The Burgh and the Bees

I'm living proof you can't fix a broken heart with a hammer. After losing my dad, I inherited his construction business alongside a heap of trouble. Enter Eden Storm: a bee-charming beauty who's got me questioning my mistakes and pleading for a second chance. 

I met her at rock bottom and I really can't afford to get stung with my business teetering on the edge right now. Eden's life is no garden, either, with a swarm of sisters and her own business on the rocks. She doesn't need to renovate me, too. Can I construct a happy ending for us, or will my past mistakes come back to sting us both? 

The Burgh and the Bees is book two of the Planted and Plowed series of romantic comedies starring the Storm sisters. Love blooms reluctantly and stems get spliced in these steamy books full of small-town swoon in a big-city setting.

EDEN

I need to ignore the screaming. I have to find my zen, or these bees are going to really start stinging, and the last thing I want is more bees getting hurt. 

I pull my veil from my bag and slide it over my head. There goes the easy breathing, but hey, that’s the price I pay for what I do. The bride isn’t the only one wearing a veil at this wedding. A smile touches the corners of my mouth as I march toward the swarm in the church garden. 

I set down the modified cardboard box I brought with me, hoping it’s large enough to transport the little critters out of this inhospitable environment. 

A child runs past me, swatting and screaming, and I want to glare at their mother, but it’s more important I find the queen and get this colony to safety. 

I pat my pocket to make sure I have my queen clip. I stoop to gather my box, and I make my way toward the picnic table where the shrieking pastor told me a colony of bees have taken up temporary residence. When it’s time to make babies, some bees leave their hives, and well, sometimes they get a little lost. I can relate. 

“Hey, friends,” I whisper, crouching beside the table to study the situation. I want to get a sense of how long the bees have been here, if the queen started laying eggs or building honeycomb yet.

People have mostly stopped screaming, but the garden vibrates with nervous energy. A man’s voice drifts through my bubble of concentration. “Shouldn’t you be blowing smoke at them? Shouldn’t she have smoke?”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, turning my head toward the voice. “Please stay back while I’m working with the bees. I need to find the queen so I can get you all to your party.”

The murmurs of human voices blend with the buzz of the bees’ wings, and I get myself in the zone. “Let’s try that again, gals. I’m Eden Storm. I’m going to take care of you, okay?” I tilt my head, searching. The bees have not yet formed any significant comb in the wooden table. They’ve only been here a few hours. I reach toward a busy cluster of bees, guessing the queen is in here, surrounded by her hardworking attendants. What a life. 

“Eh, not really,” I say out loud. The queen would have had to destroy her sisters to take the throne, and since my sisters are my whole world… I can’t even think about it. 

“There you are!” I whisper-shout to the group of bees, reaching into my pocket for the clip. If I can get the queen into my temporary hive, the rest of the bees will follow. Except maybe the drones. They’re busy finding other queens to boink and keep the species going. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I whisper as a teenage girl wails about spraying and getting rid of them with poison. The queen nestles into the clip and pride swells in my chest. “There you go, girl,” I say, placing the clip on a mended wooden frame, securing it with a rubber band. Not a minute later, the colony jets to their new home. A few stragglers buzz around completely lost, so I give them a little help, scooping them up and directing them to their leader. “I got you,” I tell a particularly stubborn group, catching the last bit and settling them inside the box. I make sure they’re all at ease, wiggling in content, before placing the lid over the frames. My knees creak as I rise from my crouch, and my gaze darks around to make sure I didn’t miss any of the cute little workers. When the only buzz left in the air is from the box, I remove my veil and take a much-needed breath of warm summer air.

I turn to the new sound of all the wedding guests applauding, pumping their fists. A few partygoers hold bags of ice to sting wounds. I refrain from telling them a bit of baking soda is most likely all they need. They seem happy now that the bees are contained, and I always like it when people are happy.

I turn to the pastor. “I’ll send you an invoice Monday morning. I’ll give these gals a few minutes to load the whole colony into the box, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

Blinking, mouth moving open and shut, the pastor eventually finds his voice. “That was amazing, young lady.”

“Oh, I’m not that young,” I blurt. I’m not terribly old at twenty-five, but my sisters and I basically raised ourselves, and I’ve had adult responsibilities for a long, long time. 

Plus, it wasn’t that amazing. I do this every day.

The bride rushes forward and throws her arms around me. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she says, punctuating each phrase with a pumping squeeze. She is not a bride who worries about her gown getting dirty. I’m sort of glad I didn’t put on my white beekeeping suit today. I would never want to upstage a bride at her own wedding. The veil was enough.

I wiggle from her hold with as much grace as I can. “It was my pleasure.” This is true. I find so much joy and peace working with bees. Everything about them fascinates me, and I know it’s a rare thing that they don’t sting or seem to get angry with me the way they do other beekeepers. If I had a mom offering platitudes, she might say I was born to do this. 

Instead, I’ve got sisters, and they joke that I’m a witch, but I know they admire my work. 

I turn to the cardboard bee box. Almost all the bees have moved inside. “Well,” I say to the crowd at large, “I better kick these guys out of your party.” I often feel like I’m on the cusp of leaving a party. This swell of pride from rescuing the wedding reception? It won’t last. When I get home, my sister Eila will still move out, like this colony of bees. And I’ll be left behind.

Someone outside the group of wedding guests catches my attention. A man from the house next door frowns at the scene, muscular arms crossed over his chest, blond hair blowing a bit in the gentle breeze that has thankfully relieved some of the heat. No wonder these bees left their cozy hive to make babies. It’s got to be ninety-five degrees out here. 

But the man…

I know that man. He looks a lot better now than he did the last time I saw him, which is saying something, because he was really freaking fine that night. He squints his blue eyes, like he’s trying to remember who I am. My lips pull downward. I don’t want anything to do with him, thank you very much. I stash my box in the back of my van, opening all the windows in case any of the hive wants to leave. 

“I’m going to turn on the AC for you,” I tell the bees, turning on the engine and pulling onto Chislett Street. I see my one-night-stand-turned-disaster walk back into the house, like he doesn’t know who I am. Whatever.

My eyes flick to the near-empty gas tank. Thank heavens I got this call today. It’s been slow going---making a name for myself here in Pittsburgh. Don’t know how I’m going to make rent now that Eila is moving in with her boyfriend. I park the van and set the new colony as far as I can from my regular hives. They need to hang out for a bit so I can make sure nobody has mites. 

A moment after I stash my gear in the mudroom, my sister thunders down the stairs, holding a lamp and a giant ficus plant. “Hey, you’re back. Did you get cake?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t ask.”

Eila huffs. “They should have offered. It’s like the least they could do when you’re saving their wedding from a swarm of bees.”

“I would have had to stick around until they cut the cake, silly.” I open the fridge and hold myself back from pouring the cold water directly from the pitcher into my mouth. I manage to get it into a glass first and guzzle it down while Eila makes another trip upstairs. 

“Hey,” she says, coming down with another plant under one arm and a dozen pairs of overalls over her other. “Can I borrow the van? Are you done for the day?”

“Yeah,” I say, “but it needs gas.” Her question takes me back to the end of my gig at the wedding reception, where I caught sight of Nate Donovan. The last time I saw him, he asked a similar question. “Are we done here?”

I swallow the ice water and study my sister, who’s been my roommate for the past seven years. I am happy she found love, and I know she’ll be back, because her beloved hops crop is growing on the lot next door. I toss her the keys from my pocket, not sure why all this is so hard. It’s not like my sister is moving to another time zone. I need to figure out how to shake this off and get into my groove.