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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