The Bear and his Honey: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (Honey for the Billionbear Book 3) Read online

  Alan straightened and turned around at the sound. His face was just as handsome as the rest of him. He had bright blue eyes with fine laugh lines around the corners, and tousled brown hair that she very badly wanted to run her hands through. When he smiled, the whole day seemed to shine a little brighter.

  "Hi! You must be Jessica." Alan yanked his work gloves off and extended one strong hand in greeting. "I'm Alan."

  Act normal. Don't embarrass yourself. He's just a guy, she told herself firmly.

  "Hi! Um. Hello! Hey!" she said.

  Oh God.

  "It's nice to meet you," she added awkwardly, taking the offered hand. His grip was firm but gentle, and Jessica could hardly bring herself to let go again.

  "Sorry for the, um…" Alan trailed off with a vague gesture toward himself, presumably apologizing for his general state of shirtlessness. Jessica's eyes helplessly followed the gesture down to his muscular chest. "I wasn't expecting you until the evening. It got pretty hot out here."

  You can say that again, Jessica thought, guiltily yanking her eyes away.

  "You've got a bit of a Bishop's weed infestation going on here, so I've been digging that up," Alan said. "You know how it is, if you don't get it out with all the roots, it'll be back within a week."

  Jessica, who'd never taken care of anything bigger than a flowerpot in her life, didn't actually know how it was, but she nodded anyway. The little pile of roots and leaves beside Alan looked exactly like all the other green leafy stuff in the flowerbeds, some of which presumably belonged there. She was so out of her depth out here. It was going to end up being pretty damn obvious very quickly, so she might as well own up to it.

  "I'm not much of a gardener," she said. "I grew up in New York City, so. I think we had some basil in a pot on the window sill once. It, um, died pretty quickly, though."

  "Oh, there's nothing to it, really," Alan said easily. "I'll show you around, you'll pick it up in no time flat."

  Something nearby was making a high, squeaky sound. Some kind of bird, maybe? Jessica looked around, trying to find the source of the sound. Whatever it was, it definitely wanted attention. The sound got louder. Meep! Meep!

  Alan looked around. "Seriously?" he said. He bent down and fished something small and fuzzy out of the towel-filled basket sitting next to him. Meep!, it said.

  A kitten, Jessica realized. A tiny little calico. It looked vanishingly small in the palm of Alan's large hand.

  Alan looked down at it dubiously. "You can't possibly be hungry again already."

  "Meep!" the kitten insisted, showing two rows of tiny white teeth and a bright pink tongue.

  Alan reached out to stroke its fluffy head. It caught his finger in its paws and promptly tried to stuff it into its mouth.

  Alan laughed. "All right, you win, I guess you really are hungry. That's Squeak," he added to Jessica. "Her mom had seven kittens and she was the runt of the litter, so the others weren't really letting her get enough to drink. I started hand feeding her instead. And now she's trying to eat me out of house and home. Here," he said, holding her out to Jessica. "Do you mind holding her for a couple minutes while I get some milk for her?"

  Jessica gingerly accepted the tiny kitten, who gave a plaintive squeak at the transfer but then promptly curled up in the palms of her hands and started batting at her fingers. Her paws looked soft and pink and somehow unfinished.

  Jessica sat down on a bench beside the house, the kitten in her lap. She carefully petted her fluffy stomach with one finger. Squeak started purring like an engine, a big loud sound all out of proportion to the tiny body it was coming from.

  When Alan came back out five minutes later he'd put on a shirt, much to Jessica's secret disappointment. His face and hair were a little damp, as if he'd hastily scrubbed up in the sink. Jessica forced her eyes away, looking down at Squeak, who was living up to her name and squeaking energetically, nuzzling at her blouse as if hoping to find some hidden source of milk.

  "She's so cute," Jessica said.

  Alan grinned. "Isn't she? Here, do you want to feed her?" He handed her a small pipette full of milk.

  Squeak was clearly already used to getting fed this way, and immediately started sucking at the tip of the pipette with enthusiasm, tiny paws kneading energetically at Jessica's hand.

