by Susan Wiggs
“Shit, look out!” The strange man grabbed her and threw her to the ground, covering her with his body. Charlie gave a sharp bark of warning.
Panic knifed through Isabel, and the fear had nothing to do with bees. It felt like a cold blade of steel, and suddenly she was lost, hurled back to the past somewhere, to a dark place she never thought she’d escape. “No,” she said in a harsh whisper. She bucked, arching her back like a bow, bringing up one knee and connecting with...something.
“Oof, holy shit, what the hell’s the matter with you?” The guy rolled to one side, drawing his knees up to his chest and holding his crotch. The shades flew from his face as a groan slipped from him.
Isabel crab walked away, not taking her eyes off him. He was big, he smelled of sweat and road dust, and his eyes reflected a fury of pain. But he hadn’t hurt her.
She was as startled as he by her overreaction. Easy, she told herself. Take it easy. Her pulse slowed down by degrees, dulled by mortification. Then she tore her gaze from the stranger in time to see the swarm lift up en masse, a thick, spreading veil of heavy silk, the entire colony sailing off into the wilderness. The dark cloud of insects grew smaller and smaller, drifting away like an untethered balloon.
“You’re too late. They’ve gone,” she said, rubbing her shoulder. Glowering, she stood up, kicking the cardboard box in defeat. A few dead bees tumbled from the now empty branch.
“You can thank me later,” the guy said. He was sitting now, too, regarding her with narrowed eyes.
“Thank you?” she demanded, incredulous.
“You’re welcome?” he returned.
“What kind of beekeeper are you?”
“Um, do I look like a beekeeper? You’re the one who looks like a beekeeper, unless that headgear is some new style of burka.”
She peeled off the hat and dropped it on the ground. Her hair was plastered to her head and neck by the sweat of her fruitless hard work. “You’re not Jamie Westfall?”
“I don’t know who the hell that is. Like I said, I came looking for the Johansen place.” He regarded her with probing eyes. She couldn’t help but notice the color, deep green, like leaves in the shade. He was ridiculously good-looking, even with his face pockmarked by beestings.
“Oh, my gosh,” she said, “you must be one of the workmen.” The tile guy was on the schedule today to finish the majolica tile in the teaching kitchen.
“If that’s how you treat a worker, remind me not to get on your bad side. But no, let’s start over.” With a groan of discomfort, he got up. “I’m Cormac O’Neill,” he said. “I’d shake hands, but you’re scary.”
The name meant nothing to her. O’Neill was not on the list of contractors she had been working with over the past year.
“And you’re here because...?”
“Because, oh, Christ...I think I’m dying.” He slapped at his beefy bare arms, his face and neck.
“What? Come on, I didn’t kick you that hard.” She turned just in time to see him hit the ground like a dropped sack of potatoes. “Really?” she asked him. “Really?”
“I got stung.”
“I can see that.” In addition to the bites on his face, welts had appeared all over his neck and arms and hands. “I’m sorry. But they’re honeybees,” she said. “It’s not as if their stings are lethal.”
“Only to people who are highly allergic,” he said, trying to sit up and speaking as though his tongue was suddenly thick. A whistling sound came from his throat.
She knelt down beside him. “You’re allergic? Highly allergic?”
“Anaphylaxis,” he said, yanking at the neckline of his T-shirt.
“If you’re so allergic, why did you come running?”
“You said I was just in time. You said you needed a hand.” His throat was bulging, his eyes glazing over. He looked as if he was just inches from dying.
I shouldn’t be surprised, thought Isabel. I’ve never had much luck with men.
Chapter Two
“What can I do?” Isabel unzipped her jumpsuit and started digging in her pocket for her phone. Then she remembered she hadn’t brought it with her.
He grabbed her wrist, the sudden touch startling her again. This time, she didn’t lash out but stiffened at the unaccustomed strength of his grip. “Hey,” he said, then coughed and wheezed some more. His face turned bright red as he struggled for breath. “Duffel bag,” he said. “There’s an EpiPen. Hurry.”
