HASALYNX PRESS
Read Romance Ebooks Legally — Anytime, Online, With a Monthly Subscription

Chapter 1. The Honey and the Fog

The Carrington Hotel's grand foyer swallowed sound the way the valley swallowed light, turning footsteps into echoes and voices into murmurs that dissolved against the pressed-metal ceiling. I stood in the middle of the black-and-white diamond tiles, my canvas bag cutting a heavy line across my shoulder, and breathed in the familiar scent of beeswax polish and old woodsmoke. The jars inside clinked softly as I shifted my weight—lemon myrtle, lavender, native pepperberry, each one labelled in my own handwriting with a pressed wildflower pressed against the glass. Twenty-four jars in total, destined for the hotel's kitchen, where the chef would drizzle the honey over goat cheese and roast figs for the autumn menu. The slow season was already biting, and every order mattered.

The fire in the massive sandstone hearth crackled and hissed, throwing heat that smelled of ironbark and ash, and I let myself stand in it for a moment before moving toward the reception desk. The leadlight windows at the far end of the foyer were fogged with condensation, the world beyond reduced to vague shapes of grey and green. Outside, the afternoon light had that soft, diffused quality that made everything look like a watercolour left out in the rain. I'd driven through it from Leura, the wipers struggling against the mist, the road a ribbon of wet black disappearing into white.

"Julie." The receptionist, a woman named Margaret who had worked here since before I was born, smiled as I approached. "Your timing's perfect. Chef's been asking about the pepperberry honey."

"It's in here." I set the bag on the counter and began pulling out the jars, each one wrapped in brown paper to prevent clinking. "The lavender's a bit lighter this batch—the bees had a good run of it before the cold set in."

Margaret peered at the labels, her reading glasses perched on her nose. "These are beautiful. You know, you could sell these at twice the price in the gift shop."

"Maybe next season." The words came out lighter than I felt. I thought about the stack of unpaid invoices on my kitchen table, the quote from the vet for Clover's annual checkup, the phone call I'd have to make to the bank about extending my line of credit. The jar of honey in my coat pocket felt heavier than it should. "I'm just grateful for the regular order."

Margaret handed me the cheque, and I tucked it into my coat without looking at the amount. I knew it wouldn't cover the whole month, but it was something. It was always something.

The foyer was quiet for a Saturday afternoon—the lunch crowd had thinned, and the afternoon tea rush wouldn't start for another hour. The fire crackled and settled, and I caught myself glancing toward the side alcoves, the ones tucked behind carved screens where the light was dimmer and the leather armchairs sagged with decades of use. Our alcove. The one with the Chesterfield that had a tear in the arm and the low table with a ring of water stains that I'd put there myself, months ago, when I'd set down my tea and forgotten to use a coaster.

I told myself I wasn't looking for him. I told myself I was just passing through on my way back to the carpark. But my feet carried me toward the alcove anyway, past the marble-topped tables and the clusters of leather armchairs, past the elderly couple reading newspapers by the fire and the young family with a toddler who was trying to feed a biscuit to one of the potted ferns.

And there he was.

Emmett sat in his usual spot, the one with his back to the wall and a clear line of sight to both exits, his posture a study in quiet vigilance. He was studying a topographical map of the Grose Valley, the paper spread across the table and weighed down with his coffee cup at one corner and a pen at the other. His thick brown hair was sun-streaked, even in autumn, and it fell across his forehead in a tousled wave that he'd pushed back with one hand, leaving it sticking up slightly at the crown. He wore a grey thermal that stretched across his shoulders, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and his hands—long-fingered, capable hands that I'd watched mend a broken fence and coax a frightened possum out of a drain—held the map with a carefulness that bordered on reverence. The leather cord around his neck was just visible, the thylacine tooth tucked beneath his thermal, and I'd never asked about it because he'd never offered. It was one of the many things about Emmett that I accepted without explanation, the way you accept the way a friend holds their coffee or the sound of their laugh in the dark.

I slid into the chair opposite him, the way I'd done a hundred times over the past year. The leather creaked beneath me, and I reached across and stole his coffee before he could stop me.

"You're a menace." His voice was low, warm, with the dry amusement that always made me smile. "That's my coffee."

"Finders keepers." I took a sip, the bitterness cutting through the fog that had settled in my head. "You've been here for hours. Your coffee's cold anyway."

"Cold coffee's still coffee." But he was grinning, the corners of his amber eyes crinkling, and something in my chest loosened. This was us. This was easy.

