Castles and Promises for the Future #2
Unable to contain my curiosity, I move into the living room. It fills the round turret, windows wrapping almost completely around it. Built-in bookshelves line the wall that connects the turret to the rest of the house in the empty room.
Neeve lets go of my hand and walks over to touch the bookshelves reverently. "Dad says we each get our own section and can fill it with the books we want."
So, no decorated leather-bound volumes to complete the aesthetic that no one reads.
"I've got a place to put all the books I bought at GRIP," Mom says complacently.
"Don't pretend you didn't have plenty of books on ancestry and genealogy before your weeklong researchfest," I tease automatically.
Mom's books were vying for space with Joy's art supplies under her bed. Which was so not fair to her.
I turn to mom. "Why didn't you put your foot down about moving to a bigger apartment?"
I don't ask why she didn't get fed up and move out on her own. Mom would never have left me and the girls to fend for ourselves like that. It's not in her nature.
She loved being a stay-at-home mom and thrived as the grandma at home too.
"You weren't ready." Mom pats my shoulder. "You are now."
I hope she's right, because it looks like we're moving.
"Come on, girls, you can make sure your rooms are just the way you want before your mom sees them while your dad shows her the rest of the downstairs."
"Wait until you see gran's room, mom," Sadie says with awe. "It's like her own apartment with a mini kitchen and everything."
My oldest has felt the pinch of the size of our apartment more than her sisters. The idea of having that much space to herself is clearly the stuff of dreams for her.
I smile up at Kieran. Trust him to find a house with a mother-in-law suite. "I love you so much, big guy."
His eyes heat and he pulls me to him. We don't continue the tour for several long minutes.
Holding my hand, he guides me through the rooms on the first floor. Besides the living room, there's a formal dining room, a family room with a super comfy looking oversized sectional big enough for all of us and a brand new recliner for mom.
The kitchen is the other fully furnished room on this floor. And it looks like it stepped right out of the glossy spread of a lifestyle magazine. Bright and open, with a long farmhouse table beneath windows overlooking the backyard, it's a cook's dream.
There's an electric kettle with a box of mom's favorite Barry's Irish Breakfast Tea beside it, and single cup coffee maker in the butler's pantry with a basket of flavored coffee pods.
"You thought of everything," I tell him.
"The girls helped."
"How long have you all been working on this?" And why didn't I notice the signs of a conspiracy?
"A few days."
"You did all this in a few days?"
He just looks at me.
Right. "You're rich as Croeseus."
"No. But I do have enough money to make things happen quickly."
He's talking in full sentences and even paragraphs more these days. But only when it's just us. His family. Even around his men, some of whom I would call his brothers, he reverts to sparse speech.
"And people who work for you to make sure it does." Like Ellie.
My sister-from-another-mister didn't give a single clue this was happening and there's no way she wasn't part of the team that managed the purchase and partial furnishing of a house like this in a few days.
"Yes."
"There's a lot of space. I don't even know what to do with a formal dining room. Or a living room that isn't for relaxing."
Then an image of a big Christmas tree decorated and lit in front of those windows flashes in my brain. Us sitting around a formal dining table for Sunday dinners.
Birthdays. Graduations. Weddings. And grandchildren.
My brain skips so far ahead I nearly trip over my own feet.
I'm still reeling from my overactive imagination when Kieran knocks on a door off the kitchen.
Mom opens the door and smiles, giving me a proud tour of her one-bedroom apartment with its own small sitting room, bathroom, the mini kitchen Sadie mentioned and its own entrance to the backyard.
It's fully furnished and her ancestry research is spread over her small dinette table.
Emotion pours through me. Gratitude. Joy. Love.
Tears clogging my throat, I hug my mom. "Thank you for staying with us."
"There's no place I'd rather be." Her returning hug is fierce. "Now, go see your daughters' rooms. They're chomping at the bit to show them off."
We peek in on two empty bedrooms before we knock on another door. Sadie opens it, beaming.
Her room is furnished too. A double-sized bed she doesn't have to share is on a loft platform above a nook with a desk and bookcase. There are fairy lights on the railing of the bed platform and in the nook.
She has a futon sofa for when her friends stay over, or want to hang out.
Neeve and Joy's rooms are just as perfect for them.
Our room only has one piece of furniture. A giant king sized bed with a wrought iron headboard and footboard, perfect for attaching cuffs too.
