by Zoe Chant
The Bear and his Honey
Honey for the Billionbear # 3
By Zoe Chant
Copyright Zoe Chant 2016
All Rights Reserved
***
"Night, Ms. Sheppard!" someone called, knocking lightly on Jessica's open office door.
She startled. "Oh! Night, Norman! It's not ten yet, is it?"
Norman, the janitor, didn't usually finish before ten pm.
"It's ten past already," Norman said, nodding at the clock above Jessica's desk. Which did in fact show 10:10 pm.
Jessica winced. She'd lost track of time again.
"You should go home and get some sleep, miss, you look tired," Norman said.
Jessica rubbed a hand across her gummy eyes.
"I will, soon," she said. "Night, Norman."
She looked down at the pile of files in front of her. She had to be at the office at six-thirty tomorrow. If she left right now she could be home by eleven, eat something, and get a whole five and a half hours of sleep before she had to get back to work.
But the Johnson brief needed to be done by noon tomorrow, and the morning's schedule was planned out to the minute. There wasn't any room to squeeze Johnson anywhere in there. She really ought to take care of it before going home.
Now that she'd realized how late it was, exhaustion was catching up with her. Her entire body ached, and her eyes kept falling shut.
Jessica took a deep breath, dropping her face in her hands. God, her head ached. She was so tired she wanted to cry.
Just three more days till the weekend, she told herself.
Well, she probably ought to come in for a couple hours on Saturday, get caught up on stuff she'd put aside in favor of more urgent cases during the week. But at least she could sleep in. And then she'd have the whole of Sunday to recover. Maybe she'd just stay in bed the entire day.
Except that if she didn't take her suits to the dry cleaner's soon, she'd have to show up to work in her pajamas. And her fridge was empty.
Jessica rubbed at her stinging eyes. She wasn't crying, she told herself. She was just… tired. Her job was demanding, but she could handle it. You had to pay your dues if you wanted to make partner.
The phone rang. Jessica reached for it automatically, before it occurred to her that there was only one person who would be calling her at a quarter past ten in the office. "Seaborn, Eccleston & Chase, this is Jessica Sheppard speaking."
"Jessy! Do you know what time it is? What are you still doing at the office?" Her mother's disapproval rang clearly down the line.
Jessica winced. She could see her mother before her mind's eye, mouth pulled down in a frown, her brows creased in disappointment. It wasn't exactly a strain to call up the image. Jessica had mastered the art of disappointing her mother long ago.
"You need to learn to manage your time better," Ruth said.
I'd like to see you do it, Jessica thought in a burst of hot indignation, looking down at the enormous stack of work she'd gotten done today, and the pile of stuff still left to do. But the rage fizzled out as quickly as it had come. Probably her mother could handle her workload, and still be home in time for dinner.
Ruth Sheppard had been elected one of the youngest district attorneys ever in the state of New York at 27, worked tirelessly on her career since then, and was now considered a top candidate for the governor's position. She was a brilliant lawyer and a ruthlessly efficient businesswoman. Jessica had never once in her life been able to live up to her mother's shining image or her lofty expectations.
"Well, I'm sure you know what you're doing." Ruth's tone implied the opposite. "But you really have to make sure not to neglect your social life. Have you met anyone lately?"
Jessica didn't even try to stifle her sigh. "Mom, when would I possibly have time to meet anyone?"
"I wasn't any less busy than you, and I managed to find the time. Robert and I have been happy for twenty years, you know."
"I know, mom," Jessica said, although privately she couldn't help thinking that she and her mother had very different definitions of a happy marriage.
Robert, her stepfather, spent most of his time on the ranch he'd bought in Colorado, going hunting and skeet shooting with his friends, while Ruth stayed in New York for her job. Jessica couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her parents share so much as a hug.
Jessica's own father had died just a couple of months after she'd been born. With Ruth busy with her career, and Robert not having much interest in a kid that wasn't even biologically his, Jessica had mostly been raised by a series of nannies. They'd done their best, but they hadn't been her parents.
She wouldn't do that to her own kids, Jessica had always promised herself. When she had children, she wanted to have the time to raise them herself. And she wanted a partner who'd be right there by her side.
But right now there wasn't any room whatsoever for a man or a baby in her life. Jessica covered the receiver with her hand when she couldn't stifle her yawn anymore.
"Mom, I really have to go home now, okay? I'll call you on Sunday."
"Take care, Jessy," her mother said.
Jessica dropped the phone on her desk. Her eyes were wet. She swiped at them angrily. She ought to get up, take the subway home, make herself something for dinner. Or, well. Take the foil off a convenience dinner and stick it in the microwave. But even just the thought of getting up from her desk seemed unbearably exhausting right now.
Someone knocked lightly on her door. "Still here?"
Jessica startled violently. She'd been sure she was the last person in the office. "Oh, hi, Martha!"
Jessica swiped hastily at her eyes again. Oh God, how embarrassing, getting caught crying by one of the senior partners. She hoped she didn't look as much of a mess as she felt like right now.
The expression on Martha's face when she caught sight of Jessica quickly dashed that hope.
