Valentine’s Day, Easter and every other holiday were celebrated with an edge of happiness that bordered on silly, because they were doing their very best to honor what their parents had given them.
To make the best life they could, because they had all known that their parents wouldn’t want them sitting around and crying on Christmas.
But that even when they laughed on that day, sometimes they wanted to cry.
They all just knew that about each other. Understood the loss.
She felt a little bit like an alien in school. An orphan. It was still such a strange word to her, one that she didn’t really identify with. Because in her mind, orphans were usually singing while doing a coordinated dance and mopping. Or little street urchins that were smudged with dirt and asking for more food in a British accent.
Orphans, in her mind, were alone.
And she never had been.
She had lost, but she had never been by herself.
But the reality was, it was them. Technically. Orphans.
It had made her an oddity, a little bit of an outcast. And she knew that it had impacted their social lives. Not very many people wanted to let their kids come over and play at the ranch run by children. The place where the “responsible adult” was eighteen years old.
But the Danielses had closed ranks around those who lived on the ranch with them. They had made their own family.
Still, it meant that the relationships she’d forged outside of that were nearly nonexistent.
And for some reason, Griffin felt linked to her. In a way no one outside of that core group ever had.
But she sensed something in him. Some deep sadness beneath the surface, and she couldn’t quite say why.
Because maybe a man who lived up there and punished himself by living such a Spartan existence had to have been wounded irrevocably?
Sure. It stood to reason.
“It’s taking you a long time to answer me,” Rose said, her eyes narrowed. “Handsome, or not?”
“He is,” Iris said. “If you like big, muscular brutes with beards.”
“And do you?”
Apparently she did. A lot.
“Rose,” Iris scolded. “I’m not open for meddling. You did it once already, and you can’t meddle here. He’s my landlord, and he’s my boss. He’s...not nice, really. He’s kind of grumpy. And I also feel safe with him. Like I know he’s not going to hurt me, or anything like that. But he’s not particularly pleasant.” She was making him sound like an ogre. But all of it was true. All of it was true, and she still craved more time in his company. “And there’s definitely no possibility of it becoming anything other than a working relationship.”
She thought back to the trail ride. That was not explicitly part of a working relationship. There was something about it that had actually been quite personal.
He’d said she was strong.
And for some reason, now she seemed to feel a core of solid strength running through her body.
It had always been there, somehow she knew it. But it had taken his perspective for her to see it.
And she wondered...
She had to wonder if at least part of the problem of why she didn’t have a lot of friends, why she had difficulty dating, was that she was just very set in her ways.
She liked things the way she liked them, and she had been running a household since she was fourteen years old.
She didn’t have to do a lot of compromising.
She cooked what she wanted for dinner, she wore whatever she wanted to. She even helped her sisters pick their clothes out, so effectively, they wore what she wanted them to as well.
Yeah, she could see why it was difficult for her to arrive at compromises. To want to try and perform to be more interesting to somebody in a bar.
He’d said something to that effect. That he just didn’t have the energy to lie to people.
Maybe that was it.
Maybe the real issue was that she lost her parents and it had devastated her. But with it had come a knowledge that life could be cruelly short. That it wasn’t protecting you from anything.
And why bother with nonsense when that reality was so clear?
Why bother to twist and contort herself to be with another person?
She wasn’t special. She never had been. Why bother to want something out of life you couldn’t get?
“Well, at least he gives you something to look at, I guess.”
Iris felt her face heat up. “I guess.”
“You know, if he’s handsome, and in proximity... It’s not