  Jessica's chest clenched, looking down at the tiny kitten in her lap. When was the last time she'd gotten to take care of someone? With her life she couldn't have a pet, never mind a baby. She knew that, she'd accepted that years ago. So why did it suddenly feel like there was a great gaping hole in her life?

  It's just hormones, she told herself sternly. Kittens and babies, they were designed to make you feel all motherly, with the big pleading eyes and all that. It was just evolution playing tricks on her. She could have a baby in a few years, when she'd made partner. Right now she was perfectly happy with her job and her life. She had everything she really needed. She just needed to keep reminding herself of that.

  Squeak fell asleep the instant she was done eating, curling up into a tiny ball on Jessica's lap, nose tucked beneath her tail.

  "You can put her back in her basket, she's gonna be out for at least an hour now," Alan said. "How about I show you around while we've got the chance?"

  "I should maybe get changed," Jessica said, looking down at her pant suit. She'd discovered while packing that she had hardly any vacation-suitable clothing left. Most of what she had was suits for work or the yoga pants and sweaters she put on before collapsing onto her couch in the evenings. The few remaining t-shirts and pairs of jeans she owned had hardly filled half of one very small suitcase.

  She got changed in Sally's bedroom, and then met Alan in the kitchen. The cottage hadn't changed very much since the last time Jessica had been here. The rooms still had the same warm, cozy charm she'd remembered.

  Jessica's apartment was essentially a shoebox that had come fully furnished with a bunch of generic Ikea furniture. She ran her fingers wistfully over the shimmering surface of the grand old oak table in the kitchen, following the lines of the intricate grain. What must it be like to live in a place like this, where every piece of furniture had been chosen with care and love?

  After a quick tour of the house Alan took her out to the beehives.

  "I'm not sure if Sally warned you—there's hardly been any honey harvested yet for the year, so there's quite a bit of work to do," he said. "On the other hand, while, okay, it's the most work-intensive part of beekeeping, it's also by far the most satisfying part. And I figure if we take care of two hives per day, we can get through all of them pretty easily before you have to leave."

  "Thank you so much!" Jessica said. "Seriously, I don't know what I'd do without you. I don't have the faintest clue where to start with any of this. It sounds like kind of a lot of work, though—don't you have your hands full with your own farm? Sally said you have a whole bunch of animals you've rescued?"

  "I've always got a few people helping out around the place," Alan said. "I have to leave on business for the company occasionally, and sometimes on short notice. They can handle the farm without my help for a few days. And I don't mind helping out with this. It's gonna be fun. I used to have a couple hives over at my farm. I had to give them up when we had a busy year at the company, and I still kind of miss them."

  He gestured towards the various hives spread around the garden. "This place is really amazing! I've been buying honey from your aunt for years, but I had no idea she had such a nice experimental set-up. She's got a whole bunch of different hive types. She's even got a few of those new flow hives around, which is going to be nice, they're a lot less work-intensive to harvest."

  He showed her how to put on the protective clothes: a bulky white jumpsuit, gloves, and a big hat with netting all around her face. Jessica put it all on over her own clothes, and then looked down at herself, feeling more than a little silly. The shapeless, baggy jumpsuit wasn't exactly doing her already rounded figure any favors. But Alan di
dn't seem to have noticed how silly she looked.

  "Shouldn't you be standing back a little?" Jessica asked when they approached the first hive. Alan was wearing nothing but a pair of jeans and a thin shirt, no protection at all from the bees.

  "Oh, the bees won't sting you if you know what you're doing," Alan said. "Don't even think of trying that yourself, though," he added. "It's not a trick for beginners. If you upset them by accident, it gets really unpleasant really quickly. Just remember you're well-protected, okay?"

  Alan put his hand lightly on her shoulder as Jessica edged closer towards the hive. His steady touch and his presence did make her feel a lot better as the first bees started buzzing around her, bumping into the nets protecting her face.

