She fluttered her right hand back down past his eye and along his cheekbone, and when she couldn’t delay the moment of truth a moment longer quickly traced her middle finger across his ‘I’m told I have kissable’ lips.

They parted just slightly before she could leave them, and breath heated her finger-pads for half a heartbeat.

‘So there you go,’ Elliott rumbled, then cleared his throat. ‘Now you’ve really seen me. You know how I sound, how I smell and how I feel. That’s pretty much all your available senses taken care of.’

‘Well,’ she began, ‘I haven’t—’

Stop!

‘You haven’t what?’

His voice, his breath, seemed impossibly closer, yet he hadn’t moved the rest of his body one inch.

‘Nothing. Never mind.’

‘Were you going to say tasted?’

‘No.’ The denial sounded false even to her.

‘Really?’ His soft voice was full of a smile. ‘Because it sounded like you were.’

‘No. That would be an inappropriate comment to make in the workplace.’

‘I agree,’ Elliott murmured. ‘Then again, that ship sailed when I asked you to touch my face, so what else do I have to lose?’

His lips—the ones she’d gone to so much trouble to avoid touching—pressed lightly onto Laney’s, half open, soft and damp and warm, before moulding more snugly against her. Sealing up the gaps.

Elliott Garvey was kissing her.

Awakened

By His Touch

Nikki Logan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves.

Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

For Jackie—protector of all creatures great and small. (No bees were harmed during the making of this book)

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE

ELLIOTT GARVEY LEANED on the bleached timber boardwalk like a seasoned stalker, watching the woman frolicking with her dog where the coastal rock slid down into the aquamarine ocean.

It didn’t matter that this lookout and the long, sandy path leading to it were public, the map in his hands and the occasional sign wired to the fence lining the gravel track in this remote, picturesque spot reminded him very clearly that the property all around him was upper-case P private. So, technically, was the beach below. In fact, it barely qualified as a beach since—private or not—it was only about twenty metres long. More a cove, really, eroded out of the hard rock either side of it, protected and quiet.

Back home they’d have turned this into a boat-launching area, for sure. It was perfect for it.

Then again, back home they wouldn’t have had anything even remotely like this. Where he was from, further north up the coast, the ruling landform was sand, not the stunning limestone rock forms of the Morgan property. The lookout under his feet ‘looked out’ over the cove about twenty metres away, as it happened, but its intended view was the spectacular Australian coastline beyond it. Rugged and raw and beaten to death by pounding seas in the off season.

But today the sea was flat and gentle.

His eyes dropped again.

Judging by the very determined way the woman was not looking up at him, she was either trying very hard to pretend he wasn’t there, spoiling her serenity, or she wasn’t supposed to be there. A tourist, maybe? That would explain the long cotton dress that she’d hiked up her bare legs instead of the swimsuit a local would have turned up in. And clearly this was a tourist who liked to travel with her dog. The soggy golden retriever bounded around her, barking and celebrating life in a shower of droplets, and the size of the lead bundled in the woman’s right hand suggested her dog was a handful most of the time. But right now it just circled her excitedly as she danced.

Danced? More flowed, really. She practically ebbed in time with the soft waves washing onto the beach and retreating again, her feet lightly skipping in the wet sand. The wet bottom of her long summer dress wanted to cling to her legs, but she kept it hiked up, out of the way, as she splashed in and out of the water with her movements. Dipping and twisting and undulating her whole body to music he couldn’t hear.

Out of nowhere, a memory surged into his crowded mind. Of him and his mother, the only trip they’d ever taken away from the city when he was about eight. He’d hung his lean little body half out of the open window of the car she’d borrowed from a friend, overwhelmed to be doing something as exciting as leaving the city, hand-surfing on the wind that whipped past. Riding the current, rising and dipping on it with both hands. Dreaming of the places it would take him if only he were light enough to catch its updraft.

Just as that woman was dancing. There was no wind to speak of down below in the protected little cove, but that didn’t seem to cause her the slightest trouble as she moved on air currents no one else could feel. Not him. Not the still coastal wildflowers lining the tiny sandy strip. Not the barely interrupted surface of the water.

Just her, her dog and whatever the heck drugs she must be on to put her in such a sublimely happy place.

Elliott used his camera lens to get a surreptitious look at her while pretending to photograph the bigger view. Her long hair was as wet and stringy as the golden retriever’s, and not all that different in colour, and the water from it soaked anywhere it touched: the fabric of her strappy dress where it criss-crossed her breasts like a bikini top, the golden stretch of her bare shoulders, her collarbones. It whipped and snapped as she circled in the retreating water, her head tipped back to worship the sun, staring right up into it for a moment.

He adjusted the lens just slightly.

The paleness of her skin and the liberal dusting of freckles across it fitted perfectly with the strawberry blonde hair. Maybe if she did this less often out in the harsh Western Australian sun she’d have fewer marks on her skin. But then, maybe if she did this less often she wouldn’t have that smile on her face, either. Blazing and almost too wide for the pointed shape of her jaw.

He lowered the lens and stepped back, conscious, suddenly, of his intrusion into her private moment. As he did so, the weathered timber under his left foot creaked audibly and the retriever’s sharp ears didn’t miss it. Its sandy snout pointed up in his direction immediately, joyous barking suspended, and it crossed straight to the woman’s side. She stopped and bent to place her free hand reassuringly on the dog’s shoulder but—luckily for Elliott—she didn’t follow the direction of its intent stare.

Not waiting to be busted, he retreated down the lookout steps and along the path to the gravel track where his luxury car waited. The only car here, he suddenly realised.

Ah, well, if Little Miss Lives-Life-on-the-Edge liked to take that skin outside at noon, trespass on private property and stare directly into the sun, then she was probably illegally camped around here somewhere, too.

Either way...? Officially none of his business. He was here to talk the Morgans into taking their company global. Not to police their perimeter security for them.

He had one more shot at this. One more chance to eclipse bloody Tony Newton and his questionable success and get the vacant partnership. Being good—or even great—at your job was no longer enough. He needed to be astounding at what he did in order to win his spot on the partners’ board and cement his future. And Morgan’s was the brand to do it. Newton was too busy schmoozing his cashed-up tech and dot-com clients to notice what was right under all their noses—that Morgan’s was about so much more than honey. Whether the board realised it or not.

And if they didn’t...?

That was okay. That was what they had him for.

* * *

‘What is a “realiser” exactly, Mr Garvey?’ Ellen Morgan asked him politely an hour later, studying his slick business card.

Falling straight into his corporate patter was second nature. ‘Realisers are charged with the responsibility of identifying clients with potential and then helping them realise that potential.’

‘That’s a strange sort of job, I’d have thought,’ announced Robert Morgan as he marched into the living room with two cups of coffee to match the one his wife already cradled and handed one to Elliott.

‘It’s a speciality role. A different focus to my colleagues’.’

Ellen didn’t quite bristle, but offence tickled at the edges of her words. ‘You believe we have unrealised potential here, Mr Garvey? We consider ourselves quite innovative for our industry.’

‘Please, call me Elliott,’ he repeated, despite knowing it was probably pointless. He wasn’t in with them yet. ‘You absolutely are innovative. You dominate the local market and you’re top three nationally—’ if they weren’t a company like Ashmore Coolidge wouldn’t touch them ‘—and yet there’s always room for growth.’

And profit. And acclaim. Particularly acclaim.

‘We’re honey farmers, Mr Garvey. One of a multitude in the international marketplace. I’m not sure there’s room for us overseas.’

As if that was all they were, and as if their operations weren’t perched on one of the most stunning and sought-after peninsulas on Western Australia’s ten-thousand-kilometre coastline.

But it wasn’t the local market that interested him. ‘My job is to help you make room.’

‘By nudging someone else out?’ Ellen frowned.

‘By being competitive. And ethical. And visible.’ Currently they were only a twofer.

‘You think the enormous sun on our packaging fails to stand out on the shelf?’

