Page 14 of The Handyman and The Drama Queen (Myths, Legends, and Southern Charm #1)

Ezra

I liked rewards.

I liked being his good boy even when I was probably insane and might’ve been rude to his mother.

Had he actually said I hadn’t been rude?

“You’re…you’re not mad at me?” It felt like I had to double-check, so I opened my eyes and focused on his face to make sure I knew what he was feeling.

He was smiling.

“For my mother?” He waited until I nodded to shake his head. “No, baby. She was wrong to come over like that and you made the best choice you could. You didn’t say anything rude or even tell her she had bad manners. Which she did. You stayed inside and just introduced yourself to my sister because you seemed to think she was behaving herself better at the very least.”

That made me smile and I could feel my face heating up. “She told your mom that you’d be mad and she was just sitting on the porch shaking her head when your mother was trying to barge in. So…so I said hello and that I wasn’t ready for visitors.”

I’d probably said other stuff too but with all the stress, that was kind of fuzzy.

“She didn’t seem angry at me.” I was pretty sure she’d liked me, so I was glad when Stone’s face lit up.

“She did. She stopped me in town earlier to tell me what happened and that was why I was later than I planned.” Looking like a kid at Christmas, Stone gave me a beaming smile. “She thought our mother was a pain in the ass and she had nothing but good things to say about you.”

His mother was a pain in the ass, so I was grateful we could all agree about it.

“She was very pleased that you said hello to her and not my mother.” Stone laughed, shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure she thinks she won some kind of competition.”

Over me?

Women were confusing.

“She asked if she could come over without your mother sometime and I said yes.” I was hoping that was a good decision but I’d had entirely too much time to overthink it. “That was fine?”

Stone leaned in and brushed his lips against my cheek and it felt so real a shiver raced through me. He didn’t miss that and it made his smile wider and sexier. “It was perfectly fine. You made her feel special. I think you’re going to like her. Oh, and you actually need to people once in a while, so she’d be good for that.”

People were hard.

“You’re people.” That had him pressing his lips together not to laugh and he raised an eyebrow, which I pretended not to see. “But she seems nice and as long as she doesn’t just camp over here it’ll be fine.”

It would be fine.

Stone’s nod made me feel more confident in that. “I told her that she needed to bring a blanket to sit on the porch with. That’ll keep her from staying too long. Once you decide if you want her around more, we’ll get some chairs for the front porch.”

That was a good plan.

“Okay. Good.” I liked that plan. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, even though this is probably my fault in some way.” Frowning, Stone let out a long sigh. “Someone talked. I might’ve said too much about you at the electronics store? Somehow it made its way over to the coffee shop? I’m still not sure the path it took, but I’ll figure it out.”

I wasn’t sure what the right response was but I shrugged. “It’ll be fine.”

Hopefully.

“We’re going to leave the doors locked from now on and I’ll pull the curtains at the front of the house closed for you if you want.” Stone moved the takeout box to his other hand as he shoved his car keys in his pocket. “When did I lock the back door?”

“You haven’t used the back door because it’s broken. I remembered that today.” I was going to have to do another walk-through and see what else I’d forgotten. “I’m really glad it doesn’t work.”

Stone chuckled. “Me too.”

At least he knew she was a menace…it would’ve sucked if I was the only one to realize that.

“Your dinner.” It was probably cold but he needed to eat. “I don’t know if the microwave was replaced or not but we can try reheating it.”

Whatever it was.

Frowning as he opened the front door, Stone was thoughtful for a moment. “Elizabeth never said. Gods above. She wouldn’t have left that fire hazard in this house, would she?”

Before I could answer, he opened the door and groaned. “She would. What was I thinking?”

Logically. He’d been thinking logically.

“Let’s check that carefully before we use it.” Because if it’d been replaced, it’d been during my fuzzy time. “You die making dinner over here and your mother might find a way to kill me again.”

She was the type to do something drastic when she was worked up.

Stone’s smirk flashed and he looked like he wanted to laugh. “I’m not trying to do anything unexpected like that. We need plans before we’re both haunting a rental.”

What?

“You were joking, right?” Hadn’t he been joking? “Right?”

Stone air-kissed my cheek before he went into the house and shut the door. “I promise not to do anything drastic or anything that leads to my death before we’ve completely talked it through. Besides, in the grand scheme of things, that feels like it would be after the thirty-day conversation and after we got married somehow. So we’re nowhere near that point.”

Nope…I had at least six months.

“I know I can’t control your body, so that means I can’t control your death.” I should be able to control his body but that was another conversation altogether. “But I’m going to say you need to stay alive for a long time. I like that you’re not dead.”

Stone scoffed. “You’re just using me for my body and my ability to touch things.”

And?

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” My dry retort had him trying to control his grin. “There’s nothing wrong with appreciating the positive things about you.”

His head cocked as he moved through the house and sat down in the kitchen. “You’re right. Your drama and feistiness are some of the things I appreciate about you and there’s nothing wrong with that, right?”

Somehow he’d very neatly backed me into a corner and I didn’t like it.

Which was why he’d done it.

Doms were such brats.