Shoot. This was turning into something very bad. His breathing was labored, the veins standing out in his neck. She dove for the back of the Jeep and yanked out a disreputable-looking army-green duffel. Massively heavy, it landed in the dust with a dull thud, kicking up a cloud. She unzipped it. A smell of dirty socks and sunscreen lotion hit her. She pawed through wadded up T-shirts and jeans, shorts and swim trunks.
“Are you sure it’s in here?” she demanded. With growing urgency, she began throwing things backward over her head. Pieces of mail. A tangle of cords. Books. Who traveled with so many books? Not just travel books, like Hidden Bali. But Selected Works of Ezra Pound. Infinite Jest. Seriously?
“Purple canvas bag,” he said.
“Aha.” She found the oblong bag and unzipped it. “What am I looking for?”
“EpiPen,” he said. “Clear tube with a yellow cap.”
The kit was crammed with a traveler’s flotsam and jetsam. She turned it upside down and shook out the contents. Everything rained down—toothbrush, toothpaste, Q-tips, jars and tubes, packets of airline snacks, disposable razors.
She found a plastic tube with a prescription label and scanned the instructions on the side.
“Inject it, quick,” he said. The welts were causing his hands and face to swell, and his lips were blue now. “Christ, just jab the sucker into me.” He gestured vaguely at his thigh.
She popped the top off the tube and slid the injector out. She had an imprecise knowledge of the procedure, having learned a little about it in culinary school, during a seminar on food allergies. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Not...rocket science.”
With a firm nod, she moved over next to him and pushed the injector at his thigh. She must have angled it wrong, because a short needle poked out and caught in the fabric of his pants, spraying a small amount of liquid.
“Oh, my gosh,” she said, “I broke it.”
“Grab the other one. Should be...one more.”
Trying not to panic, she fumbled around and located the second injection kit. She turned to him to try again, and was shocked to see that he’d yanked his pants down on one side to bear a very male, muscular thigh. And she couldn’t help but notice that he went commando.
“Hand it over,” he gasped, taking the tube in his fist. Then, with an aggressive stabbing motion, he jammed the injector at his bare thigh. An audible click sounded as the spring-loaded needle released.
Isabel sat back on her heels and stared at him while the panic subsided. She felt as if she’d been hit by a truck. He looked as if he’d been hit by a truck. He sat propped on one arm, his trousers around his knees, one leg caught on the knee brace. Rashy blotches bloomed on his cheeks, the backs of his hands, his bare ass. “Are you going to be all right?” she dared to ask. “What do we do next?”
He didn’t say anything. He was wheezing, staring at the dusty ground. Yet very slowly, color crept back into his face. His breathing began to even out.
She stared at him, unable to move. He had a small gold hoop earring in one ear. Longish dirty blond hair. The black T-shirt sleeves taut around his biceps.
How had this day gone so wrong? Only a short time ago, she had jumped out of bed in excitement, filled with plans for the transformation of the hacienda into the Bella Vista Cooking School. Now she was seated in the middle of a field with a half-naked m
an who looked like a reject from a Marvel Comics movie.
He grabbed his cane and pulled himself to a standing position, then very casually hiked his pants back up. “I don’t feel so hot,” he said, just as she was thinking how hot he was.
She noticed three stingers in the back of his hand, which was now so swollen the knuckles had disappeared. “Do you have some tweezers? I could pull out the stingers.”
“No tweezers,” he muttered. “That causes more venom to be released.”
“Get in the Jeep,” she said. “I’ll drive.” She spent a few minutes throwing his things back into the duffel bag. There were a couple of hard-shell cases, probably containing a camera and laptop. More books. Shaving soap and toothpaste in a tube with Middle Eastern characters on the label. Condoms—lots of condoms. A travel alarm with a photo frame on one side, displaying a photo of a dark-haired woman, unsmiling, with large haunted eyes.
