Chapter Three
FLORA
DAY THREE OF THE JOB that didn't exist, and I was getting good at it. That was the problem.
I pulled up to Atlas's property at seven sharp.
Not early this time, because showing up at six fifty-three twice would make it a pattern.
Patterns implied eagerness. Eagerness implied I was thinking about him between the hours of leaving his mountain and arriving back on it.
Which I absolutely was. But he didn't need to know that.
The morning was doing its best to ruin my composure before I'd even turned off the engine.
Late April had turned the mountain overnight: balsamroot blazing across the south meadow in sheets of gold, lupine pushing purple through the volcanic soil along the tree line.
The air was thick with wet earth and pollen and the low electric hum of sixty thousand bees who had places to be.
I sat in the car and breathed it in. My chest ached.
This place was starting to feel like somewhere I belonged.
Stop that.
I grabbed my sketchpad and got out. Canvas work pants again, last clean tee.
I'd packed for a three-day trip and I was out of combinations, which meant tomorrow I'd either be doing laundry at the Juniper or showing up in a sundress and work boots.
Neither option screamed "professional." Also, my booking expired tonight.
Three nights, paid in advance, and I hadn't called Connie about extending.
Extending meant not leaving. Not leaving meant.
.. well. I pulled my hair into a clip and walked toward the hives.
Atlas was already at the east hive cluster, back to me, pulling frames in the early light.
T-shirt today, sleeves straining across his shoulders, and the heat hit me low and immediate.
He held a frame up to the sun, careful, steady, those broad fingers turning the comb with a patience that made me think about what else they could do.
I was not going to finish that thought because it was seven in the morning and I was a professional.
"Morning," I called, walking toward him with my sketchpad held in front of me.
He glanced over his shoulder. "You're on time."
"I'm always on time."
"You were seven minutes early yesterday."
"And you counted. That's not weird at all."
The corner of his mouth lifted. Not quite a smile. He went back to the frame. I went to work.
The garden design was taking real shape.
I'd spent yesterday sketching the full perennial layout: staggered bloom times to close his mid-June forage gap, native plantings to carry his bees from the spring balsamroot through to late-summer aster.
Penstemon along the creek bank for the early pollinators, blanketflower and bee balm in the middle band, goldenrod and rabbit brush for the fall.
The foundation for an entire portfolio section on rural pollinator habitat.
The irony was a knife I kept stepping on: the job was fake but the work was real, the reason was a lie but the results were honest. Each hour I spent making his operation better was another hour I couldn't explain if he ever asked why.
We worked through the morning. Separately, mostly, him with the hives, me with the sketchpad, but the property kept pulling us into the same orbit.
I'd check soil drainage near the west cluster and he'd be there, crouching over a frame.
I'd squeeze past him on the narrow path between the boxes.
His shoulder would brush my hip. My breath would catch.
I'd mumble something about root depth without hearing my own voice.
By late afternoon we were walking back toward the cabin together, and I was mid-sentence about the blanketflower placement when he stopped.
Just stopped. In the middle of the path, hands at his sides, looking at me with the expression I was learning to read. The one that meant he'd been chewing on a thought for a while and had arrived at the fewest possible words to say it.
"I haven't paid you," he said.
I blinked. "What?"
"Three days of work. Professional-grade design. I've given you a piece of honeycomb and a trout dinner." His jaw tightened. "That's not right, and I'd like to fix it."
My stomach dropped. Payment meant invoicing.
Invoicing meant a business name, a tax ID, a paper trail leading straight back to a woman who'd Googled her sperm donor and driven nine hours to stalk him with binoculars.
My cover story had the structural integrity of wet tissue paper, and he was about to poke a finger through it.
"You don't have to pay me," I said, too fast. "I'm — this is a portfolio piece.
I've been thinking about expanding into rural pollinator habitat consulting and your property is a perfect case study.
The work is its own reward." I heard myself and winced internally.
The work is its own reward. I sounded like I was accepting a LinkedIn endorsement.