The new voice was soft, probing, and very much rhetorical... And coming from the doorway.

Elliott turned as Helena Morgan walked into the room. Ellen and Robert’s daughter and reputedly the talent behind Morgan’s ten-year surge to the top—

His eyes dropped to the sandy, damp golden retriever that galloped in behind her.

—and also the woman from the beach.

Of course she was.

All the rapport he’d built with the parents since arriving suddenly trembled on whether or not Helena Morgan realised he was the one who had been watching her with her wet dress clinging to her body earlier.

If she did he was dead in the water.

But she didn’t comment, and she didn’t even glance at him as she crossed into the kitchen, trailing elegant fingertips along the benchtop until she reached the extra coffee mug Robert Morgan had left out. For her, presumably. As tactics went, her dismissal was pretty effective.

‘I’m not talking about shelf presence,’ Elliott said in his best boardroom voice, eager to take back some control. ‘I’m talking about market presence.’

‘Wilbur!’ Ellen Morgan scolded the dog, who had shoved his soggy face between her and her coffee for a pat. He wagged an unremorseful tail. ‘Honestly, Laney...’

The woman made a noise halfway between a whistle and a squeak and the dog abandoned its efforts for affection and shot around the sofa and into the kitchen to stand respectfully beside Helena.

Laney.

The nickname suited her. Still feminine, but somehow...earthier.

‘Our customers know exactly where to find us,’ Laney defended from the kitchen.

‘Do new ones?’

She paused—the reboiled kettle in one hand and two fingers of the other hooked over her coffee cup edge—and looked towards him. ‘You don’t think we do well enough on the ones we have?’

One Morgan parent watched her; the other watched him. And he suddenly got the feeling he was being tested. As if everything hinged on how he managed this interaction.

‘All markets change eventually,’ he risked.

‘And we’ll change with it.’

She poured without taking her eyes off him, and his chest tightened just a hint as steam from the boiling water shimmied up past her vulnerable fingers. That was a fast track to the emergency room. But it certainly got his attention.

As it was supposed to.

‘But we’ve never been greedy, Mr Garvey. I see no reason to start being so now.’

Her use of his name gave him the opening he needed as she walked back into the living room with her fresh coffee. ‘You have the advantage of me.’

Half challenge, half criticism. And formal, but not out of place; she had a very...regal...air about her. The deliberate way she moved. The way she regarded him but didn’t quite deign to meet his eyes.

‘Apologies, Mr Garvey,’ Robert interjected, ‘this is our daughter and head apiarist Helena. Laney, this is Mr Elliott Garvey of Ashmore Coolidge.’

She stretched her free hand forward, but not far enough for him to reach easily. Making him come to her. Definite princess move. Then again, the Morgans did hold all the power here. For now. It was a shame he had no choice but to take the two steps needed to close his hand over her small one. And a shame his curiosity wouldn’t let him not. Maybe her skin wasn’t as soft as it looked.

Though it turned out it was. His fingers slid over the undulating pads of hers until their palms pressed warmly and his skin fairly pulsed at the contact.

‘A financier?’ she said, holding his hand longer than was appropriate.

‘A realiser,’ he defended, uncharacteristically sensitive to the difference all of a sudden.

And then—finally—she made formal eye contact. As if his tone had got him some kind of password access. Because he was taller than her—even with those legs that had seemed to go on for ever down at the beach—her looking up at him from closer quarters lifted her thick lashes and gave him a much better look at deep grey irises surrounded by whites of a clarity he never saw in the city.

Or in the mirror.

Healthy, fresh-air-raised eyes. And really very beautiful. Yet still not quite...there. As if her mind was elsewhere.

Some crazy part of him resented not being worthy of her full attention when this meeting and what might come out of it meant so much to him. Perhaps cautious uninterest was a power mechanism on the Morgan property.

Effective.

‘I studied the proposal you emailed,’ she said, stepping back and running the hand that had just held his through her dog’s wet coat, as if she was wiping him off.

‘And?’

‘And it was...very interesting.’

‘But you aren’t very interested?’ he guessed aloud.

Her smile, when it came, changed her face. And instantly she was that girl down by the beach again. Dancing in the surf. The mouth that was a hint too big for her face meant her smile was like the Cheshire Cat’s. Broad and intriguing. Totally honest. Yet hiding everything.

‘It sounds terrible when you say it like that.’

‘Is there another way to say no?’

‘Dozens.’ She laughed. ‘Or don’t you hear it very often?’

Her parents exchanged a momentary glance. Not of concern at their daughter’s bluntness, rather more...speculative. She ignored them entirely.

‘I’d like to learn more about your new processes,’ he risked, appealing to her vanity since their new processes were her new processes. ‘And perhaps go further into what I have in mind.’

She dismissed it out of hand. ‘We don’t do tours.’

‘You’ll barely notice me. I’m particularly good at the chameleon thing—’

Two tiny lines appeared between brows a slightly lighter colour than her still damp hair and he realised that wasn’t the way in either.

‘And your Ashmore Coolidge health-check is due soon anyway. Two birds, one stone.’

That, finally, had an impact. So Laney Morgan was efficient, if nothing else. His firm required biennial business health-checks on their clients to make sure everything was solid. By contract.

‘How long? An hour?’ she asked.

His snort surprised her.

‘A day, at least. Possibly two.’

‘We’re to put you up on no notice?’

Who knew a pair of tight lips could say so much?

‘No. I’ll get a room in town...’

‘You will not,’ Ellen piped up. ‘You can have a chalet.’

He and Laney both snapped their faces towards her at the same time.

‘Mum...’

‘You have accommodation?’ That wasn’t in their file.

Ellen laughed. ‘Nothing flash—just a couple of guest dwellings up in the winter paddock.’

That was the best opening he was going to get. Staying on the property, staying close, was the fastest way to their compliance he could think of. ‘If you’re sure?’

‘Mum!’

Laney’s face gave nothing away but her voice was loaded with meaning. Too late. The offer was made. A couple of days might be all he needed to get to know all of the Morgan clan and influence their feelings about taking their operation global.

‘Thank you, Ellen, that’s very generous.’

Her face gave nothing away, but Helena’s displeasure radiated from the more subtle tells in her body—her posture, the acute angle of her neck, as if someone was running fingernails down a chalkboard on some frequency the rest of them couldn’t hear. Except her dog couldn’t hear it either—he’d flopped down behind the sofa, fast asleep.

‘Laney, will you show Elliott up to the end chalet, please?’

That sweet, motherly voice wasn’t without its own strength and it brooked no argument.

When Laney straightened she was back to avoiding eye contact again. She smiled with as few muscles as possible, the subtext flashing in neon.

‘Sure.’

She made the squeak noise again and her dog leapt to attention. She turned, trailed her hand along the back of the sofa and then around the next one, and reached for the cluster of leather he’d seen in her hand down at the beach from where it now hung over the back of a dining chair. As she bent and fitted it around the crazy, tearaway dog it totally changed demeanour; became attentive and professional. Then she stood and held the handle loosely in her left hand.

And everything fell into place.

The death-defying coffee pour. The standoffish outstretched hand. The lack of hard eye contact.

Laney Morgan wasn’t a princess or judgmental—at least she wasn’t only those things.

Laney Morgan—whom he’d seen dancing so joyously on the beach, who had taken a family honey business and built it into one of the most successful in the country, and who had just served him his own genitals on a plate—couldn’t see.

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU’RE BLIND,’ ELLIOTT GARVEY murmured from Laney’s right, the moment they were outside.

‘You’re staring.’

‘I wasn’t,’ he defended after a brief pause, his voice saturated with unease.

‘I could feel it.’ And then, at the subtle catch in his breath. ‘Practically feel it, Mr Garvey. Not literally.’ Though he certainly wouldn’t be the first to expect her to have some kind of vision-impaired ESP.

He cleared his throat. ‘You hide it well.’

Wilbur protested her sudden halt with a huff of doggie breath.

‘I don’t hide it at all.’

