, then,” he said.
“You’re assuming I’ve agreed?”
“Haven’t you? Your eyes twinkled like the Manhattan skyline when I suggested it.”
It burned her that he could read her so easily. And it bothered her that he was paying that much attention to what her eyes were doing. Bothered and … something else. Her chest pressed in tighter.
She shook the rogue thought loose. “Can we use something small and unobtrusive? I don’t want to scare them away just as they’re starting to come close. It took me weeks to get them accustomed to visiting the ledge, and any day now they’ll need to start laying.”
He moved to the window and looked out, examining the wall material. “I can probably core out one of the stone blocks in the basement and fit the camera into it. They’ll barely know it’s there.”
She smiled. “There you go, then. You’re not totally without practical skills.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but then seemed to think better of it. “I’ll need your bathroom.”
She flinched. That seemed a stupidly unsettling and intimate request—not that the dictatorial words in any way resembled a request. The man was going to be here for one hundred hours—of course he was going to need the facilities at some point.
She stepped back from the doorway. “You know the way.”
One brow twitched. “You’re not coming?”
Both her own shot upward. “Uh … no, you’ll have to manage by yourself.” Who knew, maybe the man had assistants for that, too.
“You’re going to play hardball on this court order, aren’t you? Well, don’t come crying to me if I pull out something I shouldn’t.”
What? Tori frowned after his retreating figure. Then, as she heard the exaggerated ziiip, her frown doubled and she muttered, “What, Mr. Corporate America isn’t a door-closer?”
Seconds later she heard another metallic ziiip and she realized her mistake. Heat flared up her throat. The man wasn’t peeing. He was measuring—with a steel tape measure. Probably the ledge window.
Of course he was.
And she’d just come across as the biggest moron ever to breathe. Things were off to a great start.
Just fabulous.
Nathan turned out of West 126th Street onto St. Nicholas Avenue and wove his way through the late-afternoon pedestrian traffic heading for the subway. It didn’t matter that it was nearly evening—activity levels at nearby Columbia University didn’t drop until much later, which meant the streets around it were perpetually busy during class hours. Even a few blocks away. He’d spent a lot of time out on these streets as a kid—more than most—so he knew every square inch.
Something about Tori Morfitt really got his people antennae twitching. What was a young, beautiful woman—a wildlife photographer—doing living alone in his shabby building, with no job or family that he could discern, spending her time hanging out with birds?
In a world where he tended to attract compliant yes-men—and oh-yes women—encountering someone so wholly unconcerned about appropriateness, someone who wore their heart so dangerously on their sleeve was a refreshing change. When she forgot to be angry with him she was quite easygoing: bright, sharp, compassionate. And the immediate blaze of her eyes as he’d suggested the webcam had reached out, snared him by the intestines and slowly reeled him in.
No doubt his interest would waver the moment he uncovered her mysteries, but for now … There were worse ways of spending time—and community service—than with a lithe, healthy young woman who liked to spar verbally.
He pulled out his phone as he walked.
“Dean,” he said the moment his attorney answered his call.
“Hey, Nate.”
“Forget the appeal, will you?”
“Are you serious?” He could almost hear the frown in his friend’s voice—a full two-eyebrow job. What he was really asking was, Are you insane? “I can get you off.”
“I’d rather see it out, Dean. It’s a principle thing.”
“You sure you can afford the moral high ground right now? We have a lot on.”
His friend’s gentle censure merged with the noise of the traffic. “I’ll fit everything in. You know that. It’s been a long time since I had anyone to get home to.” He jogged between cars across the street and joined the salmon-spawn crush on the subway stairs. “Who’s going to care if I pull some late ones at the office?”
“You’re superhuman, Nate, not invincible.”
“I don’t want to lawyer my way out of this. Call it strategy—a good chance to get a handle on the lay of the land at Morningside, tenant-wise.”
A good chance to get a handle on one particular tenant, at least.
Dean took his time answering. “Wow. She must be something.”
Nate instantly started feeling tetchy. If he had to face an inquisition he might as well go back to Tori’s. “Who?”
“Your jumper.”
“She wasn’t jumping.”
“Don’t change the subject. This is about her, isn’t it?”
