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“Boy bees don’t actually have stingers at all. Only the queen and the sisters do. They’re like a girl army.”
“So, then my dad isn’t like a honeybee.”
“No,” I said apologetically. “But there are lots of animals that get angry when monsters get close to their home. Like bears. Maybe your dad is like a bear.”
It would certainly explain how growly he got around me.
“Oh yeah. He could be a bear. Bears like honey just as much as bees.”
“Does your dad like honey?” Because he certainly never took any that she’d offered him while they were here.
She nodded vigorously. “He likes your blueberry honey every morning. I like the cinnamon better.”
“I’ve never seen him eat the blueberry honey,” I said before I could stop myself. They’d been here almost a week, and not once had I seen him have any.
Paisley drew quiet and looked over her shoulder before tipping forward. Wrapping her hands around her mouth, she whispered, “He keeps it in his room.”
I chuckled and shook my head. There was no way—
“It’s his snack, so he hides it,” she insisted. “When you leave in the morning, he gets it for his toast.”
I stared at her like she’d just told me Blaze Stevens had put a poster of me up on his bedroom wall. He liked my honey? The next obvious question would’ve been, so then why did he hide it? But I didn’t need an obvious question that had an even more obvious answer. Because he didn’t want me to think there was anything he liked about me. Even my business product.
The timer dinged, and Paisley cheered, “Thunder cake!”
Another roll of thunder drummed then, and she looked at me, wide-eyed, but for the first time tonight, not with fear. “It knows it’s ready,” she said in an awe-filled whisper, and my chest squeezed.
“It does.”
I grabbed the oven mitts and pulled the cake pan from the oven, setting it on a towel on the counter.
“Just be careful,” I cautioned as soon as she leaned closer.
“What’s that?” She pointed to a chocolatey-nut cluster popping through the top of the cake.
I lifted my brows and asked her with all the seriousness I could muster, “Did you mix that in there?”
Her head swiveled, no.
“Then I think…I think that’s the thunder.”
Her face lit with hope. “It worked?”
“I think so,” I said, beaming. “But we’re going to have to taste it to be sure.”
I slathered the icing on the cake, knowing I should’ve let it cool first and then let the icing harden, but those were the kind of steps I considered flexible when a six-year-old was bursting at the seams for a bite. So, the piece that ended up on her plate had icing melted and running everywhere, the cake hardly holding its shape, but the sound she made when she tasted it…it was safe to say presentation didn’t matter.
“I taste the thunder!” Paisley squealed, her mouth full of her first bite. Her face, too. Chocolate and Nutella smeared all around her mouth.
Meanwhile, I smiled for the memories the first taste brought back. I hated to say my cake didn’t taste as good as Gigi’s, but part of me had to wonder, watching Paisley, if part of that unbeatable taste was simply the sweetness of childhood. Of being part of something special and secret that wouldn’t—couldn’t happen every day or even on a whim.
“Can I have another piece?” Pais asked as soon as she’d finished, her eyes cartoon-wide on the rest of the cake.
No was the honest answer. I was sure Blaze was going to have a heart attack when he found out about the cake; there was no way I was going to let her have a second slice. That would be like poking the bear.
“I thought we were going to make a blanket fort?” I crossed all my fingers and toes that she’d be more tempted by that than another piece of cake.
Paisley sat for a few seconds, thinking about the grave decision she had in front of her. She used her fingers to clean her face and then used her tongue to clean her fingers, and then finally declared, “Okay, but save some cake for Daddy.”
