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She hadn’t thought anything could be more mortifying than the last time she’d been freaking out on Heath’s porch, but she was wrong.
It wasn’t any more than Heath had seen the day before, when she was in her swimsuit, but she caught the moment when his eyes snagged on her black lacy bra, as if he’d completely forgotten about the spiders for a half-second, his gaze so heated she felt scorched. Or maybe she was just blushing. Or freaking out. Because spiders.
“Take yours off too! You carried the tree! They’re probably everywhere!”
He did exactly as she said, yanking his shirt over his head and throwing his shirt to the corner of the porch, looking somehow calm and forceful all at the same time.
“Let me check your hair.” His tone made it impossible for her to object. Plus he had a point—no way she wanted spiders webbing themselves a home in her hair.
She pulled her ponytail loose from its tie and shook it out, while he took out his phone and turned on the flashlight.
“Here, hold this up so I can see better.” He handed her his phone.
“I’m fine. They’re just little spiders. Baby spiders. Like inCharlotte’s Web.”
“Sure. And no one’s died from a spider bite in Australia since 1979.”
“Okay, weird. I’m not even going to ask why you know that Mr. Wikipedia, but thank you for the reassuring information.” Then his fingers, the same fingers she’d watched carefully unspooling the Christmas lights, were combing through her hair, his nails lightly scratching her scalp, his arms brushing against her shoulders occasionally as he moved. She had to work to keep her breathing normal and she was pretty sure he was breathing harder too. She wanted him to keep doing what he was doing, to never stop, to do it forever, and the shudder it sent through her was so delicious she almost forgot about the spiders. She leaned back against his solid, naked, warm chest and for a second everything feltright.
It shouldn’t make sense, but it did.
Except the instant before her shoulder blades melted into his pecs, he pulled his hands away and stepped back. Perhaps he realised his search for spiders was pushing her across a line—the one between house guest and something much, much more—and it was a boundary he didn’t want to cross.
Disappointment didn’t even begin to cover how she felt. She wanted to relax into him, to lose the sense of where her body ended and his began. She wanted to take shelter in his strong arms and forget everything that had gone wrong with all her plans. Spiders being the latest addition to the list.
“You’re clear. Don’t see anything. Why don’t you go take a shower, just to be sure, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“You’re not going to hurt them though, are you?” Without his touch distracting her, her skin was back to crawling, though she didn’t see a single spider. Which, now the initial panic of being covered in creeping things had subsided, made her feel bad about the spider murders she’d probably committed in trying to get the poor things off her.
“You don’t want me to kill them?” He stared at her.
“No? I mean, they’re just trying to live their lives. They’re not hurting anything, are they? Unless they’re the poisonous kind and then—” She shuddered again.
“Yeah, nah. Those weren’t poisonous ones. Too small.”
She didn’t know whether it was true that small spiders weren’t poisonous, but she was one hundred percent willing to believe him. “I’ll help you take them outside.” She didn’t want to think about how many spiders might still be in his living room.
“Nah. I got it, luv. You get in the shower.”
She would’ve protested, but he brushed past her and went into the house. “Coast is clear. Don’t see too many of the little guys. Must’ve been mostly in the tree. Or on you.”
When she stepped inside, Heath was squatting near the window, his back turned, using paper from her snowflake project and the phone-amplifying bowl to catch the spiders he could find.
“Gotcha!” He stood, holding the paper and overturned bowl on the palm of his hand as he went back out onto the porch. Behind him, their spider-infested tree sat on the walkway.
“What are we going to do about the Christmas tree?”
“I’ll take care of it.” His voice was so determined that she let it go, even though she really hated the idea of leaving all her ornaments outside overnight. It was summer. It wasn’t like a storm would come and ruin them.
As he came back inside, he studiously kept his gaze away from her and he was so overly focused on the floor and searching for spiders that she knew he was avoiding her. She hadn’t imagined him staring at her in her bra, then dipping lower. It hadn’t all been in her head that his breathing had quickened just like hers as he’d finger-combed her hair. Maybe he needed to move slow. That was fine. After what had happened with Zach, she wasn’t forcing anything.
She didn’t thinkshe’d taken that long of a shower, but she had washed her hair twice and counted one hundred strokes when she combed it, to convince herself she truly was spider-free. By the time she came back out to the living room, Heath had somehow managed to set up her fake Christmas tree, decorate it with her little collection of special ornaments, and be sitting on the couch in a weathered grey t-shirt that clung to his pecs and biceps. His hair was wet and freshly combed, and there were two bottles set on the coffee table in front of him.
“How on earth…? I thought there was only one bathroom.” Something was wrong with her. He’d set up and decorated a whole back up tree, and she was fixated on the fact that he’d somehow showered.
“Outdoor shower by my workshop.”
Outdoor. Shower. She completely lost her train of thought as the image of him without his shirt on, withoutanythingon, flashed through her mind.
