“You’ve got some interesting tattoos,” he said, eyeing my chest and arms. “I ain’t used to see a girl with so many.”
“You do happen to have a lot of tattoos,” Mateo mused, pretending to study me for the first time. “I am sure they all tell a story about you.”
“Do you have any?” I said, turning the question around on him.
He gave me a sheepish, adorable smile and shook his head. “I am not so good with needles.”
Claudia snorted. “Centre back for Atletico and you are afraid of needles?”
“What’s Atletico?” Wayne asked.
Mateo narrowed his eyes playfully at Claudia. “I did not say I was afraid, I said I am not good. We don’t…get along.” He looked to Wayne. “Atletico is a football—er, soccer, yes? A soccer team in Madrid.”
“He used to play for them,” Claudia said. “He was very good.”
“Was?” Wayne repeated. “What do you do now?”
“Me and my partner own a few restaurants.”
Wayne grinned. “No shit, Sherlock!” he said, pounding his fist on the table and making the wine splash around in the glasses. “I own bars in San Antonio and Austin. Texas.”
Mateo’s eyes lit up. “That is very intriguing. If we get a session together, I’m afraid I am going to—how do you say, pick your brain? Yes, pick your brain about that. I would like to expand the business overseas. I am very curious about the US market.”
“I look forward to it. How long have you been in the restaurant business?”
“Six years,” he said automatically, as if were counting the days.
“I remember when you left the team,” Claudia said between bites of her food. “And no one could understand why you were opening a restaurant. But, it was very good food. Still is. Better than this.” She waved her fork in small circles.
As she was saying this, I watched Mateo closely. His body stiffened just enough for me to know that the subject was a delicate one. Once again I wondered what had happened to him but I didn’t want to ask.
Wayne, on the other hand, wasn’t so good at reading people. “Why did you leave the team?”
Mateo sucked on his lower lip for a moment before he spoke, his voice measured. “I became injured. Tore my ACL. My knee. I’m fine now, but it was time for me to leave the game and do something else.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Eight years.” Another automatic answer. “I was thirty when it happened.”
Thirty-eight? Did I just count that right? Mateo was thirty-eight?
“You do not look thirty-eight,” I couldn’t help but say.
He gave me a smile that looked borderline grateful and focused his bewitching eyes on me. “What do I look like to you, Vera?”
A gorgeous, sensual, Spanish god. That’s what he looked like to me.
I crammed some rice in my mouth—so ladylike—and hoped I wasn’t blushing. When I swallowed, he was still waiting for an answer, his eyes never having left my face.
I dabbed the corners of my mouth with the napkin, my leftover lipstick staining it coral, and said, “You just look very young. That’s all. Like, thirty-two, maybe.”
“And how old are you?”
“Twenty-three,” I said slowly and in that moment I was suddenly aware that I was probably the youngest person in the program. Even Lauren seemed a year or two older than me, maybe because her bitterness and glitter glasses aged her.
“You got all those tattoos in twenty-three years?” Wayne exclaimed, as if it just blew his damn mind. “That is dedication.”
“That is dedication,” Mateo repeated in agreement, his eyes now raking over my arms and chest before they slowly made their way up to my face. He gazed at me intently like I was one of life’s greatest mysteries, as if I were utterly mesmerizing. I’d never seen anyone look at me that way and it glued me to my seat.
When I finally remembered to breathe, I poured myself another glass of wine and gulped it down. Luckily, Claudia had spoken up, telling us about a time she got a tattoo on her ass of her ex-boyfriend’s name and how she was trying to figure out how to into something funny, like Johnny Depp did with turning Winona Forever into Wino Forever.
While my brain got happily stuck on a tangent about Winona and Johnny and how weird it was that they dated and if it ever got awkward when they ran into each other, I finished my meal and another glass of wine. By the time we were all done, all the bottles at our table were empty and I was more than ready for a nap.
Seeing me yawn, Mateo pounced into action. “Come on, I’ll show you how to have a siesta. Sorry, little sleep. A nap.”
I looked at Claudia for her response but she just smiled coyly and shrugged before she got up with Wayne and said goodbye to us, leaving Mateo and I alone.
“Oh, don’t look so worried,” he said. He got out of his chair and held his hand out for me.
I eyed it with trepidation and gingerly placed my hand in his.
His fingers closed over mine, sealing us together with heat and heartbeat. He brought me up to my feet, flashed me a self-assuring smile, then gently let go of my hand. He pointed out the door. “Follow me.”
We walked out and as I passed by the reception I noted that one of the computers was free, though with the other four occupied by Anglos, it didn’t seem like it would stay free for long. This was the rare moment of the day where we could have free time and I really wanted to talk to Josh and let him know I was alright. And let’s be honest, I wanted to update my Facebook to say “Having a blast in Spain, bitchez! #notsohumblebrag”. But ex-soccer star turned restauranteur turned someone I wanted to keep being around was walking out the door and into the bright Spanish sun and my body was begging me to follow him and his fancy suit.
I’d made the right choice. The minute I stepped out onto the patio and was hit with the strength of the sun, my whole body tingled and relaxed. I fished a pair of sunglasses out of my purse and put them on while Mateo reached over two wicker chairs and plucked the cushions from them. Curiously, I followed him as he walked out onto the shorn lawn with the cushions in tow and threw them down near the shade of a small oak tree.
“I’m napping here?” I asked him, folding my arms.
He gestured to the cushions with an exaggerated motion. “We are napping here.”
“On the ground?”
The corner of his mouth ticked up while he started to shed off his blazer. “Oh, Vera. You’ve taught me so many interesting words, the least I can do is teach you how to have a proper nap. All of Spain is counting on me.”
I was barely listening. My mind was caught up in the sight of him taking off the jacket, the sky blue dress shirt underneath stretched across the fluidity of his muscles. How the hell was this guy thirty-eight? Granted, I knew that men aged slower than women did and that half the celebrity men I thought were sexy were in their late thirties and early forties. Hell, Johnny Depp was in his fifties! But Mateo’s age caught me by surprise.
The funny was, I thought it would make me relate to him differently. I thought it would make things awkward—at least in my mind—or make me feel like I was hanging out with my beloved Uncle George or someone like that. But it didn’t, not at all.
He took off the blazer and turned it around so that the back of the jacket was to the grass. Then he placed it on the ground, just below one of the cushions. He looked to me expectantly, brows raised. “There. For you.”
I scoffed in surprise. “You can’t do that, you’ll get grass stains on it.”