Susan Wiggs - The Beekeeper's Ball

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 man 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.