‘Right, no...sorry. Poor choice of words.’

Confusion pumped from him and she got the sense that he was a man who very rarely let himself get flustered. It was tempting to play him, just a little, but her mother had raised her never to exploit the discomfiture of others. Because if she expected to be taken at face value how could she do less for anyone else?

Even intruding corporate types from the city.

She adjusted her trajectory at Wilbur’s slight left tug and passed through the first gate beside her dog. ‘I’ve had twenty-five years to perfect things, Mr Garvey. Plus the direction of your breathing gave you away.’

‘Elliott.’

Then he fell silent again and she wondered if he was looking around at their farm...or at her still? Scrutiny never had sat lightly on her.

‘He’s very focussed. Wilbur, was it?’

Okay, neither of the above. He’d managed to zero in on her favourite talking point.

‘Captain Furry-Pants to his friends.’ She smiled. ‘When the harness is on, he’s on. When it comes off he’s just a regular dog. Making up for lost time by being extra goofy. Getting it out of his system.’

They walked on to the steady reassurance of the sound of gravel crunching under eight feet.

‘Your property is beautiful. This peninsula is extraordinary.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Have you ever lived anywhere else?’

‘Why would I? It’s perfect here. The wildlife. The space.’

His lagging steps pulled him further behind. ‘The beaches...’

There was more than just tension in his voice. There was apology in the way he cleared his throat.She quarter-turned her head back towards him as she continued onward and the penny dropped.

Wilbur’s quiet growls down by the water... ‘That was you?’

‘I was using the lookout. I didn’t realise it overlooked a private beach. I’m sorry.’

Had he watched her wading? Dancing? It took a lot to make her feel vulnerable these days. Not that she was going to let him know that.

She tossed her hair back. ‘You got a first-hand demonstration of Wilbur in off-harness mode, then.’

His crunching footsteps resumed. ‘Yeah, he was having a ball.’

‘He loves to swim.’

Awesome—she was like a radio stuck on Channel Wilbur. Time for some effort. ‘So you must have drawn the short straw, being sent by your firm so far from the city?’

‘Not at all. I chose to come. Morgan’s isn’t on anyone else’s radar.’

That got her attention. ‘You make it sound like a competition.’

‘It is. It’s the best part of the job. Finding raw talent, developing it.’

Realising it. She stepped with Wilbur around an obstacle and then smelled it as she passed. A cowpat. Behind her, Garvey grunted. Presumably, he hadn’t been so lucky. She didn’t stop and he caught up straight away.

‘Did you miss it?’

‘Just.’

He didn’t sound irked. If anything, that was amusement warming his voice. Her lips twisted. ‘Sorry, we have a couple of milk cows that free range.’

Silence reigned for the next minute or two and, again, she had to assume he was looking around at the farm, its outbuildings and condition. Critically? Morgan’s had modern facilities to go with its spectacular coastal location but being judged had never sat comfortably on her. The smell of tiny wildflowers kicked up from underfoot.

‘So if it’s a competitive process, and we’re not on anyone else’s radar, does that mean no one else at your firm believes we have potential?’

He took his time answering. Something she appreciated. He wasn’t a man to rush to fill a silence.

‘It means they lack vision. And they’re not paying attention.’

Okay, for a city boy he definitely had a great voice. Intelligent and measured and just the right amount of gravel. It was only when she gave him another mental tick that she realised she’d started a list.

‘But you are?’

‘I’ve been tracking your progress a long time—’ His voice shifted upwards a semi-tone. ‘Are those tyres?’

The rapid subject-change threw her, but he had to mean the chalets that they were approaching.

‘Dad had one of his recycling frenzies a couple of years ago and made a couple up for family and friends—’ and inconvenient visitors from the city ‘—when they visit. Tyres and rammed earth on the outside but pretty flash on the inside. Bed, open fire and privacy.’ For them as much as their guests. ‘And what I’m reliably informed are some pretty spectacular ocean views.’

Tension eased out of him on a satisfied sigh. ‘You’re not wrong. One hundred and eighty degrees.’

She stopped at the door to the chalet on the end, used the doorframe to orientate herself and pointed left. ‘Manufacturing is over that way, beach is down that track, and the first of the bee yards is up behind this hill. You should probably take a bit of time to settle in. Can you find your way back to your car for your things?’

Idiot, she chided herself. He could probably see it from here. There was nothing between them and the Morgan’s car park but open paddock. What was wrong with her? Maybe her brain cells were drunk on whatever that was coming off him.

‘Yep. I’m good. Do I need to be somewhere at a particular time?’

‘Are you allergic to bees?’

‘Only one way to find out.’

The man faced life head-on. Her favourite direction. ‘Well, if you feel like living dangerously, come on up the hill in twenty minutes. I’ll be checking the bees.’

Soonest started, soonest done. She turned and thrust the chalet key at him and warm fingers brushed hers as he took it.

‘Do I need protective gear?’ he murmured.

‘Not unless you plan on plunging your hands into the hives. This first community is pretty chill.’ Which wasn’t true of all their bees, but definitely true of her favourites. ‘But maybe wear sunglasses.’

‘Okay. Thanks, Laney.’

His voice lifted with him as he stepped up into the unlocked chalet but there was an unidentifiable something else in his tone. Sorrow? Why would he be sad? He was getting his way. She thought about protesting his presumption in using her nickname but then remembered what he’d probably seen down on the beach. Niceties, after that, seemed rather pointless. Although it did still have the rather useful value of contrasting with her own formality.

‘You’re welcome, Mr Garvey.’

With a flick of her wrist Wilbur full-circled and walked her down the hill and back through the gate, leaving the subtle dismissal lingering in the air behind her. As soon as she turned him left, towards one of the closest bee yards, Wilbur realised where they were going and he lengthened his strides, excited. He loved the beach first and the bees second. Because when she was elbow-deep in bees he was free to romp around the yards as much as he wanted.

Laney was always pleasantly breathless when she crested the hill to the A-series hives, and, as she always did, she stalled at the top and turned to survey the property. The landscape of her imagination. It was branded into her brain in a way that didn’t need the verification of sight—the layout, the view as it had been described to her over the years. Three generations of buildings where all their manufacturing and processing was done, the endless ocean beyond that.

She had no way of knowing how like the real thing her mixed-sense impression of it was, but ultimately it didn’t matter what it really looked like. In her mind it was magnificent. And she had the smells and the sounds and the pristinely fresh air to back it up.

So when Elliott Garvey complimented the Morgan property she knew it was genuine. They’d had enough approaches from city folk wanting to buy in to know that it was one of the better-looking properties in the district. But that was not why her family loved it. At least it wasn’t only why they loved it. They loved it because it was fertile and well-positioned, in a coastal agricultural district, and undulating and overflowing with wildflowers, and because it backed on two sides onto nature reserves packed with Marri and Jarrah trees which meant their bees had a massive foraging range and their honey had a distinctive geo-flavour that was popular with customers.

And because it was home. The most important of all. Where she’d lived since her parents had first brought her home from the hospital, swaddled in a hand-loomed blanket.

That was the potential they all believed in. Regardless of what else Call-Me-Elliott Garvey saw in Morgan’s.

* * *

What was the protocol in this kind of situation? Should he stomp his feet on the thick grassed turf so that she could hear him coming? Cough? Announce himself?

In the end Wilbur took matters into his own paws and came bounding over, collar tags jangling, alerting Helena to Elliott’s presence as effectively as a herald. The dog was mostly dry now, and had traded damp dog smell for fresh grass smell, and he responded immediately to Wilbur’s eager-eyed entreaty with a solid wrestle and coat-rub.

‘Hey, there, Captain Furry-Pants.’ Well, they were kind of friends now, right? And Wilbur’s haunches were particularly furry. ‘Still got energy left?’

‘Boundless,’ Laney said without looking around, her attention very much on what she was doing at one of dozens of belly-height boxes.

