When We Met (Fool's Gold #13)(31)

“Me!”

“Me, too.”

The girls scooted over so they were sitting in a line. Allison sat with her back to Taryn and waited. Taryn gently brushed her hair, then started to braid it.

“I have some ties in that outside pocket,” she told Angel as she motioned to her bag. “Would you get them?”

He looked at her as if she’d asked him to stick his head in an alligator’s mouth, then collected the ties.

Taryn worked quickly, French-braiding Allison’s hair, then securing it with a bright pink tie.

“You could do some,” Taryn told him.

Panic flashed on his face. “I don’t know how,” he said quickly, tucking his hands behind his back as he spoke.

“I’ll teach you.” She had a feeling there were going to be lots of meetings where there was a bit of time to fill, and this was an easy activity.

Taryn looked at the girls. Her gaze fell on Chloe, who sat more on the edge of the group rather than in it.

She smiled at her. “Chloe, are you feeling like you could be patient while Angel learns on your hair?”

Chloe’s eyes widened in surprise. “Okay,” she said softly, and moved to sit in front of Angel.

Taryn grabbed a second brush from her bag. She was always losing them, so she made sure she had a spare. After today she would make sure she had two or three and lots of extra ties.

“You know how to braid, right?” she asked Angel.

“Of course.”

“Then this will be easy.”

As the other girls watched and Chloe sat without moving, Taryn talked him through the process of French-braiding the girls’ hair.

Angel’s fingers were clumsy, but he kept at it and eventually had a reasonably straight braid.

“Not bad for a rookie,” Taryn told him. “What do you think, Chloe?”

The girl touched her braid and offered Angel a slight smile. “Thank you,” she whispered.

The door to the hut opened and the first of the parents arrived. The girls scrambled to their feet and started to talk about their afternoon. The new bracelets and beads were shown off. Taryn rose and introduced herself to some of the parents. Angel did the same. Fifteen minutes later, they were alone.

“We survived,” she told him as she collected her brushes and the rest of the ties.

“I need a drink.”

She glanced at him and saw he looked shell-shocked. He was kind of pale and there was a glassy expression to his eyes.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I’ll never be able to do this.”

“You were fine. The girls loved you.”

“I French-braided hair.”

She couldn’t tell if he was proud or horrified.

She grinned. “See? Your first rite of girl passage. Soon you’ll grow br**sts.”

“Funny.”

She walked toward the door. “Tell you what. You stop at Hunan Palace and get us Chinese and I’ll head by the bakery for cupcakes. We’ll have a celebratory dinner at my place.”

“What do you have to drink?” he asked.

“Plenty of beer.”

When he raised his eyebrows in question, she laughed. “You’re forgetting about the guys I work with. I always have beer in the refrigerator and steaks in the freezer. It’s in my employment contract.”

“I gotta get that in mine.”

* * *

GETTING DINNER TOOK a little longer than Angel had planned. There was a line to get takeout at Hunan Palace. Apparently a kids’ baseball game had just ended. But he placed his order and waited, then drove over to Taryn’s.

He parked in front of her small one-story house and made his way up the front walk. She opened the door before he got there and he nearly dropped the food when he saw her.

She’d traded dark washed jeans and boots for pale, worn jeans and bare feet. Her silk blouse was gone and in its place was an L.A. Stallions jersey with Sam’s number on it. Her long hair was loose, her face free of makeup. She looked young enough that if he hadn’t known her actual age, he would have told himself to keep moving without stopping.

“A transformation,” he said as she approached.

She smiled as her violet eyes brightened with amusement. “The real me.”

“I like.”

She moved aside to let him into her house. There was a nice-sized living room with a leather sofa and two big chairs. A huge flat-screen TV sat above the fireplace, and to the left was an Andy Warhol–style painting of Jack.

Angel stepped toward the piece of art. The subject was dressed for a game and had taken a knee on the field. His helmet was beside him. Jack looked straight out, as if into the viewer’s eyes.

He turned back to Taryn, who was watching him. “Nice,” he said.

“It was a gift.”

Like her shirt? If he’d had any doubts that the guys she worked with were an important part of her life, seeing all this had made the situation clear. For a second he paused to wonder if he was bothered, and then he remembered what she’d told him about her past with Jack. They’d been married before. They were friends. But they weren’t together. He could relate to that—after all, he lived with Consuelo. Although the situation was slightly different—he and Consuelo had never been married, or romantically involved—the principle was the same.