In this sweet and sexy small town romance from the author of Birding with Benefits, a type-A beekeeper and a former bad boy join forces to plan a summertime Honey Festival.
Like the bees she keeps, Penny Becker lives by a golden rule: never stop working. That mantra kept Becker Farms running when her grandfather, dad, and ex all left for greener pastures. But after taking out a loan for an expansion plan that crashed and burned, Penny has to find a way to pay or risk losing it all, and she’s betting everything on the Sullivan’s Glen Honey Festival. To save the farm, she has to make the festival bigger, better, and more successful than ever before—and she plans to do it all on her own.
Reformed bad boy turned restaurateur Zander Bouras left Sullivan’s Glen in a blaze of glory and vowed to never return. But when his ex-wife wants to go back for the summer, Zander grudgingly follows. He refuses to miss time with his son, and figures it’s finally time to deal with the farmhouse his grandfather left, for some reason, to him.
His first day in town brings Zander face to face with Penny, the girl whose perfect life mocked him from next door. It’s just his luck that his son loves her and her bees, and before he knows it he’s been volunteered to help plan a honey festival with the sexy, stubborn beekeeper whose braid he just wants to tug. As they learn to work together, Zander faces his demons and learns to see Sullivan’s Glen in a new light as Penny realizes that accepting help isn’t so bad—especially from the right person. But as the festival day and Zander’s departure draw near, they’ll have to decide if the romance buzzing between them can last past the sweet days of summer. Citește tot Restrânge
Sarah T. Dubb is a writer, public librarian, parent, and activist living the dream with chickens and desert tortoises in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona. She is the author of Birding with Benefits. Visit her at SarahTDubb.com.
Extras
Chapter 1CHAPTER 1 For Penny Becker, nothing beat standing in gauzy late spring sunlight with bees in her hands.
“All right, ladies. Let’s see how everybody’s doing, shall we?”
Birdsong trilled from the thin forest bordering the bee yard as broad leaves of nearby sugar maples rattled in the wind, flashing pale undersides like butterfly wings.
She held the frame at eye level to watch hundreds of honeybees teem across the wax comb, earning their reputation as some of nature’s busiest creatures. Wax-capped cells of honey bulged at the edges, so full that Penny’s thumb, clumsy in thick gloves, dented a small section in the corner and smeared honey and wax along the wood. Four workers hurried to the scene of the crime, cleaning up the honey to move to new cells.
Penny scanned the frame before flipping it to inspect the other side, where more bees scurried across stores of rich honey glowing in the streaks of sunlight. Her gaze slowed, picking out the various jobs at play on the comb at once—some workers drew out more wax as foragers deposited nectar into waiting cells as their sisters fanned open deposits of nectar, working the muscles of their tiny wings to evaporate the liquid’s moisture.
Penny was eight years old when she first joined her grandmother for hive inspections in the orchard, and fourteen when she claimed this spot in the woods at the edge of their property as her very own. Now, all these years later, it took just a glance at each frame to make sure that the queen was laying eggs as her daughters kept up with their tasks, to see the health of the colony alive between her hands.
But Penny still always lingered, watching honey glow under the sun as the busy movement of bees settled something inside her. Like Penny, the bees knew the most useful ways to be of service to the creatures around them. They knew, too, that slowing down too much led to waste—or, worse, destruction.
And even though she played her own role for the hive—protecting the bees from predators, checking them for disease and other risks—they didn’t need her. If Penny never came back to this bee yard again, they’d still collect nectar as everything bloomed, then slow themselves down and let their numbers drop before closing in for the long New York winter, when they would take turns vibrating their tiny bodies to keep the hive warm as they ate through their honey stores until the cycle started again.
Penny worked in the bee yard to create scenarios that would result in extra honey for her to sell. The bees themselves would be just fine without her.
And they didn’t care if she broke even that month or if she worked overtime to fit more farmer’s markets into each week. They didn’t shower her with new ideas when she struggled with the basics, didn’t tell her to relax when there were endless chores to be done. They just went on with their perfectly ordered lives, and let Penny do her best to do the same.
“I haven’t seen you all suited up for inspections in ages. Bees giving you trouble?”