  "This is a Langstroth hive," Alan said, showing her what looked like a bunch of big white boxes all stacked on top of each other. He explained how it all fit together: the brood box where the bees tended their queen and their young, and the frames in the boxes above that, where they built their honeycombs. They were designed to be easy to remove without disturbing the bees too much.

  "This is pretty much the most common hive design there is—it's convenient, it works really well, and it's pretty standardized, so it's easy to get new parts if you break something. The major downside is, the top boxes get pretty heavy once they fill up with honeycomb, so there's some heavy lifting involved every time you want to check on the hive."

  He showed her how to waft smoke towards the bees to calm them, and then lifted out the first of the frames. "I'll hold it, you brush the bees off." He nodded towards the big soft brush they'd brought along. "You're okay. Don't be nervous. You just gotta be gentle and patient with them."

  She tentatively reached out with the brush. It was actually a little hard to stay calm and patient when her hands wanted to twitch with nerves, right in the middle of the big buzzing swarm of bees. But the bees lifted off peacefully enough with every stroke of the brush.

  Jessica leaned in curiously to look at the frame once it was cleared, fascinated by the perfect geometry of the comb. Every one of the cells was filled to the brim with honey and covered with a little cap of wax. "This is really amazing," she said. "I mean, they're just insects, but—look at it! It's so perfect and even. I couldn't make something like that if I tried."

  Alan smiled at her, his eyes softening. "They are pretty amazing, aren't they. You want to try taking out the next frame?"

  Jessica managed to wrangle out one of the surprisingly heavy frames without dropping it, and even held it up unflinchingly when Alan started brushing the bees off and they came flying towards her in a dense cloud.

  Then Alan showed her to the workshop and taught her how to carefully cut off the wax caps and put the frames into the spinner to extract the honey. Jessica licked her honey-sticky fingers, tugged her hat off, and swiped the hair back from her sweat-damp face with the side of her arm. "This is pretty hard work!" she said with a laugh.

  It was fun, though. Alan had been right, it was deeply satisfying to watch the big jar below the spinner fill up with dripping golden honey.

  "Ready for another one?" Alan asked.

  "Hell yes!" She jammed her hat back on. Alan's fingers brushed the nape of her neck as he fixed a gap in the netting. The touch chased a happy little shiver down her spine.

  Don't be silly. He's helping you out because he's a nice guy, not because he's into you. You're wearing a jumpsuit that makes you look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, for God's sake, she told herself.

  "Let's try one of the flow hives next. I know how they're supposed to work, but I've never actually owned one," Alan said.

  He showed her a hive that looked like a tiny wooden house. There was a panel on the side that revealed a big glass window that let them look into the hive, bees working busily below it. Alan fastened a spigot to an attachment in the side, placed a jar below it, and then turned a big key on the side of the hive. Honey started dripping out into the jar. "All right. That'll take probably half an hour to fill up, let's give it some time."

  "Wait, that's it? You just turn a key and honey comes out?" Jessica asked, frowning. After the sweaty work of extracting honey from the Langstroth hive that seemed almost too convenient to be true. "Why does anyone ever use anything else?"

  Alan laughed. "Oh God, that's actually quite a thorny debate in the beekeeping world right now. They're pretty expensive, for one thing."

  He gestured towards the window that showed the inside of the hive. "It's a really clever invention. There's pre-built combs in there, so the bees put their wax on top of the structure that's already there, and then you can shift the cells around by turning the keys and create a channel for the honey to flow out."

  He caught a drop of honey on his finger and licked it off. Jessica's eyes caught on his lips. God, she wanted to kiss him.

  "It's a lot less work, and you don't have to open up the whole hive and make all the bees nervous to harvest the honey. On the other hand, it means you have a comb made of plastic, which actually isn't great for the bees—Uh, stop me if I'm boring you," he added quickly. "Sorry, I could talk about this all day, but I know most people don't care about beekeeping stuff this much."

  "No, keep talking! This is interesting," Jessica said. She'd never cared about bees before, but Alan's genuine enthusiasm for the topic was contagious. Or maybe it was just the appeal of listening to his deep, rumbling voice.

