Page 15 of The Beekeeper

I should’ve known this was coming. “She’s doing her science project on bees. Harper offered to help.” And I’m keeping my distance, I wanted to add but didn’t.

“Oh.”

“Should be done by now,” I added gruffly.

“Man, if it were six months ago, you and Pais could’ve moved into the Hamiltons’ old farmhouse.”

My head cocked. “What happened to it?”

“Nothing.” Wade shook his head. “It’s just where Harper lives now.” When my frown deepened, Wade sighed and shook his head. “Are you still giving her the cold shoulder? Come on, Blaze⁠—”

“Don’t,” I warned him; I wasn’t an unruly teenager or even a wayward twenty-something anymore. I was thirty-one and a father, and I didn’t have room in my life for liars. Especially beautiful ones.

“In her defense, you lied about who you were when you guys first met, too.”

“I lied to protect myself. She lied to get close to me,” I rumbled.

“She was working at the inn. She wasn’t some damn reporter skulking in the shadows waiting to make a buck or some woman trying to score a spot in your infamous black book.”

“I don’t have a black book.” I scowled.

“Because I’ve had to keep it for you, filled with all the NDAs you’ve had women sign.”

“That was a…lifetime ago.” I wanted to say long but it really wasn’t that long ago. Time just measured different when it was warped by trauma.

“I know.” My brother let his shoulders fall with a deep breath. “I guess I’m just wondering when you’re going to stop holding Harper’s one mistake against her.”

Especially when I’d made so many, I heard out of habit even though he’d said nothing.

My memories were a little…untempered of the weeks before I’d fallen down the inn’s staircase and ended up in a coma; some, too foggy to remember anything clearly. Others, so vivid it was like déjà vu. Others, like that feeling I would get standing at the top of the staircase, knowing I was going to talk to Harper down at the desk. It was like knowing I was about to spend a few hours basking in the sun when my life before her had been under a perpetual cloud.

It wasn’t even just my physical attraction to her. It was the way she cared, the way she connected. It was like no matter what I said or which way the story or the pain turned, she still managed to shine her warmth onto it and make it hurt less, the same way the sun glinted off the ever-moving surface of the ocean. No matter which way I stilled or thrashed, she always managed to reach me and make things brighter.

Until I learned she knew my real identity and had been…enamored with me for some time. It tainted everything like a drop of blood in a bucket of water.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Wade,” I said, my feet stopping in front of the door. “Maybe it’s a little thing to you, but when all I’ve dealt with for two decades is people who’ve done anything to get close to me, to get whatever it was they wanted from me, no matter the cost, I can’t…” I blew out a breath and shook my head. “Maybe it was an altruistic mistake, but I’m too jaded to change my reaction. You can add it to the long list of my faults.”

“That’s not what I want⁠—”

“I don’t have the bandwidth for this right now,” I interrupted sharply. “My only concern is Paisley. She’s the only thing I can care about.” I waited for a few beats, but Wade didn’t respond. A rare circumstance for a lawyer. I looked over my shoulder, finding his heavy stare. “Is there anything else you need from me?”

The question broke his trance, and he walked behind the desk. “Actually, if you’re heading back to the farm, could you take this folder with you?”

He opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a manila envelope and handed it to me.

HARPER was written in his handwriting on top, and at my questioning look, he offered, “You’re not the only one fighting hard battles for your future right now.”

He wasn’t allowed to go into detail, and I shouldn’t give a shit. But all the couldn’ts and shouldn’ts didn’t make a damn bit of difference in my mind as it wandered the entire way back to her farm what the hell Harper needed help with…and why I felt a strange, unwelcome emotion knowing it was Wade helping her and not me.

Chapter 4

Harper

“What do you think?” I asked, watching Paisley tip her head side to side for long seconds.

Paisley took her job as taste-tester very seriously, mulling over the morsel of my newest cinnamon-laden honey.

“It’s yummy!” she declared, her lips puckering as she swallowed the last of the sample. “But why is it sandy?”