Nate surged forward as he saw the subway car preparing to move off. “This is about me remembering where I came from. How things were done before the money.”
Dean sobered immediately. “The building’s getting to you, huh?”
Nate shouldered his way between closing subway doors and leaned on the glass partition. “I just don’t want to buy my way out of this.”
“So you keep saying. But I’m not convinced. You worked hard all your life precisely so that you could have access to the freedom money buys.”
“Yeah, but I’ll do my hundred hours and then walk away knowing I did it the right way.” Knowing that she knew it.
Dean thought about that. “Your call, buddy.”
“Thank you. You can withdraw the appeal?”
“Consider it done.”
Nate signed off and slid his phone back into his pocket.
One hundred hours with Tori Morfitt and he got to keep the moral high ground. A win-win. His favorite type of outcome.
He had some guilt about the effort they were about to go to in setting up the webcam but, at the end of the day, it was his effort to waste. He’d be doing most of the work. And it wouldn’t be totally pointless. His plans to redevelop the building site wouldn’t kick off for months so they’d get one good season out of the webcam, at least.
Of course, it meant spending more hours in the building where he was born than he particularly wanted to, but he’d control that. He’d managed the feelings his whole childhood, how hard could it be now? Memories started to morph from the gray haze he usually maintained into more concrete shapes and sounds.
He went for his phone again and dialed his office rather than let them take root in his consciousness.
“Karin, I’m heading back. What have I missed?”
As always, work did a sensational job of shoving the memories to one side. It had served him well for fifteen years and it didn’t fail him now as the subway rattled him back downtown to his own world.
CHAPTER THREE
“ARE you sure this is safe?”
Twenty-four hours later, Nathan was hanging out Tori’s window again, watching her fit the stone block he’d brought with him into the corner of the ledge opposite the nest box. It was artfully hollowed out, and comfortably housed a small black camera, the lens poking discreetly out the front. The peregrines would notice nothing unusual when they returned after an evening’s hunting and the camera would be protected from New York’s wilder weather.
“It’s safe. I’ve been much higher than this,” Tori said through tight lips, not because she was frightened, but because she didn’t like to talk about climbing. Sometimes she didn’t even like to think about climbing. It made her feel things she was better off suppressing. She shifted her weight, wedged her scaling boot more firmly in the corner, and slid the block fully back into position.
“Better you than me,” he murmured.
“Not good with heights?” she teased lightly.
“I love heights. My company’s forty floors up. It’s falling to my death I’m not so wild about.”
Tori’s body responded instantly to his words, locking up hard, squeezing her lungs so hard they couldn’t inflate. It took all her concentration to will them open again so that air could rush in. She faked busy work with the camera to buy a couple of recovery seconds.
When she could speak again, she said, “You seemed ready enough to lurch out here last week.”
“I thought you were in trouble. I wasn’t really thinking about myself.”
Sure. And hell had an ice-hockey team. Her money was on him thinking very much about the bad publicity that goes with a jumper. She turned and gathered up some of the scattered substrate from the nesting box and returned it to where it could do the birds more good.
“Won’t it all just blow out again?” he asked, watching her clean-up effort. “It’s gusty up here.”
“It’s heavier than it looks, so it doesn’t blow. The peregrines toss it all out while investigating the box. They’ll probably just do it again but at least it will have started fully set up for their needs. It’s all I can do. They seem to like it this way.”
He shrugged and mumbled, “The hawk wants what the hawk wants.”
Curiosity drew her gaze back to him. So he did have a sense of humor, albeit a reluctant one. “Well, if they’d want a little more tidily that would be great for me.” She sat back on her haunches and examined the now-tidy box, then looked at the hidden camera. A thrill of excitement raced up her spine. Nothing like the adrenaline dump of her climbing days, but it was something. “Okay. I think we’re done.”
She scooted backwards and twisted through the window, taking care not to snag the new cable that draped through it, connecting the camera to the small temporary monitor set up in her bathroom. Nathan stood back and let her back in.
“When I come next I’ll hook it up to your TV so you can watch it with the flick of a switch,” he said, shifting his focus politely from the midriff she exposed as her T-shirt snagged on the window latch.
