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
