“Um, maybe because you don’t have anything to do with my life?” she said, looking bewildered. “Why would you even care? I haven’t heard from you in years.”
He cared. That was the problem.
He really shouldn’t. He didn’t want to. But he cared so much that sometimes she was all that he could think about.
“Answer the question,” North told her. He was leaning against the wall; his arms crossed over his chest.
He looked relaxed, but Jared knew better. There was a slight tension in his shoulders.
North definitely wasn’t as uncaring about this whole thing as he liked to pretend to be.
She turned to glare at North, then pointed a finger at him. “You do not get to boss me around!”
Hmm.
She was either brave or stupid. Because North didn’t appreciate people glaring or pointing at him. Jared had known him to take quiet revenge with assholes who were rude to him when he was pretending to be mild-mannered and unassuming.
If they saw his real face they’d never make that mistake.
Except, apparently, for this girl.
Although she had told him to go suck on a chili. Which was pretty funny.
However, North just stared back at her. “I do.”
“Grr, you do not, North . . . North!”
“North-North?” Jared asked her.
“Well, I don’t know his last name. I do know that he doesn’t get to boss me around just because he kidnapped me. That’s less reason for me to do what he says.”
North stepped forward into her space. “If you had the sense that God gave a fly you’d know that it would make more sense to appease your kidnapper than rile them up.”
“But you’re not riled, are you?” she taunted. “Because you don’t feel feelings.”
“Feel feelings?”
“Yes, you’re an unfeeler!”
“And you’re a brat,” he said, getting in her face.
Jared was just about to intervene and save her from certain death when something occurred to him.
Something he should have realized before.
North was talking to her. Actually talking to her. Not polite chitchat that meant nothing, which he’d perfected in his role as Jared’s assistant.
And he wasn’t ignoring her.
What the hell was going on?
“Yeah? What you going to do about that?” she challenged.
Oh, he was leaning toward her being foolish. Didn’t she know how dangerous North was?
Jared stepped closer to her, giving North a warning look. North’s eyebrow twitched as he stared back at him.
“Oh, I’m not going to do anything. He is.” North nodded at Jared.