“If I have a couple of nesting peregrines to watch, I’m not going to be switching anywhere,” she said. Having the nest visible via closed circuit television would be a vast improvement on leaning out her window every day. Less likely to disturb the birds, too.
She lifted her gaze to him as she stepped down off the toilet seat and killed her height advantage. “That would be great, thank you.”
Neither of them moved from the cramped bathroom, but Archer clearly had no more idea what to do with genuine gratitude from her than she did. A tiny crease marred the perfectly groomed place between his eyebrows. Her breathing picked up pace as she stared up at him, and her lips fell open slightly. His sharp eyes followed every move. Then his own parted and Tori’s breath caught.
A rapid tattoo on the door snapped them both from the awkward place where silent seconds had just passed. A subtle rush of disappointment abseiled through her veins. Her face turned toward her new front door and then the rest of her followed, almost reluctantly. “That will be Mr. Broswolowski.”
She squeezed past Nate’s body carefully, failing at total clearance, and twisted slightly to avoid rudely shouldering him in the chest. That only served to brush her front against him as she moved through into the living room. If she’d been stacked instead of athletic it would have been totally gratuitous. As it was, his tight jaw barely shifted and his eyes only flicked briefly downwards.
While her breath tightened unaccountably.
She flung the front door wide as soon as she got to it.
“Aren’t you the Queen of Sheba,” the elderly man standing in the hall said as he admired her spotless new door. “Need to get yourself a peephole, though. This isn’t the upper west side, you know.”
Tori laughed as he entered. “I knew you by your knock, Mr. Broswolowski.”
The man dumped a large hamper of clean laundry on her coffee table and commenced his standard grumble. “This basket doesn’t get any lighter coming up two flights of stairs. What use is an elevator if it can’t go to all floors?” He straightened uncomfortably.
“I keep telling you to bring them to me dirty. I can launder them for you before I iron them. Save your spine.”
“I’m not so old that I’m prepared to have a pretty girl go through my dirty linens. The stairs are fine. But that washer isn’t getting any more efficient.”
Nathan chose that moment to fully emerge from the direction of the bathroom. Mr. Broswolowski looked up then turned in surprise to Tori.
“Mr. Broswolowski, this is—” for no good reason she hesitated to sic her acerbic downstairs neighbor on their landlord “—a friend of mine. He’s helping me with the falcons.”
“Is that so?”
Tori held her breath and waited for the awkward comment to come; some observation to the effect that her neighbor had never seen her with a man, let alone had one wander out of her bathroom as if he owned the place. Which, of course, he did. Not that she was going to share the fact. Her giving Nathan Archer grief was one thing, but exposing him to the collective grizzles of all her neighbors.
“Just the usual, Mr. B?”
The older man might struggle with his eyes and his arthritis, but his mind was in perfect working order. He let his curiosity dissipate, which was uncharacteristic; heavy hints usually only spurred him on. But he glanced more than once at Nathan’s imposing figure and Tori realized this was the first time she’d seen Mr. B outgunned.
“Bless you, yes. There’s a few more than usual,” he said. “I’m spring-cleaning.”
She nudged him toward the door. “Cranes or peacocks?”
He let himself be bundled out into the hall. “In a hurry, Tori?”
“Time is money, Mr. B.”
“Like either of us needs to worry about time.” He chuckled, before adding, “Peacocks.”
Tori returned his smile. He was so predictable. “Done. I’ll have them to you by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Yes, yes. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your date …”
She clicked the door shut behind them pointedly as she followed the older man into the hall, to lessen the chance of Nathan hearing. “It’s not a date. It’s business.”
“Some kind of business, anyway,” Mr. B mumbled, turning away happily.
“None of yours, that’s for sure,” she called after him. His laugh ricocheted back towards her down the dim hallway. She turned and pushed the door to go back in, but it didn’t budge. Her lashes fell closed. That’s right … new door.
Newself-lockingdoor.
She took a deep breath and knocked, steeling herself for the inevitable questions. If she got lucky, Nathan would have gone back to work on the camera and not heard a word Mr. B had said. If she got lucky he’d not be the slightest bit interested in what she and her neighbors got up to.
But it had been a long time since she considered herself lucky
An old sorrow sliced through her.
