“Busy man.” Jack stared down into his coffee and muttered something Annie didn’t quite catch.
“Pardon?”
The edge in her voice brought his head back up. He looked embarrassed. “Nothing. Well, I, uh…just said that he was busy here, too.”
“He has been busy here, Dad. If you’ve noticed, we’ve managed to do a lot in the last ten or twelve days.”
He cleared his throat. “I did notice, Annie girl. But…well…was it all bee work?”
Annie girl. She hadn’t heard him use that childhood pet name in years. She held his gaze, searching his face. He’d been an easy person to read in the past. His emotions flared and played out in his face on a regular basis. Except for his silences, he’d never been a man to keep his thoughts hidden. Or so she’d always thought.
“Daddy,” she said, “I need to tell you something.”
She sat in the chair across from him at the kitchen table. “When you were away, I realized how much work the apiary is. Too much for one person.”
“I’ll be up and working in no time,” he said.
“I know Dad, but the thing is—”
“And I can do twice the work of a man half my age.”
Annie smiled and patted his hand. “I know that, too. But I started to worry about the future of the business. I wasn’t certain how long I’d be here to help—remember I told you when I came home last year that it was temporary.”
“Annie, I never expected you to give up your life for me.”
She blinked back tears. “Of course you didn’t, Daddy. I’m just trying to explain why I…well…why I gave a representative from Sunrise Foods a tour.”
He jerked back his head. “What?”
“The vice-president came and had a look around. In the end, I told him we weren’t interested in selling. That’s all that happened.” She took a deep breath. “But I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done this behind your back—when you weren’t home. I wasn’t thinking.”
He didn’t speak for a moment. Finally he said, “I guess you just did what you thought was best. I can’t blame you for that, Annie.” He smiled. “Maybe it’s about time I started to plan for the future of the apiary, too.” His smile turned sly. “I have a feeling you might be here a bit longer than we both expected. Are you in love with him?”
The question startled her. It wasn’t what she expected him to say. “Yes, I am.”
He nodded. “He seems a decent man, Annie. Though I wonder…does he have a shady past? You know…that scar and all?”
She burst into laughter. “I’ll tell you about the scar later, but there’s something else…. I want to tell you what happened to me, thirteen years ago.”
When she finished, he didn’t speak for a long time. Neither did he drop his eyes from her face, but the whole gamut of emotions flashed in his as she told her story. None of them, she realized gratefully, had anything to do with anger or disappointment.
“You could have told me,” he said, his face twisted with regret. “I wouldn’t have let you down, Annie. I know I can be tetchy but—”
“Dad, I know you’d have been there for me but…it’s hard to explain…there was this silence between us—ever since Mom died.” As soon as she’d said that, she realized it was the very first time in years either of them had directly referred to her mother.
“All my fault,” Jack said in a low voice. “Isobel tried to tell me, but I couldn’t…I didn’t want to accept what happened. Working the bees kept me sane. It was the only world left for me and I…well, I guess I cut you out of it. I’m so sorry about that, Annie.” His eyes filled with tears.
She didn’t trust herself to speak for a long moment. Wiping the corners of her eyes she said in a shaky voice, “I’m sorry, too, Daddy. If I’d been less focused on my own guilt and grief, I’d have noticed yours.”
“Honey, I was the parent and you, the child. It was up to me. I let you down.” He stopped again, taking a deep breath. “What do you mean, guilt?”
“It was my fault Mom went to town that day. I wanted a pair of winter boots I’d seen. I bugged her about them for days.”
“You think that’s why she went? Honey, she went out because she was mad at me.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’d had an argument. I’m not the easiest man to live with, you know that. Even back then. She said she was tired of never going anywhere or doing anything. It was our usual quarrel. I wanted to stay on the farm and she liked to get out and see people. Some friends of hers were in town that day and had invited her for lunch. I told her she shouldn’t go, the roads would be bad because of the storm the night before. She said I always tried to stop her from seeing friends and having fun. Finally I shouted that she damn well better go or I’d never hear the end of it.” He stopped, his breath catching. “She slammed out the door and…and I never saw her again until I…until I had to go to the hospital morgue.”
Speechless, Annie watched as her father lowered his head and sobbed.
WILL PASSED Danny on the drive up to the house and when he pulled up in front of the barn, Annie was standing there, waiting for him. He felt a lump swell in his throat. It was a sensation that had come and gone frequently over the past two days. Like when he’d curled up to her the night of the fire, his ear pressed against her back, feeling the light beat of her heart as she slept. Or when the doctor told him Henry was going to be all right. And especially whenever he thought of that night, how they all could’ve been trapped inside the house. Then his anger rose and he knew, no matter how sorry he might feel for Sam and his family, he’d never forgive the man for what could have happened.
“Hey,” she said as he stepped out of the van.
Warmth surged through him at that one little word. Hey. Not to mention the smile that came with it. He wanted to fold her into his arms, but something held him back. Maybe the thought of Jack watching from inside the house. Maybe the sudden inexplicable shyness he felt in her presence. When had that begun? he wondered.
