“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I do.”
He nodded once. “Tomorrow. Seven.” He turned and walked back toward his hives without another word, and I stood in the wreckage of his bee yard with a job I had invented thirty seconds ago and a cover story I was now contractually obligated to maintain.
My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs and walked back to the rental car on legs that didn’t feel entirely reliable, and I did not look back because I was afraid that if I looked at him again I would say something true.
The Juniper cabin was exactly as advertised: one room, a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a porch with a view of nothing in particular. Connie Aldrich at the general store had handed me the key without comment but with both eyebrows fully engaged, and I’d driven the ten minutes from Atlas’s property in a state of shock that had not yet organized itself into a coherent emotion.
I sat on the bed. I called Britt.
“Okay,” I said. “Don’t freak out.”
“You’re in Montana,” Britt said. “I’m already freaking out. Give me the damage.”
“I found him.”
“And?”
“And I tripped over his beehives and crash-landed at his feet and panicked and told him I was a landscape designer and he hired me on the spot.”
Silence.
“Britt?”
“I’m processing. Give me a second.” A pause. “He hired you?”
“He needs pollinator plantings around his hives. I said I could do it. Which I can, that’s the insane part — I can actually do the job I made up as a panic response.”
“What does he look like?”
I pressed my free hand against my stomach. “Britt.”
“I need the full picture. For safety reasons.”
“He’s...” I stared at the cabin ceiling. “He’s six-two. Shoulders that should require a building permit. He was shirtless and holding a bee smoker and he looked at me the way you look at a raccoon.”
The silence this time was different. Longer. More dangerous.
“Flora,” she said, in the voice she used when she was about to say something I didn’t want to hear. “You cannot sleep with your sperm donor.”
“Obviously I’m not going to sleep with my sperm donor.”
“You’re going to.”
“I’m NOT.”
“You’re already in love. I can hear it.”
“I’ve known him for forty minutes. He said about twelve words to me and half of them were ‘don’t move.’”
“And you committed insurance fraud on his bees.”
“That was an accident!”
“Flora. Honey. Sweetheart.” Britt took a breath. “You drove nine hours, stalked a man with binoculars, fell into his workplace, lied about your identity, and accepted a fake job. All in one afternoon. This is not the behavior of a woman who’s going to keep professional boundaries.”
She wasn’t wrong. That was the worst part.
“I’m going home Sunday,” I said.
