Page 19 of Desert Island Duke

He turned. It was the first time she’d ever used his given name. “What’s the matter?”

“Stay still and do not be alarmed.”

He frowned. “What do you mean ‘don’t be alarmed.’ That’s precisely the kind of thing someone says when the other person should be very alarmed indeed.”

Her lips curved up in an easy smile. “There’s a spider on your back, that’s all.”

He froze, suppressing the urge to look over his shoulder or to start brushing his hands all over himself to get rid of the thing. “What kind of a spider? A big one? Get it off!”

She caught his forearm and turned him slowly back around. “It’s only a little one. Here, let me.”

He quelled an instinctive shudder as he felt movement on his back. He hoped to God it was her hands.

“There!”

Her confident tone lowered his pulse rate a little, but it ratcheted back up when he discovered her cupping the biggest spider he’d ever seen in his life in her hands.

He took an involuntary step back. “Bloody hell, woman! Kill it!”

She sent him a laughing glance and bent her head to address the spider.

“Oh, don’t you listen to him,” she crooned, as one might to a lap dog or small child. “He’s just grouchy. You are such a handsome fellow, aren’t you?”

Max broke out into a cold sweat. “Put it down! Are you mad?”

Caro laughed—actually laughed. The girl was out of her mind.

She raised the monstrosity up to eye level. “This is a tarantula. Rather sweet, if a little hairy. I had one as a pet in Brazil. His name was Timothy. I was very sad to leave him behind.”

Max fought the need to slap it out of her hand and run screaming into the forest. “You are not keeping that thing as a pet. I forbid it.”

With a grin, she extended her hand close to a branch and the nightmare creature slowly ambled off her skin and onto the twig.

He let out a relieved huff. “You shouldn’t take such chances. What if it had bitten you?”

“Tarantulas aren’t usually aggressive and rarely bite. But even if he had bitten me, I would have been fine. Have you ever been stung by a bee? It feels like that.”

Max felt his jaw drop open. “You’ve been bitten by one before?”

“Just once. Timmy didn’t want to share his mouse.” She watched in obvious fascination as the newly-released specimen clambered up the tree. “Timmy was a lovely blue color, but this one, you see, is black and brown.”

“I thought your family studied butterflies,” he said hoarsely. “Pretty, harmless butterflies.”

“We do. At least, father does, and we all help him. But one can’t walk ten feet in a jungle without encountering things that are not butterflies.”

Max shook his head, stoutly refusing to think about all the other not butterflies that might be close to him at that very moment. Dear God.

“Thank you for removing it,” he said stiffly.

Caro sent him a beatific smile. “You’re very welcome.”

Chapter 12

Caro bit back her laugh at Max’s reaction to the spider as they made their way back to the beach. For some reason the knowledge that the man who had led his troops into battle, who’d faced the horror of Napoleon’s army without flinching, was afraid of spiders, was incredibly endearing.

Perhaps feeling that his masculine aura of invincibility had been tarnished, he stomped to the shelter when they reached the beach, collected his fishing pole and knife, and set off toward the promontory with a grunt about “catching us some dinner.”

Caro let out a little chuckle. If anything, her admiration for him had only increased. The tarantula had been far larger than anything he would have previously encountered in England, and she’d been pleased that he’d obeyed her command to stay still, rather than flailing around and trying to dislodge it himself.

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