aTRACKion

Chapter Forty Six

"What do you think?" Doug has just removed his hands from my previously covered-up eyes, waiting for my very first reaction with almost boyish impatience.

This explains all of his playful and amused secrecy. All of his hushed phone calls, sneaky emails to different people and the need to often dash off to be somewhere else over the past couple of months. This, explains it all. "So this is what you've been up to, then?" My wide-eyed and enamoured gaze has a lot to take in. A lot to wonderfully now take in.

"Welcome to our new home." Doug proudly announces. "Well, new for you...newly decorated and refurbished, for me." His brown eyes are gleamingly now bright. So bright and wide with simmering excitement. "Do you like it?"

Did I like it?

Did I like how even more beautiful this place now looked?

"Um, it's......" I can't seem to find the words. I honestly can't find the right and justifiable words.

"If you don't like it, then you can talk to the decorator's." Doug has taken my stunned reaction the wrong way, completely the wrong way.

Turning hard, I just throw my arms around the back of his neck. "Sometimes, you talk too much." Then using one of my fingers to tenderly press it against his mouth, I'm teasingly telling him to now be quiet. Once hushed, I turn back around to stare at Doug's childhood home. The home that looked so stunningly the same on the outside when we first arrived back here, yet now looks so respectfully different on the inside. "It's so amazing." Dreamily exits my mouth, while I continue to adore all that I can see. The house truly does look amazing, so amazing, I eagerly now want to see the rest of it.

Doug widely smiles, before being more than ready to show me what he has been sneakily doing to the well-loved house. From room to room, Doug has thoughtfully updated them all. Key pieces of precious furniture, cherished photographs and belongings of both his parents, have all been treasured and preserved within the respectfully done revamp of the family home. "Anything you don't like, just say." He casually tells me, while we wander happily around the rest of the house.

But there was honestly not a single thing I would change. This house, is nothing but perfect. "And this is now all ours?" My hands are cradling my five month old baby bump, cradling it with quiet joy.

Coming up behind me, kissing my neck and now embracing our baby bump himself, Doug whispers into my ear. "Yeah, it's now all ours. I just couldn't get rid of this place. I want our child to have the happy childhood that I had here." Stroking more of my stomach, Doug keeps his voice so quiet against my neck. "I'm putting the apartment on the market, and in about a week, we can move in here. I think we'll all be really happy here." He then kisses me again, nuzzling the warmth of his face against my own.

Stunned, but in the most happiest of ways, I place my hands on top of where Doug's are settled on my stomach. "I know we will."

Inhaling hard with unsaid satisfaction, Doug gives me one final kiss to my neck before moving in front of me with his hand held out. "Let me show you the room that I think will be our little ones nursery." With entwined hands, Doug leads us past what is to be our bedroom, to the bedroom that is right next door.

The room is large, with high ceilings and the most beautiful of timber sash windows. The room is completely empty, but imagining our baby being within it, absolutely fills my heart to the beating brim. "I thought that we could decorate this room together?" Doug says with loving expectation, eyeing the room with his own brown-eyed wonder.

You know that moment when you're so happy, so insanely happy that it just makes you want to cry?

Well, I'm in that moment.