what if once he’s out of the carrier he doesn’t want to get back in?” Olivia called after her, ignoring the look of disgust Gretchen tossed over her shoulder. “What if he runs outside?”
“He’s an indoor cat,” the younger woman called before disappearing into an examining room.
An indoor cat. She had a vague recollection from somewhere that indoor cats were indoor cats because they’d been declawed. Or the other way around. Whichever, knowing it gave her confidence as she pushed the carrier closer to the door Gretchen had indicated and opened the latch.
“Go ahead. Go. Va, Izzy. Do whatever it is you need to do,” she urged.
That’s all the prodding Izzy needed to sweep from the carrier and, with a regal lack of concern for anyone else’s agenda, sit and begin to groom himself.
“Move it, Izzy,” she said, “This is no time for a sponge bath.”
The phone rang.
“Damn,” she muttered, glancing at the phone, then at Izzy, then back at the phone. “That’s it. Time’s up. Back in the carrier.”
She held open the carrier door and reached for Izzy. The cat bolted. He was on the desk, over the counter and headed for the exit before she could say “Bad luck.”
Ignoring the phone, Olivia went after him, scrambling over the counter without Izzy’s grace or agility. For a cat with a bum paw, he was damned fast. She swerved around a woman holding a white poodle and collided instead with a young man on his way in.
“I’m Dan,” he said at the sight of her name tag. “I’m here to pick up the vaccine for—”
“I’ll be right with you,” she said without breaking stride.
Izzy was sitting at the edge of the parking lot, watching for Olivia with those yellow eyes. She approached him slowly, desperate that this not mushroom into a full-blown “incident.” There was no way she was going to let some gimp-legged cat screw things up.
Praying Izzy couldn’t distinguish a sincere human smile from a phony one, she cooed, “Nice cat. Sweet cat.”
Izzy purred, and waited until she was within arm’s reach before spinning and disappearing into the bushes that were along the side of the building.
Cursing, she took off after him.
She emerged on the other side with scratches on her face and leaves in her hair, and found herself in a narrow clearing between the animal hospital and the ancient wooden contraption that was home to Allison’s beehives.
She spotted Izzy a half second before she saw the snake. Again the cat was faster. He already had his back arched and was hissing with such venom the snake shot through the grass straight toward Olivia.
She shouted and made a wild leap in the air with no thought as to where she might land. On the way down her shoulder slammed into something solid, sending her sprawling backward. The hives, she thought, the instant she landed and immediately scrambled to her feet. Before she could assess the damage, there was a muffled, almost eerie sound in the shady clearing, and then suddenly the air was filled with bees. Black with them. Honeybees. Seven hundred and fifty dollars worth of honeybees to be exact. The invoice had arrived in the mail that very morning.
Cursing as passionately as she ever had, she plunged back into the bushes. The bees swarmed above and were waiting for her in the parking lot. She ran for the closest shelter, a pickup truck, and climbed inside, quickly rolling up the window. It was only when she reached to roll up the window on the driver’s side that she realized she wasn’t alone. A dog as big as a bear sat behind the wheel.
As he looked at her, he dropped his lower jaw, and the sight of all those big white teeth made Olivia decide to take her chances with the bees. She opened the door, but before she could jump out, the dog plowed over her. Slamming the door behind him, she grabbed a newspaper to whack the bees that had made it inside. When she’d gotten them all, she stuffed paper into the vents and took her first good look at the scene outside.
“Oh, no,” she breathed, recognizing the young man she’d run into minutes earlier. He was spinning in circles, waving his baseball cap in a frantic attempt to protect himself and the huge black dog from the onslaught of bees. The dog stood his ground by the man’s side, barking and shaking his huge head.
Olivia grabbed the newspaper and was getting out to join the fray when Allison appeared brandishing a fire extinguisher. She motioned for Olivia to stay put. Gretchen came from the other side of the building, armed with a hose, and together they fired on the swarm, allowing the man and dog to make it inside and then somehow managing to turn the tide of bees until the air was only dotted with a persistent few.
Gretchen remained on guard with the hose, while Allison dropped the fire extinguisher and hurried inside, pausing only long enough to glare at Olivia.
Even with her minimal work experience she could tell it did not look good.
Her hunch only grew stronger when a rescue vehicle and fire engine careened into the parking lot with sirens blaring. A troop of firefighters clad in black boots and red rubber coats disembarked. A stretcher was rushed inside.
Olivia followed. As she passed Gretchen, the girl shook her head.
“Another accident?” she drawled.
“As a matter of—”
“Save your breath. You’re going to need it to talk Owen out of killing you with his bare hands. My guess is he’ll be here any second now.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” countered Olivia. “Who’s Owen?”
Gretchen smirked. “Owen Rancourt? Just about the most hard-assed, hard-driving trainer anywhere, that’s who. That’s dog trainer,” she added with an air of superiority. “As in security, and search and rescue. Danny Dewar is Owen’s right-hand man, and Romeo is his all-time number-one dog. And thanks to you they’re both in there covered with beestings.”
Olivia could feel a headache coming on. A real doozy of one.
“Some people die from beestings,” Gretchen informed her.
“And some are strangled because they don’t know when to keep their mouths shut,” she snapped. “Would you like to guess which is more likely to be your fate?”
Gretchen’s response was lost in a sudden flurry of activity as Danny was rushed to the rescue vehicle on the stretcher. From the looks of it, he was already hooked up to oxygen and an IV. Olivia’s stomach clenched painfully. She may not have meant for any of this to happen, but it happened just the same and she alone was to blame. It was like a bad joke. She was in Danby to prove to everyone—maybe even to herself—that she was more than a beautiful, essentially useless ornament, suited only to decorate some rich man’s life. Instead she was piling up proof that not only was she useless, she was downright dangerous. Men, hedgehogs, for pity’s sake, even bees weren’t safe around her.
As much as she hated to admit it, maybe her mother was right. If she had heeded her mother’s advice, she would be on her way home right now and no one would be suffering because of her ineptitude. Doc Allison would still have her treasured hives, poor Danny wouldn’t be swollen and blotchy and strapped to a stretcher, and Owen
