Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Rafael had known plenty of American women, and as a twenty-something student in New York, he’d been fairly certain they were all the same.
He’d taken the opportunity to sleep with quite a few of them, and it had been nice.
Perfectly pleasant, really, but that was all.
They were frivolous and self-absorbed and shallow.
He wasn’t sure they could ever be serious about anything, and that suited Rafael just fine, since he wasn’t ever interested in spending more than a few nights with them.
He couldn’t complain, honestly. He’d had a great time.
When he first met Grace, he’d assumed Alma’s little American friend would be just like all those other women he had judged so decidedly, and he felt validated by his initial opinion.
He tried to talk about the mastery of the Torre Agbar in Barcelona, and the two of them just kept chortling about how it looked like a giant penis.
Grace had been studying art history, for God’s sake, so he thought she might have a little appreciation for the great postmodern icon, but she had just laughed along with his sister, completely ignoring his explanations of how it was inspired by Monserrat, the mountain near the city, and it was supposed to be representative of a geyser rising into the air.
“Sure,” Grace had joked, “a geyser. Better watch out or it might spurt all over the tech district.”
He’d almost smiled at that. Almost.
It was the first thing Rafael had thought of when Alma told him her depressed best friend was coming to live with her in Granada—how he’d judged her and been so sure he was correct in his opinions.
If not giggle fits and dumb jokes, then what else would he have expected from a twenty-year-old American college student, especially one who was so close with his silly sister?
But there were moments when she’d managed to break through the haze of his superiority, even then.
Grace.
Her captivating blue eyes had always stared right into his when she wanted his attention, and she’d smirked like they had a secret between them. Or maybe like she was laughing at him; he was never sure.
The second thing he’d thought of was how he’d tried to kiss her.
That had obviously been a stupid mistake, and considering the fact that it was almost ten years ago, he didn’t even feel the need to be embarrassed about it anymore.
There was no doubt he’d been a complete idiot in his youth, and if he bothered to spend too much time dwelling on that, he’d waste much of his adulthood as well.
But when Grace walked into Alma’s apartment for the first time—her long, dirty blonde hair a rat’s nest from the convertible, her blue t-shirt wrinkled and worn—she looked at him in just the same way she had back then, as if she was studying him, or maybe, as if she didn’t need to study him.
As if she knew him already. Somehow, she’d figured out everything she needed to understand about Alma’s older brother, and there was no need to pass a second judgement.
He didn’t blame her. It may have taken a while, but obviously he’d come to realize what a giant asshole he’d been during those years after college, how he’d never actually gotten to know any of the American women he took to his bed, never even tried to open up or form a real connection with them.
He also realized how much he’d been influenced by his father when he was yet to completely comprehend that his father was a total cabrón and not someone to emulate.
Rafael had probably been at his very worst during that summer in Barcelona when he met Grace, and he didn’t need to read minds to know what she thought of him.
“Hi,” she said in response to his greeting. “Thanks for coming to help.”
“No problem,” he said, pocketing his phone. “Good trip?”
She nodded but clearly didn’t feel the need to say anything more about it. “How are you?” she asked without smiling.
He nodded, too, mirroring her movement, but nothing came out of his mouth.
She looked almost the same as she had ten years ago, except for the dark circles under her eyes.
She was still beautiful. Her lips still puckered in that same inviting way that had gotten him into trouble in the first place, but he could already tell she didn’t have that same lightness about her, that she was no longer floating through life without a care in the world.
He’d thought it shallow and superficial at the time, her innate happiness, but now she seemed like a complete stranger.
If he’d imagined her greeting him at all, he would have expected her to throw her arms around him with abandon and squeeze him too tightly, loudly declaring how thrilled she was to see him again.
She would have grinned up at him like they were old friends, rather than forced acquaintances.
Maybe she would have even teased him about his fancy gold watch or his loafers.
That’s how she’d been ten years ago, without a worry to spare about what he or anyone else thought of her.
Now, she carried herself like her limbs were too heavy for her, like the sound of a twig snapping would frighten her. Cautious and uneasy, where before she’d been all carefree glee. She was a stranger.
