The Beekeeper's Ball

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.

“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.

“Hey, just do me a favor and don’t die, okay?” After he’d gone to an exam room, she sat down and paged through a magazine, trying to forget the encounter with Calvin Sharpe. The magazine’s pages, nervously thumbed and dog-eared, displayed articles about couples breaking up, makeovers for mudrooms, recipes calling for canned mushroom soup, how to make a skirt out of four scarves, “What To Do When He Doesn’t Notice You.” She set the magazine aside and looked around, wondering how long it took to keep a giant stranger from dying.

She peeked at the “What To Do” article: Play up your air of mystery. Good one, she thought. There was nothing mysterious about her. She lived in the house where she’d grown up, she had a singular passion for culinary arts and teaching cookery with food from local sources, and she was following her dream. Some people claimed to be mystified by the reason she was single— “So pretty, at your age, I’ll bet the guys are flocking to you...” but there was no mystery about it. Isabel knew exactly why she was single and why she intended to stay that way.

On one side of the waiting room was a young mother and a toddler in a food-stained onesie. The harried-looking woman was wrestling with the kid to wipe the greenish sludge from his nose. In another corner was an older woman placidly reading a library book. Isabel had spent her share of time in the clinic. When she was little, she’d come for the usual immunizations. She’d also suffered the usual childhood ordeals of bumps and bruises. A dislocated shoulder from falling out of an apple tree. A gash on her arm, sustained while climbing a barbed wire fence. A raging fever in the night from an ear infection. And through it all, one of her grandparents had always been present, soothing her with calming words.

Later, when Bubbie fell ill, Isabel had been the one to worry and soothe, her heart breaking as she watched her grandmother getting sicker and sicker.

Restless, she gave the article another glance. Break out of your routine. Do something unexpected. Beekeeping. That wasn’t routine, was it?

Setting the article aside, she wandered over to a display of brochures on a variety of topics—immunization, food-borne illnesses, STDs, domestic abuse—Love isn’t supposed to hurt. She turned away, flinching at darker memories from nine years back, stirred up by the encounter with Calvin. She still remembered the night she’d driven at breakneck speed all the way from Napa, where she’d been attending cooking school. She had walked into the clinic, shaken beyond reason, unable to speak the words to explain what had happened to her.

There’d been nothing broken, only bruised, though she was bleeding. A miscarriage, the doctor concluded. It happens, he and the nurse told her. Many early pregnancies were not viable.

They asked her about the fear they must have seen in her eyes. They asked her if she was safe, if there was someone she could call.

I’m safe now, Isabel had told them.

They urged her to file a report. Isabel—to her eternal regret—had refused. She filed the incident away in the journal she’d always kept, closed the book on the past and went home. At Bella Vista, she’d buried the memory along with her dream of becoming a famous chef.

She’d spent the next several years trying to forget that dream and trying to ignore Calvin Sharpe’s rise in the culinary world, his smarmy television show, his chain of signature restaurants, making the most of his fame as a TV personality.

Why here? Sonoma was dotted with charming small towns frequented by tourists. Why Archangel, of all places? And why now, just as she was creating the life she’d always wanted?

She grabbed the magazine, determined to distract herself, and caught a glimpse of another tidbit of advice: Take down your walls. He can’t see you if you’re hiding something. Oh, boy. When it came to putting up walls, she was a master bricklayer. But how would a guy notice if she quit doing that?

Wear something sexy was next on the list. Clearly, this article was not meant for her. She brushed at a grass stain on her beekeeping coveralls and impatiently turned the page.

A piece called “Wedding Wonders” jumped out at her. Perfect. As Tess’s maid of honor, Isabel was knee-deep in wedding plans. The article admonished her to keep things simple. Right, she thought. With Tess and Dominic, nothing was ever simple. Dominic had two kids from his previous marriage, and multiple relatives, some of them coming all the way from Italy. Keeping track of everyone was a major juggling act. Yet Tess was blissful; that was clear to anyone seeing the light in her eyes.