"Are you okay?" Martha came in and closed the door behind her.
"I'm fine," Jessica said quickly. "Just, you know, a little tired. I was going to finish the Johnson brief for tomorrow—"
"Are you sure you're all right?" Martha asked gently. She pulled up a chair and sat down.
Jessica tried to hide her wince. Great. Now she was having a sit-down conversation with one of the senior partners about crying at the office.
"I've been a little worried about you lately," Martha said. "When was the last time you got a full eight hours of sleep?"
"I'm fine," Jessica said hastily. "Things have been busy lately, but I can handle it. I don't mind working hard. Or—have there been any problems with my work?"
Oh God, if she'd made a mistake, or overlooked something important in her exhaustion…
"No, no, nothing like that," Martha said. "I just talked to Kenneth and Sigmund about what a good job you've been doing."
Kenneth Ecclestone, Sigmund Seaborn and Martha Chase were the three senior partners at the law firm. They'd be the ones choosing the next junior partner. And they'd noticed her work!
See? I'm doing fine, Jessica thought into her mother's general direction.
"Still, you work harder than anyone else. You've got a bunch of vacation days banked. No one would mind if you took a week or two to get some rest." Martha said. "I can't remember the last time you took a day off."
"I took a half day just in March," Jessica protested.
Martha wrinkled her brow. "Are you talking about that day when you had the flu and I had to send you home
because you almost fainted at the office?"
I didn't faint," Jessica protested. She'd gotten a little light-headed on the stairs and had to sit down, that was all. And it had been a Friday, anyway. By Monday she'd been fine to return to work. Or… mostly fine, anyway. There'd been too much to do to take any more time off.
"I really am fine," she told Martha. "I just need to get some sleep."
"If you say so," Martha said. She picked up the Johnson file. "I'll take care of this. I've got a light load tomorrow. You go home and get some sleep, all right?"
Jessica could have cried with gratitude. "Thank you," she said.
***
Jessica walked into her apartment and straight to the fridge. Her stomach had woken up on the train home and was now reminding her ferociously that she'd had nothing to eat since noon, when she'd absent-mindedly picked at a sandwich at her desk while checking a brief for errors.
She peeled the foil off a package of lasagna. The smell of artificial cheese and tomato sauce hit her nose. She was hungry enough that even that set her stomach growling. For a long moment she just stood there, lasagna in hand, and seriously considered tucking right in without bothering with the microwave at all. It wasn't like convenience lasagna tasted that good anyway, right? It probably wouldn't be that much worse cold.
This is going too far. You're not an animal, Jessica told herself sternly. She put the dish into the microwave and firmly shut the door behind it.
Her phone chimed with an incoming message. She suppressed a sigh. If that was her mother again…
But the message was a picture, a smiling woman with deep laugh lines in her tanned face, standing in front of a red desert landscape. Hi honey, call me whenever you have a few minutes, it read.
Jessica found herself smiling. Aunt Sally.
Sally was in many ways the direct opposite of Jessica's mother Ruth: a warm-hearted, easy-going woman. No ambition to speak of and not an ounce of business sense, Ruth liked to say about her sister, which Jessica secretly thought were some of Sally's most likable qualities.
Sally had a bee farm out in the country, although right now she was on a long vacation in Australia. Jessica's cousin Isabella was taking care of the farm while she was away.
Or, no, wait, Isabella was on honeymoon right now. Maybe cousin Helen was at the farm, then. Jessica liked her cousins, but somehow she never seemed to find the time to stay in touch.
Jessica looked at the phone, trying to calculate the time in Australia. A little after midnight here, so… Her sleep-deprived brain considered the math problem of time zones and gave up.
Well, if Sally had been awake to send the message, she wouldn't mind a call. She suddenly desperately wanted to talk to her aunt, who, unlike her mom, never seemed to feel the need to lecture her.
Sally picked up on the first ring.
"Jessy! Honey, it's so good to hear from you. How are you doing?"
Jess smiled. The genuine warmth in Sally's voice felt like the closest thing to a hug she'd had in a year, and she wanted to wrap herself up in it forever. "I'm fine, Aunt Sally. Lots of work, you know how it is."
"Don't I ever," Sally said with a laugh. "You know I'm crazy proud of you, kiddo, don't you? Ruth's been telling me about how hard you're working."
If her mom had talked to Sally about Jessica at all, it was probably to complain about how Jessica wasn't managing her time efficiently enough. But there wasn't a hint of criticism in Sally's voice.
The microwave dinged loudly.
"Was that dinner? Don't let me keep you if you haven't eaten yet." Sally had apparently recognized the sound over the phone.
"Yeah, that was dinner," Jess admitted, hoping that maybe Sally hadn't done the time zones math, either, and wouldn't realize she was having dinner at fifteen minutes to midnight. "It'll keep, though."
Food seemed suddenly not quite as important as it had just two minutes ago. She didn't want to hang up the phone and go back to being alone in her too-quiet apartment.
"Well, then how about you put the phone on speaker, and I'll tell you all about my trip to Melbourne while you eat?" Sally said.
