Page 44 of The Beekeeper

My breath rushed out in relief. “I will.”

I motioned her over to the sink to wash our hands. If Blaze didn’t even want to eat honey in front of me, I doubted he’d want a piece of homemade cake. Or anything else from me for that matter.

Anything except my help with his daughter.

Chapter 10

Blaze

“Where is she?” I blew through the door into the house, my head whipping around for Pais.

“Upstairs—”

“You left her alone—” I stopped myself before something unforgivable came out of my mouth and bounded up the steps.

As soon as it started storming, I’d bolted from the restaurant and told Marc to just add dinner to my bill. They weren’t calling for a storm—hell, they weren’t even calling for rain, and it had been like a monsoon outside. Fitting for the current season of my life: when it rained, it poured.

I thought I’d make it back to the house in twenty minutes, cursing myself for suggesting we’d go into Friendship for dinner. I’d only been thinking that there was less of a chance the paps would find us in the smaller town. I never thought…I never thought. Period.

And sure enough, twenty had turned into an hour and twenty. Back roads were closed due to flooding, and there was an accident on the main road between Friendship and Stonebar Harbor. I’d sat at a damn standstill for forty minutes, shouting at the windshield and beating my steering wheel, knowing what my daughter was going through. Knowing how upset this would make her. And once again, I wasn’t there to help. I wasn’t there for her.

I took the stairs two at a time, not even able to process that I didn’t hear Pais whimpering or her cries that always came with thunderstorms until I pushed open the door to her room and froze.

Paisley’s princess comforter was tented over her bed along with some other blankets, and through the opening, I saw my daughter curled up with her pillow and stuffed bee asleep. Soundly asleep.

I went over—risked waking her with my footsteps—because I couldn’t believe it. But sure as shit, she was passed out in the middle of a thunderstorm. I stared for long seconds until I couldn’t be imagining it, and then backed out of the room, adrenaline and disbelief blistering open my chest.

In the kitchen, Harper was washing dishes at the sink.

“She’s asleep,” I said bluntly and she jumped with an audible gasp. She hadn’t heard me come back down. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She shut off the water and grabbed a towel. “She fell asleep maybe fifteen minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I rasped. “I didn’t mean—I just can’t believe she’s asleep.” I dragged my hand over my mouth like I could tear out all the shitty words and half-formed phrases. “She hates thunderstorms.”

“I know.” Harper set the towel on the counter, her hand remaining on top of it. Her bee-stung hand.

“You built a fort?” I asked and walked closer.

“Yeah. And we baked a cake,” she blurted out, looking guiltily at the counter. And then I saw it—the foil-wrapped plate and understood why Harper was doing dishes so late when I’d ordered them pizza for dinner.

“Cake? You made her cake?”

“Thunder cake,” she corrected. “I’m sorry for not asking first, but she was really upset about the storm, so I told her what Gigi used to make for me and Lou and Frankie.”

“What the hell is a thunder cake?” I plucked at the foil and lifted the edge.

She folded her arms, having no idea that it made it so I could see her nipples through her shirt. “It’s a cake you can only make during a thunderstorm because the thunder is an ingredient.”

Slowly, I straightened and my eyes bored into hers. She’d convinced my daughter there was a kind of cake that could only be made during thunderstorms.

“It’s just a chocolate and Nutella cake,” Harper rushed to explain. “I told her she was mixing in the thunder, and then I snuck in some Ferrero Rocher candies before baking it, so it comes out with crunchy, gooey stuff and…”

“She thinks it’s from the thunder.” I found it nearly impossible to stop myself from telling her how ingenious that was.

“She just had one slice. She wanted to save some for you.”

A band ratcheted around my chest.