She’d thrown a long-sleeved shirt over her summer dress but that was it for the protective wear he’d imagined they would wear on a busy apiary. One for the ‘risks’ column in his report. A handful of bees busied themselves in the air around her but their orbit was relaxed. A steady stream of others took off for the fields behind them and made way for the ones returning.

It was as busy as any of the airports he’d passed through in his time. And there’d been many.

He slid his sunglasses on and felt, again, a pang at Laney’s earlier kindness: a woman who had no use of her eyes taking the trouble to watch out for his.

‘Can I approach?’

‘Sure. Watch your feet in case any bees are on the grass.’

His focus shifted from the airborne bees to the possibility of stealth bees underfoot. There were one or two. ‘Are they sick?’

Her laugh caused a whisper of a ripple in the steady hum coming off the bees. Like a tiny living echo. ‘They’re just resting. Or moisture-seeking.’

‘How do you not step on them?’

‘I slide rather than tread,’ she said, without taking her focus off what she was doing. ‘Kind of a rollerblading motion. It gives them a chance to take off.’

He stepped up closer. ‘You’ve rollerbladed?’

‘Of course.’

As if it was such a given.

‘That’s probably close enough,’ she confirmed as he moved just behind her shoulder. ‘And if I say run, do it. Straight back downhill to the carriage.’

He studied her face for any indication that she was kidding. There was nothing. ‘Is that my safety induction?’

‘Sure is. It’s a fairly simple rule. Don’t touch and don’t stick around if things get active.’

And leave a blind woman undefended while bees swarmed? Not going to happen. But they could argue that out after they were both safe.

Her fingers dusted over the surface of the open hive, over the thronging mass itself, but the bees didn’t seem to mind. Some hunkered down under her touch, others massed onto the back of her hand and crawled off the other side, or just held on for the free ride. None seemed perturbed.

‘What are you doing, exactly?’ he asked.

‘Just checking them.’

‘For...?’

‘For hive beetle.’

‘What’s your process?’

He held his most recent breath. Would she hear the subtext clearly? How can you do that, blind?

But if she did, she let it go with a gracious smile. Just as well, because he had a feeling that a lot of his questions were going to start that way.

‘The bees are kind of...fluid. They move under touch. But the beetles are wedged in hard. A bit like pushing your fingers through barley in search of a pinhead.’

There was a truckload of bees swarming over the hive and Laney’s hands, but something about the totally unconcerned way she interacted with them—and her own sketchy safety gear—gave him the confidence to lean in as she pulled a frame out of several racked in the hive. It was thick with bees and honeycomb and—sure enough—the odd tiny black beetle.

Which she cut mercilessly in half with her thumbnail as her fingers found them.

‘Pest?’

‘Plague.’ She shook her head. ‘But we have it better here on the peninsula. And want to keep it that way.’

Her bare fingers forked methodically through the thick clumps of bees.

‘How are you not a mass of stings?’

‘My fingers are my eyes, so I can’t work with gloves. Besides, this hive isn’t aggressive—they’ll only react to immediate threat.’

‘And your hands aren’t a threat?’

‘I guess not.’

Understandable, perhaps. Her long fingers practically caressed them, en masse, each touch a stroke. It was almost seductive.

Or maybe that was just him. He’d always been turned on by competence.

‘Hear that note?’ She made a sound that was perfectly pitched against the one coming from the bees. ‘That’s Happy Bee sound.’

‘As opposed to...?’

‘Angry Bee sound. We’re Losing Patience sound. We’re Excited sound. They’re very expressive.’

‘You really love them.’

‘I’d hope so. They’re my life’s work.’

Realising was his life’s work, but did he love it? Did his face light up like hers when he talked about his latest conquest? Or did he just value it because he had a talent for it, and he liked being good at things. A lot. Getting from his boss the validation he’d never had as a kid.

Laney gave the bees a farewell puff of smoke from the mini bellows sitting off to one side and then slid the frame back into its housing, her fingertips guiding its way. They spidered across to the middle frame and he grew fixated on their elegant length. Their neat, trim, unvarnished nails.

She lifted another frame. ‘This feels heavy. A good yield.’

It was thick with neatly packed honeycomb, waxed over to seal it all in. He mentioned that.

‘The frames closest to the centre are often the fullest,’ she explained. ‘Because they focus their effort around the brood frame, where the Queen and all her young are.’

It occurred to him that he should probably be taking notes—that was what a professional would have been doing. A professional who wasn’t being dazzled by a pretty woman, that was.

‘Seriously? The most valuable members of the community in one spot, together? That seems like bad planning on their part.’

‘It’s not like a corporation, where the members of the board aren’t allowed to take the same flight.’ She laughed. ‘There’s no safer place than the middle of a heavily fortified hive. Surrounded by your family.’

‘In theory...’

In his world, things hadn’t operated quite that way.

‘If something does happen to the Queen or the young they just work double-time making a new queen or repopulating. Colonies bounce back quickly.’

Not all that different from Ashmore Coolidge. As critical as their senior staff were, if someone defected the company recovered very quickly and all sign of that person sank without a trace. A fact all the staff were graphically reminded of from time to time to keep them in line.

‘So the bees work themselves to death, supporting the royal family?’

‘Supporting their family. They’re all of royal descent.’ She clicked the frame back into position. ‘Isn’t that what we all do, ultimately? Even humans?’

‘Not everyone. I support myself.’

She turned and faced him and he felt as pinned as if she could see him. ‘Are you rich?’

She wasn’t asking to be snoopy, so he couldn’t be offended. ‘I’m comfortable.’

‘Do you keep all the money you make for Ashmore Coolidge?’

No. But she knew that, so he didn’t bother answering.

‘Your firm gets the bulk of the money you generate for them and that goes to...who? The partners?’

In simple terms. ‘They work hard, too.’

‘But they already get a salary, right? So they get their own reward for their work, and also most of yours?’

‘We have shareholders, too.’

Why the hell was he so defensive around her? And about this. Ashmore Coolidge’s corporate structure was the same as every other glass and chrome tower in the city.

‘A bunch of strangers who’ve done none of the work?’ She held up a hand and dozens of bees skittled over it. ‘You’re working yourself into the ground supporting other people’s families, Mr Garvey. How is that smarter than what these guys do?’

He stared at the busy colony in the hive. Utterly lost for words at the simple truth of her observation.

‘Everything they do, they do for the betterment of their own family.’ Her murmurs soothed the insects below her fingers. ‘And their lives may be short, but they’re comfortable. And simply focussed. Every bee has a job, and as long as they fulfil their potential then the hive thrives.’ She stopped and turned to him. ‘They’re realisers—just like you.’

Off in the distance Wilbur lurched from side to side on his back in the long grass, enjoying the king of all butt-scratches. Utterly without dignity, but completely happy. As simple as the world she’d just described.

Elliott frowned. He got a lot of validation from being in Ashmore Coolidge’s top five. Success in their business was measured in dollars, yet he’d never stopped to consider exactly how that money flowed. Always away from him, even if he got to keep a pretty generous part of it. Which was just a clue as to how much more went to their shareholders. Nameless, faceless rich people.

‘I send money to my mother—’

The moment the words were out he wanted to drag them back in, bound and gagged. Could he be any more ridiculous? Laney Morgan wasn’t interested in his dysfunctional family.

He was barely interested in it.

A woman with a Waltons family lifestyle would never understand what it had been like growing up with no money, no prospects and no one to tell him it was perfectly okay to crave more. Leaving him feeling ashamed when he did.

But a smile broke across her face, radiant and golden, and a fist clenched somewhere deep in his chest.

‘That’s a good start. We’ll make a bee of you yet.’

He fell to silence and watched Laney beetle-busting. Fast, methodical. Deadly. Inexplicably, he found it utterly arresting.

‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured eventually.

‘For what?’

‘For generating that silence. I didn’t mean to be dismissive of your work.’

Think fast, Garvey. It’s what you’re paid for. ‘I was thinking about a world in which people only acted for family benefit and whether it could work in real terms.’ Better than admitting he was transfixed by her.

