Diamonds Are Truly Forever: An Agent Ex Novel 2 by Gina Robinson

whoever hid there. Instead, he saw his guest shampoo bottle cracked with the cap off, bleeding out its pale yellow contents, a bottle of conditioner, and a bruised bar of soap. “You’ve been attacked by body care products? Are you trying to call Mr. Clean with that toilet brush to ward them off?”
    Staci screamed again. “No! There, there, there!”
    Drew moved in closer, gun still cocked in front of him, trying to still his racing heart. A monster brown house spider cowered stock-still in the spreading shampoo slick between the conditioner and the soap.
    “Calm down, Staci. Stop screaming. You’re scaring the poor spider to death. What were you trying to do? Give it a killer shampoo?” He let out a sigh of relief.
    “Good! I want to scare it to death. Death to spiders,” she screamed back. “Get it! Shoot it!”
    “I’m not putting a hole in the wall just to take out a spider. The Agency has a thousand-dollar deposit on this place.” He shook his head and set the safety on his gun. “This little guy won’t hurt you. He’s not even a black widow.”
    “Don’t give me any ideas.” Staci sounded as if she remembered full well that black widows ate their mates. “Just kill it.”
    He reached for a tissue to grab the spider with. Staci stopped screaming. Just as he knelt and lunged for the little beast, it took off toward the tub and scampered up the shower curtain.
    Seeing it rush toward her, Staci let out another bloodcurdling scream. The spider froze halfway up the curtain.
    “On second thought, keep screaming. It seems to calm the savage beast.” Drew reached for the shower curtain just as Staci smacked at it with the toilet brush in an apparent spider-killing frenzy.
    The blow glanced off Drew’s shoulder. A second blow hit him square atop his head. He covered his head with his hands and took a step back. Right into the puddle of shampoo. Where he promptly lost his footing and took another step back. Into more slippery shampoo.
    He grabbed for the shower curtain to keep his balance. And pulled down the compression shower rod and the curtain with it. He was still stumbling and fumbling, unable to see a thing with the shower curtain on his head. He banged his knee on the toilet and started cursing.
    “I’ll save you!” Staci jumped on his back, pummeling him with the toilet brush as he stumbled and slid toward the door and safe, nonslippery carpeting.
    He reached the bedroom and dumped Staci onto the bed. He’d just gotten her off and shrugged the shower curtain onto the floor when Staci screamed again.
    “It’s on your foot!”
    Sure enough. He froze and the damn thing ran up his leg, disappearing beneath his boxers, tickling as it went.
    Spiders were one thing. Spiders up his boxer shorts and into his family jewels was pure torture.
    He screamed, dancing around, trying to pull his shorts off before the thing bit him in his manhood. He didn’t relish the thought of showing a bite like that to a doctor.
    Staci bounced up off the bed to help him, still waving her weapon of choice. “Hold still! I’ll get it.”
    “Not with that toilet brush, you won’t. You’ve already clobbered me with it twice.” He backed away and banged into a dresser, cursing some more.
    “Why not? It’s clean. I’m sure it’s never been used.”
    “Now’s not the time to get kinky.” He twirled away from her and screamed, doing a dance as he felt the spider in his crotch.
    Staci tossed the brush away, ran up behind him, reached around him, nestled up against his back, and stuck her hands down his boxers, groping around for the spider.
    He’d been way too long without sex. Even with a spider making a pass at him, his wife dressed in the thickest layer of cotton he’d even seen and ugly monkey slippers on her feet, at her touch he grew embarrassingly long and hard.
    “Hey, I said, Hold still! ” She hitched up her sleeve. “I’m having trouble maneuvering in this fluffy robe.”
    He tried to spin away again.