by Jule McBride
“That’s about right,” Angus admitted, fingering his thick silver beard and wondering if he should trim it, in deference to the heat. Gazing into a spray of morning mist, he took in vaulting curtains of green leaves and mammoth trunks of trees untouched by civilization. And never would be, if Angus had his way. As he considered the losing battle to preserve places such as this, Angus wished he was younger. At sixty, his time wasn’t exactly running out, but he didn’t have his whole life in front of him, either, and there was no one to carry on his mission. Since his wife Linda’s death two years ago, he’d felt like a buoy cut loose on the open sea.
“Aren’t you even going to ask who this is?”
Angus laughed. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
“Jack Hayes. News director at WCBK TV in Pittsburgh.”
“Pittsburgh?” He didn’t know anyone in—
“We went to school—”
Now it came to him. “Harvard, class of sixty-five. Hell, I haven’t seen you since the last reunion, Jack. What can I do for you?”
“Well…I’ve got an employee named Ariel Anderson, who’s from Bliss, West Virginia. She’s keen to do a human-interest story about her hometown, and we gave her the go-ahead. But in the pitch, she mentioned your name, and the possibility of including information about your involvement with—”
“The Core Coal Company buyout in the late seventies,” Angus muttered. “Attempted buyout,” he corrected.
“I was surprised,” Jack continued. “I always think of you as involved in nonprofit. And…well, aren’t you out there saving the rain forests, or some such?”
“Trying,” said Angus noncommittally, even though right now, his business associations, nonprofit or otherwise, were the furthest thing from his mind. He was remembering a long-ago summer and a pretty, young, small-town girl with strawberry hair, a great body and a smile to die for. Even now, he could still see her swimming in springwater so clear and deep that he’d felt he was looking into the core of the earth whenever he’d stared into the depths. Suddenly, with a stab of guilt, Angus thought of his deceased wife, Linda.
“I thought I’d better call,” Jack continued. “I told Ariel to keep the town’s business history out of the story since the piece isn’t supposed to be a coal-industry exposé….”
“You wanted to see if dredging up past history would cause me any trouble,” Angus guessed. Before Jack could answer, he continued, “I appreciate it. And yeah, I’d prefer to keep my name out of any story about Core Coal and Bliss. I did have some involvement down there.” And now, when he thought of the place, his heart ached. It was the only place he’d ever seen that was as lush and green with vegetation as the rain forests he’d come to tend and love. “You say the woman’s name is Ariel Anderson?”
“Uh…yeah. Why?”
“No reason. Just curious.”
“I don’t know much about her,” Jack offered, “except that she came from Bliss and wound up at the University of Pittsburgh. After grad school, she came onboard at WCBK, and she’s been here three years. So, she’s still young. Thirty, tops. A tough cookie. Ambitious. One of those people who’s out to prove herself.”
Angus knew the type. He’d been well into adulthood before he’d realized that the phantoms from which he’d been running had only existed in his own imagination. “And she’s from Bliss?” he said, soliciting a chuckle from Jack.
“A town that’s aptly named, I’d imagine. I don’t know why, but most women I’ve ever met who’ve come from those West Virginia hills are gorgeous, and she’s no exception. Tall and blond, with incredible skin and a smile that stops every man in his tracks.” Jack laughed. “Not that she bothers to use it. A yuppie with a heart of steel, with a Southern twang wrapped in a throaty voice that sounds just like Kathleen Turner’s. I think her boss, a guy by the name of Ryan Vermere, has got a hopeless crush on her.”
“If I ever meet her,” Angus said, “I’ll keep all that in mind.”
“No chance, Angus. This one’s made for glass and concrete. Two-martini lunches. The kind of girl for whom nothing’s ever going to be enough. Definitely, she’s not the type to stop and smell flowers, so I doubt you’d ever bump into her in a rain forest.”
That was exactly why, thought Angus as he hung up the phone and reached for his suitcase, he was heading for Bliss, West Virginia.
