Rapunzel in New York

A moment later Tori appeared, sprinting heavily up the final flight. She jogged straight past him onto the tenth floor. She didn’t smell nearly as bad as she probably feared. Actually she smelled pretty good. An image of rumpled sheets twisted his gut, rough and distracting, before he shut it down.

“I’m sure someone would have told me if we’d installed a gym in the building.”

She slowed to a walk and let him catch up and spoke between heavy puffs of breath. “I run the stairs every day.”

He looked at her, frowning. Significant heat stained her perfect skin, but it didn’t detract from the fine lines of her bone-structure. “All twelve floors?”

“Three times each.”

His feet ground to a halt. Well, that explained her legs. “Why not run the streets? The parks? You have enough of them nearby.”

Her lashes dropped. “I don’t like to run alone, even during the day.” She pulled a key from a chain that hung disguised in cleavage he wouldn’t have expected to be there and opened her front door.

Nate closed it behind them. “It’s just dawned on me that you’ve been very relaxed about having me in your home. Given you don’t know me from Adam. And given your … interest … in security.”

If byinterestone meantfixation …

“Relaxed? No.” Her smile was tight. “But you own the building. I figure if you had anything nefarious in mind you could get a key to any of our doors without any difficulty.” The smile mellowed into a sweet twist. “Or just kick it right in.”

His gut twanged. Here was he imagining her naked and meanwhile she was finally softening to him.

Schmuck.

“I’m not sure, but that sounded almost like … trust?”

“Or resignation to my fate.”

Her husky laughter heightened the streak of color still high in her cheeks. She stood straighter to pat a towel down the bare, glistening parts of her body. His own tightened. Just slightly. It had been a long time since any woman got anything other than designer-sweaty in front of him. Exertion just wasn’t in with the women in his social circles. Except one kind of exertion and even that was often carefully orchestrated. Yet that wasn’t what was holding his attention—at least not entirely.

It was the warmth in Tori’s eyes. He hadn’t realized before that anything had been missing from her steady gaze, but seeing it now full of light and laughter, he knew he’d miss it terribly if it vanished again.

“I’ll take trust,” he said.

They fell to silence, standing awkwardly in her neat living room, staring at each other.

“I should.” She waved her hands at her state of dress, then glanced around nervously.

She wanted to take a shower, but not while he was in her home. So trust was a measured thing, then. He crossed to the giant box dumped in the middle of her floor. If he couldn’t get absent, he’d get busy. “I’ll get your TV hooked up while you’re gone.”

“I hope that’s all box,” she said, eyeing the monolith. “I probably can’t afford the electricity for anything bigger.”

Again the vast gulf between them came crashing home to him. He hadn’t even thought about running costs for a big-screen plasma. So maybe he wasn’t still as attuned to his roots as he liked to believe. “It’s mostly packing foam. Don’t worry.”

At least he really, really hoped so.

She shifted nervously, then seemed to make a decision, and disappeared into her bedroom. He heard the spray of water and then the very definite snick of a lock being turned. At least she hadn’t consigned him to the hall as she had that first day.

He’d spent enough time in hallways for one lifetime.

He took the opportunity to look around. The floor plan was identical to the apartment he’d grown up in, two floors down, and beneath the layer of bright, contemporary paint he still recognized the essential design. Tori’s careful application of color and light helped to make this stock-standard apartment into a cozy, feminine home. Much nicer than the one he grew up in.

On the mantel, she’d displayed a number of framed photographs: a blissfully happy-looking gray-haired couple in front of a large RV named Freedom; a stunning print of a bald eagle in flight silhouetted against a blazing sky and one of Tori herself, fully kitted up in climbing gear but relaxed and pouring two mugs of steaming coffee from a campfire pot and laughing up at the camera, her cheeks flushed with cold and vibrant life.

Her parents. Her mountains. And, presumably, her life. The look of total comfort and adoration on her face as she looked at whoever was taking the photo—whoever the second cup of coffee was for—squirreled down deep into his soul.