The Bear and his Honey by Zoe Chant

Author:Zoe Chant [Chant, Zoe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, romance, Adult
Amazon: B01M6AZTTM
Goodreads: 32814235
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

***

Alan watched with interest as Jessica pulled out reference material, stacking tome after tome around herself. She started working through the research, tearing through book after book quickly and systematically, flipping from indices to various chapters and back, skimming for relevant passages. Occasionally she'd pause to look something up on the internet, or go back to a book she'd already discarded.

He set up his own laptop and tried to force himself to get some work done. But he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from her. This was Jessica in her element, her face transformed with concentration, a triumphant gleam in her eyes every time she found something useful. She had a quickly-growing list of notes in front of her, full of page numbers and citations.

Sometime around eight Mabel, the librarian, tapped him gently on the shoulder.

"We really need to close for the night soon," she said, looking uncertainly at Jessica, who was so absorbed she hadn't even noticed the interruption, four books open in front of her at the same time.

Alan drew Mabel aside. "We need to talk," he said.

Five minutes later he came back with the key to the library.

"You take as long as you need, honey," Mabel told Jessica, who looked up, startled, seeming to realize that they weren't alone for the first time. Mabel was already marching towards the door. "And you stick it to those bastards!" she called back over her shoulder, just before the door fell shut between them.

Alan blinked in surprise. Mabel was usually more the soft-spoken sort.

Around midnight he finally forced himself to settle down and get some real work done, and after that he lost all sense of the passage of time. So he was surprised to realize that it was half past four already when Jessica suddenly raised her head with a shark-like grin and said "Gotcha" in a tone of deep satisfaction.

"Did you find something?" Alan asked.

"Something even better than I was hoping for," Jessica said. "So the land rights to Kingshead mountain were sold to Octane by William Smith, who inherited it from his aunt, Maria Faith Smith. We knew that much already."

Alan nodded. It had been mentioned in the newspaper coverage.

"Look at this," Jessica said. She gently spread an old book open in front of him, yellowing pages and a cracking leather cover. "Maria inherited the land from her grandfather, Zaccharias Philippe Smith—except his will contained a clause which basically comes down to, if the land is ever sold, by her or any of her heirs, the community of Mountainville gets right of first refusal. And it names a price per hectare here, too."

Alan peered over her shoulder. "That's cheap even for farmland," he said, surprised.

"Well, I don't suppose Zaccharias thought the land would ever be very valuable," Jessica said "You can't really build up there, it's all steep slopes on porous sandstone—you told me yourself, the snowmelt washes out new caves every spring, and there's collapses all the time. You can maybe let some cows or sheep graze up there, but that's about it.

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