All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [104]
“Someone outside?” he whispered, his own hand reaching for his weapon.
“Huge. Spider. Sink.” Taylor hissed the words, teeth clenched.
Baldwin’s eyebrows rose a full inch, and he burst out laughing. “What were you planning to do, shoot it?”
“Just. Kill. It.” Taylor’s hands had dropped to her sides, her eyes shooting daggers at him for laughing.
“What would you do if I wasn’t here?” He went to the back door, where a week’s worth of newspapers were stacked neatly in a large basket, ready for recycling. He picked up a section, folded it in half and made his way back to the kitchen.
“I’d evacuate.”
Biting his lip so he wouldn’t laugh again, he looked at Taylor. “Evacuate?”
“Yeah. Go get Sam or someone. I don’t like spiders.”
“I’ve noticed. It’s in the sink?”
She nodded. “Dropped right down out of the damn sky, landed on the plate I was taking out of the cabinet. I threw the plate at the sink. Christ, would you quit dilly-dallying and kill the damn thing?”
He held up his hands, the newspaper crackling in his left. “Okay, okay. In the sink, you say?”
“You’re going to need something bigger than that flimsy piece of newspaper. I’m not kidding, it’s a freakin’ monster.”
Baldwin sidled to the sink and looked in. “Damn!”
“Told you!”
Among the broken shards of a white dinner plate was the largest spider Baldwin had seen outside the Caribbean. They had banana spiders there the size of your hand, but this thing was running a close second. The body of the spider was the size of a small plum, the legs thick and hairy.
“I think you stunned it. It’s not moving. You realize this is some entomologist’s wet dream, right here. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Just mush the stupid thing. Then clean out the sink, I don’t want to see any trace of it. Jesus, I hate spiders.”
Deciding his love wasn’t wrong about the newspaper, he went to the back door and picked up a size eleven tennis shoe. “This oughta do it.” He smashed the shoe into the sink, crushing the beast, and the remainder of the plate. “Eugh, that’s gross. Okay, it’s definitely dead.”
He turned back to Taylor, who was still frozen in the corner. He was overwhelmed. Seeing her scared, vulnerable was just too much for him. He spoke before he could stop to think. “Baby, I want to be around to kill all your spiders. Forever. Starting right now. Will you—”
The phone rang, startling them both. Taylor was staring at Baldwin, but the words dried up in his throat. The moment was gone.
Finally breaking their gaze, he smiled and went to the other room, still carrying the remains of the very dead spider on his shoe.
Taylor only half heard Baldwin talking as she left the kitchen, working her way toward the back of the house. She pulled her 9mm out of its holster and ran it along the palm of her hand, as if she could pick up her gun and solve the ills of the world. There, that was better. She was still tough. Still ready to take on the world. Amazing that in the course of a few days she’d felt so out of control, enough that a spider rattled her to the point of no return. She imagined that must be what Baldwin felt, chasing after a phantom. What was he saying, there in the kitchen? From a man to a woman, the words Will you can only go a few ways, especially following the word forever. Interesting.
She stepped into the office, secured her weapon in the gun safe, which she always left unlocked; there was no one to keep the guns from, other than her and Baldwin. She heard phones simultaneously hang up and stuck her head out into the living room.
“What’s going on?”
Baldwin collapsed in a ball on the sofa. “Are you fully recovered from your trauma?” he teased.
“Yes. I’ll have the exterminator out here first thing. They must have forgotten a spot last time.” Baldwin was avoiding her eyes, trying not to smile. “Yeah, yeah, so I have them come spray once a month. I don’t like bugs. And we’ll have to order something in for dinner, ’cause I’m not going back in there until that mess is cleaned up. Now, what’s going on?”
He ran his hands through his hair. “To start