Page 21 of Always My Love

“I always wanted to learn,” she admitted with a sigh as she looked around the rest of the room. There was a soft tan leather sofa and a small desk area, as well as a glass door that she could tell led out to his garage area.

Since the home sat nestled into a hillside, each floor had access to the outside.

“Through here is my home theater of sorts.” He motioned to an archway.

She followed him and stepped into the first space that really felt like Nick. The walls were painted a warm gray and littered with a mishmash of paintings and photographs of his family. A black-and-white photo of Nick’s family from when he was a kid hung over the sofa. She gauged that he must have been around sixteen at the time. Kate looked so pretty. The perfect family. Her heart ached and she turned her eyes away to check out the rest of the room.

There was a worn sofa and heavy coffee table covered with remotes and newspapers.

“You spend a lot of time here,” she pointed out.

“Here and the music room. There is a guest room on this floor too. I never go in there,” he joked, and she walked out of the room to follow him down a short hallway. “It has a full bath, which I do use when I’m down here.” He opened the doors.

Sure enough, the guest room was very nicely put together. A queen-sized mattress sat on a very chic white oak frame with matching nightstands and dresser. There were watercolor paintings of the ocean and starfish on the walls.

The room was like something out of a magazine. Pretty and perfect, but sort of untouchable.

The bathroom had doors leading from the bedroom and hallway so you could access it from either direction. The beach theme flowed into this room, but there wasn’t as much of it.

A massive tile shower stall took up one of the walls.

“That’s nice.” She motioned to the shower. It was far bigger than the one she and her sister shared.

She’d never showered in something so nice, so large.

“Yeah, it was a bitch to build though. There was a small tub in here that had seen better days. It was pink.” Nick groaned. “My dad and I spent two weeks doing this whole bathroom ourselves.”

“Wow.” She looked at the room with a renewed interest. If he could do something like this, maybe he could help her fix up her bathroom?

“We can head upstairs,” he suggested, and she followed him back up the stairs. “There’s a total of four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms in this place,” Nick said as they climbed the stairs that sat off the living room. “I gave Blake Stevens full range to decorate the three guest rooms but took over when it came to my own space.”

Each bedroom she poked her head into was just as nice as the one downstairs. The walls in one were a soft sky blue, while the other was a little darker blue, like the sea during a storm. The bathroom that sat between those two was nice but a little bare.

Nick’s bedroom and bathroom took up half of the upstairs floor. The moment she walked into it, she could tell that this was his space. He wasn’t a clutter type of person, so there weren’t dirty clothes or junk lying around. Instead, there were little things she knew he used often. Remotes, phone chargers, a massive dog bed at the foot of the bed.

She chuckled. “I bet you that Blue hasn’t spent one night sleeping in that thing.” She pointed to the bed.

Nick chuckled. “Nope,” he agreed. “He only lays in it when I’m showering.”

The bathroom attached to the bedroom was as big as one of the other bedrooms.

Both rooms were painted that soft gray color and had more nautical-scenery paintings hanging on the wall, including an image of his small sailboat, which he’d shown her earlier that day.

Next Stop. That was the name of his sailboat. He’d told her that it was the first thing that had come to his head when naming the sailboat. She liked the name. Always looking for the next adventure.

She supposed that’s what her life had been like in the past few years. Even though part of her mind knew she was running, part of it also wondered where her life would take her.

“I really like your place,” she said as they headed back down the stairs and out to his Jeep.

“Thanks. As I said earlier, Blake pretty much gets a hundred percent of the credit,” Nick said, holding the Jeep door open for her.

“Sounds like you rebuilt a lot yourself,” she pointed out when he climbed behind the wheel.

“Sure, manual labor was good for me when I came back into town.” He started up the Jeep. “I had some… things to work through.”

She frowned. “Things?”

He shrugged and avoided her gaze as he pulled out of his driveway. He glanced sideways at her for a split second. “You have things in your past you hold off sharing. I feel the same way about my time in the army.”