Atlanta, Georgia
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
“THIS BETTER BE GOOD,” Rex Houston muttered good-naturedly. Holding out his arms, he let a tech disconnect the air hose attached to the white suit, then Rex went next door where, once more, he held out his arms and let another tech hose him down, then help him strip off the gear.
Butt-naked, he headed for yet another shower, then for a locker room where, without bothering with underwear, he shoved long legs into jeans, and sockless feet into leather Dockers. He was still buttoning a white shirt as he strode down a hallway toward his boss’s office.
Behind him, somebody wolf-whistled. One of the techs called out, “Sexy Rexy.” He was used to the teasing. Tossing a bemused smirk over his shoulder he pushed open a door. He stared at his boss and said, “You called?”
“Come on in. Sit.”
“Nothing like your bedside manner.” Sauntering into the room, as if he’d had nothing better to do today, such as be suited up in the bio-level-four lab, he seated himself in one of the leather roller chairs. Not bad, he thought, his eyes taking in the plush office, for a lady who’d never seen field action. Nope, Jessica Williams—an upper-crust type from South Carolina who’d been born and bred in a navy suit—would never get her lily hands dirty with viruses as deadly as Ebola or hantavirus.
“I have an assignment for you.”
The words were pure bliss, and Rex’s pique evaporated like water under a hot sun. “An assignment?” Already, in his mind’s eye, Rex was packing…traveling to one of the world’s hot-spots, probably some small town in Africa. Already, he could hear the chopper blades beating and the clipped tone of a pilot as he put the bird down while filling in Rex’s team, regarding the number dead, the course of some new unknown disease. “What’s the bug look like? Has anyone identified it?”
Jessica shook her head. “Actually, nothing’s really happened yet. We just got a call from a local.”
Rex’s mind was racing. “Only one call?” That was hardly enough to interest the CDC, much less to get people such as him—known in the field as cowboys—involved in a case.
“Homeland Security,” Jessica reminded.
Since 9-11, anything that vaguely smacked of bioterror needed to be checked out thoroughly. “And you don’t have any information?” That would make the case even more interesting. Rex was part of a team that had traced more than one virus back to its native origins. “My shots are up to date,” Rex assured, “and I’m ready to go. I can be on a plane within the next hour.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Now that he knew an assignment was involved, he was relieved to be getting out of the lab in Atlanta. “Where to?”
“Bliss.”
That stopped him cold. He stared.
“Bliss,” Jessica repeated, now looking as if she were bracing herself for a fight. Not a good sign. “West Virginia. An overnight trip,” she added quickly. “To be honest, we got a hysterical call from an elderly woman named Elsinore Gibbet—”
“Since when does the CDC respond to hysterical calls from elderly women?”
“Careful or I’ll cite you for sexism. She called the World Health Organization and the Department of Homeland Security,” Jessica continued.
He sighed. If anything really happened, Jessica wanted to make sure CDC got dibs. “Let me get this right,” Rex muttered. “Some lady called and—”
“Look, I just want you to go test the water. You’re in, you’re out. Overnight. If you don’t find anything, World Health won’t go down.”
“I’m not a fireman who chases kittens up tree trunks.”
“I need an M.D., not a tech. If you go, the other organizations are covered. Besides, there might be something to the complaint. There have been times when something odd happens in this town. Like unexplainable blackouts.” Pausing, Jessica shoved a file across her desk. “It’s all right here.”
Rex didn’t reach for the case file.
“I’m thinking you might find evidence of the virus we’ve nicknamed Romeo,” she prodded.
“Why me?” Rex groaned. According to office rumors, the virus to which she was referring had only been documented once, in South America, two years back, and then the documentation had mysteriously been lost. Most people assumed the bug had never existed, and that the references to it had been created as a joke. “You’re sending me to look for the love bug,” he said flatly. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“The bug makes people lose inhibitions,” Jessica countered. “And we’ve not yet seen it in the States. It can cause temporary euphoria, a high that’s said to result in increased sexual behavior. Given the patterns of unusual activity in the town, dating back to the 1700s, as well as the local reliance on a spring, as in the South American case—”
“The case is not documented.”
“It was, but the documents were destroyed.”
