Rapunzel in New York

“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.

New self-locking door.

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.