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“I’m a doctor.”
“Oh, well then you’d know!” As they walked through the house, there was a lot of work that needed to be done. Wallpaper was coming off the walls, and paneling was hanging. The appliances in the kitchen looked like they were at least forty years old. So much work needed to be done, and Shelby would have been overwhelmed by it all.
“I will want a termite inspection,” Nate finally said. “Everything else I can deal with, but termites would be too much. I’ll offer six-fifty.”
Shelia smiled, nodding. “I have the forms here if you want to make your offer.”
Nate started to fill out the form, but then hesitated and looked at Shelby. “Are you okay if we do this?”
She shrugged. “I’ll have a roof over my head and you by my side. I’ll be fine.” She’d almost said a roof over my head and you in my bed, but she’d thought better of it. She’d wait another month or two before rhyming silly things.
He finished the form and handed it to Shelia. “I don’t need to see anything else. This house is what I’ve been dreaming about fixing up my whole life.”
Shelia grinned. “Think you’ll stay here?”
“I doubt it. There are too many houses to fix up to stick with one.”
As they drove home, Shelby thought about what he’d said. “Are we going to keep buying houses and selling them through our whole marriage?” She liked the idea of the kids having some stability.
He frowned. “We could always do this one, and then buy a house for us to keep, and I could keep doing flip houses on my own time. We just wouldn’t have to live in them.”
She nodded. “I think that would be better. The children that I’m determined to have will need the stability.”
“How many kids do you want?” he asked.
“Oh, two or three. I don’t need to repopulate the earth on my own, but I would love to have a couple.”
“Two or three sounds good,” he said. “I was worried you wanted ten kids or something, and I was trying to figure out who would raise them with us both working.”
“I’m not terribly worried about that,” she said. “We’ll get a good nanny, and we’ll be with them as much as we can.”
He nodded, not even liking the idea of a nanny. “I bet Mom would watch them while we worked.”
“That would work when they’re little,” Shelby agreed. “When they’re older, it would just be a couple of hours after school they’d need care. We’d be home as much as they were.”
“All right. I think that’ll work.” Nate wasn’t sure how to say it, but as much as he cared for her and wanted her to be happy with her job, he didn’t like the idea of their kids being raised by nannies. He was sure he was just old-fashioned, but he was happier this way.
“I could always move to a bigger office and have a nursery right there if a nanny or your mom won’t work. That way, I could be with them when they needed to be fed and see them in the office. Hiring someone to care for them during office hours sounds smart to me.”
“We’ll think on it,” he said. “I’m sure we’re going to be happy with whatever we decide.”
They spent the rest of the day getting her belongings from her mother’s house. There were more clothes and other things she’d gathered over the years. It didn’t take terribly long, but every time they went to her mother’s house, she ended up talking to her mother for a while.
“Are you happy?” Mom asked.
Shelby nodded. “I’m cautiously happy. I love Nate, but I didn’t like the way he broke things off with me by just not calling. I have to be able to trust him again before I can be completely happy.”
“That makes sense,” Mom said. “I was thrilled to see that it was him you were marrying, and not a stranger.”
“I was too, to be honest with you. I’m not sure how I’d be adjusting if he’d been an actual stranger.”
“He wouldn’t have been a stranger for long,” Mom said.
“That’s true, but it’s better this way. We’ll work through all our stuff and be happy together. I’ve never been able to picture myself married to anyone but Nate anyway.”
“You two always did seem to be right for each other. As against young marriages as I am, I think I would have approved of you two marrying after college like you talked about.”
“I think it might be better this way,” Shelby said. “We’ve both been on our own, and we know more about what we want now.”
