“I’m not stalkingyou.”
He tipped his head to the pillar I’d been leaning against and the book still clutched in my hands. “What do you call frequenting my doorstep?Sightseeing?”
Okay, perhaps, I had been stalkinghim.
“In twenty-four hours, I want you gone from my life forever. Take it or leave it, Feather. Makes no difference tome.”
My heart ticked like a bomb inside my chest. Could I reform this man in a day? “The hours you sleep don’t count in my allotted timeframe.”
“She drives a hard bargain,” Tristanmused.
“Fine,” Jarodsaid.
Tristan sidled in close to me and murmured, “Well done,Leigh.”
I turned wide eyes on him, wondering why he was congratulatingme.
His hand landed on the small of my back. “Jarod isn’t in the habit of giving secondchances.”
“The minutes you spend flirting with my staff count triple.” Jarod’s voice snapped my gaze and body away fromTristan.
“I wasn’t flirting,” I said, scrambling toward the door Jarod was holdingopen.
Tristan started to follow, but Jarod said, “Go home. I have everything undercontrol.”
A flicker of hesitation crossed Tristan’s face, hesitation that made my stomach clench like a fist. I didn’t really know Tristan any better than Jarod, but he felt like a buffer, and I sort of wanted a buffer. I kept my mouth shut, though. I wouldn’t show weakness. This was my one shot. A hundred feathers could be mine before the day was evenover.
Injecting as much courage as I could muster inside my spine, I squared my back and walked past Jarod. Would he give me a fair chance, or did he have nefarious plans forme?
“What’s on your mind,Feather?”
“Are you going to call me that all the timenow?”
“You mean for the next twenty-four hours we’ll know each other? Yes. Unless you likeLeighbetter.”
Why did he have to make my name sound so awful? “I don’t like the way you sayit.”
“What’s wrong with the way I sayit?”
I narrowed my eyes to show him I wasn’t buying his mock act ofinnocence.
He smirked. “Feather it’ll stay,then.”
When the heavy door clanged shut, I let out a muted gasp. Open air stretched over the courtyard, yet I had never felt soconfined.
Jarod stared at my parted lips, then at my eyes, and then at my hair, which I tucked behind my ears nervously. He took a step forward and flicked a lock, holding it up to the thin light dripping from the iron and glass lantern aboveus.
I pushed his fingers away. “What are youdoing?”
“Checking if the color’sreal.”
“That’s really none of yourbusiness.”
“I like to know what sort of person I’m dealing with. Women who color their hair a brash color do so to stand out, and yet you strike me as anintrovert.”
“It’s real, okay?” Under my breath, I added, “Trust me, if I could change it to something normal, I would.” Dyes didn’t take to angelic hair. I’d tried. Severaltimes.
“If you could change it?” His eyebrows dipped. “Is it against yourfaithto dye yourhair?”