‘You think not?’

‘I question whether that kind of limited focus is sustainable. Outside of an apiary.’

She gave the bees one last puff of smoke and then refitted the lid with her fingers. ‘Limited?’

‘You’ve grown Morgan’s significantly over the past ten years. Why?’

‘To make better use of the winter months. To exploit more of the by-products that were going to waste. To discover more.’

‘Yet you’re not interested in continuing that growth?’

Time he stopped being hypnotised by this woman and her extraordinary talents and got back in the game, here.

Her sigh said she was aware of it too. ‘We don’t need to. We’re doing really well as is.’

‘You’re doing really well for a family of four and a smallish staff.’ Or so the Morgan’s file said. Then again, that same file had totally neglected to mention Laney’s blindness.

‘That’s all we are.’

‘So your growth is limited by your ambition. And your ambition—’ or perhaps lack of it ‘—is determined by your needs.’

Those long fingers that had done such a fine job of soothing the bees fisted down by her sides. ‘Morgan’s would never have come to your attention if we lacked ambition, Mr Garvey.’

Elliott. But he wasn’t going to ask her again. He wasn’t much on begging.

‘Yet it is limited. You’ve expanded as much as you want to.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing. This is our business—surely how hard or otherwise we pursue it is also up to us?’

‘But you have so much more potential.’

‘Why would we fight for a market share we don’t need or want? Surely that’s the very definition of sustainable? Not just taking for taking’s sake.’

He stared. She was as alien to him as her bees. ‘It’s not taking, Laney, it’s earning.’

‘I earn the good sleep I have every night. I earn the pleasure my job brings to me and to the people we work with. I earn the feeling of the sun on my face and the little surge of endorphins that hearing Happy Bees gives me. I am already quite rewarded enough for my work.’

‘But you could have so much more.’

Her shoulders rose and fell a few times in silence. ‘You mean I could be so much more?’

It was the frostiest she’d been with him since walking into the living room earlier. ‘Look, you are extraordinary. What you’ve achieved in the past decade despite your—’

She lifted one eyebrow.

Crap.

‘Disability? It’s okay to say it.’

Which meant it absolutely wasn’t.

‘Despite the added complexities of your vision loss,’ he amended carefully. ‘I can only imagine what you’d be capable of on the world stage with Ashmore Coolidge’s resources behind you.’

‘I have no interest in being on stage, Mr Garvey. I like my life exactly as it is.’

‘That’s because you have no experience outside of it.’

‘So I lack ambition and now I’m also naïve? Is this how you generally win clients over to your point of view?’

‘Okay. I’m getting off track. What I’m asking for is an open mind. Let me discover all the aspects of your business and pitch you some of the ideas I have for its growth. Let’s at least hash it out so that we can both say that we’ve listened.’

‘And you think one overnight stay and a tour of our operation is going to achieve that?’

‘No, I absolutely don’t. This is going to be a work in progress. I’d like to make multiple visits and do some more research in between. I’d like the opportunity to change your mind.’

She shrugged, but a hint of colour flamed up around the collar of her shirt. Had the thought of him returning angered her or—his stomach tightened a hint—had it interested her?

‘It’s your time to waste.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘It’s not my decision to make. I’ll talk to my parents tonight. We’ll let you know tomorrow.’

CHAPTER THREE

WHY WAS IT that everyone thought they knew what she wanted better than she did?

Bad enough fielding her mother’s constant thoughts on why she should get out more and meet people and her father’s endless determination that not a single opportunity in life be denied her. Only her brother treated her with the loving disdain of someone you’d shared a womb with.

Now even total strangers were offering their heavily loaded opinions.

She’d met Elliott Garvey’s type before. Motivated by money. She couldn’t quite bring herself to suggest it was greed, because she’d seen no evidence of excess on his part, but then again she’d only known him for an hour or two.

Though it definitely felt longer.

Particularly the time out by the hives. She’d been distracted the whole time, feeling his heat reaching out to her, deciding he was standing too close to both her and the hives but then having his voice position proving her wrong. Unless he occupied more space than the average person? Maybe he was a large man?

He hadn’t sounded particularly puffed after his hike up the hill. Or while they’d power-walked to the carriage. There was no way of knowing without touching him. Or asking outright.

Excuse me, Mr Garvey, are you overweight?

He’d been just as direct with her, asking about her vision, so maybe he was the kind of man you could ask that of? Except she wasn’t the kind of woman who could ever ask it. Not without it sounding—and feeling—judgemental. And, as a lifelong recipient of the judgement of others, she was the last person to intentionally do it to another.

Nope. Elliott Garvey was a puzzle she would have to piece together incrementally. Subtly, or her mother would start pressing the paper for wedding invitations. But she couldn’t take too long or he’d be gone back to his corporate world, because she felt certain that her father wouldn’t agree to a series of visits. He’d only agreed to this one to be compliant with their financial management requirements.

Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t enjoy the next twenty-four hours. As much as she hated to admit it, he smelled really good. Most men in their district let the surf provide their hygiene and they either wore Eau de Farm or they bathed in fifty-per-cent-off cologne before driving into town to try and pick up. Elliott Garvey just had a tangy hint of...something...coming off him. And he was smart, too, which made his deep tones all the easier to listen to. Nothing worse than a phone sex voice on a man who had nothing of interest to say.

Not that she necessarily agreed with what he had to say, but he was astute and respectful, and he’d been about as tactful questioning her about her sight as anyone she’d ever met. Those first awkward moments notwithstanding.

‘So you’d be happy to show him around, Laney?’ her father repeated as they laid the table in their timber and glass home for dinner that evening.

Spending a bit more time in Elliott Garvey’s company wasn’t going to be an excruciating hardship. He was offering her his commercial expertise for free and she’d be happy to see the Morgan’s range reflected through the filter of that expertise. Maybe there’d be a quiet thing or two she could implement here on the farm. Without taking them global. There was still plenty of scope for improvement without worrying about world domination.

And then there was the whole enjoying the sound and smell of him...

‘Sure.’

She reached over one of the timber chairs and flattened her palm on the table, then placed the fork at her thumb and the knife at her widespread little finger. ‘It’s only one more day.’

‘Actually, I was thinking of agreeing to his request,’ her father said.

The chair-leg grunted on the timber floor as she stumbled against it. ‘To let him come back again?’

‘I’d like to hear the man out.’

‘Surely it couldn’t take more than a day to give him a courtesy listen?’

‘Not if he’s to see the full range of our operations first hand. Too much of it is seasonal.’

Spring and summer were all about honey-harvesting, but the remaining six months of the year they concentrated on other areas of their operation. They lived and worked through winter on the back of the honey harvest. Just like the bees did.

‘How many times?’

‘That’s up to him,’ her father suggested. ‘It’s business as usual for us.’

‘Easy for you to say—you’re not tasked with babysitting.’

‘You’re the best one to talk turkey with the man, Laney. Most of what we now do are your initiatives.’

‘They’re our initiatives, Dad. The whole family discussed and agreed.’

Well, she’d discussed and her parents had agreed. Owen had just shrugged.

‘But you created them.’

‘Someone else created them. I just suggested we adopt them.’

‘Stop playing down your strengths,’ he grumbled. As usual.

‘Would you rather I took credit for the work of others?’ she battled. As usual.

Frustration oozed from his tone. ‘I’d rather you took some credit for yourself from time to time. Who knows? If you impress him enough there might be a job in it for you.’

‘I have a job here.’

‘A better job.’

The presumption that her job wasn’t already about the best occupation a person could hope for really rankled. ‘Why would they hire me, Dad? Not a lot of call for apiarists in the city.’

‘Why wouldn’t they hire you? You’re as smart and capable as anyone else. More so.’

‘How about because I know nothing about their industry?’

‘He’s trained to recognise raw talent. He’d be crazy not to take you on.’

Laney got the tiniest thrill at the thought of being taken on in any way by Elliott Garvey, but she fought it. ‘You don’t just hire someone because they seem generally capable, Dad.’

