I woke up to sunlight streaming through the window and a nice warm body beside me. Carlos and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning talking. Ranger asked some questions, I asked some questions and we laughed a lot. It turns out that we were both a bit of a handful when we were young.
We also talked about where we wanted to live. Ranger wanted to buy a house rather than an apartment or loft. He liked the idea of a back yard and spending his free time in the garden. He wanted to host BBQs for friends and family and he also wanted a garden that his Abuela would be proud of. His grandmother was a huge gardening fan and he remembers enjoying his time with her pruning roses and planting new flowers.
Neither of my parents were big gardeners, but our neighbour Mrs. Markowitz had a beautiful garden. I remember watching her maintaining her garden during the year through my bedroom window. It didn't take much to convince me that a house with a nice back yard was something we both wanted for our home.
Carlos wanted a huge house with many bedrooms. I wasn't so sure so I asked why he wanted so many rooms. Carlos replied, "It will give us options if we want to expand our family. Julie can have a room and we'll have several guest rooms for visiting family."
I looked at him for a moment and then said, "Carlos, let's not get ahead of ourselves. We need our own bedroom, Julie needs a bedroom and we need a guest bedroom. If we look for a moderate 3 to 4 bedroom house, I'm sure that will be sufficient for now. We can always trade up to something larger if and when we need it."
Carlos seemed to accept my preference, but I could tell from the look in his eye that he was sceptical. Maybe Carlos wanted an extra room for a home office or a library or something similar, but this still could be achieved in a house with four bedrooms.
We finally fell asleep just as the sun started to poke its head above the horizon. I could feel Carlos' arms still wrapped around me, but based on his breathing, he was awake. I rolled over to face him and saw that Carlos was fully dressed and ready for the day. He grinned at me and said, "Morning Babe."
I stretched and sighed before asking, "How long have you been up?"
"Not that long. I've been up long enough to have a shower, call the Real Estate Agent, pop out to the bakery and get back here just in time for you to wake up."
I rolled my eyes and said, "Did you call Tank to let him know that you're not working today?"
Based on the look on Carlos' face, he actually forgot to do that. Tank would probably assume he would not be working today, but Carlos pulled out his phone and made the necessary call. Based on the side of the conversation I could hear, Tank assumed that Carlos wasn't coming in and that he and the rest of the guys were curious about our relationship status. I heard Carlos say, "When we're ready to tell you, you'll know. For now, we're keeping things close to the vest."
While Ranger was on the phone, I dragged myself out of bed and headed into the shower. Twenty minutes later, I emerged clean, dry and dressed to the welcome aroma of fresh coffee. I walked into the kitchen to find Carlos leaning against the counter drinking a bottle of water. He looked at me and said, "Breakfast is on the table Babe. Eat up because the Estate Agent called and she has 4 three bedroom houses for us to look at today and she is expecting us shortly."
"Already? I expected to have to wait until the New Year."
Carlos nodded and said, "Me too, but Lynn says that these four houses have been vacant for a while and since it's the holiday season, most people are too busy to bother with house hunting. We pretty much have her to ourselves. She can help us find exactly what we want, but there is no rush. We can wait until we find exactly what we want."
I smiled up at Carlos as I accepted a cup of coffee that he had prepared just the way I like it. Much to my delight, he also pointed to a plate on the table with 2 of my favourite donuts. I grinned up at him and reached up to kiss him on the cheek before taking a huge bite from the first donut.
Less than 30 minutes later, Carlos and I were sitting in the Real Estate office looking at brochures for the various properties that were available. We rejected three outright because they were in the Burg. The fourth was nothing more than a shell that needed to be completely rebuilt from scratch. I don't think we'd mind a bit of building work, but this was like building a while house. Besides that, it wasn't in the nicest area of town. We passed on that one as well.
Not to be discouraged, Lynn pulled out a few other properties that didn't match our requirements specifically. One was quite close to the RangeMan building but it was a loft apartment with an adjoining roof garden. It only had three bedrooms, but the wall configuration was easily reconfigurable if necessary. We agreed to take a look at the loft and Carlos talked me into going to look at a 6 bedroom house.
His argument was that it would allow us each to have an office and then two spare rooms. This house was located along the River just past the Trenton Country Club. It was a bit far from the office, but it had a huge garden and the price was right because it needed quite a lot of redecorating work. The carpets, the wallpaper, the kitchen, the bathrooms, all were in need of modernisation. Lynn even suggested an interior decorator and a few respectable builders to help us out with that property.
We hopped in our car and followed Lynn to the loft. I was actually surprised at how much I liked the place. Despite being a loft, it was actually two stories. The ground floor had and open plan kitchen and living space. There was plenty of room in the open plan space for a large living room, a dining table and a desk or two. There was also a large family bathroom, a guest bedroom, a small storage closet and a small office.
The second floor had two large bedrooms, each with their own bathroom and a walk-in closet. I liked the layout of the loft. I could tell by the way that Carlos was looking around that he also quite liked the loft. He was very quiet and kept his comments to himself so Lynn didn't sense his interest. He wanted to be able to negotiate so we decided not to express our like or dislike too much in front of Lynn.
The idea to keep our reactions to ourselves was seriously put to the test when we walked through a set of folding French doors that spanned the entire length of the hallway at the top of the stairs between the two bedrooms. A beautifully maintained container garden with trellises and benches were dotted across the roof. As soon as both of us saw the garden, we gasped.
Lynn looked at us both and said, "I know, it's beautiful, isn't it?"