“Come in,” Nathan said with a satisfied mouth-twist as he opened her door. His eyes travelled to the basket overflowing with linens still sitting on the coffee table. “You do his laundry?”
She shifted the clean linen over to the service cupboard that served as a closet and lifted her chin. “He has arthritis. Ironing hurts him.”
The frown deepened. “What was with the peacock?”
Awkwardness leached through her. Speaking of none of your business … But his question seemed genuine enough. To an outsider it probably did seem crazy. “I like to make it special. Fun. I do a sort of hot-steam origami with his linen. He likes the peacock fan for his sheets.”
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of ironing?”
She smiled. “He doesn’t seem to mind. I did it one Christmas as a surprise and it’s kind of … stuck.”
“One Christmas? How long have you been doing it?”
She frowned. Wow. Had it really been four years? “A while.”
“Does he pay you?”
Heat surged. Was everything about money for him? “Worried I’m operating a home business without a license?”
“No,” he said. “Just curious.”
He shoved his hands into deep pockets, lifting the hem of his expensive coat and flashing the line of his dark leather belt where a crisp white shirt tucked neatly into a narrow waist. It had been a long time since she’d been this close to someone in formal business wear. And a long time since she’d seen someone whom business wear suited quite so much. She immediately thought of her brother dressed up to the nines on his first day at his first Portland job. He’d been so overly pressed and so excited.
Her chest tightened. A lifetime ago.
“We have a kind of barter system going. Mr. Broswolowski was a stage producer and he’s still got connections.”
“You’re an actor?”
Her laugh then was immediate. The idea of her standing on stage in front of hundreds of strangers … Her stomach knotted just from the image. “No. But Angel on three is, and Mr. Broswolowski throws her opportunities every now and again in return for me doing his laundry.”
“Wait … You do his laundry and someone else reaps the benefit?”
“I benefit. Angel babysits the deCosta boy half a day a week as a thank you for Mr. B’s inside information, and in return Mrs. deCosta brings me fresh groceries every Monday when she does her own run.”
If he frowned any more his forehead was going to split down the middle. “Just how many people are involved in this scheme?” he asked.
“Across the whole building? Pretty much everyone, one way or another.”
He gaped. “Thirty-six households?”
“Thirty-five. 8B’s been empty for years. But pretty much everyone else gets involved in one way or another. It suits our needs. And it’s economical. Doing Mr. B’s ironing keeps my refrigerator stocked.”
“What happens when the deCosta boy gets too old for babysitting?”
Tori blinked. Straight to the weak link in the supply chain. No wonder he was a squillionaire. “Laundry’s not my only trade. I have other assets.”
His laugh was more of a grunt. “A regular domestic portfolio.”
She fought the prickles that begged to rise. “Hey, I didn’t start it. Some poor kid with an entrepreneurial spirit came up with it in the eighties as a way of making ends meet. But it works for me.”
Inexplicably his whole face tightened. His voice grew tight. “You do know you can have groceries delivered to your door?”
Tori blinked at him. “Sure. But who would do Mr. B’s ironing?”
The Captain of Industry seemed to have no good answer for that. He stared at her, long and hard. “I guess you have a point.”
She fought down her instinctive defensiveness. The man was just trying to make conversation. “It’s not like it’s against the law, it’s just neighbors getting together to help each other out.”
He turned back on a judgmental eyebrow-lift. “You’re exchanging services for gratuities.”
Heat blazed. “I do someone’s ironing. You make it sound like I’m selling sexual favours in the hallway. That hasn’t happened in this building for a decade.”
He spun toward the television, but not before she saw the way his face rapidly dumped its color. All of it. Every part of her wanted to apologise, but … what for? He’d insulted her.
She sighed. “How about we just stick to what we’re here for.” She took a deep breath. “Tell me about this CCTV jig.”
He took a moment before emerging from behind her modest television. “This doesn’t have the inputs I need. I’ll bring you a new one.”
“A new what?”
“A new television.”
“You will not!”
He blinked at her. “This one won’t work with the CCTV gear.”
“I’m not accepting a gift like that from you to get you out of community service.”
His eyes narrowed. “Have I asked you to let me off the service order?”
“I’m sure you’re working up to it.” She lifted her chin and absorbed the tiny adrenaline rush that came with sparring with him.