  "All right," Alan said with a smile. "So, part of the way bees communicate involves vibrations. A comb made of wax will transmit those vibrations through the hive. Plastic can't do that. No one knows for sure how much of a disruption that actually is for the hive, so for now, this is kind of an experimental design. You wouldn't believe how vicious some people get about arguing one side or the other, though."

  "Oh, I really would," Jessica said. She spent her life surrounded by people who made it their life's work to argue over minor points of law. She was pretty familiar with how intense discussions could get when the people involved were really passionate about their topic. One of her law school acquaintances had once punched a guy in the face over an obscure bylaw in the New York urban development research corporation act.

  "We've still got maybe an hour of sunlight left. Want to do another one?" Alan asked.

  "Bring it on!"

  "All right! Let's show you a nice low-tech design for a change. Coming up next: top bar hive." He bent down to pick up a glass jar. His t-shirt slipped up, giving her a tantalizing glimpse of the rippling muscles of his back.

  ***

  The sun was hanging low in the sky by the time they'd sealed the last jar of honey and finished cleaning up the workshop.

  Jessica's stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn't eaten anything all day. "Sorry," she said, blushing.

  Alan laughed. "No, I agree, I'm hungry myself."

  "I should really offer you something to eat after everything you've done today," Jessica said. "I didn't really think about stopping at the shop on the way out here, though… I don't suppose anyone delivers pizza this far out in the country?"

  In fact, she was beginning to realize she had no idea where her own dinner was going to come from. That had been really bad planning on her part, but she'd had her mind on her work till the last second, and then she'd been so focused on getting here…

  Stupid. She should at least have picked up a sandwich at the airport.

  "I've put a couple staples in the fridge for you," Alan said. "I figured you wouldn't have time to shop on the way, and city people always forget how far we are from the nearest shop out here. Your aunt's got that nice big barbecue on the porch. How about we throw some steaks on the grill?"

  Her stomach gave another embarrassing gurgle at the idea. But Jessica hadn't operated a barbecue in her entire life. Robert, her stepfather, sometimes held a barbecue at his place out in the country, but he and his friends considered themselves great barbecue masters and tended to get offended at the idea of letting women near the grill.


  "I'd love to, but I don't really know what I'm doing," Jessica said.

  "I'll show you. Nothing to it, really," Alan said, as casually as he'd offered to show her how to take care of the bees. As if there wasn't any shame in not knowing something. Which of course there wasn't, Jessica reminded herself. That little nagging voice inside her head every time she didn't know how to do something perfectly on the first try, that was her mother's voice, not her own.

  Alan showed her how to light the barbecue, which really wasn't the mystical trick Robert had always made it out to be, and then let her cut the vegetables while he seasoned the steaks. It was fun working side by side with him. Somehow they managed to move smoothly around each other despite the small size of Sally's cozy little kitchen, as if she'd developed some sort of sixth sense of where Alan was. A few times he handed her a knife or the roll of kitchen towels just when she was thinking of reaching for them.

  Sometime she thought she caught him looking at her from the corner of his eyes, but every time she turned to him, he quickly looked back down at the steaks. Probably checking that she wasn't messing up the cooking, but not wanting to make her self-conscious, she figured. Even if she couldn't help but wish that he was looking at her for other reasons…

  ***

  Alan had never been so glad for the poker face his work had forced him to develop. It took everything he had to keep himself from smiling every time he looked at Jessica. Part of him was still caught in the moment he'd turned around and seen her for the first time, her full lips twitching into a tentative smile, the sun glowing warmly on her honey-golden hair. His breath had caught in his chest.

  She was… beautiful didn't do it justice, really. Yes, she was gorgeous, with lush curves that filled out her blouse in all the right places. But that wasn't what kept him unable to look away. She seemed to almost glow with life, and her blue eyes were bright with intelligence. Deep inside Alan, the bear was sitting up and taking notice.

  Her. It's her. She's our mate.