Page 36 of The Accidental Dragon Baby

The butler’s smile broadened. “When Spicy Master was thirteen, he made a hang glider and leaped off a hill with it.”

Ace cursed under his breath. “Are you trying to make Ivo leave?”

“He’s not going to leave. This story will melt him into a puddle.” Harvey ignored Ace’s pointed glare. “Besides, he’s stuck in the car with us.”

“He’s going to leaveafter,” Ace grumbled, but he leaned closer and wrapped his arm around Ivo’s shoulders.

“I don’t want to leave,” Ivo admitted quietly.

Ace’s gaze snapped to him. “Yeah?”

Ivo nodded shyly. Ace turned away, but not before Ivo caught his lips tugging into a grin.

Harvey gave them both a pointed look. “Anyway,Spicy Master thought he had the best idea ever. He’d built a hang glider to go visit some girl in another village, and he’d brought snacks.”

“You can’t fly with your wings?” Ivo asked.

Ace shook his head. “Not unless I’m absolutely sure no one will see. That limits my dragon shift to nighttime.”

“And this was a daytime flight,” Harvey said. “He had this little backpack that he attached to his hang glider, stuffed full of tiny cookies. But guess what he forgot to bring?”

Ivo thought about it. “Water?”

Ace groaned. “Raptor wasn’t with me.Hewould’ve remembered.”

Harvey’s smirk turned gleeful. “Spicy Master was high in the air, his mouth bone-dry from eating those cookies, when he decided it would be a great idea to fly into a rain cloud.”

“It... sounds like a good idea?” Ivo said.

“Not when it’s a hail cloud,” Harvey announced with a cackle. “It began to hail, and it tore through his hang glider wings. He had to make an emergency landing on the outskirts of town. Guess where he landed.”

“A lake of stinking mud,” Ace muttered, his ears pink. “I tried to land near the trees, but I’d lost control of the glider.”

Harvey nodded sagely. “He was covered head to toe in mud, and he smelled so bad, the village banished him immediately.”

“Did the girl find out?” Ivo asked, feeling sorry for young Ace.

“Now, you have to picture the scene,” Harvey said earnestly. “This scrawny, lumpy, muddythingwalks into your village, clumps of mud falling off him like cow dung—”

Ace rubbed his face. “I think you can stop there, we get the idea.”

“—All you could see were his eyes and a shapeless mouth—”

“Harvey!”

“—And he runs into the village yelling for his date, ‘Contessa! Contessa, my love! I’m sorry I’m late!’ He made such a ruckus, the villagers came out to see what was wrong. And then theysmelledhim.”

Ace groaned.

“It was so awful, people went back into their houses and came out withpitchforksto chase him away,” Harvey said, clearly enjoying himself. “And young Spicy Masterran through the villageto find his girl. He went all the way up to her door and banged on it.”

Ivo cringed. “And?”

“She opened the door, smelled me, and fainted,” Ace mumbled.

“I’m sorry,” Ivo said, feeling so bad for Ace as a boy.

“He didn’t get the stink off fordays,” Harvey crowed. “No one wanted to sit next to him at the dinner table, even though he’d scrubbed himself down seven times. Turned out, he forgot to scrub behind his ears.”

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