Tillie lowered into a rocker with a grunt and readjusted the tortoise shell sunglasses. “I think I’m just going to tell Travis I’m seeing someone.”
“Are you?” Pouring three equal portions of lemonade into the vintage glasses, Nora passed one off to her friend and then reserved another for herself. “Seeing someone, that is?”
“Sure.” Tillie’s shoulders wobbled in an unconvincing shrug. “I see lots of guys. Look.” Her head dipped toward a rickety old Chevy ambling down the gravel road just beyond Nora’s front yard. “I see that guy right now. And there’s another one in the car behind him. I see him too.”
“Not really the same thing.”
“Ah, it’s just semantics.” Tillie chased her words with a long drink capped off with a heavy sigh. “It would be so much easier to avoid Travis if we didn’t work together. Maybe I should look for something else. Find a job that doesn’t require being around him every day.”
“But you love working at Howie’s.” Other than Howie himself, Tillie was the longest employed worker at the local hardware store on Harmony Ridge Row. It had helped that her uncle owned the place and hired her straight out of middle school, but fifteen years at the same company was an impressive tenure anywhere. “That doesn’t feel like a good option.”
“Enough about this whole Travis mess.” Tillie flapped a hand in the air to wave away the unwanted conversation. “What’s new with you? Your bees doing good?”
“They’re great. I should have another harvest of honey in the next month, which is perfect timing since I’ll need to restock my shelf at the Café around then.” Nora rubbed the pad of her thumb along the beads of condensation sweating down the side of the glass. “I’m always so amazed at how things just seem to work out. It’s like those little insects know my whole business plan and do their best to keep things on schedule.”
“I wish I could trade my coworkers for yours.”
“The grass is always greener.”
“Except when it isn’t.”
Tillie nudged the rim of her cup toward the neighboring property just beyond the weathered split-rail fence that separated the parcels. While Miles Callahan, the new owner, spent many evenings last spring portioning off sections for raised garden beds and rose planters, the vast majority of the land remained nothing more than dirt clods and dried up grasses. And the sprawling fixer-upper in the very center persisted in a constant state of disrepair, despite Miles’ claim he had plans to renovate it. She couldn’t really blame him, though. He and his young son had been in Nashville for the last several weeks visiting his sister and her new fiancé, and then they were off to Florida to check out every amusement park possible before the school year started. Weed removal and irrigation repairs likely weren’t even on his radar.
“What’s the latest timeline for that eyesore?” Tillie asked, her mood still undeniably sour.
“I believe Miles has hired a contractor, but that’s all I really know.” Nora’s thoughts shifted from the rundown house to the arrival of their friend coasting her sedan into the empty space next to Tillie’s vintage Volkswagen.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” April apologized as a makeshift greeting before she’d even exited the vehicle. The petite redhead jogged up the porch steps, her blunt bob skimming her jaw, head swiveling as though scolding herself for her tardiness. “I promised I would be on time for once, but I think I just have to accept the fact that I’m perpetually late.” She took the lone glass of lemonade and downed half of it before coming up for air. “It’s something I’m going to work on.”
“There’s no hard and fast timetable for our porch sit-and-sips. Come and go as you please,” Nora assured in an effort to tamp down any guilt before it had the opportunity to fester. She was just thankful to have her best girlfriends by her side, right where they should be.
“What did I miss?” Readjusting her flouncy floral skirt over her knees, April switched her gaze between her two friends.
“Nothing yet.” Tillie pulled her sunglasses from their perch atop her head all the way down to her nose to peer over them solely for dramatic effect. Her focus zeroed in on an unexpected figure ambling up the walkway and she all but fanned herself as she added, “It actually looks like you’re just in time.”
Chapter Two
J.P. Weatherford had turned into a human pincushion. Something had to give.
Sure, he’d experienced jobsite injuries before. A hammered thumb or a sandpapered knuckle. But daily bee stings by the dozens? That was new.
It wasn’t merely the fact that being stung by a bee was downright painful. It was the incessant buzzing that pestered him the most. How could he accurately measure a piece of wood or safely maneuver a band saw when a swarm of bees kept zigzagging about in his periphery?
He wouldn’t say he feared them, but he also couldn’t say he liked them. And hereallydidn’t enjoy plucking stingers out of his skin. Or most recently, his bottom lip. It looked like someone had slugged him right in the kisser, and the sensitive flesh still throbbed each time he opened his mouth to speak.
At first, he thought the bees were just passing through. After all, everything was in bloom at this time of year. Flower fields. Fruit orchards. The entirety of Harmony Ridge was a bee’s pollen-gathering paradise. But a little investigation led him to the source of his stinger woes.
Miss Paisley: the owner of the neighboring property and the hives the wayward honeybees called home.
Originally, J.P. had plans to just leave a nasty-gram in her mailbox. Something to indicate his displeasure over being stung along with a thinly veiled threat using language that included the words “county” and “fine”. But when the final bee got his bottom lip and the last of his patience, he’d snapped.
Muttering all the way to her house as his large strides ate up the earth beneath him, he rehearsed his delivery. Whoever this woman was, she needed to rectify the situation, pronto. J.P. was not about to spend the next six months being harassed by nasty hornets. The hives had to go, and J.P. would make certain it was sooner rather than later.
It took a lot to intimidate the guy. A steeply pitched roof in need of repair? No problem. He could jog across the slope of it without so much as weakened knees. Moldy bathroom? That stuff didn’t scare him.
But a porch filled with three chatty women, each scrutinizing him like he’d dropped out of the sky, had him practically tripping over his big feet.
Last he’d been aware, the owner of the property was an elderly widow, not a striking young woman who couldn’t be a day over thirty. While he didn’t know the names or identities of the group in front of him, something about the woman in the middle led him to believe she was the person he originally came to interrogate. She seemed all too at home on that porch, surveying her unexpected guest, a queen reining down from her haughty throne.
