Awakened By His Touch

‘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.