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“I hate spiders,” Cheyenne repeated. A visible shudder went through her. “They wouldn’t bite the horses, would they?”

Rick rubbed at his face as he straightened up. “I wouldn’t think so, but they could be in the tack room with the saddle blankets.”

“I’ll check the horses for bites,” Cheyenne said. “I don’t want them to suffer through a black widow bite.”

I motioned for Rick to hand over a broom to sweep up the dead spiders. “There isn’t enough venom to kill a horse in a black widow. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“A bite can still be painful though. Rick, would you help me look over the horses?” She shuddered again. “I have boots on, but I can’t smash a spider no matter how afraid I am of them.”

I watched as Rick and Cheyenne walked out the barn door to check on the horses before sweeping up the dead spiders. Too many of them. Black widows were naturally aggressive towards other spiders. To see this many in one spot didn’t feel right.

I checked the tack room for any signs of spiders along with the rest of the barn stalls but found none. The drizzle of rain had turned into a steady rain when I stepped outside to where Rick and Cheyenne were running their hands along a horse’s legs.

“No bites?” I asked, relieved when Cheyenne nodded at me. “I don’t need to call Jacob out here then?”

“No bites from what we’ve found,” Rick said, smoothing a palm along a brown mare’s neck. “Those spiders must’ve had a nest somewhere in the beams. Maybe it was knocked down into the barn stall?”

“Black widows will kill each other,” I pointed out, pinching the bridge of my nose. “If they had a nest in the beams, we would’ve seen the webs. They are aggressive by nature. I’m surprised they didn’t bite the horses.”

Cheyenne let out a relieved sigh. “I’m just thankful they didn’t because those bites are so painful. None in the tack room or other stalls?”

“None. We can bring the horses in before the rain gets too heavy.”

I caught sight of Cheyenne’s nervous look at the barn. Reaching forward, I clasped her smaller hand in mine. Her slender and delicate fingers were soft against my own when she looked up at me with fright in her eyes.

“It’s going to be okay,” I assured her. “I promise, Cheyenne. I double-checked the entire barn while you two were out here.”

“I’ll take your word,” she said over the boom of thunder. “Let’s get them in before this storm starts up.”

It took an hour to get the horses in their stalls. It took even longer for me to convince Cheyenne that they were going to be okay. Huddled against one another when the rain started to pour, we both waved to Rick as he backed up the driveway in his truck. Darkness settled on the ranch as I guided Cheyenne at my side to the mudroom alongside the kitchen.

“What happened?” Tiffany asked the second we were inside. She hobbled over to us on crutches, frowning the entire time. “I heard Cheyenne screaming down in the barn. I saw the horses in the corral too.”

Cheyenne took her hat off to hang it up on a coat peg. She smoothed a few errant pieces of hair back from her forehead while looking up at me.

“We found black widows in one of the barn stalls,” I explained, taking my own hat off as well. “Not sure what happened, but there was about thirty of them in one barn stall. Cheyenne’s lucky that she didn’t get bit.”

Tiffany’s face lost color quickly as I suspected it would. She hated spiders with a passion. I was always the one who killed them when we were kids and even as adults.

“Black widows in the barn?” Tiffany repeated with a shudder. “Gross. Please tell me that you stomped the hell out of them.”

“The ones that I found,” I said.

“I don’t understand what they were doing in one barn stall though,” Tiffany said. “We’ve never had problems like that before. At least, not that many spiders at once.”

Cheyenne slipped off her boots, nudging them to the doormat next to the door. She gave us both a bashful smile.

“I’m sorry to cut this conversation short,” she said, “but, I can’t get the creepy-crawly sensation off my skin. I need to go upstairs and shower.”

Tiffany waited until Cheyenne was well out of ear-shot before she turned to look at me with a frown. “Something is going on, Colt. You see that, right?”

“I see it,” I said, darkly. “I saw it when I counted the spiders. I don’t know how that happened, but I can’t believe it was nature.”

“Who was in the barn with you?”

“Just Rick, Cheyenne, and me. That’s it. No one else came and left today.”

Tags: Claire Adams Romance
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