Page 146 of Thunder on the Mountain
"Yeah, sure. I—" Ben looked back down at the pen caddy. "Hang on, where'd he go?"
Charlie had been stepping down from her chair. She immediately stopped and jumped back up. "What do you mean? You can't find him?" She looked around wildly. "Oh my God, he could be anywhere." She looked up at the ceiling above her head as if the spider would materialize there and drop into her hair.
"Charlie, he wouldn't have gotten that far that quick."
"But you said he's ajumpingspider! Couldn't he have, I don't know, jumped up onto the ceiling?"
Ben chuckled. "Well, they do jump pretty far, but notthatfar." He peered into the pen caddy again. He didn't want to rummage around in it just in case the little guy had gone tothe bottom. He'd feel terrible if he squished him by moving the wrong pen at the wrong time.
"Maybe you could take the whole caddy?" Charlie suggested. "I don't know."
"I could," Ben started, "except I'm a little afraid of crushing the guy if he's down at the bottom."
"Oh. Right. I mean, I don't want himdead. I just don't want him crawling on me." She shivered.
"Hmm. All right, I'll just be very careful with it then."
He picked the caddy up gingerly, carefully, so that not a single pen or pencil moved. There had to be at least twenty-five shoved in there, and he noticed they were all different colors.
"Once I de-spider your caddy, I can bring it back to you."
"Oh, thank you! That would be great."
She stepped down from the chair. They were almost eye to eye. God, she was beautiful.
And they were standing so close.
And no one was shooting at them.
She took a step toward him.
But then her gaze fell back onto the caddy in his hand and she stepped back. Her cheeks turned pink.
Absolutely adorable.
"You promise?" she asked. "Promise you won't tell anybody I'm afraid of spiders?"
"I promise-promise. And don't worry—it's one of the most common phobias. You're hardly alone. My guess is that half the guys who work here have arachnophobia, they just aren't brave enough to admit it. Which puts you ahead of them."
Shit, should I have said that?
"Well, I need to get going," he added quickly. "Shane and I are going to lunch and—oh, I'm late—and, uh, caddy, and I'll clean it up for you and—okay, bye."
Ben took off back through the maze of cubicles toward the kennels.
Smooth. Real smooth, Moose.
But as he carefully carried the pen caddy away, searching for one tiny fuzzy spider among twenty-five colorful pens, he couldn't stop smiling.
Charlie King was afraid of spiders.
And just now, she'd let him be her knight in shining armor, even if it was just for a jumping spider no bigger than his thumbnail.
He'd take it.