“Keys?” he asked his sister. “I’ll get the bags.”
“I can help you,” Grace said. “There are a lot of them.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “I can handle it.”
He quickly discovered he couldn’t handle it, at least not all at once. Four large bags and three flights of stairs was impossible, so he took two trips, and he was sweating through his Sea Island cotton shirt by the end of it.
When he finally finished, he was annoyed to be sweating and annoyed that Grace would see him sweating, even though she didn’t look like the picture of perfection herself, and he didn’t know why he cared in the first place.
He slid the bags into the apartment but straightened when he heard the sound of her voice.
“He’s so gorgeous,” she said. “Was he a model at some point?”
Alma poured another splash of wine into Grace’s glass as they huddled in the corner of the small kitchen. Rafael wasn’t remotely surprised to hear them chatting about Alma’s boyfriend, since Alma talked about him constantly.
“You’ll meet him tomorrow,” Alma answered. “Just wait until you see him in person. And I told you, Gracie, he’s kind. That’s the thing that blows my mind.”
Obinna was kind, and on the several occasions that Rafael had spent any time with him, he’d actually enjoyed his company, which wasn’t something he could say about any other man that had captured his sister’s attention.
He still didn’t understand why she felt the need to go on and on about him like she did. No one was that great.
Alma teased Rafael about going on and on about his work, though, so he supposed they were even. “So busy and important, aren’t you, Rafa?” Alma would say, and even though she was poking fun at him, Rafael couldn’t help but agree.
He was busy. New company, new client, new important project. There was nothing wrong with that. He approached the counter where Alma was taking a long drink of wine, and Grace’s head cocked toward the side as she looked at him.
“Thank you for taking time out of your day to help,” Grace said. “I honestly think we could have managed, so I’m not sure why Alma made you do this.”
“Well, now that he’s here, he can stay for dinner,” Alma offered.
Rafael stiffened. Sitting around in his sweaty clothes watching sad Grace eat take-out paella did not sound appealing at all. Grace’s face seemed to reveal that she didn’t think so either.
“No.” He brushed his palm against the back of his head and glanced toward the door, eyeballing the distance to the exit. “I’ll let you two catch up.”
“I want to hear about your new project,” Alma complained. “And you know that’s not something I say very often, so you should probably take advantage of my interest.”
Rafael blew out a breath. “Can’t even tell you about it. It’s top secret.” He glanced at Grace, who seemed lost in thought.
“Come on, Raf,” Alma scolded, emphasizing his Americanized nickname. “You know you can’t resist talking about yourself for an hour, and you know you want to impress Grace with all your ‘ultimate luxury escapades’ shit.”
At the sound of her name, Grace’s head jerked up, and their eyes met. He couldn’t believe it for a moment, how he was filled with the same feeling he’d had the first time he met her, that she could see him somehow.
“What is it that you do?” Grace asked politely.
Alma was correct that he was great at talking about himself, at spouting whatever bullshit sounded good, whatever made him look impressive. But he didn’t think he could do that now, for some reason. Not with Grace looking at him like that.
He cleared his throat. “I’m building a company that—uh—helps clients to cultivate curated cultural experiences.
” He didn’t feel the need to mention his miserable finance job in the States or his father’s disappointment when he decided to leave it for something “frivolous.” No, disappointment wasn’t the word, actually.
More like, wrath. Rafael needed to focus on the future, though.
He needed to focus on what he was building, not the thing he’d finally worked up the courage to abandon.
“It’s for elite events and exhibitions throughout the region. ”
Grace smiled. It was the first time he’d seen her smile in this new life—the life where they were both adults, and they both lived in Spain. “I don’t think I know what that means,” she admitted.
“It means he makes a lot of money helping rich people throw fancy parties for other rich people,” Alma said with a wink in Grace’s direction.
“Not parties,” Rafael objected.
Grace stared at him.
“Well sometimes parties,” he conceded.
She nodded and looked as if she might say something, but she didn’t.
“What’s the latest bourgeoisie extravaganza?” Alma asked.