Page 1 of Beehive Yourself
PROLOGUE
HALLIE
All I need to do is hit send.
It’s not a big deal.
Just casually asking my sister’s ex-boyfriend if I can live with him for a few months while I’m working in Starlight Bay as a traveling nurse.
We’re adults.
It’s not weird at all.
I can do this, and Sawyer Kade will never need to know about that innocent little crush I harbored for him all these years.
This is fine.
Totally fine.
Here goes nothing…
1
SAWYER
Ilook at the clock above the stove again, hating that my heart seems to beat a little quicker with each passing second. It’s ridiculous, really. Hallie McKinley and I have kept in contact over the years, long after her sister and I ended our relationship.
Well,Bethended it.
And I guess for good reason. I just didn’t see it back then.
Or honestly, in any of the years that followed. Not until a wedding invitation had landed on my doorstep a few years ago. I hadn’t gone, but not because I wasn’t happy for her or still harbored feelings for her.
Because I don’t.
Coincidentally, my brother had been named sheriff back home in Blackstone Falls, Tennessee, and Mama would have had my hide if I missed the ceremony.
But I’d sent a gift to Beth and her fiancée and pushed the whole thing from my mind.
But Hallie.
My lips twitch remembering the time she’d gone to a party in high school and had called me for a ride home instead of her sister. They’d grown up here in Starlight Bay, and that meantthat I still ran into their parents, Margot and Nathan, in town every once in a while.
Sometimes I think they wonder why I stayed here. It’s been more than a decade since Beth and I split, the engagement ring I’d purchased—and returned—unknown to everyone except the jeweler and her father.
I’d been too proud to go back to Tennessee, so sure that Beth just needed a little time before she realized she’d made a mistake. But she hadn’t, and I’d doubled down on my life in Starlight Bay. My brother had followed in our father’s footsteps, living and breathing for our hometown, but I’d wanted a different path.
After working a string of odd jobs, I found a culinary program at a nearby college and poured everything I had into it. When I graduated, I was hired on at a local farm-to-table restaurant. The owner, Joe, took me under his wing to share his passion for creating food and an atmosphere that kept people coming back for more. The only thing that ever got him out of the kitchen was his need to tend to his beehives. I realized quickly that while I love food, I hated the hours associated with restaurants and the constraints of working for someone.
But I wasn’t in a place to branch out on my own so I kept my head down.
Bided my time.
Eventually I’d grown to like it here, the salty air coming off the ocean, locals and tourists flooding the boardwalk shops and restaurants.
Starlight Bay had become home when I wasn’t looking.
And when my now best friend, Walker, left his corporate job in Chicago to return home to Starlight Bay, we created something new we could both be proud of.
