I looked around but saw no other cars. “No one lives here?” There were fresh car tracks in the snow that went around back. They went out a different way from where we had come in. That was strange. I was about to ask Hunter who had been here, but he started to talk.
“Nah. I had a security system put in a few months back, since some local kids were messing around up here. Jack and I nipped that shit in the bud real quick.”
“What did you do?”
Hunter laughed. “Sat around back and waited for the little bastards to show up. Then I let Jack give them a little greeting with his bare teeth. Told them the next time they set foot on my property, I’d let the dog eat them.”
I brought my hand to my mouth as I tried not to laugh. “You did not. Hunter Turner, that was mean.”
He grinned, then winked. “I sure as shit did. Haven’t had a problem since.”
“That’s terrible,” I said with a giggle.
He shrugged. “It worked.”
Hunter reached for my hand and walked us up to the front door as Jack came running back around the side of the building. “The house is a little over three-thousand square feet.”
I nodded and watched him unlock the door. We walked inside and into a small foyer. Directly in front of us were two staircases.
“One goes up to the second floor, the other down to the basement. Which has a pretty impressive man cave. I foresee Kyle being over here a lot.”
I chuckled.
“Let’s start in the living room. I looked at the original blueprints of the house and this used to be called the keeping room.”
Smiling, my heart beat faster. I loved old houses so much.
“It leads into the formal dining room. Then here—” we walked toward what had to be the back of the original house, “—was were the original kitchen was.”
I gasped. “Look at that fireplace.”
Hunter gave me a wide grin. “I know. It’s the original fireplace. One of my favorite things about the house.”
We both turned and looked at the newer addition. The kitchen was stunning.
“My goodness, they remodeled the kitchen?”
“No, Kyle, Bishop, and I did. Adam helped a little when he wasn’t saving lives.”
I gaped. “You guys did all of this?”
He nodded and leaned against the large kitchen island.
“Hunter, this is beautiful.”
“Thanks. This is the breakfast area. The, um, the window seat was my idea.”
I snapped my head over to look at him. “I love window seats.”
“I know. That’s why I put it in.”
Warmth radiated in my chest, and my stomach fluttered again. “You did?” I whispered softly.
“Yeah. I guess somewhere deep down inside, I never truly gave up on us, Bella.”
I walked over to him. “Oh, Hunter.”
He smiled down at me and brushed a piece of hair that had come out of my ponytail behind my ear. “Come on, we’ve got more to see—plus, your surprise.”
Laughing in disbelief, I replied, “The house isn’t the surprise?”
“Nope.”
He kissed me softly on the lips, took my hand, and walked us through the kitchen. “Here’s the laundry room. You have to walk through it to get to the half bath. That’s the only thing I don’t like about this house. But the pantry makes up for it. Look at this.”
We walked back out of the laundry room and turned to the right. Another set of stairs went to the second floor, and on the other side of the staircase was a huge walk-in pantry.
“Holy cow, this pantry is huge!”
Built-in shelves covered one side of the pantry, with a small butler’s pantry at the very back. On the other side were more built-in shelves and drawers as well.
“This is like a dream pantry.”
“It was a giant closet in the back with a small pantry in the front. I just tore out the wall and made it into a larger pantry.”
I spun around in the room. It was almost as big as my little kitchen.
“There was a library down here at the front of the house, but I made it into a bedroom. I also created the full-size bathroom that’s down here and connected it to the bedroom.”
We walked back through the kitchen and second living room and into a large bedroom.
“There was a weird empty space behind this, so we knocked that wall down and enlarged the bathroom.”
It was the kind of bathroom you might find in a spa. Black-and-white tiles covered the floor. A large clawfoot tub sat to the left, and a long, beautiful cabinet that looked like an antique piece of furniture ran along the wall to my right. There were two sinks built into it with the toilet sitting at the end. And against the back wall was the largest walk-in shower I’d ever seen.
Making my way over to it, I marveled at the size. “This thing is huge!”