Nikki Logan - Rapunzel in New York

“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 with it.

The judge looked at Nate archly, and he stared solidly back at her. Then she dragged her eyes to his left. “No doubt, Counselor, but that’s not on the table. The purpose of a service order is to give the defendant time to reflect. To learn. Not to make it all go away with the sweep of their assistant’s pen.” Nate could practically feel the order doubling in length. Or severity. She made some notes on the documentation in front of her, eyes narrowed. “Mr. Archer, I’m going to recommend you undertake your service on behalf of the plaintiff.”

His stomach lurched. Note to self: never upset a district judge. “Are you serious?”

“Nate—” Dean just about choked in his haste to silence him, but then changed tack as the judge leaned as far forward as she could possibly go without tumbling from her lofty perch. “Thank you, Your Honor. We’ll see that it happens.”

But Nate spread his hands wide and tried one more time. “I was trying to help her, judge.”

Dean’s hand slid onto his forearm and gripped it hard. The judge’s lips drew even tighter. “Which is why it’s not a two-hundred-hour order, Mr. Archer. Counselor, please explain to your client that this is a judicial sentence, not a Wall Street negotiation.”

Nate ignored that. “But what will I do for her?”

“Help her with her laundry? I really don’t care. My order is set.” She eyed the man by Nate’s side. “Is that clear, Counselor?”

“It is, Your Honor, thank you.” Dean whispered furiously in Nate’s ear that a commuted service order was as good as invisible on his record.

“Easy for you to say,” Nate growled. “That’s not one hundred hours of your executive time.” Spent in a building he preferred not to even think about.

The judge with super hearing lifted one arch brow. “I think you’ll find that my time is just as valuable as yours, Mr. Archer, and you’ve taken up quite enough of it. Next!”

The gavel came down on any hope of someone seeing reason in all this lunacy.

Ten minutes later it was all over; Nate and Dean trod down the marble stairs of the justice building and shook hands. From an attorney’s perspective it was a good outcome, but the idea of not only spending time in that building—with her.

Viktoria Morfitt’s suit for trespass was ridiculous and everyone knew it. The cops. The judge. Even the woman herself, judging by the delicate little lines that had formed between her brows as the cops had escorted him from his own building.

But he’d spooked her out on the ledge and then made the tactical error of letting her know he was her landlord. If he’d kept his trap shut she probably would have let him off with the promise of restitution for the door. But no … He’d played the rare do-you-know-who-I-am? card, and she’d taken her first opportunity to let him know exactly what she thought about his building management.