Page 60 of Doctor Enemy

Chapter twenty-one

Kurt

Wedon’twaitwhenit comes to buying a home. There’s no reason to. Lori falls in love with the very first place that we look at; a hilltop residence near the park, with a few old oak trees in the side yard and more windows than I’ve bothered to stop and count.

The paperwork is no problem. I buy it at market price and have my accountant finish up the paperwork on the signing for me.

By the end of our fourth month as a couple, the house is ours.

Lori still hasn’t been able to start driving. This is going to make that a lot easier. No more having to go across town to pick her up or drop her off. I pull the Mustang up the long driveway and into the two-car garage.

“When are the movers supposed to be here with the boxes again?” Lori asks me.

“Tomorrow,” I answer. “They’ve already done the furniture. I still think that we should have bought a new set. We could have picked it out together.”

“There was nothing wrong with the set you had. I like the dining room table, anyway.”

“And the bed?”

Lori rolls her eyes and gets out of the car. “Really?”

“It’s an honest question.” I get out too, crossing around the front of it to join her on the other side. My arms wrap around her waist, pulling her up against me. “Do you like the bed?”

“I like the things we do in the bed a lot more,” says Lori, leaning up and pressing a kiss to my lips. “How about we go with that answer and—eek!”

She squeals as I pick her up.

“Kurt!” Her arms wrap iron tight around my neck. She does her best to cling onto me while I adjust my grip on her, getting one arm more securely under the crook of her knees. The garage is totally empty aside from the car, which means that her voice echoes in here. “What are you doing?”

“Carrying you over the threshold of our new home. That’s how it’s done, isn’t it?” I ask, leading her around the car and out of the garage, back into open air. “It's romantic.”

It’s almost noon. The sun beats down on us during the short walk from the garage, up the three white stone steps, and onto the large front porch. The heavy dark wooden door has a single window in the center of it, made with frosted glass so that no one can look inside but the light can cut into the foyer.

“Come on,” I tell her. “You have to help me out a little bit here. The keys are in my front shirt pocket.” I carry Lori right up to the door. “You need to open it.”

“You could just put me down,” protests Lori, sounding a little nervous. “I don’t want to curse our life here by getting a concussion on the first night. Do you know what sort of bad luck that’s going to be?”

“I’m not going to drop you,” I promise her. “But if you’re that concerned about it, you could open the door up quicker, and then I wouldn’t have to hold you like this for nearly as long.”

Lori’s lower lip juts out into a pout but she carefully, hesitantly, moves one of her arms from around my neck to fish the key out of my front shirt pocket. It takes a bit of juggling on both of our parts, but soon she’s slotting the key into the doorknob and we’re stepping inside.

The house is a lot cooler. The AC is already on and running.

There are no boxes sitting around but the furniture is set up. A glass-top black-wood rimmed table in the dining room. A black leather sectional and matching recliner in the living room. A small, antique wooden table that used to belong to my grandmother in the foyer hallway. The house has two floors, but the master bedroom is down here on the first floor.

Lori says, “You can put me down now.”

“I haven’t made it to the bedroom yet,” I point out.

She scolds, “You don’t need to carry me all the way there.” But I do anyway.

We have just as much wiggling around to do when it comes time for Lori to flick on the bedroom lights. My large captain’s king bed takes up the majority of the room. The black wood that makes up both the baseboard and the headboard is solid and dark, a sharp contrast to the pale white sheets that are on top of it.

The pillows are still in the trunk of the car. It’s a small misstep on my end, but nothing that I won’t soon be able to make up for.

“Going down,” I announce, and then I lower her onto the mattress. I make sure to keep it slow and gentle. Once her back is on the bed, I lean forward that last little bit and kiss her.

She finally loosens her grip around my neck, no longer fearing that I’m going to simply upend her onto the bed. “You’re a trip. I could have just walked in here.”

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