Rapunzel in New York

Tori’s body responded instantly to his words, locking up hard, squeezing her lungs so hard they couldn’t inflate. It took all her concentration to will them open again so that air could rush in. She faked busy work with the camera to buy a couple of recovery seconds.

When she could speak again, she said, “You seemed ready enough to lurch out here last week.”

“I thought you were in trouble. I wasn’t really thinking about myself.”

Sure. And hell had an ice-hockey team. Her money was on him thinking very much about the bad publicity that goes with a jumper. She turned and gathered up some of the scattered substrate from the nesting box and returned it to where it could do the birds more good.

“Won’t it all just blow out again?” he asked, watching her clean-up effort. “It’s gusty up here.”

“It’s heavier than it looks, so it doesn’t blow. The peregrines toss it all out while investigating the box. They’ll probably just do it again but at least it will have started fully set up for their needs. It’s all I can do. They seem to like it this way.”

He shrugged and mumbled, “The hawk wants what the hawk wants.”

Curiosity drew her gaze back to him. So he did have a sense of humor, albeit a reluctant one. “Well, if they’d want a little more tidily that would be great for me.” She sat back on her haunches and examined the now-tidy box, then looked at the hidden camera. A thrill of excitement raced up her spine. Nothing like the adrenaline dump of her climbing days, but it was something. “Okay. I think we’re done.”

She scooted backwards and twisted through the window, taking care not to snag the new cable that draped through it, connecting the camera to the small temporary monitor set up in her bathroom. Nathan stood back and let her back in.

“When I come next I’ll hook it up to your TV so you can watch it with the flick of a switch,” he said, shifting his focus politely from the midriff she exposed as her T-shirt snagged on the window latch.

“If I have a couple of nesting peregrines to watch, I’m not going to be switching anywhere,” she said. Having the nest visible via closed circuit television would be a vast improvement on leaning out her window every day. Less likely to disturb the birds, too.

She lifted her gaze to him as she stepped down off the toilet seat and killed her height advantage. “That would be great, thank you.”

Neither of them moved from the cramped bathroom, but Archer clearly had no more idea what to do with genuine gratitude from her than she did. A tiny crease marred the perfectly groomed place between his eyebrows. Her breathing picked up pace as she stared up at him, and her lips fell open slightly. His sharp eyes followed every move. Then his own parted and Tori’s breath caught.

A rapid tattoo on the door snapped them both from the awkward place where silent seconds had just passed. A subtle rush of disappointment abseiled through her veins. Her face turned toward her new front door and then the rest of her followed, almost reluctantly. “That will be Mr. Broswolowski.”

She squeezed past Nate’s body carefully, failing at total clearance, and twisted slightly to avoid rudely shouldering him in the chest. That only served to brush her front against him as she moved through into the living room. If she’d been stacked instead of athletic it would have been totally gratuitous. As it was, his tight jaw barely shifted and his eyes only flicked briefly downwards.

While her breath tightened unaccountably.

She flung the front door wide as soon as she got to it.

“Aren’t you the Queen of Sheba,” the elderly man standing in the hall said as he admired her spotless new door. “Need to get yourself a peephole, though. This isn’t the upper west side, you know.”

Tori laughed as he entered. “I knew you by your knock, Mr. Broswolowski.”

The man dumped a large hamper of clean laundry on her coffee table and commenced his standard grumble. “This basket doesn’t get any lighter coming up two flights of stairs. What use is an elevator if it can’t go to all floors?” He straightened uncomfortably.

“I keep telling you to bring them to me dirty. I can launder them for you before I iron them. Save your spine.”

“I’m not so old that I’m prepared to have a pretty girl go through my dirty linens. The stairs are fine. But that washer isn’t getting any more efficient.”

Nathan chose that moment to fully emerge from the direction of the bathroom. Mr. Broswolowski looked up then turned in surprise to Tori.

“Mr. Broswolowski, this is—” for no good reason she hesitated to sic her acerbic downstairs neighbor on their landlord “—a friend of mine. He’s helping me with the falcons.”

“Is that so?”

Tori held her breath and waited for the awkward comment to come; some observation to the effect that her neighbor had never seen her with a man, let alone had one wander out of her bathroom as if he owned the place. Which, of course, he did. Not that she was going to share the fact. Her giving Nathan Archer grief was one thing, but exposing him to the collective grizzles of all her neighbors.

“Just the usual, Mr. B?”

The older man might struggle with his eyes and his arthritis, but his mind was in perfect working order. He let his curiosity dissipate, which was uncharacteristic; heavy hints usually only spurred him on. But he glanced more than once at Nathan’s imposing figure and Tori realized this was the first time she’d seen Mr. B outgunned.

“Bless you, yes. There’s a few more than usual,” he said. “I’m spring-cleaning.”

She nudged him toward the door. “Cranes or peacocks?”

He let himself be bundled out into the hall. “In a hurry, Tori?”

“Time is money, Mr. B.”

“Like either of us needs to worry about time.” He chuckled, before adding, “Peacocks.”

Tori returned his smile. He was so predictable. “Done. I’ll have them to you by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yes, yes. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your date …”

She clicked the door shut behind them pointedly as she followed the older man into the hall, to lessen the chance of Nathan hearing. “It’s not a date. It’s business.”

“Some kind of business, anyway,” Mr. B mumbled, turning away happily.

“None of yours, that’s for sure,” she called after him. His laugh ricocheted back towards her down the dim hallway. She turned and pushed the door to go back in, but it didn’t budge. Her lashes fell closed. That’s right … new door.

Newself-lockingdoor.

She took a deep breath and knocked, steeling herself for the inevitable questions. If she got lucky, Nathan would have gone back to work on the camera and not heard a word Mr. B had said. If she got lucky he’d not be the slightest bit interested in what she and her neighbors got up to.

But it had been a long time since she considered herself lucky

An old sorrow sliced through her.

“Come in,” Nathan said with a satisfied mouth-twist as he opened her door. His eyes travelled to the basket overflowing with linens still sitting on the coffee table. “You do his laundry?”

She shifted the clean linen over to the service cupboard that served as a closet and lifted her chin. “He has arthritis. Ironing hurts him.”

The frown deepened. “What was with the peacock?”

Awkwardness leached through her. Speaking of none of your business … But his question seemed genuine enough. To an outsider it probably did seem crazy. “I like to make it special. Fun. I do a sort of hot-steam origami with his linen. He likes the peacock fan for his sheets.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of ironing?”

She smiled. “He doesn’t seem to mind. I did it one Christmas as a surprise and it’s kind of … stuck.”

“One Christmas? How long have you been doing it?”

She frowned. Wow. Had it really been four years? “A while.”