Page 46 of Lone Wolf
“I’m sure you will,” Oscar said with a broad grin, and left us in peace.
EPILOGUE
Damian pulled into the driveway in front of an older ranch-style house with a For Sale sign in front of it. “What do you think?”
I peered out the passenger window at the other houses in the neighborhood. “So far so good. Did you notice there’s only neighbors on one side?”
He nodded. “I’ll ask about the empty property on the other side. It might be worth buying just to keep the space. We could put trees on it.”
I nodded and looked down at my notes on the place, comparing them to what I was seeing. “It looks better in person.” The pictures hadn’t done the brick front any favors in the real estate listing. “I like the little spot they have out front for sitting.”
“Lots of trees,” Damian said with satisfaction and I hid a grin. He was obsessed with trees. Okay, I was a little obsessed with them too. After Nevada Ashes, all this green was a wonder and a miracle to me. Ten years in his tiny apartment made the space around this house a treasure to Damian.
I thought we’d found our home. “Let’s go in. If the inside is as nice as the outside, this could be it.”
“I’ll get the baby.” He leaned over and kissed me, just a quick brush of lips over mine, before he jumped out of the car and opened the back door. “There’s my boy,” he crooned.
“Don’t you wake him up,” I warned him as I climbed out on my side and opened the other rear door to get the baby bag out.
“He’s not going to wake up anytime soon,” Damian assured me. “He’s just like his Da, sleeps whenever he can.” He grinned, proud of his joke against me.
I laughed and shook my head. “Come on, we’re keeping the real estate agent waiting.”
The realtor met us at the front door. “Come in, you’re right on time,” and immediately started the tour.
“It’s bigger inside than it looks,” Damian whispered in my ear while the realtor droned on, and I nodded. All basically one room, with what looked like a hallway leading down to bedrooms—I liked it. The pup could play in the living room while I worked around the house—Damian assured me he made enough money that I could stay home with him for the first little while. As long as we kept our house budget reasonable. And this house was well within our budget. I’d made darn sure of that—there was nothing like being tied down with a baby nursing every two hours to give you time to research.
“This is cute,” I said, running my hands over one wall in the kitchen that had been turned into a chalkboard.
“A honey-do board,” the realtor said with a professional smile. “It’s a great place to leave notes about chores or to keep track of groceries that need to be bought.”
“I could fill that up easy,” Damian pronounced and I elbowed him, but carefully so we didn’t wake the baby.
We passed on from the kitchen, peeked into the bedrooms—pretty standard, as far as I could tell, then went down to the finished basement and out the French doors to the back yard.
I could tell as soon as we got outside that Damian was happy with it. The yard stretched away from us, ending in a row of mature trees. A fence ran down one side, separating us from the single neighbor this place had.
“What’s the story on that piece of land over there?” Damian asked, pointing at the empty lot beside us.
“Are you interested?”
Damian nodded. “Depending on the price.”
“Let me see what I can find out about it.” The glee in the realtor’s voice was impossible to miss, but I guessed if you lived off selling things, someone handing you a sale with very little work would make you excited. I knew that I’d gotten excited at easy dates when I’d been working.
“If you could,” Damian said with a nod. He put a hand around my waist and leaned in close. “What do you think?”
“I like it. I think it’s a good place to raise pups, but let’s see if we can get that land too,” I whispered back.
“You want to talk to him,” he asked, jerking his head toward the realtor, “Or me?”
“I’ll do it. Give me the baby. You go imagine all your new trees,” I told him, not bothering to hide my amusement, and sent him on his way.
“He’s going to have a look around the outside of the house,” I said, strolling over to stand beside the realtor. “Why don’t we talk a little more about the neighborhood?”
I pulled out the top rack of our dishwasher and started lining up wine glasses and beer glasses on the countertop above it. Behind me, Damian was filling large bowls with potato chips and pretzels and taking plastic wrap off smaller bowls filled with things to dip the snacks in.
We had a house, we had a mortgage, and I had a credit card that had seen some heavy use in the weeks since we’d moved into our new den, as I’d furnished it and started filling the spaces that Damian’s bachelor’s furniture hadn’t covered.
