A couple days turn into a week, time seemingly flying by at warp speed.

At the end of the week, Mason asks me to stay for another.

As if I could say no.

By now, I’ve shown Mason how to bathe the baby and we work on getting the feedings more regularly scheduled and also on getting a bedtime routine going.

I meet Rita the housekeeper, a pleasant woman who cleans whatever needs cleaning and prepares an evening meal for Mason –and now, me– to heat up or eat when he’s finished working.

She coos over the baby and is kind to everyone, but apart from that, she does her job and goes home.

I meet Mason’s employees, two über-geeks, Freddy and Emilio. They’re both very cool people but they’re employees who stay in the lab and only come in the house once in a while.

When we’re together, Mason and I talk incessantly, getting to know each other and having fun. We have tender and hot, getting-to-know-you sex a few more times.

But I still bunk in the nanny’s room, getting up with the baby at night and letting Mason sleep.

On the fourth night, though, he brings the bassinet back into his bedroom. “I’ll get up with him tonight. We still need to bond,” he says. Kissing me, he adds: “I want you to come sleep in my room sometime, too. But just for tonight, you should stay in here, and catch up on sleep yourself.

“Pffft,” I say. “I wanna sleep with my boys.”

“Oh, baby! I was hoping you would,” he says, smiling and pulling me close.

So I do. And when Drew wakes up, I change him while Mason gets his bottle, then we bring the baby into bed and feed him there, cuddling close and dozing.

It’s so cozy and lovely and warm. While Mason feeds Drew, he kisses the top of my head where it rests on his shoulder, over and over, and whispers sweet nothings to us both.

And when he puts the baby back to sleep, he slides under the covers and takes me in his arms, and we fall asleep with one of his thick meaty arms under my head, and the other on my hip, comforting and warm.

* * *

It’s been a whole month. I’m still here.

Everyone knows something’s going on between me and Mason by now. I’m in touch with my friends, but sticking close to Mason and Drew.

It’s where I want to be right now. There’ll be lots of time for socializing later.

I have keys to one of Mason’s cars, a VW Jetta, and I’ve been back and forth a few times, going home to get some more clothes and personal items.

I’ve spoken to my mom a lot and seen my dad and my brother a few times. We talked about the baby and a bit about Mason, but not much about me-and-Mason or whether anything’s happening there. But I can tell she’s hoping for me to start that conversation.

When I get home this time, Mom follows me into my room.

“Things are getting serious, huh?” she says. She’s not happy but not mad either. ‘Resigned’ is the word, I suppose.

“Yeah. Yes, it is, Mom. It is. You were right. I…I’m having feelings for him and for the baby.” She smiles a sad smile and hugs me.

“I know. Best of luck, sweetheart. My baby girl. I just hope you don’t get hurt…” She shakes her head, voice trailing off.

“He’s good to me, Mom. We’re having fun, and…we’re bonding. I’ll tell you more when I know more. Hey, I noticed Dad’s not here.. Everything cool with him?”

“Yep, yep, he’s good. He’s over at Mike’s, watching the game. He…he spoke to Mason, did you know that? Mason expressed something about the situation to your father, but your dad wouldn’t repeat it to me word for word, of course. He just said it’s nothing bad and that Mason’s not about to ask you to leave.”

My heart beats just a little bit faster. If he’s spoken to my Dad, that must mean something.

I can’t help but smile.

“Your dad also said…he reminded me that you’re an adult now. And that you could do a lot worse than Mason.”

“That’s Dad for you. King of the understatement,” I say. We both chuckle.

“But we’re wondering when–or if–you’re coming home.”

“I… don’t know exactly.”

She nods, and pats my arm. “So I take it you know who he is now?”

“No. And I still don’t care. He says he’s not celebrity-famous and I believe him. Otherwise I’d know him.”

“He’s not celebrity-famous, no. He’s more, say, an object of interest for other reasons.”

“Welp, I still don’t care. To me, he’s just Mason. A guy I like. A lot.”

“You’ll find out soon enough. It’s not something you can avoid forever. But for now, that’s a good attitude to have. You can’t go wrong with that.”

Stevie runs past my open bedroom door, glancing in as he flies past. He stops short and comes running in.

“You home, Samantha?” His voice, normally so annoying, sounds almost plaintive.

“No, booger-nose.” He smiles at my teasing but wipes at his nose, just in case. “Just back to pick up some stuff again.”

“When are you coming home for reals?”

“I don’t know, hun. We’ll see.”

He stares up at me, breathing through his mouth. “Okay,” he says, throwing his arms around my legs. I hug him back and then he’s gone, running down the hall and thundering down the stairs.

“He misses you,” Mom says. “So do we. But…it’s okay. You were always gonna leave the nest at some point.”

Her words make me feel teary-eyed. “Thanks Mom.”

“Sure. You know where we are if you need us.”

“Yep.”

Then she hugs me so tightly, it’s as if she thinks she’s never gonna see me again.

* * *

Later that week, Drew naps in his sling, cuddled close against my body.

Mason says he has something he wants to shows me.

He opens the door to the other side of garage, the side that houses his automobiles.

Besides the VW Jetta sedan, he has two other every-day, utilitarian vehicles: A Chevy pick-up truck that he parks outside, and a Honda SUV.

He also has an electric golf cart for what he calls ‘toodling’ around the property; two ATVs and a riding lawn mower.

Behind those, he has two vehicles under tarps that I haven’t seen yet. He said they were sports cars that he doesn’t use much and left it at that.

But now, he removes the tarp from the first one with a flourish.