"I wanted you to pick out the furniture in here. We can change the bed if you want to."
"I don't." I turn and step right into Kieran's personal space. "I like what we do together in bed." And out of it.
I like what we are together. Full stop.
He automatically wraps his arms around me just like I need him to.
We have an appointment to get our matching triquetra tattoos, but we don't need marks on our skin to prove we belong to each other. He is mine and I am his.
Forever.
"I love you so much, Kieran. It scares me sometimes," I admit into his chest.
"Yeah, losing you or the girls is the only thought that has the power to terrify me." His voice is a low rumble in his chest and I snuggle into him.
Predictably, his body reacts to my nearness and I don't even try to quiet my inner hussy when she urges me to rub on him like a cat and make that bulge bigger.
"There's a lock on the door," he tells me.
"Good." Even with the bigger house, and the girls in their own rooms across the hall instead of on the other side of the wall, I wouldn't be able to get naked with Kieran without locking the door first.
"The room is soundproofed too."
That has me pulling back to look into his heated gaze. "Yeah?"
He nods solemnly.
"Aren't we supposed to have dinner with the girls and mom?" I ask.
"Not for another thirty minutes."
"We can do a lot in twenty minutes." We need time to wash and dress after.
"We can love each other."
He's oh so right.
"There's one room you still need to see," Kieran says after we all stuff our faces with pizza.
I furrow my brow. "Where?"
He even showed me the garage.
"The one above the living room."
There's a room above the living room? That makes sense. I saw windows on the second floor from the outside, but that fact got lost in seeing everything else.
It turns out the space above the formal living room is accessed via a circular set of stairs hidden behind one of the bookcases.
It's furnished too. As an office. There's an antique partner's desk in the center. One side is set up for Kieran and the other for me. We can work facing each other.
I kind of love that.
Inexorably drawn to my desk, I let my feet carry me to the space set up perfectly for me. Kieran paid attention to my preferred work setup and emulated it here. Complete with a side table for me to stack ledgers I'm not using but might have to reference on.
There is a stack of papers tied together with a satin ribbon on the desk in front of my chair.
It says Full Covenant and Warranty Deed across the top of the first page. Is it a deed to the house?
I pick it up and untie the ribbon, reading the top page as I do so. One thing strikes me immediately. There is only one name listed under buyer.
Mine.
"How?"
"You signed an enduring power-of-attorney for McLaren in case something ever happened to you and your mom. She signed on your behalf."
Oh. Wow. "She could do that?"
"Yes," he says with just a tinge of exasperation.
I smile up at him. "Why do I get the feeling that if you didn't trust Ellie, that EPOA would disappear?"
"Because it would?"
I laugh, but inside my heart is expanding until it feels like it's going to burst from my chest. "The deed is in my name."
"Yes."
"Why?" I clutch the stack of papers tightly.
He looks puzzled by the question. "Because it's yours."
I stare at him. "But..."
He steps closer and his hands settle on my hips, pulling me closer so the deed is pressed between our bodies. "You're my wife."
My throat grows tight.
He brushes the hair back from my temple. "The girls are my daughters."
Tears blur his gorgeous face.
"This is your home," he promises. "Always."
My knees threaten mutiny.
"If something happens to me, you and our girls will always have a home and you will only ever work because you want to."
Because our marriage is real. What's mine is his and that means he has a family. What's his is mine and that means, I never have to worry about finances again.
But the most important thing he has that I know I own is his heart.
The fear I've carried ever since he suggested moving crashes into pieces at my feet. I was so afraid to trust this. To step into the changes happening too fast in my life. Afraid to believe.
He knew and never told me to stop being afraid. He built around it.
I snuggle into him, breathing in his scent. Warmth. Safety. Home.
"I couldn't help noticing the two empty bedrooms upstairs," I say into his chest. "Now I know they aren't for an office, how do you propose we fill them?"
His heart starts hammering under my ear, but he doesn't answer.
"When the IUD comes out...I won't replace it."
His arms tighten convulsively around me. "I'd like that, baby girl."
Downstairs, Joy shrieks that she found the perfect place for a puppy.
My mother tells her absolutely not.
Sadie starts laughing.
Neeve corrects everyone on the difference between castles and Queen Anne architecture.
I lean against my husband and listen to the sound of our family.
Dreams and forever are a lot less frightening when they have an address.