“Doesn’t seem very romantic yet.”
“Now, Felty, I’m thinking outside the box.”
Felty took off his hat and scratched his head. “What box are you talking about, Annie-girl?”
“It’s an expression that Dr. Reynolds taught me. It means there are no bad ideas.”
“All your ideas are good ideas, Annie.”
“I hope Titus doesn’t mind waiting. It will take me several months to learn how to crochet and paint. And write poems.”
Felty propped the hoe against the nearest wooden beam. “Maybe he’ll find his own wife in the meantime.”
“Nae, that will never do. We can’t trust Titus to make such an important decision. You’ll have to stall him, Felty.”
“Me? What can I do?”
Anna looked skyward and tapped her finger against her lips. “We’ll have to think of another surgery. Or maybe we could settle for a root canal.”
Felty raised his eyebrows and let his mouth fall open. “I’m running out of teeth.”
Anna giggled. “I’m teasing, dear. I know how you hate the dentist.” She sighed and took Felty’s face in her hands. “I’ve put you through a great deal in the name of love. Thank you for sticking with me.”
Felty wrapped his arms around his beautiful wife and tugged her close. “I would stick with you through a thousand root canals, Annie. As long as we’re together, I don’t even need teeth.”
“That would make it very hard to chew.”
“If I still have arms to hold you, I wouldn’t care.”
Anna settled into her husband’s embrace. “Then I’ll pray every day that your arms don’t fall off.”
“I appreciate that, Banannie. I truly do.”
Dear Reader,
Huckleberry Hill has become one of my favorite places on earth, and Anna and Felty are like old and dear friends to me. It has been a delightful adventure writing about Anna’s antics with her knitting needles and frying pans as well as her good-hearted attempts to find suitable mates for her unsuspecting grandchildren.
I have loved creating these characters and stories for you. I hope you have taken as much pleasure in reading them as I have in writing them.
In 2016, I will be leaving Huckleberry Hill and going a little farther down the road to the fictional Wisconsin town of Bienenstock, where three Amish beekeepers find love and laughter in my new series: The Honeybee Sisters.
Lily, Poppy, and Rose Christner, known as the Honeybee Sisters in their Amish community, are smart, inseparable, and all grown up. Orphaned when they were very young, the girls were raised by their eccentric Aunt Bitsy, who doesn’t behave anything like a proper Amish spinster. The Honeybee Sisters have blossomed into rare beauties, and the boys in the community have begun to take notice. But Aunt Bitsy is determined to scare off all comers with her brusque manner and her handy shotgun. None but the most worthy will make it past Bitsy’s defenses. It’s going to be a rowdy and romantic summer—harvesting honey from their many beehives and fighting off the boys right and left.
The three Honeybee Sister books will hit shelves beginning in July 2016. I hope you’ll come and see what all the fuss is about!
Though I know you’ll miss Anna and Felty as much as I will, never fear. Anna wouldn’t dream of retiring, not when she still has dozens of unmarried grandchildren to worry about. Not only will a match for Titus test her keen abilities, but her grandson Max never met a girl he could tolerate, and her granddaughter Sarah never met a boy she didn’t like.
That should keep Anna knitting pot holders and crocheting dishrags for a very long time.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Beckstrand
Please turn the page
for an exciting sneak peek of
Jennifer Beckstrand’s
SWEET AS HONEY,
the first book in her Honeybee Sisters trilogy,
coming in July 2016!
Dan Kanagy stopped his open-air buggy in the middle of the deserted road and turned on his flashlight. Shining it along the roadside, he squinted into the darkness.
There it was. The sign that marked the turn-off to the lane he was looking for, a big, white board decorated with flowers in every variety of paint color imaginable. In big, bold, black letters it read: BEWARE THE HONEYBEES.
Dan had never been able to figure out if that warning referred to the large number of hives that dotted the Christners’ farm or if it referred to the Christners themselves. The community had nicknamed them the Honeybee Sisters a dozen years ago. The three Honeybee Sisters were pretty enough and smart enough to be intimidating, and they lived with their aunt, who was said to be slightly odd. At least that’s what Dan had been told. He’d never met the aunt, but he knew the Honeybee Sisters well. He’d gone to primary school with all three of them.
The youngest, Rose, had seemed so delicate that Dan had feared she’d break if he looked at her the wrong way. Poppy Christner had punched him in the nose on more than one occasion. And the eldest, Lily, was too wonderful for words, and entirely too wonderful for a plain, ordinary boy like Dan Kanagy.
Beware the Honeybees indeed.
Holding the reins with one hand and the flashlight in the other, Dan turned his horse Clyde down the long lane. It was a good thing he had his flashlight. At two o’clock in the morning under a new moon in late May, the darkness was profound. Clyde’s hooves clip-clopped over a small wooden bridge just wide enough for a buggy or a car to pass over. The light of his flashlight reflected off a pond of still water that meandered under the bridge. Maybe pond was too generous. It looked more the size of a puddle.
Across the bridge, the lane curved to the right. It had to be almost a hundred yards long. A variety of tall and short bushes lined the lane, some thick with leaves, others abloom with flowers. To his left, he passed at least a dozen beehives, an outbuilding, and a substantial red barn.
The line of bushes came to an abrupt stop as he got to the end of the lane. A house stood to his right fronted by a lawn full of dandelions and a huge rectangular flower bed bursting with blooms. Even by the light of his flashlight, they looked wonderful gute. Dan grinned to himself. The bees probably thought they were wonderful gute too.
Dan jumped out of his buggy and tiptoed up the path of flagstones that led to the house, not sure why he tried to be quiet. He was about to awaken the whole house. It couldn’t be helped, but he felt bad about interrupting their sleep like this.
He walked up the porch steps, tapped lightly on the door, and listened. Nothing.
If he wanted anyone to wake up, he’d have to give up trying to be subtle. He rapped his knuckles five times against the sturdy wooden door. Holding his breath, he listened for signs of movement from within. After a few seconds, he saw a faint light behind the curtains in the front window. The door slowly creaked open, and Dan found himself nose to nose with the barrel of a shotgun.
He should have paid more heed to that sign.
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Beckstrand
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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ISBN-13: 978-1-4201-3653-1
ISBN-10: 1-4201-3653-4
ISBN: 978-1-4201-3653-1
Jennifer Beckstrand, Huckleberry Hearts
Huckleberry Hearts Page 34