Chapter 10
TEN
After their trip to the grocery store, Mason took Gabriela and Ana to a couple other stores that had wider selections of clothes, shoes, and coats, telling them to get everything they needed.
Gabby insisted it was all too much, that he really didn’t need to do all this.
Mason—as big and unmoving as a mountain in this—would hear no arguments.
Though most of the stock available in town was winter wear and the typical outdoorsy stuff, Gabriela and Ana had enough clothing by the time they left the last store to feel almost normal, at least as far as their wardrobes went—especially once they changed into their new clothes.
There were even items Mason had added himself, usually when he’d seen Gabriela look at something, see the price tag, and hurriedly return it to the rack.
And even having paid for all that, Mason took them to the little café he’d mentioned a couple days before, where he bought them steaming mugs of hot chocolate with whipped cream piled high over the rims.
When Mason lowered his mug after his first drink of hot cocoa, he had a thick whipped cream moustache left behind, complete with a few chocolate sprinkles that made Gabriela and Ana break out into giggles.
He looked at them with narrowed eyes before attempting to lick away the whipped cream, contorting his face and wrinkling his nose to get at it all.
Gabriela and Ana laughed so hard it almost hurt, and for a little while, Gabby’s cares were forgotten.
Despite her humor, she couldn’t ignore just how long and dexterous his tongue was—and she couldn’t stop herself from considering other uses it could be put to.
That thought sent a rush of heat to her lower belly, making her core clench and ache with sudden need.
She squeezed her thighs together beneath the table, but that didn’t dull the sensation.
Thankfully, Ana provided enough of a distraction with her chatter to take Gabriela’s mind off more…intimate matters.
She never would’ve thought it possible to enjoy a date the morning after losing everything, but she did.
Mason was reserved, as he so often was, but he was also incredibly attentive and engaged, allowing Gabriela—and more often than not, Ana—to steer the conversation wherever they liked.
Mason laughed and smiled as often as Gabby and Ana, and whenever he did so, his eyes lit up, becoming impossibly more violet.
Gabriela left the café feeling a little lighter, and that was more than she could ever have hoped for. They returned to Mason’s house, and she didn’t allow herself to look across the street at the ruins of her former home. She had to keep moving forward.
Mason, unsurprisingly, insisted on bringing everything inside himself. After a bit of pushback from Gabby, he accepted help—allowing Ana to take a few of the lighter bags. The little girl beamed at that and proceeded to shoo Gabriela inside as Mason looked on with a smirk.
“You need rest, Mom. Go on,” Ana girl said.
“I slept in! That’s more rest than the mother of a crazy nine-year-old can ask for,” Gabriela replied as she stepped into the house.
“I’m nine and a half,” Ana countered.
Gabby chuckled. She paused in the middle of the living room to look back at Mason as he entered. “Where…should we put our clothes?”
He halted just inside the doorway, holding at least twenty bags stuffed with clothing, groceries, and toiletries, and furrowed his brow.
There was no question that those bags were heavy, but he showed no signs of strain.
“We’ll leave them in the bags for now and put them in the bedroom. I’ll figure something out.”
Mason and Gabriela put away the groceries as Ana hauled the bags of clothing to bedroom.
When they were done, the fridge and freezer were full near to bursting, and the previously bare cupboards and pantry were well-stocked.
Mason turned to Gabby, smiled, and told her to make herself at home before striding to the front door.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
He tugged open the door and looked at her over his shoulder. “Few more things to get. Be back in a couple hours.”
As though he’d not done enough already, now he was giving them free reign of his home, trusting them while he was away? Where was this man ten years ago, when Gabriela’s ex had abandoned her and her unborn child?
“Okay. You don’t want us to come?” she asked.
Mason chuckled. “No. Settle in and relax. Treat this place like your own.”
He stepped outside and started pulling the door shut, only to pause and ease it open a bit. He leaned across the threshold and said, “Lock the door.”
And then he was gone.
Gabriela heard his truck start in the driveway. She walked to the front window just in time to see him backing out. He caught sight of her and lifted his hand in a small wave. Smiling, she returned the gesture before he drove off.