“You really don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you?”
Tori frowned. “I’ve been entrusted with … I feel like there’s an obligation there.”
“To do what?”
“To sign your attendance. Properly.”
“Like some kind of classroom roll call?” The stare he gave her went on forever. “And you wouldn’t consider just signing it off to be rid of me?”
Oh, how she’d love to be rid of him. Except someone had forgotten to tell her skin that. The way it tingled when she opened the door to him this afternoon. The way it prickled even now, under his glare.
She shrugged. “They’re trusting me.”
“You don’t know them.”
“It doesn’t matter. I would know.”
“Well if you want me to do this by the book you’re going to need to take the television, otherwise there can be no webcam.”
“I can’t accept a television.”
“Ms Morfitt—”
“Oh, for crying out loud, will you call me Viktoria? Or Tori. You make me feel like an aging spinster.” And that likelihood was something she tried very hard not to think about. Living it later was going to be hard enough …
She stood and moved toward the kitchen. Toward her ever-bubbling coffeepot.
“Viktoria …”
Nathan frowned, not liking the formal sound of it on his lips and tried again as she moved away from him. “Tori. I run an IT empire; we have monitors and televisions littering my office. Giving you one is about as meaningful to me as giving you corporate stationery.”
Her nostrils flared and he felt like a schmuck. She’d done the very best she could with the bare bones of this apartment but there was no disguising the absence of money in her world. Not surprising if she was living on a barter system. And here he was throwing around televisions as if they were nothing. Which—brutal truth be told—they were, in his world. But waving his worth around wasn’t usually his style. Money had come hard to him, but he wasn’t so far gone he forgot what it felt like to live the other way.
One minute back in this building and it was all too fresh. Uncomfortably so.
“Look. You’ll need it to monitor the web feed. I need it to get this community service order signed off.” She looked entirely unmoved. He searched around for inspiration.
It wasn’t hard for him to get into the trading spirit. That junior entrepreneur she spoke of living in the building twenty years ago had been him. He’d had a raft of creative schemes going to try and make something from the nothing of his youth. Not that he was going to tell her that. “I’ll trade you if I have to.”
Her gray eyes scanned his body critically and a tingle of honeyed warmth trailed everywhere she looked. He’d never been more grateful that he kept in good shape under the designer suits. Which was ludicrous—just because she was in perfect shape. The way she’d twisted in through that window—
His whole body twitched.
“You don’t look like someone who needs their ironing done,” she said, carefully. “What am I going to trade you for?”
The spark of defiance and pride in her expression touched him somewhere down deep. Enough to ask her seriously, “What can you offer me?”
She frowned. “Photography?”
As good as her images were, did she truly think she had nothing else to offer? He wanted to push her. To show her otherwise. A good brain ticked away beneath those tumbling auburn locks. Never mind the fact this was a great chance to learn a little more about her. “I don’t need it. I have a whole marketing department for that stuff.”
Her delicate brows dipped. “Well … if we’re talking something you need …”
Crap. He should have taken the photography.
“… how about I show you around your building?” she continued. “Introduce you to people. Show you the human face of this towering asset.”
Nate’s heart doubled in size and pressed hard against his lungs. Despite what he’d told Dean, getting to know his tenants was the last thing he wanted. Not when he was about to rip the building out from under them. But it did mean Tori would take the new television and that meant he’d get his life back ninety-five hours from now. And as a side bonus, he could get to know her better.
“Not that I can see how that actually benefits me, but I accept.” Whatever it took. He’d just stall her indefinitely on her part of the bargain.
“Of course it benefits you. I’m sure you know your tenants are an asset too. Some of them have lived here all their lives. You don’t get more loyal customers than that.”
… all their lives.
That meant some of them might have lived here back when he lived here. And when she lived here. His mother. Nate’s skin tingled. Meeting those tenants was definitely out of the question. And therefore getting chummy with the natives was categorically not on his radar.
Except maybe this one. Surly or not, Tori grabbed his attention in a way no other woman had. A two-handed grab.
“I’ll have the television delivered tomorrow,” he cut in, shaking the image free. “Will you be home?”
“Yep.”
“I haven’t given you a time yet.”
