There had been a chill in the air that morning. Like the blast of an open fridge door on a hot summer’s day.
It was the sign she had been waiting for. Time to harvest her bumper honey crop for the year. Collect at the right time and the honey would be ripe, sweet, in its prime. Leave it much longer and the colony would start eating the wares or moving it lower into the hive, making it near impossible to collect.
By late afternoon there was no need for the smoker. Warmth had settled over the valley and crept up onto the hills, meaning the honey would be warm, running easily, and the bees would be calm.
Dolled up in her veil, overalls and gloves, gumboots slapping against the stairs, she realised Ned was not at her side. No point whistling for him—he was nearly deaf.
She tipped up onto her toes to see if she could spy his fluffy tail cutting through the field. No luck. Maybe he’d headed up the hill to visit the others. But that wasn’t like him. They knew better than to feed him scraps. Amber had made it clear that he was her responsibility, nobody else’s. That in taking him on she wouldn’t put undue pressure on the commune’s resources.
About to give up and head off alone, she saw him by the pair of trees down the hill, watching the hammock slung between them with great interest.
As Amber neared she realised why.
A stranger in fact was lying therein. Asleep.
Not just a stranger...a man. A long man. Longer than the hammock, his big feet poking out of the end. His T-shirt had twisted to cling to a sculpted chest. The bottom edge lifted to reveal a tanned stomach, and a dark arrow of hair leading to...jeans that left little to the imagination.
Even in sleep he was riveting. Deep-set eyes beneath dashing, slashing brows, and overlong hair that fell across a brow furrowed as if he was dreaming important dreams. The rest of his face was rough-hewn, but handsome with it—a stubble-shadowed jaw and cheeks that appeared carved from rock. A veritable modern-day Viking.
Not from around here, or she’d have noticed. A tourist, then. Not the seasonal fruit-picking kind. Or the type who came to Serenity looking for enlightenment. Or absolution. His clothes were too nice. His aura too crisp. But people didn’t just happen to pass through Serenity. They came with a purpose. So what was his?
Her gaze running over every inch of him as if she was committing him to memory, Amber realised with excruciating discomfort just how long she’d been living in this patch of pretty wilderness dotted with leisurely artisans and gentle hippies, none of whom had made her nerves twang. Not like this.
She swallowed the thirst pooling in her cheeks and reached out for Ned.
Ned looked at her with his contented face.
“What are you grinning at?”
Forgetting the fact that in all likelihood the stranger was not as deaf as Ned, Amber hadn’t thought to lower her voice.
The stranger sprang to sitting as if he were spring-loaded. His feet hit the ground, his hands gripping the edges of the hammock, the muscles of his arms bunching as the hammock threatened to swing out from under him.
He was even bigger sitting up. Well over six feet. Strong with it. Yet Amber felt compelled to stay. To watch. To wait.
A few beats later, the stranger shook his hair from his eyes before palming the heels of his hands deep into the sockets. With a heavy breath he dropped his hands, opened his eyes, took one look at Amber and leapt out of the hammock so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet.
A string of words poured from his mouth. Italian? French? Who cared? It was the sexiest sound Amber had ever heard. Raw and deep, it scraped against her insides like a long, slow, rough-tongued lick.
Ned loved it too, what little he could hear of it. He bounded to his feet and ran around in a circle, barking at the sky.
The stranger looked over his shoulder, then back at Amber. He looked down at Ned, then back at her again. This time his gaze caught. And stayed. A beat slunk by in which deep breaths were hard to come by.
Then, in lightly accented English, “Please tell me you come in peace.”
She reached up and slowly pulled her bee-keeping hat and veil from her head. As usual, the mesh caught on her hair, pulling long blonde strands free of her bun until it fell over her face in a wispy curtain. She tried wiping them away but the heavy glove made it next to impossible.
In the end, she threw her veil to the ground, slid off both gloves and threw them down too. Feeling overheated, she unzipped her overalls, pulling them down to her hips, the arms flapping about her thighs. She fixed her tank top, pushed her hair back off her face, and—hands on hips—stared the stranger down.
The effect somewhat lessened when Ned saw his chance and went for her gloves. He managed to get both, but dropped one about a metre away as he took off into the lavender with the score in his delighted teeth.
Not that the stranger seemed to notice. His eyes never left hers. In fact, they had warmed, distinctly, the edge of a very fine mouth tilting at one side as he took her in.
Flustered, Amber pressed her shoulders back, angled her chin at him and said, “I might ask the same of you.”
“Me?” He stretched his arms overhead, once again revealing his flat, tanned belly, and Amber gritted her teeth as she looked determinedly anywhere else. “I am all about the peace.”
“Well, next time keep your peace far from my hammock. Capiche?”
“If I said I really needed a nap at the exact moment I came upon it, would that help?” One side of his mouth kicked up, and her tummy tumbled over on itself in response.
“What do you think?” she deadpanned.
“I think perhaps not,” he mumbled, running a hand through his hair. It was a little rumpled from sleep on one side. He wore it well.
He took a step her way, and Amber took an equal step back, which was ridiculous. If she screamed, a dozen hippies would rush down the hill to check on her. Well, maybe not rush. Amble with intent.
She pressed her gumboots into the ground. It wasn’t concern for her safety that had her on edge. It was concern for her hazy judgement.
He stepped sideways, picked up the glove Ned had dropped and ran his thumb over the honeycomb stitching. “How about if I said I tripped and fell into the hammock, knocking myself out?”
“I’d think you were an idiot.”
A smile tugging at the corner of that mouth, he looked out over the lavender, all the while taking a step closer to her. “Then here’s the unvarnished truth: a wicked witch lured me here with a peach. I took one bite and fell into a deep sleep.”
As punctuation, he held out her glove. Naturally, she reached out to take it. Only he did not let go, capturing her gaze right along with it.
His eyes were a deep, intelligent hazel, his mouth on the constant verge of a smile. The fact that his nose appeared to have been broken at some time only added to his stunning good looks.
“It was an apple,” said Amber, her voice breaking on the last syllable.
“Hmm?” he said, gently letting the glove go.
“Sleeping Beauty was felled by an apple.”
Again with the devastating half-smile. “Wasn’t that Eve with the apple? Tempting poor Adam.”
“Forbidden fruit. No mention of an apple, specifically.”
“Right. I stand corrected.”
At some point in the past few minutes, the sun had begun to set, stretching shadows over the stranger’s arresting face.
But it was the words that had her transfixed. The locals were so earnest she couldn’t remember