“So…did you and Danny finish up?”
“Oh no. We barely started.”
“Do you want to keep at it, or are you tired?” She didn’t look tired but something had changed. There was an air of contentment about her, as if she’d found what she’d been seeking. He felt a faint hope that he was a part of it.
“You can borrow my father’s suit again but I think we’ll have to get you one of your own.” She grinned up at him and his hope grew. “Come on into the barn and I’ll show you what we took off today.”
He followed her inside and was amazed at the number of stacked supers. “Danny’s coming back in the morning to help extract them,” she said.
“What about his summer school?”
“He said he can spare one or two hours a day for the next week. After that he’ll be busy with tests and essays.” She paused, looking from the supers to him.
“I…uh…I’m hoping you’ll be able to stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth and blushed. “Great. Well, shall we suit up? We need to put excluders in the hives in the clover field out back, so we can walk it. That okay with you?”
She sounded nervous. Having second thoughts about us? He prayed not. Not after what he’d been thinking and planning for the past two days. He wondered if she’d had a chance to talk to her father about Cara. He wanted to ask her, but knew she’d get around to telling him.
“Fine,” was all he said and they suited up quickly. He thought back to the first time he’d tried to get into Jack’s bee suit and how funny he must have looked. Was it really less than two weeks ago? His life had shifted so dramatically in such a short time.
“All set?” she asked from beneath the black mesh of her bee hat. “I’ll take the smoker if you can carry the excluders.” She led the way out of the barn.
A maroon Buick was pulling into the yard. “Shirley’s taking Dad to his physio in Essex.”
&
nbsp; “Does she need help getting him into the car?”
“No, she can manage. I helped him get downstairs and he’s been waiting at the kitchen table.”
So I wasn’t just imagining his eyes on me. He hadn’t quite figured out Jack Collins yet, but suspected Annie’s father would need time to adjust to Will’s presence, too. And, as he’d just told Annie, he wasn’t going anywhere. If all turned out the way he’d planned.
As they tramped in silence along the lane, Will thought how exotic everything here had seemed when he’d first arrived. Now he was filled with a sense of familiarity. He knew that the grove of poplars on the right ahead signaled the turn to the buckwheat field and the clover beyond it. He knew the stump from the old beech tree that Annie said fell down in a lightning strike ten years ago was a few feet farther on, to the left. That the blackberry patch to the north of the stump would soon be swelling with fruit and she’d promised him a pie.
“My mother’s recipe,” she’d said, when he’d called her from the hospital the first night after the fire. When they wanted to talk about anything but what had just happened.
They reached the first row of hives. It was a bright sunny day and Will knew the bees would be active. He smiled. Two weeks ago, he wouldn’t have known that. Annie didn’t have to tell him what to do anymore, either. He put on his gloves and headed for a hive to remove its cover. She brought the smoker over and puffed smoke into the top super. For a frightening split second he flashed back to the other night and his frantic scramble to get Henry. He waited for his heart rate to slow down, then lifted the super gently onto the ground.
Annie got the next one, and they alternated until five supers were resting on the ground around the hive. Will picked up one of the excluders and set it down over the super where the queen and her brood were in residence. He and Annie restacked the rest of the supers and headed for the next hive. He was about to remove the cover when Annie placed her gloved hand on his arm.
“Dad told me that Sam Waters has confessed to all the fires. He was trying to get Henry off his land?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Apparently his brother didn’t know what Sam was up to. He was desperate to make the campground work. He thought that if there were other fires in the valley, everyone would assume the last one—which was going to be Henry’s place—was the work of the same arsonist. He chose sites where there’d be minimal damage—”
“But why try to put the blame on Henry?”
“A last-ditch idea, which only shows how far gone he was. Things accelerated when I joined the unit. My staying at the campground and making friends with Henry made him paranoid. He was afraid I’d figure things out.”
“So setting fire to his own place was just a distraction.”
“Yes. He found some empty wine bottles at his place—Henry had given his father the wine years ago. He knew the old grudge with Henry was common knowledge in the valley and figured everyone would assume Henry was the culprit.”
“And of course he conveniently identified Henry’s truck.”
“He even drove the truck there, in case I happened to see it. Which I did.”
“But that night, when you went to the campground to get your things?”
“When I realized he’d been there minutes before, making up a Molotov cocktail, I knew he was going back to Henry’s.”
Will closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think about what might have happened if Annie hadn’t come looking for him. When he opened his eyes again, she was staring at him. Her face was bright red and her eyes damp.
“What?” he asked.
“I just…I was thinking about what—”
He leaned over and kissed her. It was a deliciously slow kiss. Will let himself fall into it for a few tantalizing minutes—the minty sweetness of her mouth on his, the sun beating down on his back and above it all, the pervasive scent of honey in the air.
He raised his head and smiled. “I love you, Annie.”
Her face lit up. “I love you, too, Will.” She laughed, then caught her lower lip in her teeth.
He held her gaze, his heart full. Speechless.
