Kiss of the Bees

water there—at least enough to get him the rest of the way to the highway.

Earlier, as Manny walked, he had heard and seen a four-wheel-drive vehicle making its way both up and down part of the mountain. Suspecting the people inside of being Anglo rock-climbers, Manny had given the tangerine- colored older-model Bronco a wide berth. He’d be better off on the highway, trying to hitch a ride in the back of an Indian-owned livestock truck, than messing around with a carful of Mil-gahn.

Now, though, as Manny approached the charco, he was surprised to see that same vehicle parked nearby. A man—an Anglo armed with a shovel—was digging industriously in the dirt. Manny may have been nawmki—a drunkard—but he was also Tohono O’othham, from the top of his sand-encrusted hair to the toes of his worn-out boots. The thought of this Mil-gahn blithely digging for artifacts on the reservation offended Manuel Chavez.

“Hey,” he shouted. “What are you doing?”

The man with the shovel stopped digging and looked up. “You can’t dig here,” Manny said. “This is a sacred place.”

For a moment the two men stared at each other, then the Anglo, who was much younger than Manny, climbed out of the hole he was digging in the soft sand. He came at Manny with the shovel raised over his shoulder, wielding it like a baseball bat.

There was no question of Manny standing his ground. He looked around for a possible weapon. Off to his right was a small circle of river rock surrounding a faded wooden cross, but the rocks were too far away and too small to do him any good. Turning away from the Mil-gahn’s unreasoning fury, Manuel Chavez tried to run. He tripped and fell facedown in the sand.

The first blow, the only one he felt, caught him squarely on the back of the head.

David Ladd lay in the darkened hotel room waiting to fall asleep and grappling with the overwhelming fear that another panic attack would come over him and catch him unawares. The plague of attacks and dreams had left him feeling shaken and vulnerable. He knew now that another attack was inevitable. The only question was, when would it come? What if it happened while he was with Candace? What would she think of him then? He was young, strong, and supposedly healthy. This kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen to people like him, but it was happening.

At last, emotionally worn and physically exhausted, David Ladd fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. Sometime later, he was jarred awake by the sound of a key in the lock and then by the opening door banging hard against the inside security chain.

“David,” Candace called through the crack in the door. “Are you in there?”

Groggily, he staggered over to the door and unlatched the chain. “It’s you,” he mumbled.

Dropping several shopping bags to the floor, Candace stood up on tiptoe and kissed him. “Who else did you think it would be?”

“I was just taking a nap,” he said. “I’m still half asleep. I’ll go take a shower and see if it wakes me up.”

“Sure,” Candace said. “Go ahead.”

He had finished his shower, shut off the water, and was just starting to towel himself dry when Candace knocked softly on the door. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” he said, wrapping the towel around his waist.

Candace burst into the room wearing little more than a glowingly radiant smile on her face.

“Oh, Davy,” she said, throwing both arms around his neck and crushing the soft flesh of her warm breasts against his damp chest. “I love it. It’s absolutely gorgeous. And it fits perfectly. How did you know what size?”

For a moment or two, David Ladd didn’t understand what was going on or grasp what she was talking about. Then, catching a glimpse of Astrid Ladd’s ring on Candace Waverly’s finger, he realized she had found it just where he had left it—on the nightstand table with his watch.

Crying and kissing him at the same time, Candace seemed totally oblivious to the droplets of water on his still-wet body. “And the answer is yes,” she whispered, with her lips grazing his ear. “Yes, yes, yes! Of course, I’ll marry you, even if it means living in your one-horse hometown.”

Marry! At the sound of the word, David Garrison Ladd’s legs almost buckled under him. For the length of several long kisses he was too stunned to reply. And by the time Candace’s impassioned kisses subsided, it was pretty much too late. By then she was leading him back across the artificially darkened room to the bed.

Sinking down on the mattress, she pulled David down on top of her naked body, drawing him into her while her eager hips rose up to meet him. That wasn’t the time to tell her that this was all a terrible mistake—that he had never planned to give her Astrid Ladd’s ring in the first place. He did the only thing that made sense under the circumstances—he kissed her back.

Other than that, he kept his mouth shut. And after their lovemaking, while he was drifting on a pink haze, she snuggled close and kissed his chest. “What a wonderfully romantic surprise,” she murmured. “But I have a surprise for you, too.”

“What’s that?”

Candace reached over on the nightstand and picked up a piece of paper. A check. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Look at it,” she said. “It’s made out to both of us.”

When he looked at it more closely, David Ladd’s eyes bulged. It was a personal check in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars, made out to David Ladd and Candace Waverly Ladd and drawn on a joint account belonging to Richard and Elizabeth Waverly.

“What’s this?” David asked.

“A bribe,” Candace answered with a grin. “For eloping. Daddy says it’ll only work as long as Mother knows nothing about our engagement and hasn’t had time to plan anything until it’s too late. Once she gets wind of it and starts arranging things, the deal is off. He’s already married off two daughters, and he doesn’t want to do another one. And I don’t blame him.”