The man swooped everything back in the first-aid box, then turned around and aimed for the freezer, obviously to find some ice. “My name is Cameron Lachlan.”

“Great name. I’m happy for you.”

He grinned, but he also kept moving. When she motioned to a lower cupboard, he bounced down on his heels and came up with small baggie for the ice. “We definitely have some kind of strange screwup going on here. You do have a sister named Daisy Cameron, don’t you?”

It wasn’t often she got that thud-thud-thud thing in her stomach, but her palm pressed hard on her tummy now. “Yes, for sure. In fact, I have two sisters-”

“But it’s Daisy who lives in France.”

“Yes, for several years now-”

“The point being,” he said patiently, “that your sister has been playing go-between for us for months. Or that’s what I’ve understood. Because she was living right there, and because she knows my work and me personally, so you wouldn’t have to be dealing with a stranger. You were supposed to be expecting me. You were supposed to have a place for me to stay for several weeks. You were supposed to know that I was arriving either today or tomorrow-”

“Oh my God. You’re Cameron Lachlan?”

He scratched his chin. “I could have sworn I already mentioned that.”

It came on so fast. The light-headedness. The stomach thudding. The way her kitchen suddenly blurred into a pale-green haze.

Granted, she was a coward and a wuss-but normally she had a cast-iron stomach. Now, though, when she pushed off the counter and tried to stand on both feet, her bee sting stabbed like hot fire and her stomach suddenly pitched. “Try not to take this personally, okay?” she said. “It’s not that I’m not glad to see you. It’s just that you’ll have to excuse me a minute while I throw up.”