“I don’t believe in documents that don’t exist.”
“Well then, take some that do,” Jessica said, pushing the file toward him. “We have pictures of the bug, drawn by people who saw it.”
He considered. The last thing he wanted to explore was a love bug, and not just because people all over the world were dying of real diseases that deserved his attention. There was also the matter of Janet Kaston. She’d been a tech at CDC when he’d met her a year ago, and like no other woman he’d ever known. She’d come to the city from a farm in the backwoods of Georgia, and she was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way. As nice as pie, too, and the first woman he’d dated whom his mother had actually liked.
Within months, he’d found himself engaged. He’d let himself get roped into hours of conversations about kids and mortgages, too. And his folks, who’d despaired of him ever settling down, couldn’t have been more thrilled. Hell, he’d surprised himself when he’d proposed. And he’d liked sex with Janet. It wasn’t the down-and-dirty, no-holds-barred kind he usually sought out. She’d been all hearts and flowers, and while she’d left him cold, on some physical levels, her seeming lack of experience had conned his heart. Seeming and conned being the operative words.
Just two weeks before the wedding, Rex had found his soon-to-be bride in the kitchen pantry of the country club where their rehearsal dinner was to be held. As much as he’d tried to block it from his mind, he could still see her clearly, down on her knees, delivering more than catering orders to their chef, who’d frosted a hard-on with cake icing from Rex’s own wedding cake.
The betrayal had hurt more than anything. As it turned out, she’d been a wild child with a string of boyfriends back in Georgia, whom she’d never told Rex about. He’d been part of her plan to straighten up her act by landing a doctor husband who could give her a soccer-mom lifestyle.
He’d walked out of the pantry and never looked back. Which was why a trip to an Ebola-ridden desert town would have been welcome. There was nothing like living in a village devastated by disease to keep a man on his toes, and his mind in the present.
Romeo—otherwise known as generis misealius—had never even killed anyone. If it had even really existed.
“It’s an order,” Jessica said.
Bliss, West Virginia, he thought. Without even seeing a map, he knew what the town would look like. Two blocks long and probably in a dry county. With any luck, though, there’d be a Hooters the next town over. Rex sure didn’t need a love drug to tell him he was horny. It had been months since Janet, and while he never intended to engage his emotions again—he could sure use some sex. Against his will, he reached for the folder. “Did you book a hotel?”
“None in the area.”
“Don’t tell me. I’ll be sleeping in a tent, right?”
“A bed-and-breakfast,” she corrected. “The fanciest place up there. It’s called the Teasdale Teahouse.”
So much for Hooters. “A teahouse,” he echoed.
She smiled sweetly. “A car’s outside. It’ll take you by your house and to the airport. Your plane leaves in an hour.” She glanced at her watch. “Forty minutes,” she corrected.
His return smile matched hers for sincerity. They eyed each other a long moment. “Well then, as much as I hate to leave you, Jessica, I guess I’d better go.” With that, he rose, lifted the file, then strode from her office. He’d just crossed the threshold when, from behind him, he heard her wolf whistle.
“Careful,” he tossed over his shoulder, “or I’ll charge you with sexual harassment.”
He could still hear his boss laughing when he hit the stifling August air. “Bliss,” he muttered. And a teahouse, no less. Now, why was he so sure he was headed for the tenth rung of hell?
2
ARIEL SPUN THE DIAL of the Honda Accord’s radio. On the local station, the Beatles were crooning, “Love, love, love…” Was this a joke? The previous song on the local station had been “Moon River”, and the one before, “Every Breath You Take.”
She blew out a sigh, clutched the wheel with both hands and stared anxiously from Bliss Run Road to the spring, which she could glimpse between the trees, then to the distant hill. Her heart constricted. At the top, she could just make out bits of the house where she’d grown up—tips of turrets, flashes of mint-and-lemon trim. Despite the colors visible under the blazing sun, the shape of the place was foreboding.
