Chapter 8 #2
Winter watched the frame for a moment before turning back to Penny. “But only the queen lays the eggs, right?”
“Oh, come on.” Penny tsked playfully. “I thought I was the one giving the lesson here.”
She returned the frame they’d been inspecting and took out another, turning it around in her hands. Zander and Winter watched as Penny examined each side before returning it to the box and repeating the process.
One night back in Boston, Quinn had been over for her usual hangout, as Zander cooked them dinner, when she’d said, “You’re the most you when you’re working in the kitchen. It’s like I can see your burdens drift away. You look lighter.”
Quinn was so rarely sincere that Zander had just laughed it off and thrown a piece of onion her way. But now, watching Penny’s lips move silently as she scanned the frame of bees, he understood. He didn’t know Penny well, but it didn’t take a genius to see that she was in her element.
How many people got to stand here with her to see her like this?
She hummed and smiled, then held the frame up high. “There she is.”
Winter bounced on his heels. “The queen?”
“Yep. Like you said, the queen is the only one who lays eggs. When there’s a nectar flow, and the colony is growing, she might lay up to two thousand eggs every day. She is mother to all the bees in the colony.”
“Wow,” Zander muttered. “Props to her. I thought having one kid was hard.”
Something suspiciously close to a laugh bubbled from Penny before she cleared her throat. “She might have fifty thousand kids at a time, but they all take care of each other, and of her. They clean her and bring her food and do everything in the colony so that she can just lay eggs.”
“Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad. I’m still trying to get someone to wash his own dishes.”
“Dad.”
Winter grumbled, but Zander couldn’t seem to mind as Penny smiled at him, her eyes bright even through the suit’s netting.
Since the farmer’s market, Penny’s body—the curve of her hip peeking from the gap in her overalls, the pale swirl of her ear against her golden braid—had risen up vibrantly in his mind more than he liked, especially late at night.
He’d hoped a morning with Penny hidden in the bee suit might help douse his inconvenient and unwanted attraction.
Unfortunately, her confidence and competence were only making matters worse.
Penny blinked away their eye contact, turning to Winter.
“You want to see the queen? Come see if you can spot the bee that’s different.”
This outing had been for his kid, but there was no denying Zander’s own eagerness as he scanned the frame.
At first, he couldn’t decipher anything different in the clusters of fuzzy bees, but then he spotted her.
The queen’s body was longer than the others’, and she had a little green dot just below her head.
Winter’s inhale told him his son had found her, too. “What’s the dot on her?”
“That green is paint,” Penny answered. “Queens are often marked like this, to make them easy to spot in inspections.”
As Winter leaned in closer, watching the queen, Penny pressed the frame toward him. “Here, hold on to it and take a look around.”
“Wait, for real?”
“For real.”
Knowing this was a time when Winter might actually be enthusiastic for a picture, Zander went for the phone in his pocket, only to realize he wouldn’t be able to operate it with the gloves on. He started to tug one off, but Penny stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Gloves stay on.”
Penny’s gloved fingers folded over his suited forearm, starting a domino effect of reactions in Zander’s body—a tightening in his chest and throat, his breath gone shallow—that was hardly warranted by a touch through two layers of thick fabric.
Maybe his years of celibacy were coming back to bite him in the ass, his touch-starved body hungry for anything.
No matter that he hadn’t had this problem until he rolled up in Sullivan’s Glen and saw Penny Becker.
Zander struggled for focus. “I need to get a picture of this. Winter’s going to go back and tell Mal every detail, and I’m going to be the shitty co-parent if I don’t have pictures for her. I’ll be fast, scout’s honor.”
The netting didn’t hide Penny’s eye roll. “Something tells me you were never a scout. I’ll take pictures for you. I’d rather have my gloves off than yours. I usually do the inspections without the suit anyway.”
She lifted her hand from his arm and brought it up, then bit the fabric of the middle finger and gave it a tug that Zander felt along his spine.
A trickle of sweat dripped from his temple. “You were in the suit the other day, when I stumbled on your bee kingdom.”
Penny stuffed the glove in one pocket and pulled her phone from the other. “That was just an off day. I was in a bad mood.”
“Why would that matter? And what was wrong?”
And why did he care?
Penny cast him a sideways glance as she turned. “Maybe I knew you were about to show up.”
Zander had to laugh. “Touché.”
She proceeded to lead Winter in a photo session, taking breaks to help him return one frame and pull out another. Each time, Zander eavesdropped as Penny shared knowledge about capped honey cells, drones, and something about pollen protein.
When a passing bee landed on Zander’s netted hood, he studied the insect with rapt interest, an odd excitement in his bones. He stared at the bee’s oversize eyes, just inches from his own, shocked by how safe he felt, how happy to be in this moment.
The best he’d felt since pulling back into Sullivan’s Glen.
“Dad! Dad! Come look!”
Winter and Penny bent over a frame resting on top of the hive box, watching intently.
“A baby bee, Dad! It’s coming out!” He pointed to a copper-colored cell, where antennae poked from a small break in the cell cap.
“No way,” Zander whispered.
“It’ll eat its way out.” Penny’s voice was calm and light. “Just wait.”
At first only the antennae were visible, but as Zander watched, the bee worked the hole wider, until the shine of her eyes and tiny head of yellow and black appeared. After a few minutes, the bee began wiggling its way out.
“How many times have you seen this?” he asked Penny in a whisper.
“So many,” she answered just as quietly. “And it never gets old.”
The bee crawled out entirely, taking its first slow steps on the surface of the comb.
“She’ll walk around for a few minutes to dry off and strengthen her wing muscles,” Penny told them. “Then she’ll get to work.”
“Always working,” a deep voice called from the trees. “Just like someone else I know.”
A guy—a big guy, which was a lot coming from Zander—came into the bee yard with a smile. He had light brown skin, a buzzed head, and a blue T-shirt that said Hockey Is So Pucking Fun! in rainbow lettering, with gloves hanging from the back pocket of his Carhartts.
“RJ?” Penny straightened from her spot at the hive. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you think, Pen?” He shot Zander a hundred-watt smile. “I came to meet Zander Bouras.”