Chapter 45 The Beehive
Briar's POV
"Chloe," I said, falling into step beside her. "I heard you're a chemical engineer. That's seriously impressive."
She didn't look up from her phone. "Don't try to be friendly with me."
"I'm not trying to be friendly," I said. "I'm genuinely impressed. Chemical engineering is a hard field. Most people don't last through the coursework, let alone go on to actually work in it."
That landed. She lowered her phone a fraction, just enough to glance at me sideways. "What do you want?"
"Nothing yet," I said lightly. "I'm just curious. What area do you focus on? Materials? Process design?"
For a moment she said nothing, and I could see her wrestling. "Biocompatible stabilizers, mostly," she said, her voice cooling into something more professional, more comfortable. "Molecular structure optimization. It's niche, but the applications in organic formulation are significant."
I kept my expression interested without letting it tip into eager. "So you work on the stability side — keeping active compounds viable across different environmental conditions?"
"Among other things." She was fully looking at me now, the Samoyed's leash wrapped loosely around her wrist. "What does any of this have to do with you?"
Harris was gone, the formulation stability gap was sitting in the middle of our Moonlight series like a fault line, and here was someone who specialized in exactly the chemistry I needed.
"Just trying to understand the field better," I said lightly. "I have enormous respect for people who actually understand that work."
Chloe studied me for another moment, then seemed to make a decision she wasn't entirely comfortable with. She reached into her bag and produced a slim card case, pulling out a business card. "Here. My contact information and professional accounts."
"Thank you," I said, and handed her one of mine in return.
She looked at it briefly, tucked it away, and turned back toward the entrance without another word. The Samoyed gave my ankle one last investigative sniff before trotting after her.
I watched them go and let out a slow breath. It wasn't an alliance. But it was a door left slightly ajar, and right now that was more than I'd had twenty minutes ago.
I headed to my car and drove to the office.
---
I was halfway through the lobby when the elevator opened and Owen stepped out already mid-sentence, turning back to address Eric, who was following two paces behind with the expression of a man counting to ten inside his head.
"It's just a formatting adjustment," Owen was saying. "The data is the same, I just need the columns reorganized so the market team can actually read the export without a decoder ring."
"The format is standardized for a reason," Eric said flatly. "If the market team can't read a standard data table, that's a training issue, not a formatting issue."
"Eric, I'm asking you to move three columns —"
"And I'm telling you to submit a formal request through the system like everyone else, and if you keep bypassing the process I will bring it to Briar directly."
He said my name and then immediately looked up and found me standing four feet away. The color that moved across his face was brief but visible.
"Good morning," I said.
"Ms. Vance." He straightened slightly. "I — about last week. I was out of line."
It wasn't a comfortable apology. He delivered it the way someone delivers a formal document — correctly, without warmth, but without evasion either. I respected that more than I would have respected a performance.
"Apology noted," I said. "And for what it's worth, the contract is signed. You're officially on the ship." I looked between the two of them. "Five years. Try not to throw each other overboard before we clear the harbor."
They followed me up to my office, where I got straight to it.
"I'm assigning Owen to work directly with you on the core formulation development," I told Eric. "He'll be your point of contact for cross-department coordination and he'll assist in the lab on a support basis."
The silence that followed lasted about two seconds.
"No," Eric said.
"Noted," I said. "Owen?"
Owen had been standing near the window with his arms crossed and the particular expression of someone who had already decided he wanted no part of this conversation. "I appreciate the confidence," he started, "but I think there are probably better uses of my —"
"He doesn't want it either," Eric said, with something that might have been satisfaction. "So we're agreed."
"You're both doing it," I said. "Three months. If it's a disaster, we reassess. If it works, we keep going. What I need right now is someone who understands the formulation science talking directly to someone who understands the business side, without everything getting filtered through four layers of email and a two-week delay."
Eric looked at Owen. Owen looked at Eric. Neither of them looked happy, which I took as a reasonable sign that the arrangement would probably function.
"Three months," Eric said finally, in the tone of a man agreeing to a dental procedure.
I moved on before he could reconsider.
"Here's how we're structuring the competition prep. Two series: Moonlight is primary, Twilight is secondary. Moonlight carries two core products, Twilight carries one. The botanical cream goes into Moonlight. The natural-additive-free line is still undecided — we're running social listening through the marketing team before we commit it to either series." I looked at both of them. "Your main job is formulation stability. Work with marketing and the brand team, take their feedback, and bring me solutions, not problems."
"And the timeline?" Owen asked.
"Tight," I said. "Which is why I need you two functional and not at each other's throats."
I let that settle for a moment, then moved to the part of the conversation I'd been saving.
"Everything related to Moonlight and Twilight stays encrypted. Internal access is restricted to this room and the people I specifically clear. No exceptions, no casual mentions, nothing in unencrypted channels." I looked at them both steadily. "We have a leak. Someone inside this company has been passing information to the Montgomery family. I don't know who yet, but I will. Until then, we operate as if every hallway has ears."
Owen's expression sharpened. Eric went very still.
"To cover the real work," I continued, "we're running a decoy project internally. It's called Daybreak. It will look like our primary competition entry to anyone inside the company who doesn't need to know otherwise. Owen, you'll lead the visible side of Daybreak. Make it look real."
"How real?" Owen asked.
"Real enough that whoever is watching will have something to report," I said.
"Eric. The Montgomery family approached you about licensing the Lunar Stabilizer formula?"
He turned to me. "They did. About six weeks ago. I didn't agree to anything."
Owen said, "I assumed you were considering Greenleaf Bio."
Something shifted in his expression — not quite surprise, but close. "How do you know about Greenleaf?"
Owen said, "Portland-based, organic extraction, plant-derived actives. They would actually use your formula correctly."
"They would," he said, after a moment. "The Montgomery offer was about market control, not application. I'm not interested in letting my work become a patent wall." He paused. "Owen knows their lead researcher, apparently."
"I know," I said. "We'll talk about it."
He left without further comment.
The rest of the day moved fast and loud: two conference rooms, a stack of candidate files, three rounds of interviews with HR that yielded maybe four viable hires out of eleven. By the time the building had mostly emptied and I was back at my desk with cold coffee and a spreadsheet that had stopped making sense an hour ago, my phone buzzed.
I looked at the screen.
Lucian.
My pulse did something inconvenient, a quick, involuntary kick that I immediately blamed on caffeine and a long day. The supply closet. The corridor. The warmth of his mouth at my collarbone, which I had scrubbed at in the bath and which had absolutely not faded from my memory the way it was supposed to.
I picked up the phone.
"Hello?"