“Aw, come on. We’ll get ice cream too.”
“Sunny Daes?”
“Whatever you want.”
She brightened. Sunny Daes had sealed the deal. “All right, let me get his leash.”
Glenn took hold of the dog’s collar. “We better hose him down first.”
They rinsed the dog, who shook all over them, but at least was now semi-clean. They got in the truck with Charlie dripping in the back seat, and Glenn leaned over and mussed Lilah’s hair.
“What’s that for?” she said.
“Because I’ve got my daughter with me, and we’re going for Thai food and ice cream. Sounds like a pretty good afternoon to me.”
She rolled her eyes but she was smiling, which he counted as a win.
Chapter Four
The beekeeper drove up in a truck with a girl in the passenger seat and a black dog hanging out the back window. If it weren’t for the name,Marsden Apiaries,Cassie might have assumed he’d blundered up the driveway by mistake. She wondered briefly if he always carted around the whole family, but it didn’t matter. At least he’d come.
He didn’t exit his truck immediately. He stayed put for a minute, talking to the girl, who Cassie assumed was his daughter. Pretty, with white-blond hair, maybe eleven or twelve.
“Don’t know why you had to bring someone out,” her dad groused. He’d been babysitting the bees all afternoon, spraying them with sugar water and moving them into deeper shade when the sun hit the front of the house. “All I need is another hive. I could’ve called a few people. I don’t need this guy telling me how to run my bees.”
“Well he’s here now, so let’s just see what he has to say. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” She gently nudged her father off the porch as the beekeeper got out of his truck.
“Glenn Marsden,” he said, extending a hand. “I guess I talked to you earlier.”
“Thanks so much for coming.” Cassie shook his hand. “This is my father, Stuart Linden.” She’d imagined someone older, a little fusty, with a pot belly, who puttered around the yard puffing smoke and whispering to the bees.
Glenn Marsden was not the least bit fusty. He appeared about her age, maybe a few years younger. And fit. Like he worked outside for a living, which come to think of it, he did. Although beekeeping didn’t seem rigorous enough to look the way he did. Then again, hefting all those hives was hard work. He was good-looking in an unselfconscious way. Jeans and work boots, hair that might once have been light like his daughter’s but was starting to gray. She was used to Phil and the lawyers she worked with, pasty all of them, with bellies gone soft from too many lunches out. Glenn Marsden didn’t look like he had much use for fancy lunches. He probably grabbed a sandwich on the run.
“We’ve been—” she began, but he stepped past her to squat next to the box of bees.
“How long have they been here?”
“Oh, a couple of hours,” her dad said.
“More than a couple,” Cassie put in, vaguely annoyed Marsden had cut her off. If he was one of those men who didn’t listen to women they were going to have problems. “They came this morning, remember Dad?”
Marsden ran a finger along the rim of the box. “You give them any food?”
“Sugar water.” Her dad seemed relieved to recall this.
Marsden got up, frowning. “That’s okay for now, but they need honey. Sugar doesn’t have any nutrients.”
“I know that.” Her dad bridled. “I’ve been keeping bees for years. My daughter, here, she’s the one who got panicky.”
“Didn’t mean to offend,” Marsden said, “but you’d be surprised how many people feed sugar or corn syrup when the honey’s a little light. Not faulting you, a lot of commercial beekeepers do it too.” He cast a glance down the driveway. “I saw your hives on the way in, you’ve got them in a good south-facing spot.”
“Sited them myself,” her dad said, but Cassie could tell he was still ruffled.
“What kind of bees do you keep?”
“Italians.”
Marsden nodded. “They don’t usually give much trouble. Should we take a look, see what’s going on? Then we can figure out where to go from here.” He had a nice respectful tone with her dad, which would go a long way. Still, her father had that stubborn look. This wasn’t his idea, and he was going to fight it.