‘You’re as worthy as anyone of your chance.’

Dread pooled thick and low. Oh, here we go... ‘Dad, promise me you won’t do the whole Laney-sell job.’

As he was so very wont to do. Over and over during her childhood, much to her dismay. But the thought of him humiliating her like that with Elliott Garvey... Ugh.

‘I’ll promise no such thing. I’m proud of my daughter and her achievements and not too shy to admit it.’

‘He’s here to study our operations, not—’

‘I liked him,’ her mother piped up, apropos of pretty much nothing, as she placed a heavy dish on the table with a punctuating clunk. Chicken stew, from the delicious aroma. All organic, like the rest of their farm. ‘He’s handsome.’

Her father grunted. ‘Don’t change the subject, Ellen.’

‘You think everyone’s handsome, Mum.’ Laney lowered her voice instinctively as she and her father helped ferry clean plates to the table, even though she’d heard Elliott Garvey’s expensive tyres on the driveway gravel about twenty minutes earlier. ‘Besides, what do looks have to do with a person’s integrity or goodness?’

‘I can’t comment on those until I’ve shared a meal with the man. So can we please just do that before setting our minds in any particular direction?’

‘You’ll have to invite him first, and he goes home tomorrow afternoon.’ So there went the dinner plan. Conveniently.

‘I have invited him. That’s his setting you just laid.’

She straightened immediately. No. She’d only set the table for the usual four. ‘Where’s Owen?’

‘Chasing some surfer tourist,’ his father muttered.

At twenty-five she might still be a work in progress, but her twin had pretty much stopped emotional development at eighteen. Whatever was Owen’s perpetual outlook. If he was around to give one and not off surfing the latest hot break.

‘He’s taking her for a pizza, Robert. He had his Saturday night shirt on.’

Oh, well...look out, Surfer Girl, then. If her brother had bothered with a clean shirt he was definitely on the make. Girls and surfing were about the only things Owen took seriously.

‘And you didn’t think to just let us enjoy a quiet dinner without him?’ Laney muttered.

‘Elliott has nothing in that chalet, Helena.’

Uh-oh— Helena. Reason had always been her friend in the face of mother voice. ‘The chalets are practically five-star, and I’m sure he has a full wallet.’ And an expense account. ‘He could have easily taken himself for a restaurant meal.’

‘When we can offer a home-cooked one instead?’

‘He went out anyway. He might as well have eaten in Mitchell’s Cliff.’ In fact she’d been sure that was what he was doing as the crunch of his tyres on the driveway had diminished.

‘I’m less concerned with what he does than with what we do. Extending Morgan courtesy to our guest.’

Laney opened her mouth to protest further but then snapped it shut again as feet sounded on the mat outside. An uncontrollable dismay that she hadn’t so much as combed her windswept hair washed over her.

But too late now.

‘He’s coming,’ her father announced moments later.

Elliott had clearly paused in the doorway and was greeting a dozing Wilbur, which meant his disturbed man scent had time to waft ahead. Wow, he smelled amazing. The same base tones as before, yet different somehow. Spicier. Cleaner.

Tastier.

Heat burbled up under her shirt at the thought, but it was true. Whatever he was wearing was tickling the same senses as the stew still simmering in its own heat on the table.

‘Thank you for the invitation, Mr and Mrs Morgan—’

‘Ellen and Robert, please, Elliott.’

He stepped up right next to her. ‘I nicked out to pick this up. Couldn’t come empty-handed.’

Another waft of deliciousness hit her as a bottle clacked against the timber at the centre of the big table.

‘Oh, lovely. That’s a terrific local winery—Helena’s favourite.’

‘Really? I didn’t know.’

His voice was one-tenth croak, subtle enough that maybe she only heard it because he was standing so close. But he wasn’t looking at her, she could tell. Plus, she wouldn’t be looking at him if their situations were reversed. On pain of death.

Her mother laughed. ‘How could you know?’

Was he worried that she might read something into that? Laney spoke immediately to put the ridiculous idea out of the question. ‘You’re either a man of excellent taste or Natty Marshall did a real sell-job on you at the cellar.’

‘She was pretty slick,’ he admitted.

‘Sit down, Elliott.’ Her mother mothered. ‘You look very nice.’

The reassuring way she volunteered that opinion made Laney wonder whether he was worrying at the edges of his shirt or something.

‘He’s changed into a light blue Saturday night shirt, Laney.’

Oh, no...

‘Mum likes to scene-set for me,’ she explained, mortified, and then mumbled, ‘sorry.’

‘Blue shirt, jeans, and I combed my hair,’ he added, amusement rich in his low voice.

Was that a statement about her wild locks? Her hand went immediately to them.

Her mother continued to be oblivious. ‘Sit, too, Laney.’

She did, moving to the left of her chair just as he moved to the right of his. They collided in the middle. She jerked back, scalded.

‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘Ladies first.’

‘We’ll be standing all night if we wait for one of those,’ she quipped, still recovering from the jolt of whatever the heck that was coming off him, and then she slid into her seat, buying a moment of recovery time as he moved in next to her.

So that was her question answered. She’d felt the strength of his torso against hers. He was solid, but definitely not overweight. Not as youthfully hard as her twin, but not soft either. Just right.

Which pretty much made her Goldilocks, snuggling down into the sensation.

The necessity to converse was forestalled by the business of filling plates with stew and side plates with thickly sliced bread and butter.

‘Home-made bread?’ Elliott asked. Such a charmer. So incredibly transparent.

‘Organically grown and milled locally and fresh out of my oven.’

‘It’s still warm.’

The reverence in his voice surprised a chuckle out of Laney. ‘Are ovens not hot in the city?’

An awkward silence fell over the whole table. She didn’t need to see her mother’s face to know it would be laden with disapproval.

But chivalry was clearly alive and well. ‘Bread starts out hot, yes,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s not usually hot by the time it gets to the consumer. This is my first truly home-made loaf.’

The fact that he needed to compensate for her bluntness at all made her twitchy. And just a little bit ashamed. Plus it made her wonder what kind of city upbringing he’d had never to have had fresh-baked bread before. ‘Well, wait until you taste the butter, then. Mum churns it herself.’

And bless her if her mother didn’t join her daughter in the age-old act of making good. ‘Well, I push the button on the machine and then refrigerate the results.’

‘You guys seem pretty self-sufficient here...’

And off they went. Comfortably reclining in a topic she knew her parents could talk about underwater—organic farming and self-sustainability. Long enough to give her time to compose herself against the heat still coming off the man to her left as they all tucked into the chicken.

Okay, so he was a radiator. She could live with that. And enough of a city boy to never have had home-baked bread. That just meant they came from different worlds. Different upbringings. She’d met people from outside of the Leeuwin Peninsula before. There was no reason to be wound up quite this tight.

She slid her hand along the tablecloth until her fingertips felt the ring of cool that was the base of the glass of wine her father had poured from the bottle Elliott had contributed. She took a healthy swallow and sighed inwardly at the kiss of gentle Merlot against her tongue.

‘Still as good as you remember?’ Elliott murmured near her left ear. Swirling more man scent her way.

Okay, this was getting ridiculous. Time to focus. ‘Always. We have hives at their vineyard. I like to think that’s why it’s so good.’

‘This wine was fertilised by Morgan’s bees?’

‘Well, no.’ Much as she’d love to say it had been. ‘Grape pollen is wind-borne. But we provide the bees to fertilise their off-season cropping. So the bees help create the soil that make their wines so great.’

‘Do they pay?’

Back to money. Sigh. ‘No. They get a higher grape yield and we get the resulting honey. It’s a win-win.’

He was silent for a moment, before deciding, ‘Clever.’

The rush of his approval annoyed her. It shouldn’t make her so tingly. ‘Just standard bee business.’

‘So tell me about your focus on organic methods,’ he said to the table generally. ‘That must limit where you can place hives or who you can partner with?’