His personal stuff is none of your business, she told herself, hoisting the bag into the back of the Jeep. Then she retrieved his sunglasses and tossed the now-empty cardboard box into the backseat. “Go on, Charlie,” she said, shooing the dog. “Go back to the house.” Charlie trotted down the hill. She turned to the stranger. Cormac, he’d said his name was. Cormac Something. “There’s a clinic in town, about ten minutes away.”
“I don’t need a doctor.” He already looked better, his breathing and coloring normal.
“The instructions on the EpiPen say to seek medical help as soon as possible.” The last thing she needed at this point was for him to relapse. She adjusted the seat and took off. The Jeep was an older-model Wrangler with a gearbox. She’d grown up driving tractors and work trucks, so the clutch was not a problem for her. “I thought you were Jamie,” she said as the Jeep rattled over the gravel track. “The beekeeper.”
“Cormac O’Neill, like I said,” he said. “And hell, no, I’m not a damn beekeeper.”
“O’Neill,” she said. “You’re not on the list of workmen.”
“There’s a list? Who knew?” He braced his hands on the sides of the seat, looking queasy and pale now. “Did I take a wrong turn somewhere?”
“This is the Johansen place.” The Jeep jolted over the rutted track as she headed down toward the main road into town. “I thought you might be a workman because we’re remodeling.”
“Oh, yeah, Tess mentioned something about that.”
“You’re a friend of Tess?” Isabel whipped a sideways glance at him. He was pale and sweating now, probably from the rush of Adrenalin delivered by the shot. “My sister invited you? Oh, my gosh, are you the wedding expert?”
He gave a wheezing laugh that ended in a cough. “That’s the last thing I’d be an expert at. I’m here for Magnus Johansen. You know him?”
“What do you want with my grandfather?” she asked, instantly suspicious. In recent months, Tess, an antiquities expert, had unearthed a family treasure worth a fortune. Ever since, their grandfather had been hounded by everyone from insurance actuaries to tabloid journalists.
“I’m working on his biography.”
She glared at the road ahead. Lately, the whole world wanted to know about Magnus Johansen. “Since when?”
“Since I made the deal. So he’s your grandfather. And you are?”
“Isabel Johansen.” She had a million questions about this so-called biography. Glancing to the side, she saw that he was leaning back, eyes shut, face gray. “Hey, are you all right?”
He answered with a vague wave of his hand.
She kept sneaking looks at him. He had strong, chiseled features, his jaw softened by a day or two’s growth of beard. And those shoulders. She’d always been a sucker for a guy’s strong shoulders. Big square hands that looked as if they did harder work than writing biographies.
No wedding band. At thirty, Isabel couldn’t help noticing a detail like that.
She paused at the end of the lane where it intersected with the paved road. On the corner was a pretty whitewashed building with a wraparound porch and flowers blooming from window boxes. A sign hung from the eaves—Things Remembered.
“That’s Tess’s shop,” she pointed out. “How do you know my sister?”
He made a vague wheezing sound.
“Never mind,” she said, “we can talk later.”
An easel sign at the roadside invited passersby to browse the antiques, local gourmet products, vintage items and ephemera. Before long, there would be another sign, one directing guests to the Bella Vista Cooking School. Isabel didn’t mention it to the stranger, though. He didn’t seem very interested in anything as he leaned back against the headrest with beads of sweat forming on his upper lip.
She gripped the steering wheel harder and sped along the paved farm-to-market road. Over the top of a rise, the town of Archangel came into view, its stone and timber buildings, parks and gardens as familiar and pretty as a framed picture, surrounded by the blooming Sonoma landscape. Isabel had lived here all her life. It was home. Safety and security. But next to this wheezing, blotchy stranger, she didn’t feel so safe.
She pulled into a parking spot next to a shiny red BMW. The clinic was situated in a mission-style plaza that also housed the Archangel city hall and chamber of commerce.
“Can you walk?” she asked her passenger.