"How's the tracking?" I nodded at the map, sliding it closer for a better look. The contours were printed in fine brown lines, the valleys and ridges rendered with the precision of a cartographer's hand. Emmett had marked several spots with small crosses in pencil, each one accompanied by a notation in his neat, angular script.

He leaned forward, his forearms resting on the table, and I caught the scent of him—rain and earth and something darker, something that smelled like the bush after a storm. "There's been unusual movement around the Grose Valley," he said, tapping one of the crosses with his pen. "Track patterns that don't match the usual fauna. Wallabies showing signs of stress, a couple of hikers reporting strange sounds at night."

"Strange sounds like what?"

"Like nothing that should be out there." He said it lightly, but his eyes had gone flat in a way I'd learned to recognise as something he didn't want to explain. I didn't push. I never pushed. That was the thing about Emmett—he gave you what he could, and you learned to be grateful for it.

"I heard about the hikers." I set his coffee back on the table, sliding it toward him. "Clara mentioned it last week. She said someone saw a dog the size of a calf near the old mining road."

"A dog." Emmett's mouth twitched. "That's one word for it."

"Clara's not exactly a wildlife expert. She once tried to identify a wombat as a badger."

The tension broke, and he laughed—a low, rusty sound that made me feel like I'd won something. "A badger. In the Blue Mountains."

"In her defence, she was very tired."

"Clara's always very tired. She runs a pottery studio and a cafe at the same time. She's allowed to confuse marsupials."

The conversation drifted, the way it always did, from Clara's latest ceramic firing to my mother's upcoming medical appointment to the fog that had hung over the valley for three weeks straight. I told him about the bank, about the slow season, about the way I'd woken up at four in the morning worrying about the hives and the frost that was coming and the leak in the kitchen roof that I couldn't afford to fix. He listened the way he always did, with his head tilted, his eyes never leaving my face, and I felt seen. Heard. I thought about how rare that was, how most people listened with their attention already elsewhere, already planning their response. Emmett just listened.

"Your mother's appointment," he said when I'd finished. "Do you want me to drive you?"

"It's on Tuesday. You're working."

"I'll take the day off."

"Emmett, you can't just—"

"I'll take the day off." He said it the way he said everything, with a finality that didn't invite argument. "You shouldn't be driving yourself after. It's too much."

The warmth in his eyes was still there, and I realised I'd been staring at him for too long. I looked away, reaching for the map to cover my confusion. "Let me see your tracking notes. I want to understand what you're actually doing out there."

He slid the map toward me, and I bent over it, my fingers tracing the pencil marks. "These are the movements," he said, pointing. "And here, along the ridgeline—"

Our fingers touched.

It was nothing—a brush of knuckles, the barest contact, less than a handshake—and yet it was everything. A jolt of electricity shot up my arm, sharp and hot and completely inexplicable. I gasped, pulling my hand back as if I'd been burned, and the map slid off the table and fluttered to the floor.

Emmett's eyes had gone wide. His pupils were blown, the amber almost swallowed by black, and I watched his hand shake as he pressed it flat against the table to steady himself. The veins in his wrist stood out, and his breath had gone shallow in a way that was nothing like the easy, relaxed man I'd been talking to moments before.

"What—" I started.

"I have to go." He was already standing, his chair scraping back against the tiles with a sound that cut through the quiet of the alcove. He didn't look at me. He was gathering his map, his pen, shoving them into his bag with a haste that bordered on frantic.

"Emmett. What was that?"

"Nothing." He slung the bag over his shoulder and took a step back. "I have a pack meeting. I forgot. I'm sorry."

"Pack meeting." I said the words slowly, trying to make sense of them. He'd used that phrase before, always as an excuse to leave, and I'd never questioned it because I'd never had a reason to. "You've never mentioned—"

"I'll call you."

He was gone before I could finish, disappearing through the side door that led to the hotel's back corridors, and I was left in the alcove with his spilled coffee and my tingling fingers and a confusion that settled in my chest like a stone.

I touched my hand where our fingers had brushed. The skin was warm, the nerves still buzzing with that strange electric current, and I pressed my palm against my coat to try to ground myself. It didn't help. My mother's face floated into my mind, and I thought about the way she'd always said that the mountains held secrets you couldn't explain, that some things didn't make sense until you stopped trying to make them make sense. I'd always thought she was being poetic. Now I wasn't sure.

The fire crackled. A bellhop walked past with a luggage cart, his footsteps echoing. I gathered my canvas bag and stood, and the chair scraped back in the same way Emmett's had, the sound filling the quiet space.

I couldn't shake the feeling that everything had just changed.