Annie shifted her eyes to the hive they’d been working on minutes ago. “You know, when I was a little girl I never really understood how bees could find their way home. Everyday they travel—long distances sometimes. See that?” She pointed to the bottom entrance to the hive where a cluster of bees hovered.
Will looked, but didn’t know what he was seeing. “Yeah,” he said doubtfully.
“They’re new bees, just hatched. They’re moving up and down and sideways in a kind of dance.”
“Why are they doing it?”
“They’re about to make their first flight out of the hive and they’re memorizing their home.”
“Say again?”
“Every bee returns to their own hive. They memorize what it looks like so they won’t mistakenly try to enter another. That would mean death. To survive, they have to know instinctively where their home is.”
He knew exactly what she was talking about. Coming home again. To Garden Valley.
“Let me tell you about my plan,” he said, taking her hand.
EPILOGUE
“YOU READY?”
Annie pressed her lips together for the third time, patted a few strands of hair in place and stood back from the mirror for one last look. She’d deliberated for hours over what to wear. Nothing too casual, nothing too dressy. In the end, she settled on a cream-colored skirt with a subdued flowered print. It barely reached her knees and flowed smoothly over her hips, flaring slightly at the hem. She matched it with a sleeveless periwinkle blue, scoop-necked cotton top and, at the last minute, added a pair of dangling blue and silver earrings.
She couldn’t recall the last time she’d taken such pains over her appearance. In my other life. The one before I came back home, she thought.
“Annie!”
She poked her head out of her bedroom. “Coming, Dad.” She reached for the small gift-wrapped box on top of the chest of drawers and walked slowly down the stairs. Her stomach was making ominous noises and her underarms felt damp already. She paused outside the kitchen, took a deep breath and walked into the room.
Her father was standing at the door, cane in hand, and wearing what he called his Sunday suit. Annie smiled. The fact that she hadn’t seen him in it since the day he went to Charlotte for his operation suggested there weren’t many Sundays in her father’s week. Certainly not if the day signified one of rest and contemplation. She and Shirley had managed, however, to limit his hours in the barn during the past six weeks since the fire.
Six weeks. So much had happened since that night. Sam was in custody and awaiting trial in Raleigh. Annie had heard that the family’s farm was up for sale and that Sam’s wife and children were living with her parents in Charlotte. She’d met Mike Waters once, in town. He’d summoned a curt hello and passed on by. One more connection to the past cut forever.
“You look beautiful,” her father said, breaking into her thoughts.
“And so do you.”
He colored slightly, muttering a humph, but she knew he was pleased. She’d seen him ironing his shirt that morning and he’d even changed his tie at her subtle hint.
“I think I hear a car coming now,” he said, tilting his head to the side nearest the screen door. “Are you nervous?”
“Scared stiff.”
“Me, too. I’ve never been a grandfather before.”
Annie bit her lip. She’d vowed not to cry. “You’ll be an amazing one.”
“Think so?” His smile vanished for a second. “But I’ll be number three.”
“But the best one,” Annie said. She kissed him on the cheek and took his arm through hers. “Come on, let’s go outside and see if it’s them.”
She didn’t feel the slightest disappointment when Will’s van drove up in front of the barn. So, he’d made it on time. She felt only a rush of gratitude.
He’d been a busy man since th
e fire at Henry’s. He’d rented a trailer, which was parked in Henry’s backyard, and Henry was living in it while Will stayed in the van. But what had astonished and warmed Annie more than anything, was how Will—through Captain Andrews—had gathered together a crew of firefighters from the whole county. They were spending all their free hours rebuilding a home for Henry. It was part of the plan he’d concocted during the long hours waiting for word of Henry’s recovery. There was something else too, he’d hinted, that he was saving for the right time.
She waved as he got out of the van and saw at once that his shopping trip into Essex the other day had been successful. He was wearing tan chinos and a short-sleeved striped cotton shirt. He’d even bought new shoes.
“Isn’t he the dapper one,” Jack remarked.
Annie turned sharply and caught the warm smile in his face. Who was he kidding? Everyone in the valley was already commenting on how much Jack liked the newcomer at the apiary. “You be good,” she whispered, removing his arm from hers so she could greet Will.
Will leaned into the van and came out with a long white box. He carried it awkwardly. “I got some roses,” he said. “The woman in the flower shop said you can never go wrong with roses. Even for a thirteen-year-old.”
Annie stretched to kiss him lightly on the lips. “That was very thoughtful.”
“First impressions are important,” he said.
She recalled what he’d told her after the first time they’d made love. That she was one of the few people he’d met since the accident who had noticed his face first, and the scar last.
“So, is today going to be the right day?” she asked, teasingly, reminding him of their conversation weeks ago. She was aware of her father’s questioning face turned her way, but kept her eyes on Will.
“Oh I think it’s going to be,” he said. “Later. After.”
If eyes could write songs, Annie was thinking, his are sending me a ballad right this moment.
“There they are,” Jack piped up, looking down the driveway.
The three of them watched as a red station wagon drove into the yard. Annie’s stomach lurched, but she knew she was going to be all right. Her two favorite men in the world were beside her.
The Beekeeper's Daughter (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 21
