Spanish Lessons (Study Abroad Book 1) Page 24
He’s not my father.
“Are you serious?” I manage. “You really think I’m not going to tell mom?”
Dad takes a step toward me. We’re still a couple of feet apart, but that one step makes a world of difference. I feel like he’s hovering over me, pinning me to the couch with his quiet, confident anger.
“If you tell your mother, you’ll ruin everything she loves. Everything she’s worked for—you and I both know this family is her life. You take that away from her, and she’ll be left with nothing.”
I bite my bottom lip to keep it from trembling. I won’t cry in front of him.
I won’t cry. I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how terrified I am. How confused that he’s putting me at fault for his mistake.
“Who do you think pays her bills? Your bills?” he continues. “Don’t you forget that I’m paying for your education. You’re getting the money for your semester in Spain from me. Don’t screw all that up by opening your mouth.”
He takes another step closer. “You tell your mother, and you’ll destroy this family. You’re a smart girl, Maddie. I know you’ll do the smart thing.”
Maddie
November
Madrid, Spain
Tucking my chin into the collar of my jacket, I step inside Ático, my favorite discoteca in Madrid. A pleasant shiver arrows up my spine as the heat hits me. The potent smells of liquor and cologne, along with a hint of sweat, fill my head. Considering the week—the semester, really—that I’ve had, a drink sounds downright heavenly.
I take a deep breath. My heart feels heavy and sore. Par for the course these days. Considering I was the one who basically caused it, I can’t get past my parents’ divorce. Of course I told mom about dad and that woman—how could I not?—and she kicked his ass to the curb that night.
I offered to stay home this semester. You know, help her figure everything out, be a shoulder to cry on. But she insisted I still go to Spain.
“We may not be able to count on your father for that internship you want for next summer,” she’d told me. “You’ll need to fall back on your grades, and maybe your thesis, for that. And it might be good for you to get away for a while.”
The whole thing sucks. But Saturday nights at Madrid’s infamous discotecas make the heaviness I carry around inside me a little bit lighter.
Shrugging out of my coat before I check it with the girl at the counter, I spot the cute couple tucked in the corner of the bar right away. Sipping on their Cuba libres—rum and cokes—they’re leaning toward one another, the girl grinning as the guy murmurs Spanish nothings that are probably more saucy than sweet. The bar’s sassy red lights gild their profiles, catching on their eyelashes, making haloes of their hair.
It’s such a pretty picture, my best friend and the guy we both fell for—the guy who’s now her boyfriend—that I wish I brought my camera to capture it.
My heart clenches. Not because I’m jealous that Vivian got the guy, and nabbed such a hot foreign piece. It took a while for us to get here, for Vivian and I to forgive each other, and ourselves, for the awful, stupid things we did while embroiled in our little love triangle with handsome Spaniard Rafa Montoya. They suck with a capital S, those triangles, despite what the vampires and werewolves would have us believe. I haven’t exactly been myself these days—not that that’s any excuse—and watching Vivian’s dreams come true while my parents crushed mine was not easy.
But now, more than a month after our friendship almost imploded, I can honestly say I’m happy for Vivian. Genuinely, deliriously happy she found a guy as excellent and delicious as she is.
No, I’m not jealous.
My heart clenches because I miss, I miss, the kind of home Vivian and Rafa have obviously found in each other. Home doesn’t exist for me. Not anymore.
I’ve always thought your twenties were all about finding yourself.
But at almost twenty-one, I feel more lost than ever.
My one saving grace this semester is that I’m four thousand miles away from the broken place I come from. Madrid, thank Dios, is the perfect distraction; the perfect place to escape, for a little while, the ever-expanding universe of hurt inside me. It’s all about long, lingering meals with my friends, the Madrileñas, that always include too much vino and talk of penises; an awesome library at San Pedro University that I’m using to put together some ideas for a thesis proposal; and a hedonistic club culture that encourages anonymous encounters with handsomely Eurotrash Spaniards.
Encounters I am all too happy to partake in. After crushing, disastrously, on Rafa, I realized a relationship wouldn’t do this body good anyway. What’s the point, considering the kind of cheesy-romance-novel true love I’m looking for is obviously a big fat lie?
I don’t need a boyfriend. I need a hook up—many hook ups—where the only faith required is in a guy’s ability to make me come.
And oh, are Madrileños good at that.
From her perch in the corner, Vivian glances over her shoulder and meets my eyes. She grins, the kind of grin that lights up her face, and that happy-squidgy-best-friend-feeling fills me to the brim. It never gets old, does it, the happiness you feel seeing someone you know and love across the room?
“Hey lady!” she says, her grin widening to a smile as I wrap her in a quick hug. “Holy shit you’re cold. We gotta warm you up with some liquor.”
Rafa leans over the table, pressing the standard Spanish kisskiss into my cheeks. “Buenas noches, Maddie. How are you feeling?”
Viv and Rafa look at me, hopefully, as they wait for my answer.
