gently. We only want the honeycomb and don’t want to disturb the honey.”
“What do you do with all that honeycomb?”
“We sell it, or I use it to feed the bees.”
“Amazing,” I say under my breath, and he reaches for me.
“Come here, give it a try.”
I step back. “I don’t want to ruin anything.”
“You won’t,” he says, like he truly believes in me. But I hesitate, and he reaches for me, refusing to take no for an answer. “Come on. You’ve got this.”
“Okay.” I step up to him, and he hands me the knife. I grip it, and he turns the frame he’d been working on so I can clean the other side. His body presses against mine from behind, and he holds the knife with me. I gently move my hand, and he moves with me, guiding me through the honeycomb. I smile as the comb drops into the bucket. I glance at him over my shoulder.
“Isn’t it amazing?” He smiles as I work the comb from the frame and I get it. I get what he sees in this.
“It is,” I say. “Actually, the whole thing is far more complex than I ever knew. So many moving parts.”
“I read books and periodicals and try to keep up on everything so I can properly manage the colonies. But I really enjoy the process.”
I stare up at him with a new kind of appreciation. This guy knows a lot of things about a lot of things. I nod and wish I could find something I loved this much. “I guess my orchard is pretty important for your bees.”
“Very,” he says, and that’s when understanding hits. He can’t let me screw up and run the business into the ground because he needs my trees. That makes me want to succeed all the more.
“What do they do in the winter?” I ask, a new sort of determination taking up residency in my gut.
“I leave the honey inside for the winter, and they feed off it.”
I finish cleaning the honeycomb and turn to him. “Now what?”
“Now we need to extract the honey.” He finishes cleaning a few more frames, much more quickly this time, and puts them into the big extracting machine. “This controls the speed of the centrifuge,” he explains and turns the machine up to medium. The frames begin to spin, and Jay steps back. It goes for a few minutes, and he switches it off, only to change the direction of the spin.
After a few more minutes, he points to a stack of buckets. “Can you grab me one of those and a strainer?” I do as he asks and he places the bucket, strainer on top, under the nozzle and opens it. Honey pours out. “Isn’t that beautiful?” he says when I gasp at how quickly the bucket is filling.
“It is,” I agree, and he smiles at me.
“I could do this all day. There is something very satisfying in watching this flow.”
My heart misses a beat as I take in the pleasure in his eyes. “I could watch all day, too,” I say, but I might be talking about Jay, rather than the flow of honey. “When do we get to eat it?”
He laughs. “Right. Let’s get out of these clothes and dig into a honeycomb.”
We both remove our big loose suits and hang them up. I follow Jay to the bucket full of honeycomb. He reaches for a piece.
“Wait, is this stealing the honey?” I ask.
“Not really. Bees produce honey all the time.”
“Okay, good.”
He hands me a piece and takes one for himself. “Would you have refused it if I said yes?”
We walk out into the sunshine, and I chuckle as I taste the sweet honeycomb. “Probably not,” I say, and catching us by surprise Cluck comes racing around the corner crowing and chasing something.
“What the—” I stumble backward, my arms flailing.
“Whoa,” Jay says and catches me.
Cluck disappears, and I take a quick breath. “He scared me half to death. What is his problem?”
“He has many, but right now you’re the one with a big problem. A big sticky problem.”
“What—” I ask, but my words die an abrupt death when I touch my hair and realize exactly what he’s talking about.
Chapter Fourteen
Jay
“Pass the gravy, Aly,” Tyler says as he taps his hand on the table, his head bobbing to some imaginary beat. He’s taken to calling our new neighbor—even though she might be a little more than that to me—Aly, like she’s one of the family. She’s been here