Sweet as Honey (17 page)

Dan watched as Lily sliced through the layer of beeswax with her knife. “I'll do my best.”

“Don't worry,” Lily said, flashing him a reassuring smile. “We'll do it together.”

Dan's pulse sped up at the prospect of doing anything together with Lily.

“I know you're not that sharp,” Aunt B said, “but Rose was helping with the honey when she was nine. You'll do fine as long as you don't cut your finger with that uncapper knife. I don't want blood in my honey.”

Dan gifted Bitsy with his most mischievous grin. “Don't worry. I'll only cut my fingers off when you're not looking.”

Bitsy gazed at the ceiling and growled. “Lord, I don't care what You say, this is not what I prayed for. And if this is a joke You're playing on me, You know I've never had a sense of humor.”

She tromped out the door with Poppy and Rose close behind.

Rose turned back before she left, her cheeks glowing and her eyes bright. “Have a
gute
time.”

For some inexplicable reason, Dan's heart started knocking around in his chest as if he hadn't just spent the entire morning with Lily already.

Willing his pulse to resume a normal rhythm, he watched as she skimmed the beeswax from the comb. It fell onto the screen inside the plastic box. “What do you do with all that beeswax?”

“We sell it to Colleen Grow in Shawano. She makes candles and such with it. Paul thinks we should make the candles ourselves to bring in more money, but with everything else we have to do, there doesn't seem to be enough time.” She glanced at him doubtfully. “Do you think that's a bad decision? I feel like I always get it wrong.”

Because of Paul Glick, Lily was starved for confidence. Dan wished he could give some of it back to her. “You're much smarter than I am, so I would never second-guess your decisions. You don't want to wear yourself or your sisters out.”

Lily gave him a very nice smile and placed the frame in the extractor. She had tied her hair up in an emerald scarf that brought out the green of her eyes. Finding it impossible to concentrate on anything when he looked into those eyes, he cleared his throat and turned his gaze to the full supers against the wall.

“This will take most of the day,” he said, thrilled with the prospect of spending eight hours in this little room with Lily Christner, but a little overanxious to prove himself charming and lovable and worthy. What if he came across as forced or fake from trying too hard? The formidable challenge made his head spin.

A frown cast a cloud over her features. “If you have to go, Rose can help me.”

He gave her a look of mock indignation. “And miss all the fun? Absolutely not.”

“You won't think it's so fun after a few hours.”

He couldn't help himself. He reached out and hooked his index finger around hers. “What could be more fun than spending the day with Lily Christner?”

Dan was overjoyed to see that the color rose to her cheeks as she tried to stifle a smile. Maybe she didn't mind their fingers touching so much.

Maybe she wouldn't mind their lips touching so much.

Dan coughed as if his throat had swelled shut and quickly pulled away from her.

No kissing.

No daydreaming about kissing.

Kissing was surely the farthest thing from Lily's mind, and if he let his daydreams run wild, she'd run screaming for the hills.

Chapter Fifteen

Giddy.
That was the only word she knew to describe how she felt.

Giddy.

Giddy and toasty warm all over.

And she couldn't stop smiling.

“I can't believe we finished before five o'clock,” Lily said as she washed the strainer in the small sink in the honey house.

She'd spent the entire day with mean, insensitive Dan Kanagy and had thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. She had never met a more cheerful soul or a harder worker. He seemed determined to make the most of every second, running, not walking, to fetch frames to scrape, sweeping floors or wiping surfaces while the extractor spun honey. Even with his frantic pace of activity, he told her stories and made her laugh or listened intently as she shared her opinions about Laura Ingalls Wilder and fruit trees.

Should she feel ashamed that she took so much pleasure in his compliments or the way he looked at her when he told her she was pretty and smart? Paul would say that a boy should never feed a girl's vanity by giving her compliments. Paul might be right, but Dan and Lily had been alone in the honey house and no one else had heard his flattery. Surely there was no harm in it.

They had taken a break at noon when Rose brought them bologna sandwiches on honey wheat bread. They ate under the shade of the basswood trees. Dan seemed excited about everything from the bushes that lined the lane to the acres of clover fields behind the barn. He fit in with the family quite nicely. He didn't seem like an intruder like other people sometimes did.

Dan snapped the lid onto the half-full bucket of honey and smiled. “The best day I ever spent, I think.”

Poppy and Rose finished drying out the extractor and hung their towels on a hook by the sink. “A wonderful-
gute
harvest for June,” Rose said.

“I feel bad I can't come back tomorrow,” Dan said.

Lily felt more than a little disappointed herself. “We can manage.”

“Will you stay for dinner?” Rose said, out of the blue.

Lily chastised herself for not thinking of that before Rose did. “
Jah.
It's the least we can do to thank you for all your help.”

His look left her knees a little weak. “I've already been amply thanked. But I would love to stay for dinner.”