As a girl, Isabel used to dream of her own wedding, but she’d put that aside at the same time she’d set aside her plans to study the culinary arts and earn her chef’s credentials. She had found other things to focus on—Bubbie, whose cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment had thrown darkness over everyone at Bella Vista as she became sicker and eventually passed away. Then the estate itself, sinking deeper and deeper into debt as they battled the insurance company that had rejected the claim for Bubbie’s treatment. On the heels of that, Grandfather had fallen from a ladder in the orchard and was in a coma for weeks. Tess, whom Isabel had not met until that incident, had appeared out of nowhere, a redheaded reminder of the fact that their mutual father, Erik, had been a scoundrel right up until the moment of his death in a fiery car crash.

But as Bubbie used to say—out of the worst winter will always come a brilliant springtime. Tess and Isabel had turned into the best of friends, and thanks to Tess’s relentless research, they’d recovered from the brink of disaster, and had turned the fortunes of Bella Vista around.

Life could be very distracting, thought Isabel. And that was a good thing. It kept her from focusing on things that couldn’t be changed, such as the fact that she’d never finished culinary school, or that she’d allowed one failed relationship to keep her closed up tight inside a hard, protective shell. Now she had a new project that consumed her every waking moment—the cooking school. It was true that she didn’t have the official certification from a prestigious institute, but she had something that couldn’t be taught—a God-given talent in the kitchen.

She clung to that gift, grateful to let the passion consume her and fill her days with a joyous pursuit. She believed living and feeling well came from eating well, appreciating the simple things in life and spending time in the company of family and friends, and that was the mission of the Bella Vista Cooking School. The last thing in the world she needed was something to divert her attention from creating the world she had always dreamed of.

Cormac O’Neill returned to the waiting room, wearing a cotton print hospital smock that was open in the front from neck to navel, revealing his chest and abs. His abs had ridges. Ridges.

He didn’t seem to notice the way she was staring. “The patient will live to fight the swarm another day,” he said. “I need to grab a clean shirt and my wallet from the car.” Leaning on his cane, he ducked out briefly, then returned. Now he wore a clean black T-shirt with an Illuminati logo, the fabric stretched taut across his chest, defining its muscled shape.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” said Isabel, pretending not to notice the muscles.

He gave a clipboard and insurance card to the receptionist. “I’m okay to drive,” he said to Isabel. “I’ll give you a lift back to your place.”

“All right.” She quit trying to be sneaky about checking him out. He was probably onto her, anyway. He had to be used to it, surely. A guy couldn’t just walk around looking like that—flamboyant hair, big shoulders, piercing green eyes—and attract no notice.

She tucked the magazine under her arm. It was an outdated issue, anyway. No one would care if she borrowed it to finish a couple of articles.

“...if you don’t mind,” he said.

“Uh...mind? Mind what?” She made herself focus on his words.

“I need to stop at the pharmacy. The doc phoned in a couple of prescriptions. She said it’s just a few doors down.”

“Vern’s, with the striped awning,” she said as they left the clinic. “I’ll wait for you.”

She watched him make his way to the drugstore. Even with a limp and a cane, he seemed to walk with a swagger.

Tara Wilson, a teller at the bank, walked past with a cardboard tray of steaming coffee cups from Brew Ha Ha, a busy local café. She spied Cormac and nearly dumped the tray as she did a double take.

So it’s not just me, thought Isabel, getting into the Jeep. For the first time in ages, she tried to recall the last time she’d gone out with a guy, or even stayed home and made out with one. Ah, she was so bad at dating. It simply had not been a priority of hers. She didn’t like that vulnerable feeling that took over when she was drawn to someone—and so she didn’t allow herself to be drawn to anyone. Sometimes, though, it couldn’t be helped.

