She turned back to Angela and their conversation, which sounded like they’d been talking about Andy.

“So, did he sacrifice himself for you?” Angela wondered, sounding a bit of a romantic there. Frank couldn’t imagine Andy sacrificing himself for anyone “Oh, it was so brave of you for making it through all that...”

Tasmin looked pained at that, physically she stiffened. 

“Yeah sure, you could put it that way,” she offered in a more casual tone, but didn’t go into any details.

Angela seemed to realize she had gone a bit too far and pulled back to just a nod and said no more. She was a fairly new hire, had barely started as a temp just a few days before Tasmin and Andy had left on their expedition. 

She was definitely the romantic type, especially from the reading material he spotted on her desk from time to time. 

On the other hand, Frank knew Andy was certainly not, even though he had no problem attracting the romantic types, even in death. He supposed that was why he and Tasmin had worked so well together, whereas the man had never done serious worked any of his doting fans of the other sex. Neither of them had been into the niceties of life. They both had their goals and drive and things like romance and the like wasn’t much interest either of them, even if it was obvious sex was a big part of their working relationship. 

The entranceway door swung open again and Gary came through wearing his Red’s jacket. The guy had definitely relaxed a lot since the trip up north. Frank watched him stopped and give the reception area a once over spotting the new figure in the realm. He wondered what was going through the guy’s mind. 

Maybe, “Ha who is this? A new client perhaps?” 

And then his expression changed as he saw the dynamic going on around Angela’s reception desk. Frank was decently impressed as he nodded to Gary, who was quickly reassessing what was in front of him. Gary didn’t get a chance to ask for confirmation. This was a bit too much of an opportunity for Frank not to intercede.

“Hey Gary,” Frank said and nodded his head towards Tasmin. “Our prodigal daughter has returned.”

Tasmin immediately turned to take her own look at the guy, but from his angle Frank couldn’t exactly check out her reaction, so he sidled a couple feet around Nora to get a better look and do more introductions. 

“This is the new guy, Gary,” he told her. “Gary this is Tasmin, as you know Nora's sister back from her nightmare in Africa. All back and good though.”

Gary offered a smile, Tasmin turned to Frank with an annoyed/bewildered look on her face, before turning back to Gary and accepting his proffered hand. 

“Well, good to finally meet you Gary,” she said while Frank kept a careful eye on the interaction. Looks like that perked up a little life in her posture he could see. Well, Tasmin is always been a bit of a party girl and even the death of Dr. Burnes and a long flight back from Africa didn’t seem able to entirely tamp that down. 

Now that should get a reaction. He turned to Nora.

She seemed to have caught a bit of what he just did, and seemed annoyed as well. Gary gave Tasmin a sympathetic look, then things got a little awkward. 

“Nora told me a little about you,” Tasmin finally offered. “Good we’ve got someone like you on the team, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Gary replied a little awkwardly from her lukewarm greeting. “Thanks.”

Tasmin then offered a dirty glance back at Frank as though suspecting he’d maybe talked more about her than she would have liked.

Oh come on, he thought, offering her look of complete innocence. Who me? You know better than that.

“Okay,” she said in a long breath, and then turned back to Angela. “What about Ephram, is he going to pop out as well to say something profound?”

Frank glanced over to Nora. Nora shrugged. 

“Where is he then?” Tasmin wanted to know. “We probably need to talk over a few things, you know about how the trip turned out and all.”

“He’s off on a job of his own,” Angela told her. “Apparently, he is on a search for ‘Enlightenment’.”

From her tone, Angela didn’t quite get what that was all about, and reminded them it wasn’t in her job description to know either. 

At Tasmin’s raised eyebrows, all she offered was, “That what Mr. Palantine called it.”

“So, Flores has taken over the office until he gets back,” Frank cut in. “As far as any of us can tell he’s going to be busy on that for a while.”  

Tasmin offered a breathy chuckle.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” she agreed, and then glanced back at him, possibly noticing the fragrance of his coffee from the way her nostrils flared.

“I take it we have a working coffee machine again,” she said sounding pleased.

“It’s a new one, well relatively new,” he told her. “Just got a new set of packets this week. I picked them out myself.” 

“Can always count on you, Frank,” Tasmin replied, offering him a smirk.