So that's what they did, Jessica trying not to shovel her decidedly mediocre meal down like a hyena, Sally telling stories that occasionally made her choke on her overcooked pasta. Sally had always been one hell of a storyteller.
Sally finished up just as Jessica was shoving the empty foil container aside.
"Sounds like a real adventure," Jessica said. God, she wished she could go on vacation, even just for a week. Not that she wanted an Australian adventure right now. At this point, all she wanted was to lie in the sun somewhere, sleep for a million hours, and not have to think about work for a few days in a row.
She thought wistfully of her cousin Isabella, who was honeymooning with her husband Ryan in Papua New Guinea, and was probably lying on a beach right now.
No one would mind if you took a week or two to get some rest, Martha's voice rang in her head.
"Anyway, you've probably figured this out, but there's a reason I called you," Sally said. "You know your cousin Helen was supposed to look after the farm for me while I was gone and Isabella's on her honeymoon? You're not going to believe this, but Helen had to go into hiding because there's a mobster trying to kill her."
"What?" Jessica dropped the lasagna container she'd been about to clean up.
"Apparently, she somehow ended up key witness in a lawsuit against Antonio Amodeo—"
"What?" Jessica said again. What the hell. She'd heard of Amodeo, who was known as a ruthless businessman but heavily rumored to be a mafia don beneath a thin veneer of legitimacy. "Jeez. Is she okay?"
"Well, he tried to have her killed—"
"Oh my God!"
"—but she's in a safe place now. Where she's going to need to stay for the next two weeks or so. Which means someone else will need to look after the bees for a bit," Sally added, while Jessica was still trying to process what she'd just heard.
It took Jessica a long moment to catch where Sally was going with this. "…Me? Sally, I wish I could help, but I wouldn't have any idea where to even begin. I have no idea what bees need! The last time I was out on the farm, I was twelve."
She'd come back sunburned and happy, and her mom had spent a good ten minutes chiding her for ruining her dresses with mud and grass stains. She hadn't been out on the farm since.
"You wouldn't have to do it alone," Sally said. "A friend of Isabella's husband is out there right now, helping out. He could show you what to do. And it wouldn't be for long. Isabella will be back from her honeymoon in two weeks, and she can take back over then."
Sally hesitated for a long moment. "I'm not just asking you because I can't find anyone else," she said carefully, as if she was worried that what she was about to say next was going to get taken the wrong way. "You need to get out of that city for a couple days, kiddo. You're working yourself to the bone. It's past midnight, and you've only just had dinner."
Busted.
"When's the last time you were out in the sun for more than five minutes at a time? I think this could be really good for you. Fresh air, working with your hands… It's quiet out there. One week, that's all I'm asking."
Jessica closed her eyes for a moment. No one would mind if you took a week or two to get some rest.
It did sound good. It sounded like heaven.
"I'll try to get the time off," she said. "I can't get away before the weekend, though."
"That's fine. Ryan's friend can take care of the place till then," Sally said.
Jessica could hear the smile in her voice. Sally had been more worried about her than she'd let on, she realized. Not that she needed to be. Jessica was fine. A little exhausted, that was all; it happened to everyone. Still, a break would do her good.
***
She was at the firm until close to midnight on every one of the following days, and the only reason she got out of there on time to make her flight on Saturday morning was that Ma
rtha put her foot down and all but shoved her out the door.
She slept hard and deep on the plane, and actually felt somewhat refreshed when she arrived, at least enough that she felt able to brave the winding mountain road to Aunt Sally's place in her rental car.
She hadn't seen the farm in almost a decade. But somehow, coming up the driveway still felt like a homecoming. The little old cottage was instantly familiar, unchanged by the passage of time. The garden was a riot of flowers, bees buzzing everywhere. The weathered wood of the house shone warmly in the midday sun.
Jessica took a deep breath. The scent of flowers and pine trees filled her nose. When she breathed out, a year's worth of stress seemed to come out with the long, shaky exhale.
Sally had been right. It was good to get out of the city.
She looked around, hoping to spot the guy who'd been keeping an eye on the place until she could get out here. All Sally had been able to tell her was that he was a friend of Isabella's fiancé, his name was Alan, and he was a billionaire who owned some kind of GPS company but spent most of his time out on his farm in the country. Jessica had automatically pictured him like one of her step-dad's rich friends, an old guy with weathered, ruddy skin and a cigar between his teeth.
Which meant that her first glimpse of Alan came as a bit of a surprise.
Alan was standing with his back to her, digging up weeds in one of the flower beds. He'd taken his shirt off to work in the hot noon sun, giving her a perfect view of broad, powerful shoulders, a narrow waist, and a body that could have been sculpted by Michelangelo. Every time he moved, she could see his muscles flex beneath his smooth golden skin.
Jessica unconsciously licked her lips. Alan looked like the kind of guy who could've starred in a superhero movie. But from the way he was confidently driving the shovel into the ground, she could tell that those muscles weren't for show. This was a man used to working with his hands.
Jessica was still wearing her pants suit from work. The heels of her shoes crunched on the gravel of the driveway.