Ruth Becker, in her daily uniform of worn jeans and a Becker Farms T-shirt, stood watching at the edge of the clearing. Her mom reminded Penny of the trees in their orchard—beautiful in their usefulness, coming into their truest form over time. Penny shared most of her features with her mother and grandmother: they all had stout, strong bodies, pudgy noses dusted with freckles in the summer, and wide smiles that dug laugh lines into their faces. They’d also shared the same hair, the gold of midsummer apple blossom honey, though Penny was the only one still holding on to that color now.
Only Penny’s eyes set her apart: a shining blue that everyone noticed.
Blue, she assumed, like her father’s.
The Beckers: three generations of women with dirt under their nails, famous in their tiny corner of the world for living off the land, talking to bees, and scaring off every man within a hundred miles.
First, Penny’s grandfather, who’d come to the area talking big about starting a new life, only to panic and flee the first hard winter, leaving his wife with a growing belly and a life to recover.
Then Penny’s father, who left just after hearing the news of Penny’s conception.
And finally Henry, who’d stayed long enough to help Penny build her cottage at the edge of the Becker property, who’d been all in on Penny’s dream of running Becker Farms side by side. Until it was obvious he’d never stick around long enough to see any of it come to pass.
It wasn’t for everyone, but Penny loved living in Sullivan’s Glen, nestled amid the wooded rolling hills of upstate New York. Her small town had everything a person could need branching off its two-lane road, and they were close enough to the tourist-rich Finger Lakes to keep Penny’s market tables busy, but far enough that the town wasn’t overrun in the summer.
And she knew her role there, just like each worker bee scurrying over the comb knew theirs.
She lowered the frame carefully back into the hive, nestling it among the others as she shrugged under the weight of her full bee suit.
“Pe-nny!” her mom singsonged. “You with me? What has you all dressed up today?”
“Just in a weird mood.” Penny replaced the lid on the hive. Her bees had docile genetics, and on a usual day she’d inspect the frames with only a veil. But she’d been on edge this morning so she’d suited up.
Penny’s mom ran a hand through her gray pixie cut as she stepped fully into Penny’s bee yard, where two dozen hive boxes dotted the clearing. Behind her, a trail formed by Penny’s own feet over the years wound through the trees to their family home. Between the hives, bunches of baneberry and wild garlic bloomed in white bursts, all covered in the buzz of bees.
Ruth chuckled, shaking her head. “You and your mimi, so superstitious.”
Penny’s grandmother believed the bees could sense her moods. Ruth called the assertion “pure bullshit.”
“Anything specific causing the mood?”
Penny shrugged. “PMS probably.”
The fib came easily enough. Penny had a lifetime of practice.
Her mom had tons of love to give but wasn’t one to often indulge bad moods or pessimistic thoughts. Ruth Becker preferred shiny new ideas, trusting the universe, and stockpiling gossip. And when Penny was a girl, she’d seen how running an orchard, managing a business, and raising a child strained her mom and grandma, who had no one around to help but themselves. So early on, she’d learned an important lesson from the bees: be useful and take care of yourself.
And for years, that’s exactly what she did. Until Henry had a big idea, and Penny went all in. And now a letter was spread on the table back in her small cabin at the edge of their property—a letter giving Penny two more months before her loan was in default.
The loan that held Becker Farms as collateral.
Her problem was way bigger than PMS.
The groundwork was laid five years before, just before Penny’s thirtieth birthday. After losing a close friend to a stroke, Mimi’d become obsessed with planning for her own passing.
“What if I die tomorrow?” she’d asked one morning in the kitchen. “Or if I decide to run off and join the circus before it’s too late? I want everything to be in order.”
Part of getting things in order was deeding ownership of Becker Farms to Penny.
It was just a formality, until Henry had an idea that required a lot of capital. Capital Penny accessed as the sole owner of Becker Farms, without telling her family.
Capital she couldn’t pay back now.
She cleared her throat and threw a weak smile at her mom. “What are you doing out here?”
“Just felt like coming out for a walk,” her mother answered. “Realized I haven’t come over here for a while, thought I’d check up on you. Lord knows I need a break from your mimi talking my ear off at home. And also, Pen, I was thinking—”
“Mom, I can’t right now.” Penny busied herself at the hive box. Her mom was always thinking. Thinking about the next project that sounded like fun, thinking about chasing the next new trend, like the thousands of Becker Farms stickers in the warehouse, cute little things with bees buzzing around—but not even a URL or phone number on them to bring in sales. When Penny was younger and eager to please, she followed each of her mom’s ideas like a puppy dog. Now, they were just more red lines on the budget Penny had to manage.