It’s a Dodge Viper. One of the few American-made vehicles, he tells me proudly, that come with a six-speed manual transmission only.

“Do you drive stick, Samantha?” He waggles his eyebrows, making sure I catch his broad innuendo. As if I could miss it!

“Nope. But I always wanted to learn.”

“I’ll teach you, as soon as we get a babysitter. We’re not strapping Drew into The Beast with you driving until you can handle it.”

I grasp his package through his pants, giving it a nice squeeze before letting go. “This is the only Beast I care about handling,” I say, grinning. “See? I can do innuendo too.”

“Good one,” he says, chuckling.

“Yeah…but, I have to admit, you handed that one to me on a silver platter.”

Now, he steps over the the other tarped vehicle and pulls it off to reveal a sleek, fire-engine red, old fashioned-looking race car.

It’s a fine-looking machine. I see a name emblazoned on the side in a slanted, flaming, lettering in an old-time-y font.

GRIMMETTI

I gasp. Even I know this car. My friend Marie, whose barn party I skipped the day I met Mason, is a motorhead from a family of motorheads.

She has a poster of one of these cars on her bedroom wall. To her, it’s like, some kind of Holy Grail of race cars.

According to Marie, it’s a rare, insanely valuable vehicle, manufactured by a renowned Italian family of the same name. Exquisitely high-performing cars, the cream of the crop, these vehicles were, at one time, without equal in the world.

“You know what this is?” he asks.

“Yes,” I reply, and tell him about Marie.

“Huh. She sounds cool,” he says. “So, you know the story behind these cars, too? The family?”

“Um. I know that they stopped making the cars years ago. The family, no. Not so much.”

He walks over to the car and runs his hand along the curved roll-bar. “Every vehicle was manufactured by hand, by family members or their apprentices. Every component, of every engine, was hand-tooled in the family’s private shops.”

Picking up a rag, he uses it to polish the curved nose of the sleek automobile.

“With very few exceptions, almost every Grimmetti that was ever raced, in any venue, either won or placed. In every class of competition,” he says. “The family was world-renowned for that, for vetting and training their own drivers, and also, of course, for their money.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard they had money.”

“They used a lot of the proceeds from their business to buy gold. And property. They amassed incredible wealth and carried on luxurious but intensely private lives. And, like a lot of wealthy people, they were somewhat…cursed, you could say…dogged by tragedy, scandal…and the press.”

“That must have been back in the day. You don’t hear anything about them any more.”

“No, but that’s because…well, they’re flying under the radar now. But the name, and the wealth associated with it, is still well-enough known to bring a lot of attention and notice. In their heyday, any sighting, gossip or scuttlebutt about them was valuable as gold for selling newspapers. That kind of notoriety doesn’t just fade away.”

“You know them pretty well.” It’s not a question. I think I know what he’s getting at but I wait and let him take his time.

He doesn’t reply, just steps over the low frame of the car and slides into the cockpit, then uses the rag to thoughtfully polish whatever is in reach. As usual, I’m mesmerized by the motion of his biceps and shoulder muscles as he moves his arms.

He nods. “They became as notorious for suing newspapers as they were for their cars or their money. All that fucking…money.” He shakes his head. “Ironically, the way they closely-guarded their privacy made any tidbit about them even more valuable.”

“The Streisand effect.”

“Yep. But for all their money and fame and notoriety, they were always just a family. A very small family of talented craftsmen and engineers, dedicated to their craft, to each other and to their privacy. They had a great product, which turned out to be a blessing and a curse.”

I say nothing, just wait, and listen.

He lets out a huge sigh. “The last Grimmetti rolled off the line in 1979. It was test driven around the family compound, then parked in their garage. Never raced.” Pause. “I’m sitting in it.”

His voice is quiet and inexpressibly sad.

“Why…why wasn’t it raced?” I caress the baby’s warm little back as I wait for the answer.

“The family was very small by then. There were only two brothers left. They didn’t know it at the time, but the older one was already dying when this car was made. Only a few days later, he collapsed, was hospitalized and kept alive by machines for the next two years.”

“Oh, how terrible.”

He nods. “An inoperable birth defect. Heart deformity. All their money couldn’t fix it.” He sounds so lost and sad!

“Mason…”

He holds up a finger. “The remaining brother was very involved with his sibling’s care, dedicating himself and their vast fortune to his recovery. It was all for nothing. The elder one died without heirs, leaving his share of the fortune to the surviving brother.”

I say nothing.

“The remaining brother stopped making cars and turned to other pursuits. Kept his head down, hoping to wait out the media interest. A few years later, he had a child. A son.”

He smiles, a grim smile. I just look at him, waiting.

“That son grew up and got tired of Europe, tired of living under a magnifying glass, with security and servants and paparazzi and the press, always the press outside the gate. European press are like wolves at a kill, picking over scraps and bones, did you know that?”

I shake my head.

“They’re brutal. Inhuman, some of them. Anyway, at sixteen, the son asked to be sent to America, where heat from the press wasn’t so bad. He enrolled in an elite boarding school in California and did everything he could to become American, including losing his Italian accent.” Pause. “He tried to become invisible.”

He gives the steering wheel a final wipe, and then his hands fall into his lap.

“The next year, both his parents were killed in a car crash on vacation in California.”

“Mason…” I whisper.

“Mario,” he says, climbing out of the car with a grunt. He comes to stand before me. He puts his hands on my shoulders and squeezes gently, looking into my soul with those warm brown eyes of his, now full of sadness and grief.

“That kid was me, obviously. Mario Grimmetti. At your service.”