Vivian has been my shoulder to cry on this semester. Aside from our little snafu with Rafa, she’s played her BFF role with aplomb. Granted, I haven’t told her everything. She knows my parents are splitting, and that it’s pretty nasty. But I haven’t told her about the cheating part. My dad raised us to always “keep it in the family”; he is a big believer in never airing our dirty laundry in public (that sonofabitch scumbag, now I know why).
It just hurts too much to talk about, especially the part about me catching my dad in the act; the part about him threatening me, telling me I would be at fault if our family fell apart. I don’t want to think about it, and I definitely don’t want to talk about it. Even with someone as cool and understanding as Viv.
I swallow, hard, and pull my lips into a smile. “I’m feeling good. A little tired, but better than last week. How about you guys? What’s new and exciting?”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Rafa says. “But I invited my uncle, Javier, to join us. For one drink only, he says the weather is very good tomorrow so he wants to fly.”
My eyes flick to the illuminated shelves of liquor on the far wall. “Fly? Is he, like, a pilot or something?”
Rafa nods. “He has his own plane, too. Little plane, but it is still very fun. He is just back from a long trip for business, and he hasn’t been able to fly for many months. I am excited for you chicas to meet him. He asked me and Vivian to fly with him, but we’ve got tickets to the fútbol match tomorrow.” Rafa offers me that lady killer grin of his. “Maybe Maddie can go with Javier?”
“That wouldn’t be awkward at all,” I say, “being alone on a tiny little plane with your uncle who I’ve never met.”
“You’re going to like Javier. He is not like other uncles.”
I shrug. Even if Javier has George Clooney’s salt-and-pepper smexiness, mature guys aren’t exactly my thing at the moment. I’m into dudes who are young, and eager to please. It’s shallow and it’s stupid, I know, but hey, they get the dirty job done. I’ve slept with quite a few wonderfully foreign dudes in the past month, and I have yet to be disappointed.
I order a gintonic from the bar. It’s delicious, and it is fuerte—strong, the only way Madrileños like their liquor drinks—so strong I already feel the gin working its black magic on my sluggish brain.
My body and my mood begin to thaw.
I offer Viv a small grin. “I like thi
s little Saturday night tradition. You guys take care of your third wheel, and I appreciate that.”
She reaches across the table and flicks her thumb across my top lip, wiping away a stray chunk of lime. The gesture is so sweet, so familiar, I have to look away. “Wouldn’t be Saturday night without you,” she says. “We started that tradition freshman year, remember? Just because we’re in Spain—”
“And just because you sleep over at your super hot Spanish boyfriend’s apartment,” I say.
“Right. Just because things are a little different doesn’t mean the tradition has to change.”
Rafa sets his drink on the table and leans down on his elbows. “I guess I’m the third wheel, then, aren’t I? I should be thanking you”—he looks at me—“for letting me crash your Saturday night with Vivian.”
I’m about to make fun of Rafa for being such a relentlessly cute cheeseball when a gust of cold air hits me. Skin prickling with goose bumps, I glance toward the entrance hall.
A broad-shouldered guy strides into the club, hands tucked into the pockets of his bomber jacket. The collar is turned up against the cold; the leather is lovingly scarred, distressed in a way a machine couldn’t replicate.
I can’t see his face—he’s looking away from us, searching the other side of the bar—but something about the way he’s built, the dark scuff that covers the square lines of his jaw, catches my wandering eye.
He’s built like a quarterback, deliciously thick about the shoulders and arms and chest. Not huge, just the very right side of athletic. But his chocolate brown hair—cropped close at the sides, a combed swoop of longer hair at the top—along with all that scruff scream hot hipster. His clothes are somewhere in between: dark fitted jeans, tidy suede boots, the hem of a button-down shirt peeking from underneath the bottom of his jacket. It’s like he’s part Madrileño, part rookie NFL player, part hipster country music star.
I’m intrigued.
Who are you, I wonder. What is your story?
And would you like to get naked with me tonight?
He turns his head and our gazes collide. I look, and he looks, and we both keep looking.
My stomach does a backflip. He is so handsome. Hot. He his handsome and hot—he walks that fine line with finesse. His eyes, light brown, burn amber in the red light of the bar.
I know in the space of a single heartbeat that I am going to fuck this delectable Madrileño tonight. I am shameless in my pursuit. When I want a guy, I have him.
And I want Javier. Badly. My blood warms as I imagine the way he’ll move. The way he’ll taste.
I imagine the blinding, forceful blankness of my orgasm.
Hell yes.
“Are you okay?” Viv is asking me.
I don’t need to answer her. She glances over her shoulder and she, too, is rendered speechless by this guy’s hot-handsomeness.
My stomach flips again when señor NFL hipster hot body starts walking toward us.
No way. He can’t be.
No way this guy is—
“Tío!” Rafa gathers his uncle in a hug.
I blink. This guy is Rafa’s uncle? It doesn’t make sense; they’re practically the same age. From what I can tell, Javier is twenty-four, maybe twenty-five, tops.