“We cannot control the things our partner likes about us.” That was as good as I was going to give him and his smirk said he knew it. “But I’m going to list off another limit that we both have to be okay with: you dying before you do anything…dangerous to your health.”

Stone’s shrug didn’t make me terribly confident about what was going to come out of his mouth. “Sounds to me like you’re controlling my body.”

For fuck’s sake.

“Stone.” What could I threaten him with that wouldn’t make me insane? “It would be tragic if I accidentally mentioned this conversation to your sister when she comes by.”

He flopped back in the chair, clutching his chest. “I’m hurt. That level of insanity already?”

“Yes.” When he stopped flailing around like a dramatic toddler, I gave him nothing but a serious expression back. “Are we clear?”

“You’re sexy when you do that.” His response just got a huff from me, so he nodded and finally stopped looking so mischievous. “Yes. I promise. Nothing that could lead to a premature death without a lot of discussions.”

Thank God.

“Besides.” He shrugged. “I have to plan that out right so I actually end up a ghost. It would suck if I fucked that up.”

Oh.

“I hadn’t thought about that.” He made me have the strangest conversations. “We don’t want that.”

“Nope.” Opening his dinner again, he frowned at the meatball and slowly pushed it to the top of the takeout carton. “At some point we’re going to get normal restaurants.”

That seemed like a loaded statement, so I simply nodded and sat down across from him. “I don’t remember there being that many in town.”

One, maybe?

I had a vague memory of a sign for hamburgers and cannoli but that didn’t seem like it made any sense.

“That’s why we put up with the food truck that shifts on a monthly basis.” He said it so casually it took me a second to work out what was wrong with it.

“That’s fast.” And it had to be expensive. “Magic?”

His nod made me feel better. “And a few members who are actually just that handy with mechanical stuff.”

I wasn’t going to ask what they were members of.

“That’s convenient.” And weird. “Are they ADHD or just easily bored? Can’t make decisions and stick with it?”

“All of the above.” Stone frowned at his food before shrugging and getting a bite ready. “Tell me about your day. I’m going to pretend my dinner is perfectly safe.”

We needed a way for him to eat dinner here without risking his body.

“Well, I told you about practicing turning the radio on and off. I’ve gotten pretty good at that as long as I stay focused.” If I didn’t, my hand went through it. “Before you say anything, I know it’s just going to take practice and figuring out a way to keep being solid at the front of my mind.”

That was harder than I’d expected.

As he swallowed, Stone smiled. “You read my mind so well.”

Because he’d given me the same lecture a lot.

“Thank you.” My dry response had his eyes sparkling. “After I relaxed a bit and stopped the unnecessary panicking, I wanted to try the lock again but that sounded like a bad idea, just in case.”

He couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to laugh or wince and finally settled on a sigh. “Good call.”

I’d thought so too.

“Instead, I worked on trying to touch the TV remote.” I wasn’t sure if I was going to call that a success or not. “The good thing is that yes, I can touch it if I concentrate enough. The bad part is that I’ve had to listen to infomercials all afternoon. I don’t know what I did but going back down in the channel list didn’t help. I’m not sure what happened.”

User error of some type but I couldn’t decide if it was a will kind of problem or if I’d pushed the button more times than I’d realized.

Stone would’ve had every right to laugh but he smiled proudly instead. “The TV too? That’s amazing. I mean, not the infomercial part, but the rest is great.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got a list of kitchen gadgets that might help us keep you fed over here.” That got a grin out of him but he leaned back again and it shifted to something more wicked.

He was going to brat again…I could just see it.

“If you want me to move in, you just have to say so.” Looking pleased with himself, Stone winked at me. “I thought that would be part of the one-month conversation, though.”

I was not even going to respond to that.

“A pencil is my next goal because I want to be able to make notes. There was something I wanted to ask you or tell you about, but I can’t remember what it was.” There’d been too much to think about.

Like what would go in that conversation in about three weeks.

Stone’s smirk wasn’t fading any time soon because he was having too much fun. “Making notes about all the ways you want to see me naked?”

God.

How was it not possible to have a second death from embarrassment?

“I don’t know what to say about that.” I wasn’t sure it was the best response but it was the most honest one and the one that just popped out. “You do that to me a lot.”

“Because I like your reactions and I get the clearest responses to it.” He didn’t look apologetic at all. “You overthink things until I shock you out of it.”

Brat.

“I understand.” I didn’t have to like it, though. “Did you have any ideas about what you’d like to watch tonight?”

We talked when he came over and we walked around the yard, but one of the big ways we enjoyed date time was watching movies together. He worried once in a while that I’d get bored, but I thought it was fun and at some point I was going to get solid enough to cuddle him.

“Porn?” His answer was so unexpected it took a moment for my brain to process it. I’d probably looked like a goldfish until I got my expression under control, but his grin said he was enjoying it. “Is that a no?”

God.

Was he being serious?

No.

He couldn’t be.

Right?

Ugh.

No. He was just enjoying making me crazy and this was his way of poking at me because of the dick rant earlier.

Eventually, I was going to learn to control my mouth when I was frustrated.

Hopefully.

Shit.

Was he actually expecting a response?

Goddamned Doms.

I should’ve gotten one when I had the ability to throw shit at him.