“Yeah. I think I left my cane in the back.”
“Sit tight. I’ll get it for you.” She went around to the back of the Jeep and nearly ran into a man on a mobile phone who was headed to the car parked next to her.
He stepped out of her way with a gruff, “Whoa, watch where you’re—” And then the hand holding the phone dropped to his side. “Isabel.”
Her heart lurched into panic mode. “What are you doing here?”
She hadn’t seen Calvin Sharpe in years, not since she’d fled from culinary school in a fog of shame and hurt. Seeing him now didn’t hurt anymore, but the shame was still there like a nightmare she couldn’t shake. She’d heard rumors that he was looking for a new restaurant venue, but she’d refused to believe he would have the nerve to come to Archangel. “Never mind,” she said, her voice tight. “I don’t care. Excuse me.”
He didn’t. He took a step closer, his gaze coasting down over her, then upward. “Archangel is everything you said it was.”
She couldn’t believe there had been a time when she’d imagined them together, here in her hometown. “I’m busy,” she said.
“You look good, Isabel.”
So did he, she noticed, his dark hair and chiseled features refined by the patina of success. His teeth were too white and too perfectly aligned, like a row of chewing gum tablets. She grabbed the cane from the back of the Jeep. “I don’t have time for this,” she stated quietly.
“We should catch up.”
Her stomach churned. She hated that, after all this time, he still wielded some kind of power over her. Why? Why did she let him?
A large shadow fell over Calvin. “Is there a problem here?” asked Cormac O’Neill. The red welts and swelling on his face made him look bigger and meaner than ever.
Calvin’s eyes narrowed, then he offered the signature smile that had endeared him to a huge TV audience. “Just catching up with an old...friend.” He made sure to say it in a way that implied they’d been more than friends, or so it sounded to Isabel.
“Uh-huh,” said Cormac, somehow managing to inject a world of meaning into two meaningless syllables. With his worn clothes, his hands and face swollen like a prizefighter’s, he looked like a guy no one in his right mind would want to tangle with. “The lady said she’s busy,” he added.
“Yes, we have to be going,” Isabel said with crisp decisiveness, hating the fact that her heart was still pounding crazily.
“Sure,” Calvin said smoothly, his delivery as polished as the TV chef that he was.
“See you around.”
O’Neill stood unmoving while Calvin got into his cherry-red BMW and backed out with an angry stomp on the accelerator.
Cormac staggered and grabbed the Jeep. Under the red blotches, his face was ghostly pale. She quickly handed him the cane.
“Sorry about that,” she muttered. “Here, let me help you.”
“Sorry about what?” he asked. “That some douche bag was bothering you?”
“Was it that obvious?”
“That he’s a douche, or that he was bothering you? Yes, and yes. Who the hell is he?”
“He’s just some guy I used to know,” she said, trying to sound dismissive. “Come on. You need to get to the doctor.” She hurried to help him as he leaned on his cane, swaying slightly. Fearing he might topple over, she fitted herself against him. God, those shoulders. Dead weight against her. He smelled like a man. Uncomfortably aware of his muscular frame, she brought him into the clinic and waved to the guy at the reception desk.
“He’s allergic to beestings,” she said. “He got stung all over. We gave him an EpiPen shot but he needs to be seen.”
The receptionist hit a buzzer. A nurse in marigold-colored scrubs appeared. “Sign this form, and you can finish filling it out later. Let’s get you into an exam room,” she said, her gaze flicking expertly over the guy’s face. “Hey, Isabel.”
It was Kimmy Shriver, a friend from way back. They’d been in the 4-H club together in their school days. “I thought he was the beekeeper,” Isabel explained.
Kimmy grabbed a clipboard and motioned the guy through a doorway and into a curtained area. “Is he going to be okay?” Isabel asked.
“We’ll fix him right up.”
“Thank you. I’ll wait out here.”
“Sorry about your bees,” said Cormac O’Neill.