Chapter 10
It was just Zander’s luck that the day after walking away from Penny in the bee yard and vowing to avoid her at all costs, he’d find a goddamn beehive in his grandfather’s house.
He was chipping old paint from the windowsill in Winter’s room when he noticed bees, a lot of bees, moving in and out of a small opening under the eave.
Winter inspecting a beehive with a full bee suit on was one thing; thousands of those stingers outside his son’s window was another. So Zander’d searched online, sure he could find someone else to come remove the hive.
Someone he wasn’t always fighting with. Someone who didn’t look at him like she was just waiting for his next mistake.
Someone who didn’t make his blood boil and his hands restless and his brain revert to some sort of adolescent stage of dirty thoughts, like wrapping his fist around that pretty braid and tugging her toward him.
But everyone he called told him the same thing: if you’re in Sullivan’s Glen, Penny Becker is the one to call.
Which was why, the day after Zander’s brain was rearranged just from watching her unzip that bee suit, Penny Becker was climbing a ladder leaning against the house.
She’d arrived just a few minutes ago without fanfare, simply slamming her truck door and grabbing her ladder.
Before he could offer to carry it for her, she’d boosted it over her shoulder and followed his directions to the side of the house, then did a few trips from her truck to collect buckets and a black bag, leaving them all at the foot of the ladder.
“Um,” he finally said, hands stuffed in his back pockets. “Thanks for coming.”
As Penny paused with a hand on one rung, brow furrowed and lips tight against her teeth, Zander was struck again by the sensation of watching her through a pane of glass, something distorted and a little wobbly keeping them each from seeing the other clearly.
But at that moment near the bees the day before—when he’d spoken a few honest words and almost touched her golden braid—he thought maybe he’d tapped a crack in their barrier.
She ascended the ladder in jeans and a loose-fitting Becker Farms shirt, her eyes blocked by a pair of red sunglasses.
“What about the bee suit?” he called up.
When she looked down, the sun behind her lit her up like some kind of shiny angel.
“I doubt I’ll need it,” she called back. “If you want to make yourself useful, you could bring my stuff up to this window and pass me things from there.”
He fought a smile. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were asking for my help.”
“You think I don’t do this by myself all the time?” she shot back. “I’m trying to give you something to do so you stop pacing down there like some mother hen, but I already regret it.”
“I’m not—” But the worn ground beneath him didn’t lie. Watching Penny throw a ladder against the house, secure it with rope, and climb twenty feet up might have made him a little anxious. “I don’t love heights, okay? But lugging tools I can do.”
He carried everything upstairs in two trips, then managed to shimmy open the window. Just outside, Penny slid her glasses off her face and inspected the area above the window. She was irritatingly vulnerable, bare arms and hands, her freckled face available to any passing bee.
“Are you sure you don’t even need gloves on?”
Penny didn’t bother looking at him. “If I get a sense that they’re liable to get upset, I’ll go down and suit up. But generally, if we’re gentle with them, they’re gentle back. Just don’t kill any that fly your way. A dead bee releases pheromones that signal to the others that they’re in danger.”
“Oh, shit. Okay. No killing bees, got it.”
Her fingers curled around the wood at her eye level. “I’m going to pull off this soffit. I think they’re behind here.”
“Okay.” Zander nodded. “But also, what’s a soffit?”
She lowered her eyes to him. “Seriously? Aren’t you fixing up this house?”
“Trying.” And realizing he was in a little over his head. “But what does that have to do with a—whatsitcalled?”
“A soffit.” Her hair was pulled back in a bun today, and a few strands blew loose around her face. “It’s the piece under the eave. It’s a basic part of a house.”
“I’ve, uh, never lived in a house, so—” Zander shrugged to hide his embarrassment. “Just apartments and shitty duplexes and stuff. Besides this place, I guess. But I didn’t really care about soffits when I was sixteen.”
“Right.” Penny blinked at him. “That makes sense. Anyway, I’ll take it off and we’ll see what’s back there.”
Zander crouched by the window as Penny pried off a six-inch piece of soffit, gave it a couple of shakes, and passed it through the window without taking her attention from the bees.
She pulled a small Maglite from her pocket and pointed it under the eaves. “Doesn’t look like they go back too far, so that’s good. Shouldn’t be too hard to get them out of here. Hand me the smoker, will you? And the vacuum in that black bag.”
