In a lightning-fast move, Ezra snatches the camera from the woman’s grip.
She reaches for it. “Hey, you can’t—”
“You are on my property.” His tone is clipped. “Threatening the man I love with a blunt object, no less. I most certainly can.” Ezra chucks the camera into the bushes at the front of our house, whipping out his phone in the process and pointing toward the gate. “Get the fuck out before I call the police.”
She wavers, taking a step toward the bushes, but Ezra starts dialing. With a curse, she dashes out of the gate, the reporters trained on her now.
“Jesus, Ez,” I say, keeping my voice quiet. “That’ll be in the news.”
He looks unrepentant, opening the car door wide and waving me in. “She fucked up.”
I can see him firing off a text to Shawn as I slide into the vehicle, likely to have the camera taken care of before the woman tries to get it back.
“Everything okay?” our driver asks.
Ezra gets in beside me and closes the door. “Peachy. We’re ready to go.”
Cameras continue to flash as we drive out through the gate. It closes behind us, and I gaze at Ezra’s scowl as he taps angrily away on his phone.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t have your sword,” I mutter.
Ezra’s grin tells me how very much he would have enjoyed that.
As our driver brings us toward the premiere, something Ezra said a while back niggles at my memory. “What did you mean? When you asked if I’d want to move?”
Ezra sets down his phone, blinking a few times as the anger melts off his face. “I thought, well, maybe you’d enjoy living somewhere quieter. It wouldn’t have to be all the time, or even right away, but… I could see it. Couldn’t you? Somewhere private out of the city, where you’d actually be able to see the stars and I could go grocery shopping without being mobbed?”
I huff a laugh, and Ezra smiles in response.
“What about our house?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “We’d keep it. Like I said, it wouldn’t have to be all the time.”
“Where would we go?”
His face brightens immediately. “Anywhere we want. That’s the point. It’d be ours and ours alone, Gray.”
I consider it, the notion more and more appealing the longer I think it over. We’re often away when filming anyway, separately or together. Having a second base to come home to? Somewhere off the beaten path without paparazzi at our doorstep?
Ezra must be able to read it from my expression because he pounces. “You like the idea.”
“I don’t not like it.”
“A glowing review, everybody.” He throws his arms out theatrically, going so far as to bow in his seat. “However will I cope with such accolades?”
I shake my head as Ezra wipes a fake tear from below his eye. “It’s a good thing I know how to tolerate you.”
He clutches his chest as if betrayed. “Tolerate. Ouch. The pain, Grayson. You wound me.”
I give his cheek a pat, and Ezra snorts. “I like it,” I finally say. “The idea of having another place.”
“We’ll tell Madison but no one else.”
“Not even Shawn?”
“Doesn’t need to know.”
Our car slows, pulling up behind a procession of vehicles. It’s mayhem up ahead, a red carpet rolled out and countless reporters vying for a snippet from the many movie stars heading inside.
