Free Awakened by His Touch by Nikki Logan Page A

interest if you don’t let this go. Your visit is about Morgan’s—not about me.’
    ‘Okay, take it easy. I’ll drop the subject. But at some point you’re going to have to accept what everyone else knows—that you are Morgan’s.’
    * * *
    You are Morgan’s.
    She wasn’t. She didn’t want to be. She was a Morgan and that was it. Morgan’swas a family, a plural, a heritage and a way of life. It was the genetic memory and the learning of everyone who’d ever had anything to do with their bees, going right back as far as their founder, her great-grandfather, and that first Queen he’d hived up as a hobby.
    She and Morgan’s were as symbiotic as queens and their colonies: one couldn’t exist without the other. But, as reverent as they were while the Queen lived, ultimately when she was lost the colony just made a new one. They kept the hive strong.
    It wasn’t personal with bees.
    So why was Elliott trying to personalise this? Why was he trying to hang Morgan’ssuccess around her neck, all millstone-ish? And why was he working his way up to making Morgan’s continued success contingent somehow on her...what had he called it...?
    Her pioneering spirit.
    As if that was a prerequisite for something to come.
    ‘Good morning.’
    Wilbur slowed her to a halt halfway to the chalet. ‘Morning, Elliott. Sleep well?’
    ‘I slept brilliantly. May I?’
    How did she know what he was asking? Yet she did. ‘Sure.’
    She unclipped her harness and gave Elliott the moment he’d asked for with Captain Furry-Pants. Released, Wilbur knew he was allowed to enjoy it. Just be a dog. The two of them enjoyed a mutual rough-house until they naturally parted, all done.
    She buckled up the harness again and Wilbur sat at attention by her leg. ‘No possums this time?’
    ‘Nothing I didn’t sleep through.’
    Bully for him. She’d slept as badly asthose possums. ‘Have you had breakfast?’
    ‘I’ve had coffee. Close enough.’
    ‘That might work for you in the city, but here a coffee doesn’t fuel you until morning tea. You’d better have a reasonable lunch.’
    ‘Yes, ma’am.’
    She tipped her head. ‘I don’t want to have to carry you if you faint.’
    His chuckle carried them across the paddock. ‘So what’s the plan for this morning?’
    ‘I thought I’d show you where we make the queens and the Royal Jelly. Two more of our sidelines.’
    ‘You make the queens?’
    ‘Well, the bees do it. We just give them a nudge.’
    Elliott followed Laney and Wilbur between fences and along the crunch of a gravel path towards the plant sector. Inside, a pair of workers chatted to each other over the whirr-whirr of the centrifuge harvesteras they worked. It was exactly per the videos Elliott had watched for research. But over in the corner progress was more silent and studied. And that was where Laney was leading him.
    If she’d walked him off a cliff he’d have considered following.
    Which went to show how desperate he’d become in his hunt for the meaning of life.
    ‘Hi, Laney.’ Two voices piped up at the same time.
    Laney introduced them and then launched into presentation mode.
    ‘So, when the Queen is ready to step down, she creates special cells and her attendants know to pack them with super-nutritious jelly instead of honey.’ She ran her long fingers along the work her staff were doing until she found the enlarged cells. ‘It’s the exclusive diet of Royal Jelly which produces a fertile virgin queen instead of an infertile worker bee. Hence the name.’
    The way she said it—with such a ta-da! in her voice... It made him wish he hadn’t already done so much reading up. That way her passion could infect him for real. ‘So you place artificial cells in the hive and the attendants just fill it? No questions asked?’
    She passed him a row of artificial queen cups to examine. ‘Bees aren’t good with the big picture. And this is the most important moment in their bee career. Thousands of bees will be