Carlos nodded as he touched some of the intricately shaped topiary shrubs. He looked around and said, "The owners must have spent a lot of time and effort maintaining this garden. They must be sorry to have to say good-bye to it."
Lynn smiled sadly and said, "The woman who is selling this place recently lost her husband. They lived here together for 52 years. She didn't feel that she could take care of the loft and the garden adequately on her own."
Carlos looked at me and then said, "If we do decide to buy this loft, I think we should make some sort of arrangement with the current owner. We would love to allow her access to the garden any time she wants. It would be a shame to separate her from her life's work."
I smiled at the generous offer that Ranger made and agreed with his sentiment. We took one final look around the place and then climbed back in our cars to follow Lynn to the house on the other side of the town. As soon as we closed the doors, Carlos and I looked at each other. He smiled and said, "I really liked that place. Even if we decide not to buy it for ourselves, I'm tempted to buy it as a safe house for RangeMan. That roof garden alone makes it worth the asking price."
I smiled at this and agreed that it was a beautiful apartment. I could see us living there and spending plenty of time in the garden once the weather warms up a bit. We sat in silence as we drove through town towards the house we were viewing. I took this downtime as an opportunity to contact home to let them know that Ranger and I would be joining them for dinner.
Grandma Mazur answered the phone. "Hey Gran, I'm just calling to let Mom know that I'll be coming for dinner tonight. I'll be brining Carlos with me."
"Is that the sexy Bounty Hunger with the package that you kept insisting didn't want a relationship with you?"
"Yup, that's the one. But as it turns out, I was mistaken."
"I'll tell your mother, but I'll leave it until the last possible minute so she doesn't do something silly and invite a date for you."
"Thanks Grandma, I'd appreciate that. It would be quite awkward to tell my family that Carlos and I are together with a date there."
After I got off the phone, Carlos looked at me and said, "Should I expect the Spanish Inquisition?"
"Probably not, my mother will probably be three sheets to the wind and my father will be practically catatonic. It's Grandma Mazur's hands that you'll need to be on the lookout for."
We pulled off the road down a long driveway. The house didn't come into view until we turned the last corner. My jaw dropped at the view. The house was whit stone and there were two large columns on either side of the double front doors. A large garage was off to the left side of the house and a circular drive gave access to both the front door and the garage. The house itself was very symmetrical. There were 6 large windows on each floor on both sides of the door, and that's all you could see from the driveway.
We both climbed out of the car and waited as Lynn opened the door and let us inside. Despite the garish 70's interior, the house was beautiful. All of the rooms were huge with high ceilings. There was a lot of crown moulding and old fashioned touches throughout the house. The master bedroom was about the size of my current apartment. It was also more than twice as large as Ranger's bedroom at RangeMan. There was enough room in there for a king sized bed, a sofa, a chair, two chests of drawers, and still room for a dressing table and mirror. The sheer size was staggering.
There was a large family bathroom with a separate shower and a Jacuzzi tub on the second floor and two separate cloakrooms on the ground floor. A basement was open the whole length of the house and an attic provided a lot of storage options.
The 5 other bedrooms were also very large. Four of the rooms had their own bathrooms. Ranger pointed out one room that would be good for Julie because it was already decorated in feminine colours. The last room he pointed out had mahogany built-in cupboards that would be ideal for an office. It was actually large enough that we could both easily fit two desks in the room and have plenty of space left over
The decor in the kitchen and bathrooms was pretty unpleasant, but despite that, it was a beautiful house. There was so much space and so many cool little features. I was in love with the stone surround that framed the fireplace in the master bedroom. There was a larger but similar surround in the lounge that I could picture holding all sorts of photos and decorative trinkets.
The backyard was so large you couldn't see the end of the property from the house. The previous owners kept horses and the small barn at the bottom of the garden blocked the view to the paddock out back. The fence around the property needed repairing and the Ranger side of Carlos came out and talked about the security opportunities of a new fence. I blanched at the idea of turning the house into a secure vault, but as usual, Carlos recognised my discomfort.
"Don't worry Babe, we're not going to turn our house into a vault. We'll use precautions and our most sophisticated home security alarm, but we'll still have our privacy, no matter where we live."
Lynn was giving us our space, but when she sensed we had seen the whole house, she led us out the back to where the horse paddock was located and showed us something we didn't expect. At the bottom of the garden, there was a self contained 3-bedroom guest house. The current owners built the guest house when their son went to college. He wanted his own place, but they didn't trust him to be fully on his own.
The amount of house and land was incredible. When Carlos first talked about buying a house together, I never thought I'd like something quite this big. I struggle to keep my one bedroom apartment clean, so this house would be near impossible without help. Carlos leaned over and said, "Don't worry Babe. We can hire somebody to help with maintenance and housekeeping. Don't let those kinds of concerns sway your decision in any way."
We both thanked Lynn and promised to contact her soon. We took one last look at the house as we drove away and were both lost inside our own heads. A few minutes later, once we were back on the main road heading towards my apartment, Carlos asked, "What did you think Babe?"
I sighed and said, "I loved them both. The apartment is beautiful and its garden is spectacular. It has a great view and it's close to RangeMan. The house is also gorgeous, but it needs some work done before we could live there. It's bigger than we really need, but I'm sure we can find uses for the space over time."
"I know what you mean. I have ideas about both places. Maybe we should buy both and stay in the apartment until the house is ready and then figure out what to do with the apartment. Ella and Luis are close to retirement, so maybe that could be their retirement present. What do you think?"