While she waited, she paged through the purloined magazine and tried not to snoop around the Jeep, but it was hard to resist. The contents of a person’s car said so much about him. This one was cluttered, though not dirty. The dashboard was littered with receipts and a couple of maps with frayed edges. Who used a paper map anymore, in the age of smartphones and navigation devices? The stereo was old, too, the dial set to Pacifica Radio. There were CDs in the console—The Smiths, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin. Who played CDs anymore? She noticed some cards tucked in the visor—a parking pass of some sort, a driver’s license from out of state. She craned her neck and tilted her head to see. There were foreign characters on it, and from what she could see of the picture, he had a beard and mustache.

“Saudi Arabia,” he said, opening the door.

She cleared her throat. “I beg your pardon?”

“The license. It’s from Saudi Arabia.”

“Do you live there?”

He tossed the pharmacy bag in the back and started the engine. “I don’t live anywhere.”

Chapter Three

Isabel stood in the shower with the hot water pounding down on her. It was not yet noon, and her day had already been derailed. She tried to shake off the trouble—the lost swarm, the stranger showing up unexpectedly, the hasty trip to the clinic and then running into Calvin Sharpe, of all people.

She wanted to believe she’d moved on, that she was immune to him now, but she still remembered the naive trust she’d put in him, a chef instructor at the culinary institute, her mentor, her lover.

On the day all those illusions had been shattered, she had gone with him to one of the teaching kitchens to set up a laptop webcam so they could film a presentation. She had felt a special air of privilege at being his anointed favorite. It was then that she chose to confide in him that she’d missed her period; the home pregnancy test had registered positive.

She had not imagined he’d be pleased. But she never could have anticipated his reaction. Fury flashed like a lightning bolt. He’d slammed her against a stainless steel counter, pinning her there while he called her names that sliced her to ribbons and accused her of conniving to trap him. He’d slapped her across the face, and thrown her to the floor, her head striking the tiles with enough force to cause her to see stars. The attack was like being hit by a speeding car. It was that quick, that violent.

Long afterward, when she looked back on the incident that had broken her apart, she realized the signs had been there, if only she’d known how to read them. Calvin had been the classic and incredibly convincing charmer, drawing her into his exciting world.

What she’d failed to notice was his subtle exertion of power and control over her. He’d drawn her focus away from other instructors at culinary school. His way of playing the mentor had included subtle put-downs, eroding her confidence in ways she didn’t recognize until it was too late. He’d had answers for everything—what she should wear, how she should style her hair, the way she should angle the knife for julienne or brunoise. He expected her to be available every moment. Initially, she’d reveled in the attention, but as time went on, she came to realize he’d eclipsed everything else, even her long-held goals.

Her accidental pregnancy had taken the power and control away from him, and that was probably what had made him snap, his roiling anger erupting into pure violence.

Somehow she’d managed to drag herself up off the floor. With Calvin’s threats ringing in her ears, she had grabbed her things and left culinary school forever. He had overlooked one detail, however. The webcam on her laptop had recorded the incident. But she’d been too scared to take action by filing a complaint with the school, let alone the police. Instead, she’d buried her shame and kept herself hidden in the only safe place she knew—Bella Vista.

Today she was dealing with another unexpected arrival—a man with whom she had no past at all. Cormac O’Neill didn’t appear to have a cruel streak, but he was distracting in an entirely different way. He made her think about things like how lonely she sometimes felt, even when she was keeping herself busy with other things.

Wash away, she told herself. Let’s just wash the day away and hit the reset button. She used soap made from Bella Vista honey and lavender, inhaling the scent of the luxurious foam and wishing she could just stand here all day. Not possible. There was too much to do. She was not going to let a stranger named Cormac O’Neill rearrange the day’s plans for her, even though he’d already set back her schedule by two hours.

She dressed in a softly gathered skirt, sandals and a gauzy, loose-fitting blouse, light and comfortable in the warm weather. Her dark heavy curls—a legacy from the mother she’d never known—would dry in the sunshine today. Spring was in full bloom, and she had tons to do, starting with supervising the workers who were fixing a pergola over the new section of the patio, which had been expanded to make way for guests.