Gabby still hadn’t quite shaken her shock from what he’d said in the grocery store.
He was moving in on her hard and fast, and well…
she wasn’t put off by it in the least. And it wasn’t simply because of her current situation.
She would never, ever take advantage of Mason.
She’d always been attracted to him, since the moment she saw him moving into this house.
There’d been many times when she’d stopped what she’d been doing—whether cleaning house, helping Ana with schoolwork, cooking, sorting through her bills—to catch a glimpse of him, usually shirtless, mowing his front lawn.
To watch his muscles flex and bulge, to watch sweat drip down his skin, to stare at his jeans clinging to his shapely ass. He was a gorgeous man.
She’d just never dreamed he would want her in return, especially knowing she was a single mother—and that she therefore came as a package deal.
Though he sometimes spoke strangely, Mason was a good man, and he instilled her with…hope. Hope that she had a chance at a real relationship with a man who wanted her and her daughter. Hope that Ana could have the father she so longed for, and hope that they’d be…a family.
Jeez, we really are moving fast.
“Can I watch TV?” Ana asked.
Gabriela jumped back from the window, casting a guilty look at her daughter.
Ana grinned. “You do like him.”
“Oh, shush you, and go ahead.”
Ana laughed and plopped down on the sofa, dragging down one of the blankets folded across the back to cover herself. She turned on the TV, selected the YouTube app, and surfed through her favorite content creators.
She’d be entertained for hours watching them.
So what could Gabby do to occupy herself?
She glanced around. She…could get to know Mason a little more by exploring his home.
Not that she’d was nosy or anything, but he had said to treat this place like home.
Maybe she could even tidy things up a little.
His house wasn’t filthy, but there was a thin layer of dust gathered on the edges of the shelves and atop the carved bear in the corner.
It could be Gabriela’s way of paying him back, if only a little, for all he’d done for her and Ana.
After locking the front door, she walked into the kitchen and opened the cabinet under the sink.
Sure enough, his cleaning supplies were inside, standing in a small plastic tub.
It looked like he only had the basics, but that was good enough for her.
She tucked the wood polish under her arm and grabbed the duster before conducting another search that resulted in her finding some rags in one of the kitchen drawers.
Armed and ready, she went to work.
Gabriela more or less blocked out the TV, letting it become background noise—though the occasional piercing scream from whatever YouTuber Ana was watching sometimes broke through.
She dusted the shelves and the décor upon them, dusted the pictures on the walls, dusted around the TV and the TV itself.
Some of the things Mason owned didn’t quite seem to fit him; they were old objects, bordering on antiques. The sorts of items she’d seen time and again in rental properties in and around McCall time and time again that were meant to give the places a taste of that rustic aesthetic.
Metal cowboy boots with spurs hanging from horseshoes, generic paintings of skies, mountain meadows, snowy woods, and reflective lakes—she’d seen their like a hundred times, and a few of Mason’s things had that same feel.
But there were some items that seemed to reflect his personality.
The chest-high carved bear in the living room corner, in particular, reminded her of him.
Yeah, she’d seen such bears on people’s porches and front yards pretty often, but it said something to her that his was inside.
It was in the heart of the home. A big, gentle looking creature that was capable of immense strength and savagery when necessary in defense of its family.
The scene from last night—Mason lifting Mr. Jensen clear off the ground with one hand—came to mind. She knew it was probably wrong to smile, but she didn’t stop herself.
He stood up for me.
That was already far more than she could ever have said of her ex.
James had preferred to let things go, to brush aside her issues and avoid any sort of confrontation on her behalf, even if it meant ignoring slurs that had been thrown her way.
Of course, his nonconfrontational nature seemed to vanish whenever he’d been mad at Gabriela.
When Gabby reached the bookshelf, which was filled with well used paperback books, she smiled. Were they Mason’s, or had they, too, come with the house? Had he read them? She ran the duster along the shelf and over the tops of the books, reading the titles as she went.
There were nonfiction books on countless subjects. Astronomy, philosophy, various historical eras, even a couple science textbooks. She spotted a few self-help books interspersed here and there, and she smirked at one that was titled How to Approach a Woman.