Bearly Christmas

by Becca Fanning

  * * *

  Jasmine had spent the whole day after the interview and all the following morning feeling full of dread. She’d blown it. There was no way they were going to hire her. After breakfast, she opened her newspaper to the employment section and started looking. She’d have to go with a minimum wage job that needed no experience and hope she could earn enough to get her own place soon.

  Her door was partially opened, and Sarah knocked, then stuck her head in. “Hey Jas, you have a call.”

  She hopped up and dashed downstairs to pick up the phone. “Hello, this is Jasmine.”

  “Jasmine, hi, this is Knox. Knox Ryker. We talked to you yesterday about the housekeeping position.”

  “Oh yes, hello.” Her heart squeezed itself tight in her chest, ready to be let down.

  “I just wanted to give you a call and see if you’d like to accept the job.”

  Accept? Had he said accept the job? Meaning they wanted to hire her?

  “Yes, I would love to!” She’d probably sounded a little too excited. She tried to tone down her voice before asking, “When would I start?”

  “Well.” He chuckled. “To be honest, the place is a wreck. You can start today if you want.”

  “That’d be great. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Perfect. See you soon.”

  “Thank you! Thank you so much for this job. I will work very hard for you.”

  “I know it.” He chuckled again. “Bye, Jasmine.”

  She hung up the phone and stared at it for a minute. Many emotions rushed over her. She was elated that she’d gotten the job, and especially a first job that paid so well. But nervous. What if she wasn’t good at it and they let her go after a short time? And then Knox. Obviously, now that he was her employer she couldn’t have feelings for him, but she was attracted to him. Not only his looks, but he seemed to be kind, and he seemed to like her, and the way he said her name in his silky voice…

  She dashed upstairs, went straight to Sarah’s room, and told her the good news in a serious of squeals and shrieks. Then she hurried into her room and dressed. She was out the door and on her way to the bus stop in a matter of minutes. Less than an hour after he’d called, Knox opened the door and smiled at Jasmine.

  “That was fast,” he said.

  “I told you I was punctual.” She smiled and stepped inside.

  “I’ll give you a tour of the place, show you what we want done. Basically, we’re slobs, and we need someone around who’s not. I guess Dax’s girlfriend complained that it’s a mess.” He shrugged. “We never seemed to mind much.”

  They started in the living room, where they’d interviewed her the day before. “In here, I guess just dusting and vacuuming, that sort of thing.”

  “And wiping down the tables and cleaning the windows?” she asked.

  “Uh, sure, whatever.” They next went into the kitchen. “We always have dishes in the sink. The usual crumbs and stuff all over the counter. I swear, I do wipe it off constantly. It’s like the crumbs just find their way back.”

  She glanced around the kitchen. It was a decent sized room, big enough for a table and four chairs. But it was filthy. The floors seemed to have a dirty film, there were crumbs and dishes as he’d said, but also sticky spots and an overflowing trash can.

  “So, mainly just the dishes in here.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Surely, the floors and counters and table, refrigerator, and trash as well?”

  He looked around and nodded. “Yeah.”

  They walked down the hall and passed a dining room and office. “In there, you can just vacuum and I guess dust. Nothing major.” He opened a door to a small half bathroom. “This is one of the bathrooms. We try to keep it cleaner for guests.”

  She didn’t want to seem horrified, but if she had been a guest, she wouldn’t have felt comfortable using the bathroom. It smelled and it was grimy on every surface. The seat was up, revealing splotches of yellow and brown. The hand towel smelled of mildew, the rug had clumps of mud, even the light switch had some sort of sticky substance on it. Was this all honey? Did it get into the house and stick to everything?

  They next went upstairs to a long hall of bedrooms.

  “All the bedrooms are up here and the big bathroom.”

  She was afraid to look in the big bathroom after seeing the one downstairs. It was much the same, but here there was also a shower covered in soap scum, a sink full of toothpaste and tiny hairs, and products sitting all over the counter.

  Knox didn’t say much about the bathroom except to give her a resigned look. “I’m sure that’ll be the worst part.”

  They walked down the hall a little way. “We don’t have to go in all the bedrooms, but just to give you an idea, this is mine.”

  He opened the door to a room that looked like clothing had exploded inside of it. On the floor, on the bed, on the desk, were shirts, pants, and socks. The bedside table had a collection of dishes, including a bowl with some liquid at the bottom that was starting to mold.

