What Really Matters

by M. A. Innes

  No matter the quirks or bumps in the road, he was it for me.

  Hell, I put up with him cheating at every game we played and talking his way out of practically every chore in the place on an almost daily basis. Nothing would get more frustrating than that. But when he gave me that little pout or turned those big eyes on me, I wanted to give him anything he needed...even if that was to steal my Monopoly money when he thought I wasn’t looking.

  I forced myself to stop worrying and sat down at my desk. There were just a few things I had to do, but if my brain kept wandering, I’d be there all afternoon. And that would be a crime because I wanted nothing more than to sit down at the table and watch Zac try to make the cake he owed me. It would be a hell of a mess, but it’d be fun to watch.

  Zac was incredibly smart and saw things completely outside the box in fascinating ways. But it made following directions a challenge. I nearly killed him the one and only time we’d tried to put a flat pack shelf together. It wasn’t that he hated the directions; he’d just thought there had to be better or more creative ways to put it together.

  After that debacle, furniture always magically appeared completely done like there was some kind of flat pack fairy.

  It would probably end up being the secret to a long and happy marriage.

  We’d be chasing each other around the nursing home driving everyone nuts, and they’d all want to know what our secret was. I’d tell them lots of sex and never doing any kind of home improvement project together.

  “Work. You have to finish the presentation.” Even if it was boring. Fixing that part was one of the big things on my to-do list. The bones of it had been put together by a co-worker of mine, but it was so dry it’d put everyone to sleep. I wasn’t the funniest guy in the world, but without something to keep everyone thinking or laughing, it was going to go down as one of the most painful presentations ever made.

  After a few minutes, I heard Zac call out and the door to the house slam shut as he left. Refusing to get sidetracked, I kept pushing through until I’d gone through the slides twice. After adding in some pictures and an insurance meme that was actually pretty funny, I thought it was looking better. The list of notes and stories I’d come up with also gave me confidence that we wouldn’t have a room full of snoring insurance agents.

  Saving the file, I stood up and stretched, fighting off a yawn. “Time for a break.”

  Deciding coffee would be a good idea, I started heading for the kitchen. As I passed through the living room, I got sidetracked by the couch. Zac had been so absorbed in his book, I hadn’t been able to resist making him jump. The fact that he’d hidden the screen like a teenager finding his first online porn had made it even better.

  It’d also made me curious.

  I wasn’t much for romance novels, but Zac’s only guilty pleasure was gay romance stories, the dirtier the better. He might work an insane number of hours a week, but when he got to veg, all he wanted to do was curl up on the couch and binge on the newest releases. It was cute. And it also meant that most of the time I controlled the remote, so I was good with it.

  Walking into the kitchen, I couldn’t help but smile. It was perfect. Zac might have fallen in love with the overall feel of the house and the number of bedrooms, but I’d loved the kitchen as soon as we’d seen it. With long expanses of granite countertops and a huge island, it was fabulous.

  As I made my coffee, I puttered around the kitchen picking things up. It wouldn’t stay clean for long once Zac started baking, but I loved the way it looked when everything was put away. Once my mug was doctored up and perfect, I started thinking about the rest of the things I should get done for work.

  The presentation had been the biggest thing, but I liked to start the week with a clean slate, so finishing up a few more things would make that easier. I probably would’ve gotten them all done, too, if it hadn’t been for Zac’s e-reader sitting on the table.

  What had he been reading?

  He’d been desperate to hide whatever it had been. The frantic way he’d slammed the phone to his chest and the forced smile only reinforced how nervous he’d been. In the past, he’d never worried about me reading over his shoulder. Hell, there’d been a lot of times where he read the dirty parts out loud just to drive me crazy.

  I knew better. I really did. But I walked toward the table anyway.

  Setting my cup down, I reached for the small tablet. He’d never had an issue with my borrowing it in the past even though I preferred paperbacks to reading off of a device, and I could only assume that hadn’t changed. But it felt a little underhanded. I just wasn’t sure why. The way his eyes had been glued to the screen and the way his body had been reacting, he’d clearly been at a good part. The only thing I’d been able to glimpse, though, had been something about a diaper.

  Maybe I’d misunderstood.

  Maybe he’d been reading one scene but thinking about something else.

  Maybe I’d just read it wrong.

  Bringing up his list of books, I tapped the one at the top of the list. As it opened, it looked like I’d picked the right one. A couple of pop-ups flicked over the screen and I cleared them off without bothering to read them. I didn’t need the blurb or anything else. I just wanted to see what he’d found so interesting.

  As I skimmed through the lines, my eyes caught words that made me stop and reread the page. Yes, he’d been reading a love scene—but nothing like the ones he’d read out loud to me before. I wasn’t an idiot, and I wasn’t overly naïve. However, it took me a few minutes to really understand what I was seeing.

  Okay. Not what I’d been expecting.

  Finally, I gave up pretending to just skim through and sat down at the table. Starting mid-chapter wasn’t going to work. It didn’t make enough sense. I wasn’t sure why the one guy was in a diaper and the other was holding a bottle. I flicked back a few pages to the start of the chapter. Then, I took a sip of my coffee and started to read.

