Even after a week of living in Australia, I still wasn’t used to waking up next to the most beautiful woman in the world. I took to retirement a lot quicker than I thought I would have. Jess quit her job at the antique store and took to taking care of Gina alongside me. I had more money in the bank than Jess knew, and if she was going to work, it would be doing something she loved. I no longer needed a nanny for Gina, but at the moment we were content living unemployed and being with Gina.
After making up, we made the mutual decision to tell Gina about us. And in typical Gina fashion, she was thrilled. So, there wasn’t any reason to hide our sleeping arrangements.
“You snore anyway, Daddy,” Gina had said after I told her I was going to sleep in Jess’s room.
But even after a week, Chloe’s house was a little cramped. Most of our stuff was in storage, but we didn’t bring clothes for a week. We brought all of them. Chloe was kind enough to let us stay, but I wanted to show everyone how serious I was about our life change. We needed a place for ourselves. A place we could call home.
I broke the news to Jess and Gina at breakfast. Chloe already knew since she helped hook me up with a real estate agent in the area. She left early that morning to go to work and encouraged me to look at some places outside of Mona Vale. Little did she know that I wanted her in our lives too, so most of the properties I looked at were nearby. Besides, I wasn’t ready to give up the fantastic ocean views in the area. Also, Jess’s relationship with Chloe was better than it had ever been before. Giving Jess the option to stay with us would make it easier if we were close to her mom.
“Can I pick my room?” Gina asked with a mouth full of scrambled eggs.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Yay! Yay!” Gina said, bouncing in her chair. “New room!” She threw her hands in the air and swung them around.
Jess snorted into her coffee, and I laughed along.
“Are you excited, Jess?” Gina asked.
Jess pumped her hand in the air and said, “Whoop whoop!”
Gina mimicked her, and before I knew it, they both stood up and started dancing around the kitchen.
I sat back in my chair, watching them, shaking my head and smiling. This was the family I’d always imagined for myself. Even though it started off much differently, I wouldn’t have wanted any of my past to change. Even with the awful two weeks without Jess, that was the push I needed to get to where we were. Gina and Jess’s happiness were my number one priority now. And that sure felt good.
Each of the houses we looked at were beautiful. As I intended to stay in Australia for a long time, I didn’t skimp on my budget. I had more than enou
gh from my account and would get even more from the sale of the business and my house soon enough. The real estate agent, Sami Moore, was a professional and really listened to the ideas I had for what I wanted out of a forever home.
While they all had beautiful views of the ocean, it wasn’t until the last one that I was indeed taken away.
“Is there a reason you showed us this one last?” I asked Sami.
She had a wicked grin across her lips. “Because I figured that you’d want to stop looking after seeing this one.
We stood in the living room. As in every other house, Gina went straight for the bedrooms, and Jess was closely behind her. Jess had no idea I was going to ask her to move in with me, so she hadn’t invested a lot of her input even though I pried it out of her at each possible home.
I stepped forward, and Sami stayed behind me, giving me the space to explore. I opened the sliding doors to the terrace that overlooked the ocean. Below the terrace was a private beach with cement walls on either side for even more privacy.
“I thought you’d like the private beach,” Sami said from the doorway.
I turned around and smiled at her.
On the way back to Chloe’s house, Jess slipped her hand into mine and said, “Which houses did you like best?”
“I think that last one would be perfect,” I said.
“I liked that one too,” Gina said.
“Then it’s decided,” Jess said. “Did you tell Sami that?”
“Not yet,” I said, squeezing her hand. I glanced back through the rear view mirror at Gina who was busy playing with two small dolls. We’d brought them to keep her busy during the house hunt, but she’d barely played with them while we were inside any of the houses. Though by the way her eyelids drooped, I knew she wasn’t going to play for long. We’d spent all morning and most of the afternoon on a non-stop house hunt.
“How about we drop Gina off at your mom’s and we can go back to see the house again?” I asked Jess.
Jess glanced behind her at Gina. “That’s fine with me.”
When we arrived at the house, Chloe was in the living room watching television. She loved her soap operas and never missed an episode. Jess and I tried to convince her to record the episodes, but Chloe said that it was a ritual of hers that she was unwilling to break.