Atlas was already at the east hive cluster, back to me, pulling frames in the early light. T-shirt today, sleeves straining across his shoulders, and the heat hit me low and immediate. He held a frame up to the sun, careful, steady, those broad fingers turning the comb with a patience that made me think about what else they could do. I was not going to finish that thought because it was seven in the morning and I was a professional.
"Morning," I called, walking toward him with my sketchpad held in front of me.
He glanced over his shoulder. "You're on time."
"I'm always on time."
"You were seven minutes early yesterday."
"And you counted. That's not weird at all."
The corner of his mouth lifted. Not quite a smile. He went back to the frame. I went to work.
The garden design was taking real shape. I'd spent yesterday sketching the full perennial layout: staggered bloom times to close his mid-June forage gap, native plantings to carry his bees from the spring balsamroot through to late-summer aster. Penstemon along the creek bank for the early pollinators, blanketflower and bee balm in the middle band, goldenrod and rabbit brush for the fall. The foundation for an entire portfolio section on rural pollinator habitat. The irony was a knife I kept stepping on: the job was fake but the work was real, the reason was a lie but the results were honest. Each hour I spent making his operation better was another hour I couldn't explain if he ever asked why.
We worked through the morning. Separately, mostly, him with the hives, me with the sketchpad, but the property kept pulling us into the same orbit. I'd check soil drainage near the west cluster and he'd be there, crouching over a frame. I'd squeeze past him on the narrow path between the boxes. His shoulder would brush my hip. My breath would catch. I'd mumble something about root depth without hearing my own voice.
By late afternoon we were walking back toward the cabin together, and I was mid-sentence about the blanketflower placement when he stopped.
Just stopped. In the middle of the path, hands at his sides, looking at me with the expression I was learning to read. The one that meant he'd been chewing on a thought for a while and had arrived at the fewest possible words to say it.
"I haven't paid you," he said.
I blinked. "What?"
"Three days of work. Professional-grade design. I've given you a piece of honeycomb and a trout dinner." His jaw tightened. "That's not right, and I'd like to fix it."
My stomach dropped. Payment meant invoicing. Invoicing meant a business name, a tax ID, a paper trail leading straight back to a woman who'd Googled her sperm donor and driven nine hours to stalk him with binoculars. My cover story had the structural integrity of wet tissue paper, and he was about to poke a finger through it.
"You don't have to pay me," I said, too fast. "I'm — this is a portfolio piece. I've been thinking about expanding into rural pollinator habitat consulting and your property is a perfect case study. The work is its own reward." I heard myself and winced internally. The work is its own reward. I sounded like I was accepting a LinkedIn endorsement.
He studied me. Those brown eyes, steady, unhurried, missing nothing. "You drove nine hours from Portland to do free landscape design on a stranger's mountain."
"I was already in the area."
"For the client."
"For the client. Yes."
"The client you haven't mentioned once since you got here."
My neck went hot. "She's very private."
He was quiet for a beat. Then: "I'm offering to pay you for your work. If you won't take money, I'll find another way. But you're not working for free on my property. The math doesn't sit right."
My throat tightened. He didn't know I was carrying his baby. He didn't know I'd chosen him from a catalogue. He just knew a woman had been working on his land without compensation, and it bothered him. Not because of me. Because of who he was.
I wanted to tell him everything. The words were right there, crowding behind my teeth. Instead I said: "What if we called it a trade?"
He raised an eyebrow. One eyebrow. The left one. It shouldn't have been devastating, but my thighs had opinions.
"I design the garden," I said, "and in exchange you give me access to your operation. I document the full pollination cycle: your bees, my plantings, how they perform together. Varietal samples for client gifts, photos for my portfolio, and you keep feeding me."
"How they perform together," he said.
"Cross-pollination efficiency. Forage uptake metrics." I did not have forage uptake metrics. I did not have anything except a cover story held together with spit and adrenaline. "I'm talking about flowers, Atlas."
He looked at me for a beat. "I know what you're talking about, Flora."