When Ruth’s eyes narrowed, Penny adjusted her tone. “Sorry, not feeling great today. But the frames are heavy. This week I’ll pull some out and spin them.”
“Can you handle it on your own?” Her mom plucked a bloom from the wild garlic. “Mimi has a pinochle date and I thought I might join.”
“Of course.” Penny preferred working alone so she wasn’t stuck cleaning up someone’s mess later. Even bringing on RJ as orchard manager had taken some convincing, despite the fact that he’d grown up carousing with Penny in the orchard rows and knew the place as well as she did.
Ruth nodded to the stand of oaks blocking the view to the neighboring property. “I may have something to distract you from the PMS. Word is somebody’s staying at the Bouras house.”
“What?” Penny’s narrowed gaze shot to the trees. She couldn’t see the old farmhouse from here, but it was just beyond the copse of elms and sugar maples, its blue siding faded by the sun. The place had been empty since Mr. Bouras passed away a year before, though the grass had grown long around the house years before that.
The fate of the Bouras house was a common topic for the town gossips. Mr. Bouras had a daughter, but she’d been notoriously absent since leaving Sullivan’s Glen young and pregnant before Penny was born. Who owned the house now was anyone’s guess—and people were definitely guessing.
For the last year, Penny’d held her breath over the property’s fate. What if it landed in the hands of a developer who parceled the land, or a farmer intent on putting in yet another twenty acres of corn that would come with gallons of chemicals?
Because as sure as she could always count on her bees to be busy, Penny had no hope of determining where they went every day. Whatever happened on the Bouras land would end up back in her hives with her bees, and a heavy dose of pesticides could mean an end to entire colonies.
As if she wasn’t already balanced on a thin enough tightrope.
“Debbie has a theory about who it is,” her mother teased, yanking Penny from her thoughts.
“Of course she does.” As the owner of the hair salon that boasted Sullivan’s oldest—and therefore nosiest—clientele, Debbie was a regular font of gossip.
Ruth lowered her voice, like the bees might carry away her prime intel. “Debbie said that Felicia told her that when Gary was coming home from his hike yesterday, he went past the mailbox at the end of the drive and saw a man checking the mailbox. He was tall, with big shoulders, and dark hair.”
Penny’s mind filled in the rest: and an annoying smirk like he was the hottest shit within five hundred miles, like everything and everyone in Sullivan’s Glen was beneath him.
Impossible.
“He wouldn’t be back. He hated this place.” And had made sure everyone within hearing distance knew it.
“Sometimes places call us back.” Ruth sighed and looked meaningfully at the hives, where forager bees crowded the bottom boards of each box, all called home by the pheromones of their queen.
“Zander Bouras is not a bee, Mom. And this will never be home for him.” Even saying his name made Penny want to roll her eyes.
Ruth sighed. “I suppose we’ll see. Could make for an interesting summer.”
Which would be great for the town gossip mill. But the last thing Penny needed was an interesting summer. She needed a profitable summer, a farm-saving summer. It would require an abundant honey harvest, a great U-pick season in their small but mighty vegetable patch, and some better-than-average sales at every farmer’s market stand Penny could manage.
But most of all, Penny needed her Hail Mary, the Honey Festival. The event was a mainstay for Sullivan’s Glen, a daylong event that Penny poured her heart, and finances, into each year. Becker Farms nearly always broke even, but that wouldn’t do this year. This year, she needed more. Enough to get the lender off her back and forestall foreclosure.
It had to be the biggest festival yet. Which meant Penny had no time to speculate over some brooding bad boy who used to spend summers next door.
“Let me know when you’ve got more reliable intel.” Penny turned to the next hive box. “Until then, I’ve got work to do.”
Ruth chuckled and turned on her heels to leave the clearing.
“You always do, Penny. You always do.”
Recenzii
“Plenty of steamy scenes… Dubb, a public librarian, has also done her bee and beekeeping research, further helping to transport readers to summer life on this small-town farm. Recommended for romance readers who enjoy cozy, small-town stories and self-aware characters.” “Endearing… The diverse supporting cast adds to the appeal… It’s honey-sweet.”
Descriere
The author of Birding with Benefits returns with a romance perfect for fans of Christina Lauren and Kate Clayborn!In this small town, enemies-to-lovers romance, a type-A beekeeper and a recovered (?) bad boy band together to plan their hometown's annual Honey Festival.
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