He studied me. Those brown eyes, steady, unhurried, missing nothing. "You drove nine hours from Portland to do free landscape design on a stranger's mountain."
"I was already in the area."
"For the client."
"For the client. Yes."
"The client you haven't mentioned once since you got here."
My neck went hot. "She's very private."
He was quiet for a beat. Then: "I'm offering to pay you for your work. If you won't take money, I'll find another way. But you're not working for free on my property. The math doesn't sit right."
My throat tightened. He didn't know I was carrying his baby. He didn't know I'd chosen him from a catalogue. He just knew a woman had been working on his land without compensation, and it bothered him. Not because of me. Because of who he was.
I wanted to tell him everything. The words were right there, crowding behind my teeth. Instead I said: "What if we called it a trade?"
He raised an eyebrow. One eyebrow. The left one. It shouldn't have been devastating, but my thighs had opinions.
"I design the garden," I said, "and in exchange you give me access to your operation. I document the full pollination cycle: your bees, my plantings, how they perform together. Varietal samples for client gifts, photos for my portfolio, and you keep feeding me."
"How they perform together," he said.
"Cross-pollination efficiency. Forage uptake metrics." I did not have forage uptake metrics. I did not have anything except a cover story held together with spit and adrenaline. "I'm talking about flowers, Atlas."
He looked at me for a beat. "I know what you're talking about, Flora."
My panties were no longer a neutral party. One word — my name — in that voice, and we had a situation. We were negotiating a landscaping deal. I needed professional help.
"Then we have a deal." I stuck out my hand before the entire field of botany could embarrass me any further.
He took it. His hand was rough and enormous, closing all the way around mine. The contact went through me: palm to wrist to chest to the pit of my stomach, and lower. I held on exactly one second too long before I pulled back.
Flora: three. Atlas: two. He got a point for the eyebrow.
The inside of his cabin smelled like woodsmoke and honey and the quiet of a man who lived alone and liked it.
I'd been inside once before, briefly, for the trout dinner, but this was the first time I really looked.
Bookshelves crammed with no organizing principle I could identify: a varroa mite management guide next to a Louis L'Amour paperback, a dog-eared Beekeeper's Handbook, and what appeared to be a college entomology textbook with sticky notes poking out of every chapter.
Honey jars on the kitchen shelf, lined up lightest to darkest, pale spring wildflower to deep amber buckwheat.
A wood-burning stove with a coffee pot that looked like it had been on since the Clinton administration.
Two place settings on the counter. He'd put out two before I'd said I was staying.
He handed me a mug without asking. Strong, black, and hot enough to strip paint. I drank it and it was terrible and perfect.
"I'm making venison," he said, pulling a wrapped package from the freezer. "Backstrap. And there's honey for the glaze if you're willing to handle prep."
"You're asking me to help you cook?"
"You keep telling me you can cook. I'm calling the bluff."
"It's not a bluff. I'm an excellent cook."
"Then you won't mind the knife work." He slid a cutting board across the counter. Root vegetables, parsnips, carrots, a few small turnips, and a loaf of sourdough that looked homemade. "Rough chop. Everything gets roasted."
We cooked. Side by side at the counter, his cabin kitchen not built for two people to move without touching.
He was at the stove, searing the venison in a cast-iron skillet.
I was at the cutting board. The space between us was maybe eighteen inches, and it kept shrinking.
He'd reach past me for the honey jar, his arm brushing my shoulder.
I'd lean over him to grab a towel, my hip grazing his.
Each accidental contact sent a jolt straight down my spine that I had to pretend was not happening.
He drizzled honey over the venison. Slow.
A thick golden thread from a wooden dipper, catching the light from the stove.
He tilted the dipper with the same focused attention he gave the hive frames.
I stared at his fingers and thought about them on my bare skin, drizzling honey across my stomach, following it with his lips.
I chopped a parsnip so aggressively it shot off the cutting board.
"You alright?" he asked, not turning around.
"Fine. The parsnip had it coming."