Her gaze returned to the road. Tied between phone poles, a white banner flew overhead, announcing the Harvest Festival. “Now, that’s odd,” she murmured. The Bliss theater was showing only black-and-white romantic movies this week. Tonight, Casablanca was paired with Bringing Up Baby. Glancing upward, she glimpsed the teahouse again and punched the gas. She was running hours behind schedule, and God only knew what was going on at the proverbial ranch. She’d gotten a call from Great-gran this morning, saying that someone had broken into the root cellar, opened the safe and stolen the book of Matilda Teasdale’s tea recipes. They’d had to call the sheriff, which meant Ariel was going to have to talk to Studs Underwood.
Feeling sure her blood pressure was skyrocketing, Ariel took a deep breath. The last person she wanted to see was Studs. Oh, she’d heard the rumors about all the sexual things she’d done for him. She’d given him tongue baths, made love to another woman in his presence and worn crotchless panties—when she’d bothered to wear any underwear at all. Oh, yeah. And what else? Allegedly she and Studs had been the hottest couple ever to hit Bliss.
That he was now married to Joanie Summers hardly helped matters. Ariel glanced into the rearview mirror. Thankfully, she looked great. The eleven years since she’d left Bliss hadn’t aged her a bit. She could still afford to go light on the makeup accentuating her blue eyes. Her straight, long, wild blond hair was pulled severely back, and turned neatly into a tight French roll, the pins of which were starting to give her a headache, if she was honest about it.
Not that she’d give in to temptation and let down her hair. She’d brought mostly suits, all of them more expensive than she could afford, and the one she wore now—a pale pink silk skirt and jacket, with a white silk blouse beneath—made her look impossibly demure. She couldn’t wait until tonight, since she planned to wear it into Jack’s Diner, and give the town something to buzz about. It was a far cry from the fishnets and miniskirt she’d worn the day she’d left Bliss. She’d been home in the many years since then, of course, but usually, she’d kept out of sight, staying put in the teahouse. When she had ventured onto Bliss Run Road, she’d never sported a total makeover.
This outfit hit the right note, with matching pumps that gave just enough lift to accentuate her calves but not so much that she looked like she was inviting at
tention. Yes, she thought, her hands tightening around the wheel, her long-awaited plan to restore her good name was definitely going to work. Color flooded her cheeks as she thought of how she’d roared out of town eleven years ago, on the back of her flame-red Harley. No doubt about it, back then she’d been hell on wheels, with the world’s worst reputation to uphold. But once she’d gotten out of Bliss, she’d been able to start finding herself. Not Ariel Anderson, youngest of the four weird, witchy, widowed Andersons.
Now she was about to put Bliss on the map, nationally. And that would make people in town finally respect her. Her heart squeezed tightly. Her family, as well. Her mom, Gran and Great-gran weren’t nearly as strange as the young kids always made out. No stranger than Chicken Giblets, really. But the three women did keep to themselves, wear dark clothes, and keep mum about their mysterious family history, especially Ariel’s mother when it came to answering questions about the identity of Ariel’s father.
Her lips tightened. She couldn’t dwell on that right now. Nor on the fact that she was going to have to talk to Studs, since the recipe book had been stolen. “We’ve got to get it back before the festival,” she muttered. Not only was the book of deep sentimental value, but she’d hoped to include shots of it for the feature spot she was putting together for WCBK. She’d considered mentioning the near buyout of the local land by Core Coal in the seventies, but the news director, Jack Hayes, had pushed the story in a more human-interest direction. Her more immediate boss, Ryan, had agreed.
Just the thought of Ryan made her lips go dry, so she reached for a bottled water and took a sip. He’d been asking her out, and if the story went well, and she got a transfer to another department, and without the taint of her adolescent reputation still hanging over her head…
She’d start to loosen up. Feel more free, sexually. Ryan was everything she wanted. Which meant the opposite of every man she’d ever met in Bliss. Of average build, with sandy-brown hair and brown eyes, he was the type to open doors and pay for his date…inclined to wear suits even when he didn’t need to for an occasion. Still, it was hard to imagine introducing such a normal guy to her family. But she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. She hadn’t even dated him yet, much less slept with him.
