Page 26 of Bearly Out Loud

He handed her a coffee. “I do.”

“You’re a billionaire CEO who maintains beehives on a Manhattan rooftop.” She took the coffee. Turned in a slow circle. “There are lavender plants between the hives. You landscaped for the bees. Those are custom copper roofs. Someone hand-fitted those. Is that a?—”

She stopped. In the center of the garden, on a low wooden table between two benches, sat a tasting board. Not a commercial product. Handmade—carved from a single pieceof dark wood, with small circular wells for different honey varieties, a section for comb, and a groove for a tasting spoon. It was beautiful. It was absurd.

“Is that a handmade honey tasting board?”

“The sleuth woodworker?—”

“You had someone build a BOARD for the HONEY from your PERSONAL BEES and you don’t see how this looks?”

He tilted his head. The head-tilt. Takumi was right about the head-tilt. “How does it look?”

“Like you’re the most aggressively wholesome person I’ve ever met and I don’t know what to do with that information.”

The smile that crossed his face was quiet and real, and it did a specific, targeted thing to her pulse that she elected not to examine.

He walked her through the garden. Light slanted low through the glass panels, turning the gravel paths gold. The air smelled like cold earth, beeswax, and the faint sweetness of dormant lavender—and underneath it, him. Cedar and warmth and something clean-skinned she couldn’t categorize.

He explained the hives with a warmth that made expertise sound like affection. Nine colonies, three varieties of bees, seasonal harvest schedules. He knew the queens by temperament. He described one as “productive but opinionated” and another as “a diplomat” with the sincerity of a man discussing colleagues.

He’s giving personality assessments to his bees. He has named the queens. I am standing on a rooftop in Midtown Manhattan listening to a billionaire describe bee politics and I am?—

Charmed. She was charmed. The word arrived like a verdict.

Absolutely not.

FOURTEEN

NARI

The honey tasting undid her.

He’d arranged five varieties on the board—wildflower, lavender, clover, buckwheat, and a dark amber he called “late harvest” with a reverence that bordered on devotional. Small wooden spoons in each well. He poured water into two glasses—“to cleanse the palate between tastings”—and sat across from her on the bench like this was normal. Like billionaires served hand-harvested honey on handmade boards on Manhattan rooftops every Saturday.

She started with the wildflower. Lifted the spoon. Tasted.

Her eyes closed. The honey was extraordinary—bright and complex, floral without being cloying, with a finish that reminded her of the way sunshine tasted in childhood, warm and golden and impossible to hold. It spread across her tongue and her eyes stayed closed a moment too long—the kind of pause her body made when pleasure arrived before she could decide how to hold it.

She opened her eyes.

He was staring. Not polite interest, not casual attention. Full, undivided, arrested focus—his coffee untouched, his bodystill, his eyes on her mouth with an intensity that made the air between them contract.

“That was involuntary.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying ‘I know’ like you expected it.”

His gaze didn’t move from her face. “I hoped.”

Nari opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

Nothing came out.

This had never happened. She was a woman who always had an answer—a comeback, a redirect, a joke sharp enough to cut the tension and give her room to breathe. Her mouth was her instrument. It did not malfunction. It did not go offline. And yet here she sat on a rooftop bench in February with honey on her tongue and a man looking at her like she’d handed him a gift he hadn’t known he wanted, and her legendary, never-failing mouth had absolutely nothing to offer.

He picked up the lavender honey. Held it out. “Try this one.”