Page 60 of Hot Knot Summer
Before it can scurry away, I bring my boot down hard. There’s a sickening crunch as eight legs worth of menace meets its maker.
I’ve barely straightened when a wet, naked missile crashes into my chest. Emma throws herself against me, shaking violently, her arms locked around my waist like I’m the only solid thing in a collapsing world.
“Is it dead?” she gasps against my now-soaked shirt, face buried against my sternum. “Tell me it’s gone, or we might need to burn this cabin and salt the earth afterward.”
I can’t help but grin, even as my body responds all too eagerly to her nakedness pressed against me. “It’s been permanently relocated to the underside of my boot.”
“Eek!” She flinches away from my boot, and in that moment of separation, her situation seems to dawn on her.
For one suspended moment, we just stare at each other. Her eyes widen, darting down to her completely exposed body, then back up to my face, which, I’m sure, is doing a poor job of hiding exactly how affected I am by the view.
And what a view it is. This close, I can see the freckles dusting across her shoulders, the small birthmark just below her left breast, and the gentle swell of her hips flaring out from a narrow waist. Her skin is flushed pink from the hot water or perhaps embarrassment and glistening with droplets I suddenly, desperately want to trace with my tongue. My hands actually twitch with the need to touch, to explore, to claim.
My jeans are tightening around me to the point of pain.
She snatches another towel from the rack with lightning speed, wrapping it around herself with a squeak of mortification. “Don’t look!”
“Oh, I saw nothing,” I lie, unable to keep the grin off my face.
“You are such a liar!” She swats my arm, leaving a wet handprint on my sleeve. “Your eyes practically took measurements!”
I can’t help it. I laugh. “Force of habit. I’m an engineer.”
Her cheeks flame even redder. Before I can say anything else, she’s darting past me into the hallway, leaving wet footprints on the hardwood as she practically sprints to her room. The door slams behind her with enough force to rattle the frame.
“You’re welcome!” I call after her. “I saved your life!”
Her muffled “Shut UP!” is just audible through the door, followed by what sounds suspiciously like laughter.
I glance down at my thoroughly soaked shirt and jeans, then at the spider corpse still under my boot. For a moment, I consider collecting the specimen, it’s unusually large for the species and might be worth documenting, but decide Emma might actually commit homicide if she saw me preserving her nemesis.
With a sigh that’s equal parts amusement and frustration, I clean up the bathroom, dispose of the arachnid remains in the outside trash, and head to my room to change.
As I peel off my wet clothes, the image of Emma, wide-eyed, water-slicked, and gloriously bare, replays in my mind like a torturous highlight reel. This living arrangement just got a whole lot more complicated.
And exponentially more interesting.
By the time Emma emerges from her room, I’ve changed into dry clothes and am lounging on thecouch. I glance up casually, as if I haven’t been listening for her door for the past forty-two minutes.
She hovers at the edge of the living room, wearing a pair of gray sweatpants and an oversized Whispering Grove Fire Department hoodie—both items from the clothes we’d purchased for her, tags recently removed judging by the tiny plastic thread clinging to the sleeve. Her hair is damp but combed, falling in waves around her shoulders, and her cheeks are still flushed with either embarrassment or the lingering heat from her shower.
For several seconds, she seems to debate whether to acknowledge me or retreat back to her room.
I decide to make it easy for her. “The enemy has been vanquished,” I say, setting my book aside. “The cabin is now a certified arachnid-free zone.”
She takes a few tentative steps into the room, and I notice she’s carefully scanning the floor and corners as she moves. Her spider trauma runs deeper than just momentary fear.
“Arachnophobia, huh?”
“Clinically diagnosed,” she confirms, sinking into the opposite end of the couch. “Since I was eight. A babysitter thought it would be funny to put a tarantula on my pillow while I was sleeping.”
I wince. “That’s... sadistic.”
“She didn’t work for our family again,” Emma says darkly. “But the damage was done. One glimpse of those eight legs and I’m instantly eight years old again, waking up to fuzzy legs on my face.”
“That explains the extreme reaction,” I say. “The adrenaline spike from a phobia trigger can be comparable to actual life-threatening situations.”
She eyes me curiously. “You sound like my therapist.”
