Nikki Logan - Rapunzel in New York

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.