Page 11 of The Beekeeper

I gritted my teeth like I could stop my reaction to her, especially when she crouched and hugged Pais tight. She had this aura to her—a glow I kept trying to pin on sunlight. But sunlight didn’t draw you to a person the way this pulled me to her.

“Hi.” Harper rose and greeted me, jarring me from my trance.

“Afternoon,” I returned roughly and lowered my chin, catching a whiff of lavender and honey on the breeze, and feeling it zing through my blood. Thankfully, she’d already turned her attention back to my daughter.

“Are you ready, Paisley?” she asked, her expression overflowing with excitement. “I want to introduce you to a very special bee today.”

Pais’s eyes lit up. “What special bee?”

“The queen bee.”

She gasped. “There’s a queen?”

A laugh burst from my chest. Not once in the last eighteen months had Pais ever looked so comically excited and…stupefied. The look on her face—jaw dropped and wide eyes—was meme-worthy. It took a beat for me to realize that her look of surprise—their looks of surprise were now aimed at me. Shit.

I wiped the mirth from my face. I didn’t care if Pais saw my guard slip, but Harper…I wouldn’t make that mistake with her again.

“There is a queen,” Harper recovered, getting the memo in my glare to forget what she’d just seen. “Let me show you.”

I went to follow behind them when my phone started to ring. Stopping, I reached for my cell.

“Daddy?” Pais had stopped, too, and was staring at me.

“I’ll be right there, pumpkin. Uncle Wade just needs to talk to me,” I said and braced for her distress…but it never came.

She just nodded and then, still smiling, went with Harper. I waited until they were far enough away not to hear me—selfishly using the time to savor the sight of Harper’s ass that looked too damn good for those to be her work jeans—and then answered.

“Hello?”

“You busy?” Wade asked with his lawyer voice, and instantly my whole body tensed.

“Why? What’s going on?” I asked instead of answered.

Between him and Harper’s brother, Max, they’d managed to clear the paps from outside the apartment. We were still using the back entrance, but even that wouldn’t be safe for long. I needed a long-term solution because even though they hadn’t gotten any photos of me or Paisley yesterday, the response to their presence was confirmation they’d found my location, and the first story had run this morning.

Blaze Stevens Returns to Maine!

“Paisley’s guardian ad litem, Denise Jenkins, just requested information about your current residence. She wants photographs and a written statement explaining the move from Boston to Stonebar Harbor.”

“What—are you serious?” I wiped my hand over my mouth and along my jaw. Fuck. This couldn’t be happening.

“I wish I wasn’t.”

“Shit,” I swore, and then swore again. “Fucking shit.”

I wanted to punch something; instead, my fist caught nothing but air.

“I’m sorry, Blaze, but she’s court-appointed, so there’s nothing I can do⁠—”

“I know.” I huffed. “I just can’t believe this shit. This is all Angela’s doing. No one but family and her legal team knew where we were staying. She wants the court to think I keep moving Pais and me around because I want to.”

“I know,” my brother returned heavily. “I raised that with Denise and she said she’d made inquiries, but it didn’t change her request.”

Shit.

Paisley’s aunt was determined to make my life a living hell in order to get what she wanted: fame and fortune. Megan hadn’t been like that.

I’d met Paisley’s mom before my career had taken off; we’d connected because we were both dreamers who’d been, for a brief time, in the same orbit. Then my orbit changed and so had hers. I’d been launched into the Hollywood stratosphere and she never told me she was pregnant, deciding my new orbit wasn’t ideal for a kid. After the last six months, I couldn’t blame her.