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.
The nonfiction books were outnumbered by fiction of seemingly every genre—mystery, horror, fantasy and science fiction, literary classics, westerns. But to Gabriela’s surprise, the majority of those books were romances. There were historicals, contemporaries, fantasies, and paranormals, most of which were all uniform in size. But there were a few that stood taller and appeared newer than the rest, though they’d still clearly been well read.
She drew one off the shelf and turned the cover toward her. Upon it was a sexy, bare-chested man covered in stripes with a woman peering out from behind him, her hand poised precariously close to his groin. The title read, Have Tail, Will Travel.
Did that mean the man had a tail?
Gabby returned the book to the shelf, tucking the title away in her memory for later, and moved her hand to the thicker book next to it called The Bridal Hunt. The cover featured a gasping woman and a…a white-furred man behind her? Gabriela turned the book to read the back. Her brows nearly shot to her hairline. An abominable snow beastie? As the love interest?
“I will be coming back to you later,” she said, intrigued, as she put the book back in its place.
Alien and monster romances? She hadn’t known such things existed! Perhaps it was time for her to take up reading again.
There was another book sitting on the shelf, lying on its back with a bookmark sticking out of it. Prisoner of My Desire. Gabriela grinned.
My mountain man reads romance.
Something about that was utterly endearing, all the more so because it was something she’d discovered about the man who wanted to claim her.
Gabriela glanced at the clock. Only thirty minutes had passed since Mason left. Anxiousness fluttered in her stomach as she turned her face toward the front window, as though that could somehow make his truck appear in the driveway.
He said a couple hours, Gabby. He’s not coming back yet.
Still…she wanted him here. She wanted to watch him interact with her daughter, wanted to talk with him, touch him, be touched by him.
“Slow down, Gabby…” she muttered, and set about dusting the rest of the living room.
Once that was done, and all the wood surfaces had been polished to a shine, she checked one of the closed doors off the short hallway and discovered a mostly empty bedroom. There were only a couple old pieces of furniture within, including a vintage end table—the kind that had a little raised section on the back. Four cardboard boxes were stacked in the corner, the flaps open on one of them. Gabriela peered inside to find more books.
Maybe Mason wouldn’t accept money as repayment, but whenever she was able to afford it, Gabby guessed another bookcase or two would make a great gift for him.
She dusted the room—mainly the blinds—and, with little else to do in there, moved on to the master bedroom.
She cleaned the master bathroom first and was about to unpack the toiletries they’d purchased, but she decided it was better to hold off on that. There was a chance Mason would have Gabriela and Ana use the guest bathroom so he could have his own space again; she didn’t want to presume anything in that regard.
Returning to the bedroom, she paused and surveyed her surroundings. Gabby hadn’t really had a good look at the room last night. She’d been exhausted both physically and mentally and had registered little but Mason’s kindness and thoughtfulness. Her eyes dipped to the foot of the bed, where he’d sat her down, removed her socks, and massaged warmth into her feet with those big, confident, clever hands of his.
Despite her weariness and the fact that Mason had changed the bedding before he and Ana went to sleep, she swore she’d smelled hints of him beneath the scent of detergent when she had lain down.
You’re in here for a reason, Gabriela, and it’s not to get all hot and bothered.
Steeling herself, she set about her task, trying to think of this as she would a client’s bedroom. She dusted, cleaned the headboard, picked up the few articles of clothing on the floor and tossed them into the hamper, and made the bed. Yet she couldn’t help herself; she had to look at his things.
Not that there was much. Just like the rest of Mason’s home, there was little in the bedroom that seemed to represent the man himself. There was a small piece of paper atop his dresser with a pencil that had been worn down to a two-inch-long stub. A list had been written on that paper in compact, slightly uneven letters, all caps. BOOKS TO LOOK FOR. Each title was written on its own line, accompanied by what must’ve been the last names of the authors.
But the bottom of the paper was separated by a firm pencil line, beneath which was printed one word—TERMINATOR. She leaned closer to the paper, narrowing her eyes slightly. There were still tiny flecks of graphite on the paper around the letters; they were recently written.