‘Not so much these days,’ her father grunted. ‘Organics is very now.’

‘Yet you’ve been doing it for three decades. You must have been amongst the first?’

‘Out of necessity. But it turned out to be the best thing we could have done.’

‘Necessity?’

Every cell in Laney’s body tightened. This wasn’t the first time the topic had come up with strangers, but this was the first time she’d felt uncomfortable about its approaching. The awkward silence was on the Morgan side of the table, and the longer it went on the more awkward it was going to become.

‘My eyes,’ she blurted. ‘My vision loss was a result of the pesticides we were using on the farm. Once we realised how dangerous they were, environmentally, we changed to organic farming.’

Her father cleared his throat. ‘And by we she means her mother and I. Laney and Owen weren’t even born yet.’

She was always sure to say ‘we’. Her parents took enough blame for her blindness without her adding to it.

‘None of us really knew what they were doing to our bodies,’ her father went on, ‘let alone to our unborn children.’

Well, one of them, anyway. Owen seemed to have got away with nothing worse than a teenager’s attention span.

‘Have we made you uncomfortable, Mr Garvey?’ her mother said after moments of silence. ‘Helena said we should have just sent you to town for a meal...’

Heat rushed up Laney’s cheeks as his chair creaked slightly. It wasn’t hard to imagine Oh, really? in the voice that washed over her like warm milk.

‘No. I’m just thinking about how many worse ways the chemical damage might have manifested itself. How lucky you were.’

Again the silence. But this time it wasn’t awkward. Surprised was the closest word for the half-caught breath that filled the hush. Was he being intensely dismissive of her loss—and her parents’—or did he actually get it?

And possibly her.

Warmth swelled up in her chest, which tightened suddenly. ‘Most people wouldn’t consider it luck,’ she breathed. ‘But as it happens I agree with you.’

‘And, as threatening as it must have been for you at the time, the decision sealed Morgan’s fate. Put you well ahead of everyone else in organics today. It was smart.’

‘It was a life-changer in more ways than one,’ her mother cut in.

Silence again. Laney filled it with the first thing that entered her mind. ‘I gather we’ll be seeing you again, Elliott?’

Elliott. The very name tingled as it crossed her tongue.

‘Really?’ His voiced shifted towards her father. ‘You’re happy to have me back?’

Robert Morgan was predictably gruff. He always was when he dwelled on the bad old days. ‘Yes. I would like to hear what you have to say.’

It didn’t take a blind person to catch his leaning on the word ‘I’.

‘And what about you, Laney? You’ll be doing all the escorting.’

‘Free advice is my favourite kind. I’ll be soaking it up.’ But just in case he thought he was on a winner, she added, ‘And weighing it up very carefully.’

Approval radiated outwards. Or was it pleasure? Either way she felt it. It soaked under her skin and did a bang-up job of warming her from the inside out as he spoke gruffly.

‘That’s all I ask.’

* * *

Three hours later they walked together back towards the chalet, an unharnessed Wilbur galloping in expanding arcs around them, her hand gently resting on Elliott’s forearm. Not entirely necessary, in truth, because she walked this trail often enough en route to the hilltop hives. But she just knew walking beside him would be the one time that a rock would miraculously appear on the trail, and going head-over-tail really wasn’t how she wanted him remembering her.

‘It’s a beautiful night,’ he murmured.

‘Clear.’ Ugh, such verbal brilliance. Not.

‘How can you tell?’

‘The cicadas don’t chirp when it’s overcast, and I can’t smell moisture in the air.’

‘Right.’

She chuckled. ‘Plus it may be autumn, but it’s still summery enough that the odds are on my side.’

He stopped, gently leading her to a halt too. ‘Listen, Laney’ he said, low and somewhat urgent. ‘I don’t want every conversation we have to be laden with my reticence to ask you about your vision loss. I want to focus on your processes.’

Was that his way of saying he didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of her any more than she did in front of him? Her breath tightened a tiny bit more.

‘Why don’t you just ask me now? Get it out of the way.’

‘Is that okay?’

‘I’ll let you know if it’s too personal.’ She set off again, close to his side, keeping contact between their arms but not being formally guided.

He considered his first question for a moment. ‘Can you see at all?’

‘No.’

‘It’s just black?’

‘It just...isn’t.’

Except for when she looked at the sun. Then she got a hazy kind of glow in the midst of all that nothing. But she wasn’t even sure she wasn’t making that up in response to the warmth on her face. Because she sometimes got a glow with strong emotion too.

‘It’s like...’ How to explain it in a way that was meaningful? ‘Imagine if you realised one day that all other human beings had a tail like Wilbur’s but you didn’t. You’d know what a tail was, and where it went and what its function was, but you just couldn’t conceive of what it would be like—or feel like—to have one. The extra weight. The impact on your balance. The modifications you’d need to allow for it. Useful, sure, but not something you can’t get by without. That’s vision for me.’

‘It hasn’t held you back at all.’

‘Is that a question or a statement?’

‘I can see that for myself. You are more accomplished than many sighted people. You don’t consider it a disability?’

‘A bat isn’t disabled when it goes about its business. It just manages its environment differently.’

Silence.

‘Are you glaring or thinking?’

‘I’m nodding. I agree with you. But there must be things you flat-out can’t do?’

‘Dad made sure I could try anything I wanted—’ and more than a few things she hadn’t particularly wanted ‘—so, no, there’s not much that I can’t do at all. But there’s a lot of things I can’t do with any purpose or point. So I generally don’t bother.’

‘Like what?’

‘I can drive a vehicle—but I can’t drive it safely or to a destination so why would I, other than as a party trick? I can take a photograph with a camera, but I can’t look at it. I can write longhand, but I really don’t need to. That kind of thing.’

‘Do you know what colours are?’

‘I know what their purpose is. And I know how they’re different in nature. And that they’re meaningful for sighted people. But, no, I can’t create colour in my head.’

‘Because you’ve never seen it.’

‘Because I don’t think visually.’

‘At all?’

‘When I was younger Dad opened up the farm to city kids from the Blind Institute to come and have farm stays. As a way of helping me meet more children like myself. One of them had nothing mechanically wrong with her eyes—her blindness was caused by a tumour in her visual cortex and that meant she couldn’t process what her eyes were showing her perfectly well. But the tumour also meant she couldn’t think in images or conceptualise something she felt. She really was completely blind.’

‘And that’s not you?’

‘My blindness is in my retinas, so my brain creates things that might be like images. I just don’t rely on them.’ She wondered if his pause was accommodating a frown. ‘Think of it like this... Mum said you’re quite handsome. But I can’t imagine what that means without further information because I have no visual frame of reference. I don’t conceive of people in terms of the differences in their features, although I obviously understand they have different features.’

‘How do you differentiate?’

‘Pretty much as you’d imagine. Smell, the sound of someone’s walk, tangible physical features like the feel of someone’s hand. And I have a bit of a thing for voices.’

‘How do you perceive me?’

Awkwardness swilled around her at his rumbled question, but she’d given him permission to ask and so she owed him her honesty. ‘Your strides are longer than most when you’re walking alone.’ Though, with her, he took pains to shorten them. ‘And you smell—’ amazing ‘—distinctive.’

That laugh was like honey squeezing out of a comb.

‘Good distinctive or bad distinctive?’

She pulled up as he slowed and reached out to brush the side of her hand on the rough clay wall of the chalet for orientation. ‘Good distinctive. Whatever you wear is...nice.’

In the way that her favourite Merlot was just ‘nice’.

‘You don’t do the whole hands-on-face thing? To distinguish between physical features?’

‘Do you feel up someone you’ve just met? It’s quite personal. Eventually I might do that if I’m close to someone, just to know, but ultimately all that does for me is create a mind shape, address a little curiosity. I don’t rely on it.’

‘And people you care about?’

Did he think you couldn’t love someone without seeing them?

