Page 6 of One Year Ago in Spain
Claire parted her lips.
The silver tip of the spoon touched her tongue. Sweetness hit her taste buds, and she moaned.
Every woman has her limits.
She pushed aside the remnants of the picnic, climbed across the table, and kissed him, their mouths like molten sugar.
Claire had never slept with anyone before the sixth date, but Matías was not made for rules.
He laid her down on the plush carpet of the library and disassembled her carefully pressed suit, piece by piece. She yanked his shirt over his head and fumbled at his fly.
Despite the air-conditioning of the staid library, their bodies melted together like the heat that shimmers in the air in the middle of summer days.
When she came, she held in her scream, but the books shook on the shelves around her.
When it was his turn, he whispered her name.
The full, contented silence that followed said everything else they needed to know.
And that was how Claire Walker fell in love with Matías de León.
Claire
Eleven Months Later
“I can’t waitto show you around Spain,” Matías said as he grabbed his empty suitcase to begin packing. He was about to set it on the bed when Claire yelped.
“Wait, don’t put it there!”
She ran to his closet and returned with the luggage rack she’d bought him. “It’s just…remember I read that article about all the germs on suitcase wheels?” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m sorry, but I—”
“You don’t have to apologize,churri,” Matías said, using his favorite endearment. He leaned in and kissed her, right where her nose was scrunched. Then he took the luggage rack from her, unfolded it, and set his suitcase on top.
Claire sighed. He was good to her, he really was. But in the eleven months of their whirlwind romance, some…differenceshad emerged. Matías was chaos, whereas Claire was order. For instance, he tried his best to put things where they belonged, but he wasn’t always successful. That had been good enough in the early days of being together, when Claire had laughed whenever he set his keys on her kitchen island instead of the entry table by the door, or when he put the coffee mugs on the water glass shelf.
But it had been bothering her more lately. Maybe becausethe hurricane of their relationship was slowing down to a normal breeze, and it was a lot easier to spot flaws when you weren’t in the middle of a storm.
Right now, she had to avert her eyes as he tossed improperly folded T-shirts into his suitcase.
Don’t be so rigid,she told herself.
Still, to avoid watching, Claire walked over to the dresser in the far corner of his room to retrieve some socks and boxer briefs. If she got to them before Matías did, she could roll them up nicely to prevent them from wrinkling.
As she reached for his socks, though, her hand hit something hard in the back of the drawer. What the—?
Claire angled herself so her body would block Matías’s view, and she pulled the mystery thing out of the drawer.
It was a sock, but stuffed inside it was a velvet ring box.
Her stomach flipped, and she wasn’t sure it was entirely in a good way.
He’s planning to propose. On this trip to Spain. In front of all his family and friends…
Only, Claire already knew she couldn’t go. The merger she was working on was utter madness, but she hadn’t found the right time yet to break the news to Matías.
Also, she didn’t know if she wanted to say yes to marrying him.
She and Matías were complete opposites—which, judging by Claire’s friends’ relationships, usually did not work out. And her model relationship—her parents—had been one based on shared personalities and occupations. Mom and Dad had both been postal workers, and because of that, they’d understood how to live in the ebbs and flows of each other’s days. They had drivento work together each morning. She worked in the post office itself and he delivered mail, so they touched based during the day whenever he stopped in for a new batch of packages and mail. And at the end of the day, they’d sit next to each other on the sofa, their feet soaking in respective foot baths in front of the TV, where they inevitably murmured their commiseration every time a delivery person showed up onscreen and got chased by dogs.