  “So probably just vacuum the bedrooms. Or whatever you normally do in a bedroom.”

  “Sure,” she said. And dust and scrub the furniture and windows, and do the laundry, and tidy up and make the bed.

  “That’s pretty much it. You still want the job?”

  “Yes, though…” How could she ask this without sounding like she wasn’t up to the job?

  “You’ll need more money? I can probably arrange that.”

  “Oh. That’s not what I was going to say. Just that, at first, it may take longer to clean than normal? I may not get to all the rooms today, but once I clean each room, it will be faster to clean from now on.”

  He laughed. “Oh goodness. No one expects you clean this whole house today. Whatever time it takes. I know it’s a dump and we’re messy. Blair—that’s Daxton’s girlfriend—does the dishes and stuff sometimes, but she refuses to shower here until it’s cleaned, so Dax was whining that were too messy, and that’s when we all decided it was time just to pay someone. There’s no way we’ll ever be able to keep it clean. So, anything you do will be an improvement.”

  “Do you have cleaning supplies? I can get started right away.”

  “Oh.” He scratched his neck. “Uhh… well, let me give you the full tour, then we can figure all that out.”

  They went back downstairs and then into a basement. “You don’t have to clean down here, in fact, you don’t ever need to come down here at all, but I just thought you should see the whole place.” He motioned to several large metal barrels. They had tubes coming and going from them. “We make whiskey, too.”

  She nodded, not sure what to think of that, then followed him back upstairs. Next, they toured a large building full of machines and a few workers running them. This was where the honey was made, and again, he assured her, she never had to go in there. In fact, they had someone that cleaned in there since food was processed there and it had to be kept cleaner.

  They walked out of the building and stepped into a large patch of grass. Square wooden boxes were in a row and there were bees everywhere. When he’d said they made honey and had shown her the processing facility, for some reason, she hadn’t thought about how they got the honey. Of course they had bees. She walked close to him and tried to move very slowly.

  “These are all the hives.” He walked over to one and started to pull something out of it.

  “Oh no, that’s okay, you don’t have to do that.”

  He looked at her and must’ve seen her nervousness. “Don’t be afraid. They won’t hurt you unless they get agitated.”

  She nodded, but backed away. He led her back into the house. “My brother and I are the beekeepers, so I spend a lot of time with them. They get a much worse rep than they deserve.”

  Three men walked toward the house from another direction.

  “Ah,” Knox said. “Here are the guys.” He waved them over.

  These men, too, were all huge in size. Maybe they l
iked to go to the gym together or had met there. He introduced each of them and she tried to remember a defining characteristic so she would remember their names. Daxton had black hair, and he wore business suits, since he was the sales guy, according to Knox. Slade ran the business, though, and he was the tallest, also the most serious looking. Until he smiled. Then a dimple popped in his right cheek, and made him look softer. And Amir, who was the one to do all the moonshining in the basement. He was easier to remember because he was the one with darker skin and a slight accent. The thing that stood out the most about all of them, besides their large muscles and wide chests, were their eyes. They all had the hypnotic golden eyes that Knox did.

  “You’re not related in any way?” she asked Knox after the men had walked away.

  “Not by blood.” They went inside and he stood in the living room. “Okay, so what all do you need to get started?”

  “Do you have any cleaning supplies?”

  “Oh, right.” He went to the kitchen retrieved a few bottles. Dish soap, anti-bacterial spray, a floor cleaner. “There’s a mop and broom in the kitchen closet.”

  “Great. I can get started in here. Are there other things? Rags or cleaner for the bathrooms?”

  “Umm, there might be stuff upstairs. The vacuum is up there in the hall closet. Let’s just do this. You get started and do whatever you can do. Anything you need, just make a list and I’ll be sure to get it.”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, well, I’ll be out back with the bees. If you need anything, just holler.”

  She watched him walk away, then got to work.

  * * *

  * * *

  After four days of hard cleaning and multiple trips with Knox to the store to purchase various cleaning supplies, the house was starting to look much better. Soon, she’d be ready to just maintain and the deep cleaning would be done.

  “It’s really looking awesome in here,” Knox said, peaking into the bathroom. “And it smells good. I like that floral cleaner stuff we got.”