She pressed her fingers to her chest. ‘I feel them in here. And I get a surge of...it’s not vision, exactly, but it’s a kind of intensity, and I experience it in the void where my vision would be when I think about my parents or Owen or Wilbur. And the bees. Their happy hum causes it.’

And the sun, when she stared into it. Which was often, since her retinas couldn’t be any more damaged.

‘That sometimes happens spontaneously when I’m with someone, so I guess I could tell people apart by the intensity of that surge. But mostly I tell people apart by their actions, their intentions. That’s what matters to me.’

‘You looked me right in the eye after we shook hands.’

‘Only after you spoke. I used the position of your hand and your voice to estimate where your eyes would be. And the moment either one of us moved it wouldn’t have worked until I recalibrated. I don’t have super powers, Elliott.’

His next silence had a whole different tone to it. He was absorbing.

‘You’ve been very generous with your information, considering what an intrusion my questions are. But it felt important for me to understand. Thank you, Laney.’

‘It’s no more an intrusion than me asking you what it’s like being tall.’

‘How do you—? The angle of my voice?’

‘And the size of your hand when I shook it. Unless you have freakishly large hands for the rest of your body?’

‘No. My hands are pretty much in proportion to the rest of me.’

Cough.

Not awkward at all...

Wilbur snuffling in the distance and the chirpy evening cicadas were the only sounds around them. The only ones Elliott would hear, anyway.

‘I’m tall because my father was a basketball player,’ he volunteered suddenly. ‘It means I spend my days looking at the bald spots of smaller men and trying very hard not to look down the cleavages of well-built women. My growth spurt at thirteen meant I made the school basketball team, and that was exclusively responsible for turning my high school years from horror to hero. It taught me discipline and focus, sharpened my competitiveness and gave me a physical outlet.’ He took a breath. ‘Without that I’m not sure what kind of a man I might have grown into.’

His words carried the slightest echo of discomfort, as if they were not things he was particularly accustomed to sharing. And she got the sense that he’d just given her a pretty fair trade.

She palmed the packed earth wall of the chalet and opened her mouth to say Well, this is you, but as she did so she stepped onto a fallen gum nut loosed by the wildlife foraging in the towering eucalypts above and her ankle began to roll. Her left fingernails bit into the chalet’s rammed earth and her right clenched the fabric of Elliott’s light jacket, but neither did much to stop her leg buckling.

The strong arm that slid around her waist and pulled her upright against his body was infinitely more effective at stopping her descent.

‘Are you okay?’ he breathed against her hair.

Other than humiliated? And way too comfortable in his strong hold. ‘Occupational hazard’ she said, when she really should have been thanking him. ‘Happens all the time.’

He released her back onto two feet and waited a heartbeat longer as she tested her ankle for compliance. It held.

‘I’m sorry, Laney. Guess I don’t have Wilbur’s years of training as a guide.’

Guilt saturated the voice that had been so warm just moments before. And that seemed an ungrateful sort of thanks for his catching her before she sprawled onto the ground at his feet.

‘It wasn’t you. My bottom and hip are peppered with bruises where I hit the dirt. Regularly.’

Talking about body parts suddenly felt like the most personal conversation she’d ever had, and it planted an image firmly between them that seemed uncomfortably provocative.

She released his jacket from between her clenched fingers. ‘Thank you for those basketball-player reflexes.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he breathed, and his smile seemed richer in the silence of evening. ‘Are you okay to get yourself back?’

She whistled for Wilbur, who bounded to her side from out of the night, and then forked two fingers to touch his furry rump in lieu of a harness. ‘Yep. I’m good. I walk these paths every day.’

Not that you’d know it by the wobble in her gait.

Then she set off, turning for the house, and Wilbur kept careful pace next to her, making it easy to keep up her finger contact with his coat. But she wasn’t entirely ready to say goodnight yet, although staying was out of the question. Something in her burned to leave him with a better impression of her than her being sprawled, inelegant and grasping, in his arms.

So she turned and smiled and threw him what she hoped was a witty quip back over her shoulder.

‘Night. Sorry about the possums!’

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WASN’T THE possums that had kept him up half the night, though they’d certainly been having a ball, springing across his chalet’s roof in a full-on game of midnight marsupial chasey. Kiss chasey, judging by some of the sounds he’d heard immediately afterwards.

Because if it had been the possums he would have been able to fall asleep when they’d finally moved on to foraging in the trees surrounding the chalets for the evening, instead of lying there thinking about the gentle brush of Laney’s fingers on his arm, the press of her whole body against his when he’d caught her. The cadence of her laugh.

Her amazing resilience in the face of adversity.

Except that Laney genuinely didn’t see it as adversity. She understood that she experienced the world differently from the rest of her family, her friends, but she was pretty happy with those experiences. The world was just as much her oyster as his.

More so, perhaps, because she was so open to experience.

And right about then his mind had flashed him back to watching her dance, wet and bedraggled and beautiful, down at the cove. Then to an imagined visual of her perfect skin marred by small bruises from falling. And then just her perfect skin, and the all-consuming question of whether that dusting of freckles might continue beyond the hem of her dress.

And any hope of sleep had rattled out of the chalet to join the possums.

Pervert.

As if he’d never seen a pretty woman before. Or held one.

Did it even count as holding if you were the only thing stopping someone from falling unceremoniously on their arse? It was more community service than come-on, right?

Elliott shook off the early-morning tiredness and wiped his loafers on the Morgans’ mat. But he only had one foot done before the door opened and Laney stood there, resplendent in white overalls straight off the set of Ghostbusters.

Except he couldn’t remember Murray or Ackroyd ever looking this good in theirs.

‘I feel underdressed,’ he commented.

Laney’s smile was the perfect accessory. ‘You won’t miss out. I have a pair for you, too.’

‘I take it today’s bees aren’t as friendly?’

‘We’re doing a run to check the migrating hives. I prefer the farmers to see us taking it seriously. Preserve the mystery.’

‘We?’

‘Hey, mate.’

Only a brother would shove past a blind woman in a doorway with quite so little regard. That was what gave him away. That and the fact he was basically a short-haired male version of Laney.

A stupid part of Elliott bristled at seeing Laney treated with such casual indifference, though she barely noticed.

‘You must be Owen.’ Elliott gripped the proffered palm in his, introducing himself and swallowing back the disappointment that today wasn’t going to be all about him and Laney. ‘Many hands make light work?’

‘Owen and I work together on the remote hives,’ she said. ‘We’re checking two off-sites today.’

If there had been any question that the intimate truce of last night was going to continue today, he’d just had his answer. Laney Morgan was all about business this morning.

‘We’re going to take the back gate out of our property so you’ll get to see more of Morgan land. Come on.’

She stepped past him and brought a white stick out from behind her leg. The first time he’d seen her with one. The first time he’d actually thought of her as blind. And instantly he understood why she didn’t use it more often.

‘No Wilbur today?’

She swept the stick ahead of her as though it were a natural part of her body, pausing only to slap the folded overalls and hood she’d been clutching towards him.

‘Captain Furry-Pants has the day off. I think three guides would be excessive.’

Owen was already in the front of the Morgans’ branded utility.

‘So what will we be doing today?’

His question paused her just before she turned and felt her way up onto the tray of the truck, and she waited as he clambered up behind her. Once they were both on board, safely wedged between large, empty hives, she knocked twice on the window of the cab and Owen hit the accelerator. Hard.

They lurched up to speed.

‘Today we’re checking for beetle and propolis. We do these hives once a month.’

‘Propo what?’

‘Bee spit. They produce it to patch up any tiny holes in their hive and keep bacteria out. Humans use it for everything from treating burns to conditioning stringed instruments. Every one of our hives has a single propolis frame in it and the bees will totally cover it a couple of times in a year. We’re exchanging those frames today.’

Bee spit. The potential for new markets was greater than he’d imagined. And as long as those obscure markets were buying, Morgan’s was selling.

Man, they were so the right client for him.

They rumbled through the back roads of the property between fields full of bright, fragrant wildflowers and then skirted the edges of dense, tall forest.

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