The Beekeeper's Ball

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 (#u8093f237-77c0-5447-bdcc-638412f7f45a)

“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 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.”