2. Nate

2

NATE

People are screaming outside. I set down the plans I was studying and peek outside to see what the commotion is.

My guys trickle out of the house, pulling off safety gear to get a better peek at the situation in the church garden. Sparky, my welder, claps a ham-sized hand on my shoulder and squints through the chaos. "Donny, what the hell is that racket?" A sharp pang knocks the breath out of me. He called me my father's nickname. I rarely shorten my last name, Donovan, the way Dad always did. But then, his first name was Albert.

Sparky doesn't notice me having a moment. He frowns at the church. "You think they got bees over there?"

At the word bees, my crew bolts inside, slamming the door. I could tell them there's not much point, since half the windows are busted in this dump of a house. But I'm intrigued.

I once knew a beekeeper, but I stung her with bad decisions and messed everything up.

I lean against the rotting porch and try to see if this bee charmer is my bee charmer. A wave of shame rushes through me, hotter than the summer air, at the memory of the angry voicemail I got a year ago. A woman named Eden Storm called me every name in the book and told me I gave her the clap.

The bee whisperer next door takes off her veil, and I know it's her. She has a full head of dark hair. It's in a ponytail today, but the night I met her, she had it down in gorgeous waves. I remember meeting her; I remember her telling me she's a beekeeper. Everything after that is just fog. I got so damn drunk I don't even remember taking that gorgeous woman to bed.

God, she's stunning—petite and toned, tanned skin dark eyes. What kind of lowlife could forget anything about her?

"Hey, Donny, ask you something?" My foreman, Chris, pokes his head out of one of the empty window frames.

I don't turn to face him, staring intently at the bee situation and the woman wrangling all the chaos. "What's up, Chris?"

"You really want to say yes to this mess? They'd be better knocking it down and starting fresh. That's my professional opinion. Total gut job…" Chris has a heavy Pittsburgh accent. It reminds me of my dad.

I lace my fingers together behind my head, the porch sagging a bit as I give it my weight. This "gut jawb," as Chris pronounces it, will indeed be a lot of work. But it will also cover the finances of Dad's construction business— my construction business—for six months if it goes well. The whole thing makes me uneasy, but I figure that's either because the house is next to the church where I started going to grief support meetings, or because it's the first real project I'm starting since Dad died last spring.

All the other stuff was already in the books. This property would be new. The house is one of the three-story beauties in the Morningside neighborhood, with huge windows from the 1920s, brick exterior, and a chimney that's about to fall over. The owner is one of those out-of-town assholes who read that Pittsburgh real estate is hot right now. He wants it flipped as fast and cheap as possible. I don't need Chris to tell me that's not how Dad did business. It's not how I want to build a name for myself, either.

But I burned a lot of bridges last year in the name of grief. I drank too much. I slept around. I let a lot of people down. The fact is, I'm lucky to have been offered this job, but I can't tell that to Chris or Sparky or any of the other guys who depend on me to keep their kids fed.

Next door, a bride hugs Eden, both of them with veils tucked under their arms, and people seem to be singing Eden praises. She deserves it. She just bare-handed a chunk of bees the way I sometimes reach into a bag of pea gravel. I watch as she picks up her box full of bees like it's not a bomb. Like it's a regular box of tools or something normal. She catches me staring, and I don't avert my gaze in time to avoid her expression turning angry.

No… not angry.

Eden is disgusted . She storms to a van, sets the bees inside, and drives off.

I shake my head, turning my attention from where Eden burned rubber out of here. The scent of tobacco reaches my nose, and I follow it to Chris, leaning out the window, blowing a plume of smoke into the air. His face is trained on the exact spot Eden turned the corner.

I rap my knuckles on the gut jawb porch. "Yeah, Chris. We're taking the job." My tone doesn't leave room for discussion, although I wish he'd talk me out of it. "It's got good insides. It just needs a little love on the exterior, is all."

Chris snorts and stubs out his cigarette on the brick around the window. "Sure, the exterior. And the plaster. And the plumbing."

"You got somewhere better to work?"

He waves a hand at me and ducks inside. I run a palm along one of the columns on the porch. A little mortar will stabilize these bricks, and we aren't afraid of pulling out plaster to put up drywall. I think we can save this house. I can't change what I did last year when everything was raw, but maybe I can take this old beauty of a house and make it shine again.