“Vacuum? What the hell?” Maybe Zander hadn’t thought this through. “Winter will never speak to me again if he finds out I had a colony of bees killed.”
“Relax.” She laughed, a sound lovely enough for Zander to forget why calling Penny had been a bad idea.
Or maybe it was a bad idea because her laugh was so lovely.
“It doesn’t hurt them, just makes it easier to move them.
If you’d prefer, I could climb up and down the ladder carrying handfuls of bees—”
“No. Absolutely not.” His heart beat double time just thinking about it. “Vacuum it is. Then what will happen to them?”
“I’ll cut out the comb so they can reuse it, and move it and the bees into an empty hive box I brought. If I can find the queen, I’ll leave her in a clip in the hive for a couple of days, and it should encourage the colony to take up residence.”
“The clip—”
“Doesn’t hurt her. Chill.” Penny rolled her eyes, but a smile still played on her lips.
“It’s basically a little plastic cage just big enough to keep her in.
Her pheromones can get out, and worker bees can get to her, but she can’t leave.
This will give everybody time to get acquainted with the new space and prevent them from coming back up here. ”
Damn. She had every base covered. “You’ve done this a lot.”
She tilted her head, maybe as surprised by this half-polite conversation as he was. “Yes. I was in high school when I did my first removal.”
“Your parents let you climb ladders like this when you were a kid?”
Penny’s face went blank for a second. “Um, yeah. My mom was busy with other stuff; I think she was happy to hand this part over.”
“What about your dad? Is he a beekeeper, too?”
“My dad?” Her blue eyes narrowed. “Why would you ask that?”
“He’s not on the website, but I kind of figured this was a family thing. Or maybe he has a boring office job.”
Penny’s dad was probably a mild-mannered guy with graying blond hair and an ugly tie. He’d loved coming home to his little freckled daughter every night, and now he brags to all his buddies about his golden girl.
Penny gaped at him. “You actually don’t know.”
Zander leaned forward, angling his head to see her better. “Don’t know what?”
Penny glanced to the bees as her hands twisted at her waist. “My dad left. When my mom was pregnant with me. He’s never been around.”
“Shit, Penny, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I just assumed—”
“It didn’t occur to me you wouldn’t know.” She finally looked back at him, her cheeks a bright pink. “It’s public knowledge: my dad left us just like my mom’s dad left before that. It’s sort of a joke in town, how we scare men away.”
Two dipshit men had walked away from the Beckers, and the town joked about it?
“That’s a bad fucking joke,” he said gruffly. “Like a man walking away from his kid is anyone’s fault but his own.”
She just blinked at him. From his position below her, Zander had the perfect view of Penny’s pale throat as she swallowed. “No one’s ever put it quite that way.”
He rested his forearms on the window. “You probably already know my dad was a deadbeat, too. My mom says she doesn’t know who he is, but she’s slipped up enough here and there that I know it’s BS.
And maybe you don’t need to hear it, but my therapist once said, ‘A man who’d leave like that would have been a shitty father, so it’s probably best he’s gone. ’ ”
Penny’s eyes narrowed as she chewed on her lower lip, watching him. He’d probably made it too personal, but Zander knew all too well that jokes about someone’s absent parent were actually the least fucking funny thing in the world, and it pissed him off that Penny’d been subjected to it.
After a moment, she climbed down a few rungs, bringing them eye to eye. “I thought you’d left.”
“Left what?”
“When people started talking about you and Mallory splitting up, I just assumed—”
Zander’s chest tightened. “You assumed I’d left them?” His family? His kid? The thought of it made him dizzy. And angry. “Because that’s the kind of guy you think I am.”
“No. I mean, yes. But no.” She wiped a hand across her face, and even though Zander was pissed, because Winter was the center of his whole world, he would really prefer Penny keep both damn hands on the ladder.
“I didn’t know what kind of guy you were,” she continued, urgency in her voice. “I realize that now. I thought I knew, but really—”
She sighed, seeming resigned. “I never knew you back then. I mean, obviously, we never even talked. I just went off gossip and stories.” Her gaze drifted past him, into the house. “I never thought about what it was really like here for you.”
“It sucked,” he told her flatly. “If you’re wondering. My mom needed a break from me every summer, presumably so she could get as fucked-up as she wanted. So she sent me here, to a cold man I was constantly disappointing and a town full of people who were always just waiting for me to fuck up.”