The address is already stored in the GPS, so when he starts the car, he follows the highlighted route. When we start driving, I look outside at all the huge mountains in the distance. I see a couple of them with white dusting. “Look, snow.” I point at them as he makes his way around the huge lake.
“I told you it was beautiful here,” he says as I take in the breathtaking mountains and green trees. He pulls up to a gate where he presses the code on a keypad. The gate opens, and we make our way up to the house. He drives through the winding forest, and then I see the house come into view. I think I gasp out loud because it’s so pretty. It looks like six different houses all merged.
He pulls right up to the front door of the house under an awning. I get out and see about ten pine trees in the middle of the huge asphalt driveway. I grab my backpack and meet Carter in the back of the car, and he is rolling our luggage to the front door. The door has a keypad also, and he enters the code. When you walk in, there isn’t anything much except a cast-iron bench that sits on the brown slate floors. The walls all around are brick, and a staircase is right in front of the door. “Go on up. I’ll follow you,” he says to me, and I walk up the steps holding on to the black cast-iron railing.
Once I get to the landing, I stare at the room with wooden beams on the ceiling. The whole back wall is huge square windows, and you can see the mountains in the distance. A huge rock fireplace in the middle of the room faces two huge red couches and two leather chairs. A brown wooden coffee table sits in the middle. “Is that a moose?” I ask of the black head hanging above the fireplace.
“I think it’s a caribou,” he says, putting down our luggage. He walks inside and places his bag on the kitchen counter that is on the left-hand side of where the wooden floor turns to slate. The L-shaped countertop has five stools. I see the counter has two different heights and then see the huge island in the middle. The back wall has the ten-burner stove and double ovens, the fridge right beside it, and facing the kitchen to the right is a dining room. The windows are in a half octagon. The round table has eight huge chairs, and the chandelier looks like it has two rows of candles burning, but they are lights. “The bedrooms must be through there,” he says, gesturing toward the hallway. I turn to grab my bag and roll it down the hallway, coming to a rocked archway with stairs leading down. There is another rocked archway in front of the stairs that lead to the bedrooms.
Two wooden double doors are open on both sides. “Pick a room,” I tell him. He walks into the right one, and I enter the left one. The ceilings are high, and in middle of the room is a king-size four-poster canopy bed. An old-fashioned black and gold fireplace sits on an elevated rock floor. Lantern lights hang on either side of the bed. I walk in and see that the bed faces the lake. Two huge windows and a glass door give an outside view. I walk to the door and step out onto the balcony, the glass railing preventing any barriers to the view. The sound of the running water fills the air. I walk to the railing and rest my hands on top of it and just look out. “Erin.” I hear my name being shouted and walk back into the bedroom. “Let’s take a tour of the house so we know what we have.” We explore the house and are shocked to see it has a movie room with six huge leather couches that recline. We even have a wine cellar, a wooden dining room table with ten chairs is also in the middle of the cellar, and a game room with a pool table.
“This house is insane,” I tell him as we walk back up another set of stairs that lead to the backyard and outside. When we walk outside along the slate tiles, we see a huge fire pit and two steps up to an outdoor living space. “It’s so pretty,” I tell him, turning to him, and he just looks out at the mountains. “This is going to be my coffee spot in the morning.”
He shakes his head. “You know that it gets cold, right?” He points at the mountains with the snow. “I’m going to go in and run through the script.”