It wasn’t the meetings with the girls that were the problem—it was how he was expected to attend biweekly Grove Keeper meetings. This time he’d dragged Taryn along. He’d said it was so he got all the details for the upcoming mother-daughter tea right, but the truth was he wanted the distraction of having her near him. He liked being around her. Not just looking at her, but breathing the same air. He liked how she moved, how she spoke and how she laughed. Over the past few years, he’d discovered that he liked strong women with attitude. Marie had been like that, in her fiery Cajun way. She could cuss at him in languages he’d never heard. Consuelo was tough, which was why he enjoyed rooming with her. She had simple rules, and if everybody followed them, life was smooth. If not, the offending party had a fifty-fifty chance of waking up with a scorpion in his bed. Taryn was just as powerful, but on a completely different plane.
