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!”
“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