  “Thanks.” Jasmine brushed a hair from her forehead with her arm and set down the scrub brush. The tile floors were gorgeous—once she scrubbed the layers of dirt off.

  “I talked to Slade, too. We’re going to pay you more than what we agreed on. This place is so gross, and you’ve already done such an awesome job, it’s the least we can do.”

  “Thank you very much. It’s a big help to me, and just that you would take a chance on someone with no experience.” She chuckled. “I thought I did very poorly in the interview.”

  “I think it was the ‘my good looks’ comment that won it for you.” He winked at her.

  She shook her head and felt her cheeks warm. “I can’t believe I said that.”

  “Well, it’s certainly true.”

  She looked down, her pulse speeding up at his words.

  “I came up here to ask you a question, though. A favor.”

  She pulled the gloves off, one finger at a time, and stood up.

  “Something is up with one of the hives. We had a lot of deaths.” His smile faded and his face became concerned, maybe even worried. “We’re not sure what’s going on, and we don’t want anything to affect the other hives. Can you come take a look at something? We want to clean it all out, but I’m not sure what would be best.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  She followed him out of the house, into the backyard, her heart racing now for a different reason. She didn’t want to be anywhere near these bees. But how could she say no? He’d just given her a raise, and compliments, and he was her employer. She prayed the bees would stay far from her.

  Knox took her to one of the wooden boxes where Beck stood, looking inside. Several flat pieces of wood leaned against the box. She thought it was the honeycomb, but wasn’t sure.

  “So, here’s the thing,” Knox said. “First, we have all these dead bees. There’s a place we can send them for testing, and we’re going to do that, but we only need to send a few. We need to get the rest out of there, and we need to clean everything out in case there’s a contaminate. So, what can we clean it with that won’t be toxic for the bees when we rebuild the hive?”

  She looked down in the hive and her eyes widened. The box was full of bees and the sides of the box were coated in a sticky substance. She didn’t know if it was honey or something else. There were several products that would take off stickiness, but something safe for bees?

  “I’m not really sure,” she said. “Vinegar can clean a lot of things and is usually not toxic.”

  Beck nodded. “I think I’ve heard of that. I’ll check online. I’m sure there’s info for that.”

  “Can you help us with this?” Knox said. “We need to take all these frames in to be processed.”

  “Okay.”

  He picked up a few of the frames that were leaning against the box. He handed some to her, several to Beck, and took the rest. They walked toward the building. She looked down and noticed that one of the frames she carried had a bee crawling slowly across the wood. She watched it for a moment. It seemed to be moving slowly, but it made her nervous.

  “Umm, Knox?”

  He looked back at her over his shoulder.

  “This bee is alive.”

  He stopped and looked at the frame. “I’ll take it.”

  When he picked it up, the bee flew off and landed on her hand. She let out a startled scream and yanked her hand away. Then she felt the pinch of a sting.

  “It stung me!” She almost dropped the other frames, but handed them to Knox so she could inspect the sting.

  “It’s dazed from whatever killed the hive. I probably aggravated it by picking up the frame. We have stuff in the house to clean out a sting.”

  “Umm, should it look like that?” Jasmine looked down at the place the bee had stung her, which was now rising on her skin into a small mound.

  Knox’s eyes grew wide. “Are you allergic to bee stings?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever been stung before.”

  “Crap.” He set the frames down and said to Beck, “I’m gonna take her to the hospital.”

  Beck picked up their frames and stacked them onto his. He glanced at her hand. “Oh wow, that looks bad. Hurry.”

  “I will. Come on,” Knox said, and took her other hand to pull her along. “Can you breathe okay?” He yanked open his truck door and helped her in.

  “Yes.” She buckled her seatbelt as he sped off.

  “Can you swallow okay?”

  She swallowed and thought it felt maybe a little tight, but didn’t know if that was just from her increasing panic. “I think so?”

  He looked over at her, then sped up. They pulled into the ER, and he slammed the truck into park after pulling into a spot.

  Her hand was now swollen to the point where the entire back of it was puffy and her wrist was swelling, too. In the center, where the sting was, had turned an angry red.

  Knox took her by the hand and hurried her into the ER. He made her sit, then went to tell a nurse what was happening. They immediately took her into a small exam room. The nurse shined a light in her eyes and looked down her throat.