  That didn’t help either.

  One guy was bathing the other guy in a tub with bubbles and toys.

  Part of me wanted to set the book down and chalk it up to Zac being curious about something odd, but it was too easy to remember how he’d looked earlier. Picking up my coffee, I headed back to my office. There was a nagging feeling inside me that said it was more important than I wanted to admit. And since it was that same feeling that had pushed me to talk to the sexy drunk in the first place, I wasn’t going to ignore it now.

  Walking back through the house, I went back to the beginning of the book and started to read. I didn’t have long until Zac got back, but I just needed enough time to figure out why he’d been so into it. Diapers and bath times weren’t erotic...were they?

  ****

  “Are you sure this is the recipe you want?” Zac’s voice echoed through the house, and I set the tablet down on my desk.

  Still reeling from the few chapters I’d managed to read, I went over to the door and opened it. Zac called out again, slightly frustrated. “Do you know how hard it is to find espresso powder? I had to go to two stores to get it.”

  Trying not to laugh, I followed the sound of him grumbling to the kitchen. “I’m sorry it was so hard to find.”

  He sighed and gave me big wide eyes with just enough of a pout that I wanted to kiss his lips. He was pulling out all the stops to get out of making the cake.

  “Thank you for going to all that trouble just to show me you’re not going to back out on the bet.”

  Two could play that game.

  He just scrunched up his face. “Using guilt to make me behave should be cheating.”

  To make me behave...Was I reading into his words too much? Maybe. “If you weren’t such a terrible cheat, I wouldn’t have to.”

  Zac just started grumbling again but kept emptying out the grocery bags and setting things randomly around the kitchen. I wasn’t sure if he had a plan in mind or not, so I kept my mouth shut about his organizational system. “Do you need any he
lp?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “No, I’ve got it.”

  Sitting down at the table, I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and set it on the table. “Did you want to watch a movie tonight or did you have another plan?”

  Zac turned from the odd assortment of ingredients on the counter to look at me. “Are you done with your stuff? I thought you were going to finish working later, so I was just going to read my book.”

  Did he glance away nervously or was he just focused on getting ready for the cake? “I should finish up a few more things, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to spend all weekend working while you’re home, though.”

  Last week had been ridiculous. Most of the time he worked long hours, but it’d been one disaster after another. He worked at a small but exclusive PR company that handled a variety of clients. Normally they were well-behaved, but occasionally, it got out of hand.

  He smiled and set down the can of beans he’d been holding to come over and give me a kiss. “It’s going to be easier this week. Two of my biggest handfuls are on vacation in weird parts of the world with no internet. That right there will make my day two or three hours shorter.”

  I smiled, but the joke was that he was telling the truth. “Okay, as long as you don’t mind.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. If I don’t finish the book tonight, I’ll probably end up having to wait for days to see how it ends.”

  “Good, then I’m not going to feel guilty.”

  He gave me a little grin. “I should have made you feel terrible, so I got something out of it...a massage tonight or blow job in the shower tomorrow morning.”

  Laughing, I shrugged. “Your loss.”

  “I’ll remember next time.” He looked like he was going to enjoy the challenge of getting what he wanted in the future. Not that it was hard...I gave in far too easily and too often to make it a challenge.

  “I’m sure you will. But just remember I won this bet, so I wouldn’t feel too smug about your chances later.” He gave me a suspicious look and mumbled something about my luck being too good.

  Zac went back to organizing the kitchen and getting ready to bake the cake. Thankfully, he put the beans and the rest of the odd groceries away. I’d pictured all kinds of things he could have done with those—and none of them had been good.

  As I watched him, I couldn’t help but smile. The little grumbles and pouting looks, the clear manipulation even though he really didn’t want to get his way, were so funny. He was too cute. Oh, it’d taken me a little while to learn, but if I stopped him now and told him he didn’t have to make it he’d feel terrible and would really pout for the rest of the night. No, he wanted the drama and attention, but he liked pleasing me.

  Fuck.

  Maybe I was starting to understand the point of that damned book.

  It’d been a slow start as far as sex scenes went. But the way the...submissive character...um, boy...hell, guy who wanted to pretend to be young again described what he wanted, I was beginning to see the hints that Zac had been dropping. And maybe even why he was drawn to the book to begin with.

  Not that I wanted to be little or young or role play as a kid. Hell, whatever it was called.

  I couldn’t imagine Zac wanting to be the grown-up in that kind of situation, though. As crazy as his weeks were most of the time, when he got a chance to relax it was his time to just let everything go. He didn’t check social media or browse endlessly through the internet. He pushed it all to the side and read or watched TV. It wasn’t such a big leap to picture him playing with blocks or coloring.

  Ooohh...browsing through the adult coloring books at the store the other day was starting to make more sense. At the time, he’d just said that he wanted to find one for a co-worker who had a birthday coming up, but he’d also mentioned that he was curious about why people liked them.

  Duh, he was curious about why people that role played they were a kid again liked them.