“
Gute
,” Lily said, locking her knees so she wouldn't collapse into a heap. “We are making honey curry chicken in honor of our first extraction day.”

Dan smiled at Rose. “I like your hive paintings.”

Rose blushed and lowered her head. “They're nothing.”

It was the Amish way. Never give a compliment. Always deflect praise. Dan didn't seem to keep with that tradition. “It's no sin to tell you they're beautiful. Even a blind man could see that.” Dan handed Lily the clean uncapper. “I still can't believe you do this without help.”

Lily saw Poppy stifle a smile, pretending not to be pleased with Dan's utter amazement. He couldn't help but make them all feel as if they truly did something wonderful when they tended to their bees. “You mean without a
man's
help,” Poppy said.

Dan curled his lips sheepishly. “
Jah.
That's what I mean. You have to admit my arms came in handy today.”

Poppy shook her head. “I don't have to admit anything.”

Dan laughed. Insults from Lily's family members didn't seem to faze him. He was too good-natured to take offense. She really liked that about him, because Aunt B considered it her duty to offend every boy who set foot on Honeybee Farm. Poppy was little better.

Even though Poppy protested that she didn't need a man to help her out, Dan insisted on helping them take the empty supers back to the orchard, then took the wagon back to its place and stabled Queenie while the rest of them went back to the house to change.

They emerged from the orchard to see a buggy parked at the end of the lane. Buggies in the community were all similar, black with sliding doors and reflectors. But this buggy looked extra familiar. With a sinking feeling, Lily peeked in the window. Nobody in there. Where was he, and why had he come?

“Whose buggy is that?” Poppy asked.

Lily pushed ahead of her sisters and Aunt B, hurried up the porch steps, and opened the front door. Paul sat on the sofa in the great room, reading the Bible that Aunt B kept on the bookshelf. He looked up, slammed the Bible shut, and rose to his feet, his face a puffy, purple bulb. He looked as if he were about to pop like a pimple.

He opened his mouth to speak and promptly closed it as he took a good look at her. His expression changed from pouty anger to sputtering shock. “What are you wearing?”

Lily looked down at herself. Jeans, a sticky sweatshirt, and a scarf. She could only guess at how much hair had escaped from the scarf and how unkempt she must have appeared.

Poppy, Rose, and Aunt B sidled into the room and stood staring at Paul like a trio of statues. Poppy wore that hostile expression that she used on all the boys. Rose looked positively terrified. Aunt B had a disgusted smirk, probably wishing she had a dog to chase away the strays Lily collected.

“This is my beekeeping outfit, Paul,” Lily said, giving her voice a matter-of-fact tone, as if the
Englisch
clothes were common knowledge.

He drew his brows together until they were touching. “Of all the stuff, Lily,” he said, as if it were a chore to speak, “I've never seen anything so inappropriate.”

She wanted to cry. “It's to protect us from bee stings.”

Paul shook his head. “As a member of the fellowship of Christ, I should report you to the bishop. You could get shunned. What would my
dat
say?”

“The bishop approved it,” Lily said, wishing her family wasn't here to witness this. How embarrassing to have Paul chastise her in front of everybody. “So we won't get stung.”

Aunt B scrunched her lips together and gave Paul the evil eye. “It's bad manners to let yourself in.”

Paul eyed Aunt B as if she were a dog who'd pooped on his lawn. “A hundred bees flew into my buggy. I wasn't going to stay out there and get stung.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two one-hundred-dollar bills. “And look what I found in your Bible. Two hundred dollars. You shouldn't leave money lying around like that.”

“Well, Paul Glick. It's bad manners to search through other people's stuff.”

“I wasn't searching,” Paul sputtered. “I was reading the Good Book. Something I suspect you should be doing more of.”

“Put it back, young man,” Aunt B said.

Lily nearly smiled. It wasn't uncommon for her to find cash while reading. Aunt B stored money on every bookshelf. She didn't trust the banks.

Utterly disgusted that he seemed to be the only person in the room with any sense, Paul shoved both bills back into the Bible.

“Not like that.” Aunt B bustled over to the sofa to fix the damage. “Lord,” she said, looking at the ceiling, “all I want is a boy who won't steal my money or trample my dandelions. Is that too much to ask?”

Paul's nostrils flared. He found Aunt B's vocal prayers both irreverent and inappropriate. He'd expressed his disapproval to Lily on more than one occasion. “What, what is all this?” he said, waving his hand around to indicate the entire house and everyone in it. “I come here to find money strewn about the house, bees everywhere so I can't even get out of my buggy safely, and all four of you dressed like
Englisch
boys. It's shameful, Lily, and I won't stand for it.”

Rose found some courage to speak up, probably because she hated to see Lily upset. “We only wear the jeans when we work with the bees, Paul.”

Paul barely gave Rose a glance. “Then maybe you should find another profession.”

Lily tried to smooth things over. “No one ever sees us. I'm real sorry about it.”

