The Sweetness of Honey (A Hope Springs Novel) Read Free Page A

Keller.
    The first time he’d seen her had been at the Caffeys’ reception. They hadn’t spoken. They hadn’t been introduced. He may have said “Excuse me” as he walked by her, but even that memory wasn’t clear.
    The one that was came from later that night. She’d been across the room talking to Luna. He’d been talking to Angelo and Luna’s father, Harry, about the loft Luna had purchased in the converted textile warehouse—the original brick, the original windows, the investment versus resale value.
    But his eyes had been on Indiana the entire time. At least until Will Bowman had walked into the picture, his face, as he’d accompanied her to the kitchen for a bottle of wine, close to hers in a way that said they were more than friends. That was when Oliver had looked away. He didn’t intrude on another man’s interest, though his conversation with Indiana this morning left him wondering whether he’d been mistaken about that.
    She hadn’t seemed in a hurry to cross the street to Bowman. And what the other man was doing over there instead of working over here with Ten left Oliver frowning. But how Ten chose to run his business was none of Oliver’s, so he let it go. He’d learned early to observe without interfering; doing so had served him well.
    At least, most of the time it had served him well.
    He preferred not to think about the one time he didn’t step in when he should have. What it had cost him. What it had cost his family.
    The price his brother had paid.

CHAPTER TWO
    I n a comparison that seemed strangely apropos, the wild mess of her new acreage reminded Indiana of her personal life. Maybe not the first fifteen years, though certainly a hefty portion of the decade that followed. But this last? She’d done a good job of hiding the turmoil, staying as busy as her bees to keep it at bay, but it was there, the roots deep and holding fast.
    The yard around Hiram’s cottage, now her cottage, had been busy, too, and seemingly for almost as long. The weeds were out of control, growing where flowers should have been, where grass once had been; the paths Hiram had once carefully cleared were just gone. She, at least, did a decent job of controlling her internal chaos. The property defined chaos, and not a bit of it controlled.
    Trash cluttered the yard, blown there or thrown there; she had no way of knowing. It made what would otherwise have been a case of nature gone wild an eyesore. An overgrown plot, perfect in its own right, but flawed as a manageable lawn. Damaged. That might never again be as good as it once was. Too many seeds that didn’t belong had found their way to the ground, sprouting where they weren’t wanted, stealing resources, demanding rights.
    The back of the lot that separated the cottage from the bees was a jungle of more than plants. There were insects and reptiles and amphibians. Squirrels and rabbits and what she was certain was a feral cat who shared his or her hunting grounds with any number of birds of prey. The cat won on that score; Indiana had seen freshly scattered feathers and savaged carcasses more than once as she’d walked the grounds.
    She’d thought for years now that she had a handle on how best to nurture the parts of her that had been broken all those years ago. With her degree and her business, she’d thought she’d built a quite solid foundation. She’d thought that missteps might shake her, but never cause her to fall. That whatever garbage still clung would dry up and flutter away. That she could manage the mayhem. That she was fine.
    She’d learned plenty of coping skills after her assault, and really, she had no right to be weak. So many other women had gone through so much worse and survived, though she imagined the number who’d lost touch with both of their brothers in the process was small. That’s why the sound of Tennessee’s voice last spring, the first time she’d heard it in years ,had been like a plow, digging beneath the surface