She shrugged. “I’ll be home. I have a date with a Battlestar Galactica marathon and Mr. B’s ironing, remember?”
For some reason, the thought of the same hands that took such artistic wildlife photos sweltering behind a steam iron all day made him uncomfortable. But what Viktoria Morfitt chose to do with her spare time was entirely her own business.
And her business was none of his business.
“Tori Morfitt, door!”
A man in a hemp beanie flung the front door wide and let Nate into the ground floor of his own building the next day, then hollered Tori’s name up the stairwell. Somewhere upstairs, someone else echoed the call. And then someone else as the message passed up the building frontier-style.
“Buzzer doesn’t work,” the man finally said by way of awkward conversation and then turned back to scanning his mail.
Nate’s smile was tight. What could he say? That was his buzzer doing such a bad job of providing security for his tenants. Fortunately, the neighbors had it covered—this guy wasn’t letting him go anywhere until Tori appeared and vouched for him.
Security by proxy.
“She’s jogging so she shouldn’t be long,” the guy eventually said, taking an exaggerated amount of time sorting through his post. Nate turned and looked outside, confused. He hadn’t passed her in the street … Then again, Morningside was a campus district, full of people at all hours, and she might prefer the ease of the public parks. He turned more fully to watch the path that led up from the sidewalk to the foyer door.
Anyone would think he was looking forward to it.
The stairwell door burst open behind him, snapping his head back around. Tori came through flushed, sweating and kitted out in tight running gear. Her eyes flared as they hit him and she stumbled to a halt. “You’re early.”
Her chest rose and fell heavily with each breath. He concentrated extra hard on keeping his focus high, but it wasn’t easy, given her training top was more bandage than clothing and her skin glistened with sweat along her breast line. “I had a meeting in Jersey. I figured there was no point going back downtown for only half an hour.”
He took in the way she ran her palms down her tight-fitting workout gear. She looked as though she wanted to be anywhere else than here—with him. “Sorry. Is it a problem?”
“No. I just …” She pushed her fingers through damp hair. “Come on up.”
As they turned, she threw a smile at beanie guy. “Thanks, Danny.”
Danny gave her a keen smile and Nate immediately stood straighter as a surge of territoriality hit him out of nowhere. Ridiculous. As if she’d go for the half-washed hippie type anyway.
As he headed for the elevator, he realized he had no idea what type of guy she did go for. Not his type, judging by how quickly she took offense at just about everything he did.
“You’re taking the stairs?” he said as she let him enter the elevator alone.
“I’ll meet you up there,” she said. “I’m nearly done with my workout. And you really don’t want to be locked in a small space with me right now. The rate that elevator moves I might even get there before you.”
She turned and disappeared back through the door, leaving Nate to enter the elevator alone. As it happened, he couldn’t think of anything better than being closed in a small space with Tori Morfitt—sweat or no sweat. Something about standing so close to all that radiating heat while he was buttoned up in his best three-piece. His subconscious slapped him for the pleasurable twinge that flicked through him, low and sharp.
She hadn’t meant to get caught out in Lycra, all hot and bothered.
He pulled out his phone the moment the old doors slid shut and—as he had every time he got into this elevator—he picked a spot of carpet to focus on and kept his eyes glued there rather than look at himself in the age-speckled mirrors lining the walls. This little box held all kinds of memories for him—none of them good.
“Karin?” he greeted his assistant when she picked up. “I want you to get onto Tony Ciaccetti and have him sort out the door security at Morningside.”
It was crazy that the residents of his building had to pass messages up the stairwell like a warfront. It was secure enough, just not convenient. Which hadn’t really troubled him before, but now that he saw it in action he realized how difficult it could make things, especially for older residents. Even for Tori.
Just because he’d dreaded the knell of the buzzer as child didn’t mean every tenant in the place had to suffer the consequences.
He lurched to a halt on the eighth floor and optimistically pressed Tori’s floor again. The doors opened then closed, and for one hopeful moment he thought the elevator was going to rise. But no, the doors reopened impotently, as silently judging as Tori was every time she’d mention some failing part of the building.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Karin.”
