Price of a Kiss (Forbidden Men #1)(63)

He rolled his eyes. “It is not.”

Now he was shaking his head as he chortled over my phobia. My claws extended and I was about to pounce on him for finding amusement in my terror when the spider saved his life by distracting me.

I screamed and nearly tackled Brittany in my frantic lurch to leap away from the edge of the couch. “Oh, my God! It moved. Kill it, kill it, kill it.”

I certainly knew how to lead an upheaval because the girls started shrieking—even Sarah—begging Mason to exterminate the spider.

He sent me a vexed frown that seemed to say, look what you started.

I didn’t care. The spider was still alive and that was not cool.

“What am I supposed to kill it with?” he demanded, looking harassed.

My hysteria rising to titanic proportions, I shrieked, “With your big freaking foot, you idiot. You have what, like, a size twenty shoe. Smash that thing.”

“I wear a size twelve.” He scowled, clearly insulted.

“I don’t give a flying flip if you wear a size two, just step on it before it gets away.”

And so the chant started, quickly gaining followers…and volume. “Smash it. Smash it. Smash it.”

Mason started laughing. He shook his head with resigned humor and stomped his foot down over the wolf spider.

“Did you get it? Did you get it?” I clutched Leann’s arm, probably cutting off her circulation as I held my breath in tense anxiety.

Mason lifted his foot and showed me the big black smudge on the carpet. “Handled,” he reported proudly.

I screamed out my joy. “Oh, my God, thank you.” I really hadn’t planned on launching myself at him, but one second I was standing on the sofa, too relieved to think properly, the next, I was flying through the air, arm opens as I tackled my best good gigolo friend.

He barely caught me, a grunt of surprise gasping from him as I knocked the wind out of his lungs. We stumbled backward a few steps before he found his footing and latched an arm around my waist to brace me against him. Grateful, I hugged him hard and buried my face in that comfortable little nook at the base of his neck.

He was solid, and real, and warm, and smelled amazing. As soon as I hugged him, I realized how much trouble I’d just gotten myself into. I liked pressing against him. Too much. I didn’t want to let go. But we were standing in a room full of people, one of which was his mother, another of which paid him money to have sex with her.

Awkward.

I cleared my throat and pulled back just enough to grin up at him, thinking quick to keep the situation funny instead of utterly uncomfortable. “Mason Lowe,” I sighed out in a dreamy voice, purposely overdramatizing my words as I fluttered my lashes like a B-rated actress. “You’re my hero.”

He rolled his eyes and cracked out a laugh. Putting a hand to my forehead, he nudged me off him. “You’re such a dork.”

I shrugged and thankfully didn’t have to respond because all the girls who’d been shrieking on the couch with me leapt off behind me so they could hug his waist too and praise him for saving them from the mean, scary spider.

After he accepted the praise from them, he turned to Sarah and bent down to hug her. “You’re…my…hero…too,” she told him in her halting voice.

He looked like he might start bawling. Cupping her cheek, he grinned at her and murmured, “For you. Always.”

Damn. Now I wanted to bawl.

But really, did he have to be so utterly sweet when it came to his sister?

Without wanting to, I fell a little bit further than a mere crush. I was already halfway in love with this man.

$

After all the spider drama, Sarah wanted to dance. It was all her idea, I swear.

With Dawn’s permission, I pulled up LMFAO on my phone and blasted “Sexy and I Know It,” from the tiny speakers. The other girls loved how I flipped Sarah’s wheelchair to manual and twirled her around the kitchen floor. They all wanted to take their own turns giving her a spin.

Mason had followed us back to the kitchen and stood just inside the opening of the hall to watch. Though he folded his arms over his chest much the same way they’d been folded when I’d first arrived to the birthday party, he at least looked relaxed, as if he might actually be having fun.

When I caught his gaze, I wrinkled my nose at him. He grinned back and rolled his eyes.

Spinning away, I bumped my hip into Sorcha’s, and we boogied together while Leann spun Sarah.

“Mason,” Sarah called. “Your turn.” She waved him to her.

He wasn’t the type to deny his little sister anything, so he pushed from the wall and strolled forward. As the two of them began to “dance,” I backed away from the scene so it wouldn’t get too crowded. I’d just rested my back against the very doorjamb Mason had been using when I felt a presence at my side. I looked over to find Mrs. Garrison, sans her fiancé.

Wow, were he and Dawn still talking about plants in the front room together? Once she and Ted had begun, they’d fallen deep into a heated discussion over perennials.

“Hi again,” I said, trying to be cheerful when I just wanted to escape the woman who’d turned Mason into a prostitute. Well, okay, I wouldn’t mind chopping off her hair and stealing her purse first and then escaping, but…you get the drift, right?

“Hello, Reese,” she murmured with a regal nod to me before turning her attention to Mason.