Five Weeks (Seven Series #3)(93)

“So you’re saying I need to find a flawed man with issues?” I sat back in my chair and thought about Jericho. With him, I knew all his imperfections, so there wouldn’t be any surprises.
Hawk was another story. But in retrospect, I could see the warning signs. He’d known slapping me in the morning made me volatile and sometimes shift, so why did he provoke me that way? Maybe that was a subtle hint of a larger fissure on that man’s soul. Jericho had never done anything so thoughtless. His flaw wasn’t that he would hurt me physically, but I knew the risk that he could break my heart.
“Who’s the guy who’s been watching you all night?” Rosie asked, sipping her drink.
I snapped out of my fog. “What?”
She craned her neck and peered over the divider. “The man who… well, he’s gone now. I thought maybe you were dating him, or he was the ex.”#p#分页标题#e#
“What did he look like?”
The ice in her glass clinked when she set it down. Rosie pulled out her makeup mirror and applied more lip liner. “I haven’t seen him in here before. He ordered one beer and watched you for the last hour, but not the way a man looks at a woman when they want to sleep with them, you know? Kind of… mad.”
Her eyes should have been on the mirror, but they were on me.
“He’s not the ex. What did he look like?”
“Plaid shirt, tight jeans…”
“I don’t mean what he was wearing.”
She clipped the mirror shut and slipped it in her purse. “He’s a little taller than you—not a big guy. Stern. He looked like anyone else wandering in. Either he was naturally bald or shaved his head—I couldn’t tell which. He also had a tattoo on his hand, but I don’t remember what it was.”
That gave me the creeps. “Was he a Shifter?”
“I can’t always tell unless I get up close. He sat in the corner by the door; we don’t get many customers who fill that area.”
Chills ran up my arms. I wondered if Delgado had sent someone else in to follow me. God, was I going to be paranoid for the rest of my life?
Heck no! my brain shouted. Get out of Dodge before it’s too late! Time to bail and get out of this city before you end up buried in it.
“Is Jake going to fire me? I haven’t been the best employee,” I asked, ignoring that irritating voice in my head.
Rosie chuckled with her mouth closed. “Not as long as you’re keeping Jericho around. Plus, I think he likes having a redhead on staff. You don’t see many redhead Shifters, so it’s a treat for the boys. Some of them stay a little longer and drink a little more, just so they can watch you work.”
“Then maybe all the girls should dye their hair red.”
She leaned in and her voice fell to a whisper. “One time, Trina did that. She colored her hair like a stoplight on her first day of employment. Now Jake and I knew she was a blonde, but she thought she was going to be slick and pull in all the tips,” Rosie said with a giggle. “Nooo. You can’t pull one over on these boys. I don’t know if they can smell red hair or maybe something didn’t match up, like her skin was a little flawless or she forgot to dye her brows, but they knew. In fact, they were so irritated by it that she didn’t get any tips that night. Jake threatened to fire her if she didn’t get herself together, so she came in the next day with black hair because the red wouldn’t come out. Oh, honey, she looked frightful. Like a little Morticia Addams.”
I laughed, feeling a bit sorry for Trina. I knew what that was like. I had once worked in a Shifter bar and dyed my hair brown, hoping to avoid the attention. Somehow, they knew. I’d catch them studying my hair, examining my eyebrows, as if looking for any small clue I wasn’t what I portrayed myself to be. I’d even covered my faded freckles with makeup, but I don’t know. Some things just can’t be explained, and almost all Shifter men had an inherent attraction toward redheads. The other Breeds could care less.
I had an inkling why. I’d only met two redheaded Shifter wolves in my life, and they were both alpha Packmasters. Strong alphas. If red-haired males were more likely to be an alpha, then mating with a redhead might increase a man’s chances at having an alpha child. Not all wolves will have an alpha child, so it’s a great honor, and most of them are the firstborn. Cole’s family was the rare exception. It explained why a few Packmasters had more than one mate. If the firstborn wasn’t an alpha, they could always try their chances with another woman. I had mixed theories about all this.
I didn’t see what the big deal was. I wasn’t any different than the next girl.