He stepped out into the hallway and disconnected his call, then turned with determination to the stairwell before daring to lift his eyes again. Today he just didn’t need the shadows of the apartment where he grew up. In the relative silence of the stairwell his ears tuned in to the steady thump of feet coming closer. He trod the two flights and held open the door with her floor number painted on it in flaking blue.
A moment later Tori appeared, sprinting heavily up the final flight. She jogged straight past him onto the tenth floor. She didn’t smell nearly as bad as she probably feared. Actually she smelled pretty good. An image of rumpled sheets twisted his gut, rough and distracting, before he shut it down.
“I’m sure someone would have told me if we’d installed a gym in the building.”
She slowed to a walk and let him catch up and spoke between heavy puffs of breath. “I run the stairs every day.”
He looked at her, frowning. Significant heat stained her perfect skin, but it didn’t detract from the fine lines of her bone-structure. “All twelve floors?”
“Three times each.”
His feet ground to a halt. Well, that explained her legs. “Why not run the streets? The parks? You have enough of them nearby.”
Her lashes dropped. “I don’t like to run alone, even during the day.” She pulled a key from a chain that hung disguised in cleavage he wouldn’t have expected to be there and opened her front door.
Nate closed it behind them. “It’s just dawned on me that you’ve been very relaxed about having me in your home. Given you don’t know me from Adam. And given your … interest … in security.”
If byinterestone meantfixation …
“Relaxed? No.” Her smile was tight. “But you own the building. I figure if you had anything nefarious in mind you could get a key to any of our doors without any difficulty.” The smile mellowed into a sweet twist. “Or just kick it right in.”
His gut twanged. Here was he imagining her naked and meanwhile she was finally softening to him.
Schmuck.
“I’m not sure, but that sounded almost like … trust?”
“Or resignation to my fate.”
Her husky laughter heightened the streak of color still high in her cheeks. She stood straighter to pat a towel down the bare, glistening parts of her body. His own tightened. Just slightly. It had been a long time since any woman got anything other than designer-sweaty in front of him. Exertion just wasn’t in with the women in his social circles. Except one kind of exertion and even that was often carefully orchestrated. Yet that wasn’t what was holding his attention—at least not entirely.
It was the warmth in Tori’s eyes. He hadn’t realized before that anything had been missing from her steady gaze, but seeing it now full of light and laughter, he knew he’d miss it terribly if it vanished again.
“I’ll take trust,” he said.
They fell to silence, standing awkwardly in her neat living room, staring at each other.
“I should.” She waved her hands at her state of dress, then glanced around nervously.
She wanted to take a shower, but not while he was in her home. So trust was a measured thing, then. He crossed to the giant box dumped in the middle of her floor. If he couldn’t get absent, he’d get busy. “I’ll get your TV hooked up while you’re gone.”
“I hope that’s all box,” she said, eyeing the monolith. “I probably can’t afford the electricity for anything bigger.”
Again the vast gulf between them came crashing home to him. He hadn’t even thought about running costs for a big-screen plasma. So maybe he wasn’t still as attuned to his roots as he liked to believe. “It’s mostly packing foam. Don’t worry.”
At least he really, really hoped so.
She shifted nervously, then seemed to make a decision, and disappeared into her bedroom. He heard the spray of water and then the very definite snick of a lock being turned. At least she hadn’t consigned him to the hall as she had that first day.
He’d spent enough time in hallways for one lifetime.
He took the opportunity to look around. The floor plan was identical to the apartment he’d grown up in, two floors down, and beneath the layer of bright, contemporary paint he still recognized the essential design. Tori’s careful application of color and light helped to make this stock-standard apartment into a cozy, feminine home. Much nicer than the one he grew up in.
On the mantel, she’d displayed a number of framed photographs: a blissfully happy-looking gray-haired couple in front of a large RV named Freedom; a stunning print of a bald eagle in flight silhouetted against a blazing sky and one of Tori herself, fully kitted up in climbing gear but relaxed and pouring two mugs of steaming coffee from a campfire pot and laughing up at the camera, her cheeks flushed with cold and vibrant life.
Her parents. Her mountains. And, presumably, her life. The look of total comfort and adoration on her face as she looked at whoever was taking the photo—whoever the second cup of coffee was for—squirreled down deep into his soul.
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