Viv turns around and meets my eyes. She’s thinking it, too. How is this Uncle Javier? And how is he so ridiculously good-looking?
He’s related to Rafa, that’s how. The Montoyas must have a pretty sick gene pool to make such handsome babies.
Rafa introduces Javier to Vivian, who, like me, is still staring at him in mute adoration-slash-confusion. He smiles, a blinding, half goofy, half devastating thing that works two grooves into the stubble on either side of his mouth.
“Wow,” she says at last, standing. “Just. Um, wow. I gotta be honest, Javier, you are not at all what I was expecting.”
“Javier is more like a brother to me,” Rafa explains. “It is a joke, yes?, that I call him Uncle, really, because we are almost the same age. My grandfather, he married again when he was very old to a younger woman. They had a small family. Javier is part of that family.”
Viv’s brows snap together. “How much younger are you than Rafa’s—”
“Father?” Javier says. His voice is deep, a little gravelly. A lot sexy. “I am twenty four now, so that is, what, Rafael, twenty two years between me and my brother?”
“Wow,” Viv says.
“Wow,” I say, getting up.
Javier’s turns his gaze on me. A rush of tingly awareness moves from my head to my toes. It’s powerful, his gaze, not because it makes me feel like he can see what I’m wearing underneath my clothes (a lacy bra and no underwear; I always come to Ático prepared).
It’s powerful because there’s something honest about it. A little playful.
Granted, I’ve only been ogling him for one and a half minutes, but I get the feeling Tío Javier isn’t the kind of guy to hide what he’s feeling; he’s too confident to play games.
I like it, his easy, masculine confidence.
I like it a lot.
I step around the table to stand beside Viv, in front of Javier. “Javier, this is Maddie Lucas, my best friend,” she says.
Before I can do the awkward American thing and offer him my hand, Uncle Javier leans forward and greets me in the Madrileño way, pressing quick kisses into either of my cheeks. The stubble of his beard brushes my skin; the scent of cinnamon mints trails in his wake as he pulls away.
I love a lot of things about studying abroad in Spain.
The double-kiss greeting, though, has to be the thing I love most.
“Maddie,” he says, my name a pleasant rumble that rolls off his tongue. “Encantado.”
It’s the Spanish equivalent of “nice to meet you”, but when Uncle Javier says it in his husky, come-hither voice, it sounds like an invitation to join the mile high club in this plane he supposedly owns.
I am so, so game. I’ve never done it on a plane before. I bet it’s fantastic.
I meet his gaze head on with the sauciest smirk I can muster. “Very nice to meet you, Javier.”
He nods at my empty glass. “Might I get you another drink, Maddie? What is that, a G and T?”
His English is better—much better—than Rafa’s, and tinged with a British accent. Hearing a Spanish dude speak the Queen’s English gives me a sense of cultural vertigo, but I mean that in the best way possible. Europe—the world, really—can be such a cool melting pot.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s a gin and tonic. Another would be great—thank you very much.”
“Vale,” Uncle Javier says. I love that word, so particular to Madrid, and one Madrileños use to glorious excess. It can mean everything from “okay” to “cool” to “fine by me”.
Javier shrugs out of his jacket, revealing more of that physique that is definitely fine by me. I watch, pulse throbbing, as he rolls back his shoulders and shrugs out of his bomber jacket. He’s wearing a white button-down that hugs the rounded slopes of his shoulders and arms; he cuffs his wrists in his hands and slides the rolled sleeves up his arms, baring tan forearms ridged with sinew and vein.
I don’t bother to hide my grin of appreciation.
He catches me checking him out. He holds my gaze for a beat too long. I bite my lip. He looks away. He runs a hand down his face, trying—and failing—to hide a small, enticingly secret smile.
“C’mon, Rafa,” Javier says, his eyes flicking to meet mine. “Let’s grab those drinks—I do believe Maddie is quite thirsty.”
Oh, yes.
A million times yes.
I am definitely going to fuck Javier tonight.
***
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Acknowledgments
A big shout out to my biggest fan—Benji, I love you to the moon and back. Can’t wait to see where our travels will take is in 2016!
I’d also like to thank my editor extraordinaire, Kristin Anders. Not
to be a drama queen, but your enthusiasm for this book changed my life. You have a gift—thank you for sharing it with me!
Thanks to Elizabeth Bank/Celestiele Designs for my awesome new cover. It’s gorgeous! Thanks, too, to Marie Force and the Formatting Fairies for all the help and self-pub tips—you ladies are the best.
About the Author
JESSICA PETERSON began reading romance to escape the decidedly unromantic awkwardness of her teenage years. Having found solace in the likes of Mr. Darcy, Jamie Fraser (OMG love the gingers!), and Edward Cullen, it wasn’t long before she began creating tall, dark and handsome heroes of her own. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband, Mr. Peterson, and her smelly Goldendoodle Martha Bean.
Find Jessica:
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25