The lines momentarily softened around his mouth. “Go change before anyone else sees you like that.”

Lily nodded and took two steps toward the stairs. Her sisters, also dressed in jeans, stayed put, perhaps in silent defiance of Lily's boyfriend.

Paul held up his hand. “Wait. There's something else.”

Lily stopped in her tracks.

“Is it true that Dan Kanagy was here today?”

Poppy folded her arms and smiled smugly. “He still is.”

Lily felt ill. She should never have kept that secret from her boyfriend. He'd somehow found out about Dan on his own, and he must have been livid if he'd actually made a special trip out here to discover the truth.

She wrung her hands as the guilt and shame overwhelmed her. “He . . . he helped with the honey.”

Paul stuck out his bottom lip. “Dan Kanagy is a liar and a cheat. And you always seem to forget how mean he was to you at school. Why would you let him near you, especially knowing how he's treated me?”

Lily didn't have an answer to that. Well, she did have an answer, but Paul wouldn't want to hear it.

Even while Lily felt guilty for such disloyal thoughts, she also felt a tiny bit justified. Dan had offered his help. Paul never did.

The front door stood open, and Lily heard Dan's quick footsteps on the porch. She wanted to find that mouse of theirs and crawl into his hole.

Dan came into the house, beaming like an extra bright battery-powered flashlight. When he caught sight of Paul, he stopped as if he'd run headlong into a wall, and his smile faded to nothing.

“Oh. Hello, Paul,” he said, as if he'd come face-to-face with an
Englischer
holding a camera.

Poppy seemed to come to life. She laid a hand on Dan's back and nudged him a little farther into the room. “We've invited Dan to dinner.”

Paul grunted as if all his annoyance were stuck in his throat. “Well . . . Dan . . . that's too bad because I've invited everyone to have dinner with me at the restaurant tonight.”

Dan folded his arms across his chest and spread his feet apart slightly as if he were a mountain that would not budge. “That's nice.”

The shadow of a scowl traveled across Paul's face before he made a valiant attempt at a smile. “Doesn't that sound nice? A day off from cooking?”

“We can't afford it,” Aunt B said, with a tinge of sarcasm in her voice.

Paul coughed violently, nearly choking on his words. “I'm paying for everybody.”

Lily had to work hard to keep the surprise from showing on her face. Paul must really be upset. He never offered to pay.

Paul glared at Dan. Dan stared back, his face an unreadable canvas even though Lily could see the tension in his arms and tightness of his jaw. It looked as if Dan and Paul were locked in an intense game of checkers, and it was Dan's move. Would he back down and uninvite himself to dinner? That's what Lily would have done in the face of Paul's anger—anything to appease her boyfriend.

Paul motioned toward the stairs. “Why don't you four go change, and we can get going.” He looked down his nose at Dan, which must have been difficult because Dan stood about four inches taller. “Good-bye, Dan. Maybe we'll see you in town sometime.”

Dan didn't say a word. Apparently he wasn't going to back down, but he wasn't going to insist on staying either. He was obviously waiting for someone else to make that decision. If Lily wanted him uninvited, she'd have to be the one to do it.

But she didn't have the heart, not even to placate Paul. Dan had saved them hours of work today. She could find the courage to stand up for what she knew to be right. No matter what Paul thought, sending Dan away would be rude. Besides, she sort of liked having him around.

Paul looked at her and smiled one of his threatening smiles—the kind that said,
You better do what I want or I'll pout for three days
.

Lily's gaze turned to Aunt B. Aunt Bitsy laced her fingers together and raised an eyebrow. Lily knew that look. She'd get no help from her
aendi
. She swallowed hard and offered Paul her sweetest smile. “We promised Dan honey curry chicken.”

Though his expression didn't change, Dan visibly relaxed. Paul, on the other hand, grew more agitated in a subdued sort of way. “Then you and I can go without your family. They can eat chicken while we get some of my
mamm
's famous rolls.”

Lily felt as if all the wind had gone out of her sails. The perfect solution. If she agreed to eat at the restaurant, she could probably keep Paul's pouting to a minimum, and if she offered to pay for her own meal, he'd probably forgive her for the whole Dan thing.

Paul must have sensed her hesitation, and he was irritated about it. “I'll even pay for dessert. Anything you want.”

The trouble was, no matter how disloyal she felt, she didn't want to go to the restaurant. Paul would feel better, but she wouldn't, and her family would think she'd abandoned them. But she could see no other way to make things right with Paul. She would do just about anything to avoid his wrath.

A big, fat, heavy lump of coal settled in the pit of her stomach as she silently surrendered. She glanced at Dan. “Okay, Paul. I'll go change my clothes.” It would be better this way. Paul was her best friend, after all. A true friend would try to make him happy.

Paul pursed his lips, as if not expecting anything less. “Hurry up, then. We don't want all the rolls to be gone.”

She started up the stairs.