“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.
Not very much.
And now he had a hundred hours of community service to think about how he might have done things differently.
“There’s a morning we’ll never get back,” Dean grumbled comfortably. “But don’t worry about it, I’ll get appeal paperwork straight off. Though you might have to do a few hours before that gets processed.”
“When am I supposed to start this farce?”
“The judge’s decree will be lodged after two-thirty today, but, reasonably, tomorrow will be fine. That’ll give the public defender time to alert your jumper to the order.”
“I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”
“I’m sure she won’t,” his friend said, turning and trotting down the steps with a chuckle. “But the Archer charm hasn’t failed you yet.”
The fact that was true didn’t really make things any better. One hundred hours with a human porcupine in a building he could barely stomach.
Great.
Tori filled her lungs behind her brand-new door and composed herself. The judge must have been having a badly hormonal day to task someone like Nathan Archer with community service. Either that or his smug confidence had got up Her Honor’s nose as much as it had irritated her last week. Not hard to imagine.
Now or never. She pulled the door nice and wide and made a show of leaning on it. Showcasing it. “Mr. Archer.”
The breath closest to her lips froze in its tracks at the sight of him filling her doorway and all her other breaths jammed up behind it in an oxygen pile-up.
Fortunately, he didn’t notice as his blue eyes examined the door critically. “Could they have found anything less suitable?”
She looked at the modern, perfect door which was so out of place in a 1901 building. “I assumed you picked it specifically. But it locks, so I’m happy.”
She’d forgotten how those eyes really felt when they rested on her. Like twin embers from a fire alighting on her skin. Warm at first touch, but smoldering to an uncomfortable burn the longer they lingered.
“Well, one of us is, at least,” he mumbled.
She couldn’t stop the irritated sigh that escaped her. “I didn’t ask for this community service, Mr. Archer. I’m no more thrilled than you are.” The last thing she wanted was to be forced into the company of such a disagreeable stranger, with the uncomfortable responsibility of tasking him with chores.
Silence fell, and the only sound to interrupt it was 10A’s television blaring out late afternoon Sesame Street.
He stared at her until finally saying, “May I come in?”
Heat broiled just below her collar. Leaving him standing in the hall … She stood back and let all six-foot-three of him into her home. “So how does this work?”
He shrugged those massive shoulders. “Search me, this is my first offence.”
Tori winced, knowing that—truthfully—he’d done nothing more than try to help her. But one hundred hours was a small price to pay for how he’d neglected the building they both stood in. “Hey, service orders are the latest celebrity accessory. You can’t buy that kind of street cred.”
He turned and shot her a dark look from under perfectly manicured brows. Every glare he used was a glare wasted. She really didn’t care whether or not he was happy. He was only her landlord.
She took