“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 his coat and turned to hang it on the back of her front door before remembering her new one didn’t have a hook. She detoured via the sofa to drape it over the back. The contrast between the expensive fabric of his coat and the aged upholstery of her sofa couldn’t have been more marked.
“Something’s been bothering me,” he said, turning those blue eyes on her. “About last week.”
Only one thing? Quite a lot had been bothering her about it. Her reaction to his closeness not the least.
“What were you doing out on that ledge?” he continued.
“Not jumping.”
“So I gathered.”
She stared at him and then crossed to the large photo album on the coffee table. She spun it in his direction and flipped it open. “These are Wilma and Fred.”
He leaned down to look at the range of photographs artfully displayed on the page. “Hawks?”
“Peregrine falcons. They live wild in this area.”
Deep blue eyes lifted to hers. “And … ?”
“And I was installing a nest box for them.”
He blinked at her. “Out on the ledge?”
She clenched her teeth to avoid rolling her eyes. “I tried it in here, but it just didn’t do as well.” Idiot.
Archer grunted and Tori’s arms stole round her midsection while he flicked through the various images in her album.
“These are good,” he finally said. “Who took them?”
“I did.”
His head came up. “Where from?”
She pulled back the breezy curtain from her living-room window to reveal spotless glass. “There’s another window in the bedroom. Sometimes I use the roof. Mostly the ledge.”
“So that wasn’t your first dangerous foray out there?”
“It’s not dangerous. I’m tethered at all times.”
He lifted aristocratic eyebrows. “To a century-old building?”
A century-old building that’s crumbling around you. He might as well have said it. It was perfectly evident to anyone who cared to look. The neglect wouldn’t fly in Morningside proper, but being right on the border of West Harlem, he was getting away with it. Of course he was. Money talked around here.
“I pick the strongest point I can to fix to,” she said.
He looked at the pictures again. “You must have some great equipment.”
She shrugged. Let him believe that it was the camera that took the photo, not the person behind it. “I’ve always enjoyed wildlife photography.” More than just enjoyed. She’d been on track to make a career out of it back when she’d graduated.
He reached the back pages of the album. “These ones weren’t taken out your window.” He flipped it her way and her heart gave a little lurch. An aerie with a stunning mountain vista stretching out in all directions behind it. An eagle in flight, its full wings spread three meters wide. Both taken from high points.
Really, really high points.
“I took those in the Appalachians and Cascades,” she said, tightly, but then she forced the topic back to her city peregrines before he could ask any more questions. As far as she knew, this court order didn’t come with the requirement for full disclosure about her past.
“Fred and Wilma turned up in our skies about three months ago, and then about four weeks ago they started visiting this building more and more. I made them a nest box for the coming breeding season so they don’t have to perch precariously on a transformer or bridge or something.”
So she could have a little bit of her old life here in her new one.
“Hawks …” He closed the album carefully and placed it gently back on the coffee table. Then he stood there not saying a word. Just thinking.
“So.” She cleared her throat. “Should we talk about how this is going to work? What you can do here for one hundred hours?”
His eyes bored into her and triggered a temperature spike. “I sense you’ve been giving it some thought?”
She crossed to the kitchen and took up the sheet of notepaper she’d prepared. “I made a list.”
His lips twisted. “Really—of what?”
“Of all the things wrong with the building. Things that you can fix in one hundred hours.”
The laundry. The elevator. The floors. The buzzer …
His eyebrows rose as he read down the page. “Long list.”
“It’s a bad building.”
His long lashes practically obscured