And stay disconnected at the same time, she thought.
The idea of tragedy in Angel’s past didn’t surprise her. She’d been pretty sure he couldn’t do what he had done and not be exposed to loss. But the type of loss was unexpected. A wife and a son. A woman he had loved for years. What must it be like to be able to give your heart so completely? She’d never done it. No one close to her had done it successfully. The boys had tried. Well, not Jack, but Sam had, and Kenny... Okay, Kenny’s situation was unique. But Sam had been in love when he’d gotten married. And since then, he’d made more than one attempt to find genuine love.
“Then the girls are a good choice,” she told him. “Similar and yet different. It might have been difficult to work with teenage boys.”
He nodded slowly. “If they reminded me of Marcus. You’re probably right.”
“And now you know how to French-braid hair.”
He relaxed in his seat and smiled at her. “A necessary skill for a Grove Keeper. They should put that in the handbook.”
She grinned. “The handbook is pink. I’m thinking they assumed you already knew.”
Conversation shifted to the various girls in the grove. How a few had stood out and others would require a bit more time to get to know.
“Chloe was sweet,” Taryn said. “I hope the group can help her open up more. I think she wants to participate. I saw flashes of that, but it was almost as if she didn’t remember how to make friends.”
“She might feel guilty about having fun,” Angel told her. “If she laughs, she’s not missing her dad.” He paused. “It took me a while to recognize that in myself.”
“You must miss both Marie and Marcus.”
“I do. I think about them every day. I’ll never not think about them. But the ache isn’t there all the time, even if the guilt is. I should have been there to protect them.”
She wondered if that was about the driving or something more. “Because you would have done better navigating in a storm?”
“Because there’s no point in saving the world if you can’t save the people you love.”
An interesting twist, she thought.
She studied the man across from her. The scars, the cold gray eyes. He was dangerous and appealing. Knowing about the sadness in his past only made him more sexy. And yet...
To quote him, this wasn’t her area of expertise, but if she had to guess she would say that for Angel to heal, he needed to have faith, and she was the last person to help him with that. Trust was an overrated commodity. She’d learned that the hardest way possible.
They were a couple of broken souls, she thought, passing him the spare ribs. A man who had loved and lost and a woman who didn’t believe in romantic love at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TARYN SPENT A restless night, which didn’t make for a good morning. The night before she’d been worried about her first meeting with the Acorns. Last night she’d been thinking about what Angel had shared with her about his past. She told herself that they all had ghosts to wrestle with, but somehow Angel’s seemed more tangible than hers. Or maybe the difference was he’d met his as an adult, while hers were all left over from childhood.
She got into the office, still confused about what had happened or not happened. Their conversation didn’t exactly lend itself to a romantic interlude. But somehow learning what she had about Angel had added dimensions to an already intriguing man. The safest and most sensible course of action seemed to be to cut and run. Not exactly an option.
She got to the office and turned on her computer. A few seconds later her calendar appeared with a large red block right in the middle of her day.
“Why didn’t I know this before?” she asked out loud, even as she remembered entering the date herself. But it had been a few weeks ago and somehow she had forgotten.
Taryn called over to the graphics department and got one of the guys to set up the main conference room. Then she put a call in to Isabel and explained the crisis.
“I’m going to need food and beer,” she said. “Do I call Jo? Does she deliver?”
“Call Ana Raquel,” Isabel said. “Dellina’s sister. She and her fiancé do catering. They wrote the Fool’s Gold cookbook that was out last year. Just tell her what you need and she’ll bring it to you.”
Taryn took down the number, then made the call. Ana Raquel promised to have the spread there on time. Just as she hung up, Larissa walked in with a couple of DVDs in her hand.
“For later,” the blonde said.
“You remembered?” Taryn asked.
“Sure. All the guys have been talking about it for a couple of weeks. You know how it bothers them.”
“No one reminded me.”
Larissa’s eyes widened. “We’re not ready? You know how they get.”