It wasn’t what I expected. One long main street, starting with the tidy, flower-festooned Carnal Hotel (which, regardless if it was tidy and flower-festooned, it was more of a motel then a hotel) on the left and ending with a big mechanics garage on the right with residential areas leading off the main street which were compact rather than sprawl.

Ty was jeans and tees but he was also suits and cufflinks so I knew his hometown could be anything. Still, I didn’t expect it to be what it was. Small, seemingly quiet but obviously populated and not a single building had been built in this decade or the last or the one before that.

I liked that.

It was also surrounded by tall Colorado hills which were surrounded by taller Colorado mountains, neither of which I had seen except in pictures before that day and both of which I instantly loved.

The town was ordinary, settled, you’d drive through it and probably not pay much attention.

And I liked that too.

Ty drove us by the mechanics where the town and the residential area abruptly died away with only a few houses dotting the valley. About a half a mile out of town, he turned left and drove into the hills where, after a short while, we hit thick pine and aspen. Not too long after that, he turned right into a road I wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t turned there. Another short drive that was all pine and aspen on both sides broken intermittently by boulders, this suddenly opened up to a development that was far newer than the town we’d just driven through.

Whoever planned and built it, they did it with care. It was a bunch of three and four story buildings dotted up a steep, winding incline, all an attractive red-brown wood and lots of windows, all with abundant decking to enjoy the views, all with their own short, private drive at the mouth of which was a mailbox. The houses weren’t close together but they were also not far apart. Quite a few of the pine trees and aspens between the houses had not been disturbed when they built so they provided even more privacy. Every single one was taken care of but there were a few that really were taken care of with big planters and flower boxes filled with blooms and trailing or spiking greenery, a couple of flagpoles with American flags, some with decorative accents on the outside like iron Kokopellis, terracotta suns and fancy outdoor lights and some with very attractive deck furniture.

It was awesome and I figured that Maggie and Wood lived there and we were there to pick up the keys to Ty’s condo. This meant I’d been right to take extra time getting ready that morning. If I was coming home like Ty was, I’d want to see family and friends right away. I figured Ty would want to do that too and I would be with him when he did so I wanted to look good for him when his posse met me.

He drove to the very top of the development, turned left into the private drive of the last of the houses in the development, this one a little bit more removed from the others and having pine and aspen at its sides, one side a steep decline that eventually led to another house, the other side leading into nothing but the steep, heavily wooded incline of the hill.

He stopped the Charger in front of a large, two car garage and beside the garage was an open space and on top of all of this were three stories with a large-ish deck jutting out over the open space. The open space was big enough to park another car or, maybe, snow mobiles or ATVs. There was a set of wooden steps with open slats inside the space, these positioned beside the garage.

I released my seatbelt and leaned forward, tipping my head back to look at the tall building, seeing the wraparound deck and noting that, if that wrapped around the front, it would have a spectacular view to Carnal and the hills and mountains beyond.

“So,” I said to the windshield as I heard Ty’s door open but he hadn’t yet angled out, “are we here to pick up your keys?”

“Come again?”

I tore my eyes from the house to look at him. “Are we here to pick up the keys to your condo?”

“This is my condo,” he replied and I blinked as surprise flooded through me, surprise mingled liberally with excitement as he went on. “Maggie’s left the keys so we can get in.”

“This isn’t your condo,” I told him stupidly and he stared at me a second.

Then he said, “It is.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Lexie, it is.”

“It can’t be. This isn’t even a condo,” I informed him.

“It is,” he replied.

“No, it isn’t. It’s a house.”

“Woman, it’s a condo.”

“It is not,” I argued.

“It is in Colorado,” he replied.

At this news, the surprise shifted out, the excitement took over and my happy gaze slid back to look up at the condo.

Then I whispered, “Wow.”

To this he muttered, “Goof,” and exited the car.

I followed him, still looking up at the house and thinking this did it.

I knew.

The last couple of days I’d given a lot of headspace trying to determine if the signs I was reading were correct. That in a crazy, wild way life had finally led me somewhere sweet. It had led me to a beautiful man who had his issues but then again, everyone did. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be generous, gentle, thoughtful and, yes, I discovered, also funny. He was great at teasing, he found my buttons and enjoyed pushing them but in a way that wasn’t nasty but intimate and increasingly familiar. When I talked, he listened. He didn’t pretend to, he just did. No matter what I was blabbing about, he found it interesting and I knew that to be true. I didn’t know how I knew, I just knew. He was patient. He was gentle. He was calling me “babe” and “baby” more often but, even so, he still didn’t do it like other men, throwaway. These words had meaning to him, I sensed I’d become these to him or he wouldn’t have called me those names. I was his babe, his baby and those were things I wanted to be. He was also using his soft voice with me more often, sometimes for reasons I didn’t know him enough yet to understand, whatever mood he was in making him do it, sometimes he used it when he was teasing me. It didn’t matter. I liked it. He still didn’t give much away but I had a feeling all this stuff was giving something away. Giving something to me. Something big, something important, something good and clean and right. Something I liked having and wanted more of.

And now there I was in a Colorado condo development outside a small, quiet, settled town surrounded by beauty and my place of residence was going to be a kickass crib, three stories of house with spectacular views.