  Low, frustrated mumbling about ridiculous instructions pulled me back to the present. Zac was staring at the recipe like he was reading about rocket science. It was a chocolate cake recipe, and he was damned near a genius. I wasn’t falling for it.

  “So what’s your book about? You nearly jumped out of your skin when I startled you earlier. Action and suspense book?” Okay, it might have been a little bit mean, but he deserved it after the drama about the cake.

  And it had the benefit of stopping his pretend grumbling immediately.

  In fact, he had no idea what to say because he stood there staring at a box of cocoa powder for entirely too long. When he finally started to move again, it took another second for the words to start flowing as well. “No, but another author I love has one of those coming out soon. It’s the fourth or fifth, I can’t remember which, about this military team with cool amped-up powers because they were changed by government experiments. It takes forever for the next book to come out. Fair warning, you might not see me at all next weekend.”

  Interesting. Not really what I’d asked him about, but it was another good clue that he was hiding how he really felt about the book. When he’d gone through his motorcycle bad boy phase, he’d talked endlessly about the latest sexy asshole that wasn’t nearly good enough for the cute little thing that was in love with him.

  I hadn’t been able to tune it out. At one point, he’d been so obsessed about a book, he’d started putting himself in as the main character and he’d come stomping into the office ranting about what that ass had done to him. I’d shared my marriage for a long three-day weekend with a biker named Antonio who was the son of a local mobster.

  I’d been really glad when he’d moved on to science nerds and then werewolves.

  “I’ll plan my work accordingly. When does it come out?” If he wasn’t ready to talk about the other books, then forcing him probably wasn’t the right way to handle it. But I wasn’t sure what was.

  Zac sighed but seemed relieved that I’d gone with the change in topic. He was also able to get back on track with my cake, because I was starting to recognize all the ingredients on the counter now. “She doesn’t give readers a lot of notice, which drives me nuts. She keeps making vague comments about how it’s almost done or is so close to hitting publish...it’s insane.”

  It was impossible not to laugh at his indignant expression. “So she’s as big a tease as you are?”

  He nodded and started waving around the container of salt he was holding. “Yes, and that’s not fair at all.”

  His being completely serious about that made it even better. “You should make sure she knows that.”

  He just nodded again, slamming the salt down on the counter. “I did. She just posted some laughing stickers on my Facebook post and wasn’t guilty about it at all.”

  “Of course you did.” Until I realized how much Zac read, I’d never known that people had more than one Facebook page. He had three...one for work, one for his family and mainstream friends, and one for his book friends where he posted semi-risqué pictures of hot guys and chatted with other people who were just as insane as he was.

  It was like some kind of cult.

  But he loved it and I loved him, so unfortunately, I had a feeling it made me an honorary member too.

  Chapter 3

  Zac

  “Okay, it has to cool before I can finish it.” Giving Hunter a mock frown, I looked around at the mess. “I’m not making dinner. Just in case you had any bright ideas about me being domestic and all.”

  “But you’d look so cute in an apron.” He laughed when I snorted. “What? No fantasies about wearing something frilly for me?”

  Fantasies?

  “Um, no.” Although I’d read a book a few weeks ago that hadn’t made it sound like that bad of an idea. “Any fantasy that involves me cleaning is not sexy. That might fall under scary.” Besides, I had other things I was much more curious about.

  Not that it was probably a good time to bring them up.

  Not that any
time was a good time to bring them up.

  Hunter grinned. “Darn.” Then he glanced around the room. “I’ll help clean up, but you got that batter everywhere, so I’m not doing it all myself.”

  “I’m pretty sure all that deal said was that I had to bake a cake. Nothing about cleaning.” If that was in the fine print, I wasn’t planning on remembering it.

  Snorting, Hunter pushed away from the counter and over to the sink. “I’ll start on these. You wipe up the cocoa powder. I’m still not sure how you made that explode everywhere.”

  Fuck if I knew. Baking had too many directions, and paying attention to every step was excruciatingly painful. “It hates me.”

  Choking on a laugh, Hunter nodded like that made perfect sense as he reached for the soap. “I see.”

  Cleaning the kitchen didn’t take that long with Hunter helping. Unfortunately, it was just long enough that Hunter kept glancing at the cake still cooling on the counter.

  “Nope. I’m taking a break. It’s still a little warm and I haven’t decided what kind of frosting I’m going to do yet, so you’re going to wait.”

  The recipe called for some kind of melted chocolate with that sweet milk stuff that came in a can, but I wasn’t so sure about that. I had all the ingredients, but I’d also grabbed some regular frosting from the store just to be on the safe side.

  Wiping down the last pan, Hunter chuckled. “You just want to read your book.”

  “That too.”

  When his hands were finally free, I wrapped my arms around his chest and gave him a kiss. “You need to work anyway. You finish your stuff and I’ll read my book, then we can curl up before bed and you can show me how grateful you are for all my hard work on the cake.”

  Hunter pulled me closer and kissed me again, slower and with more heat. It was the perfect hint about what would happen later. When he finally released my lips, he smiled. “Maybe. I have to see how it turned out first. But with all that grumbling, I’m not sure if you earned a reward.”