Page 55 of One Year Ago in Spain
Claire pasted a puzzled frown on her face. “I think my client hung up on me.”
“For breaking a coffee cup? Tough standards.”
Matías smiled, and Claire’s breath stuttered.
After waiting for him for hours, now she just stood there, stunned by his easy charm, which was both familiar and new all over again.
“What are you doing in Malasaña?” he asked.
She exhaled. Claire had a prepared answer for that. “I figured that if I’m working in Madrid, I should try to see more of it than just my hotel and my client’s office. All the recommendations online say this is a great neighborhood to check out, so…here I am. Working, but it’s a victory because I’m outside of a conference room.”
“Did you try the café’s almendrados?”
“No,” Claire said. “What are they?”
“Here, try one,” Matías said, making the motions of opening what might be a paper bag, but just like his cellphone the other day, she couldn’t see it. He held the invisible cookie out to Claire. “They’re made from almonds.”
“You really like sweet almond things, huh?”
“Actually, yeah. How’d you know that?”
Claire blanched. Sheshouldn’tknow that, at least as far asthisMatías was concerned. On their first real date in New York, he’d brought those little glass jars of bienmesabe canario, his old family recipe. But that hadn’t happened yet, not in his timeline.
“Just a guess,” Claire said with a squeak. “I love almond sweets, too, but I’m going to pass for now, thanks. I’m really full from breakfast.”
“Your loss, but more for me.” Matías grinned as his fingers worked to close the bag of cookies that Claire couldn’t see.
They had reached a critical juncture in the “chance” meeting. He could walk away. She could prevent it from happening by inviting herself to his studio. But that might give off the hunter-tracking-prey vibe again, as well as making her look pathetic. And Claire was sure that being pathetic wasn’t the reason Matías had originally fallen in love with her, so it certainly wasn’t going to work as the hook this time, either.
She decided to try reverse psychology.
“Well, it was great seeing you again, Matías.”
“Oh. Uh, yes. Great seeing you, too.” He hovered for a moment, then turned to walk away.
Patience,she thought.
SheknewMatías. The same part of his brain that loved finding new hobbies also liked being a contrarian. If someone said,You can never learn tennis well as an adult,Matías would buy a tennis racket and rent court time to prove them wrong. If accepted opinion said coffee and cheese don’t go well together, he would spend an entire weekend in the kitchen until he made a recipe where they did.
Not that Claire was just a hobby, but she understood his mind well enough to predict that if she gave him the brush-off, he ought to at least pause.
The question was, was she enough of a draw for him to come back?
He took one step. Two, three.
On his fourth, he turned 180 degrees.
“Claire?”
“Hmm?” She looked up from something that was supposedly important on her phone.
“Yesterday, at Museo Sorolla, the way you looked at the paintings and talked about them—How do you understand art so well? Did you grow up with it, or study it in university?”
“No,” Claire said. “I didn’t used to get art at all. But then a…friend taught me how to appreciate it. How to see beyond the surface. Now, one of my favorite things is discovering new painters I didn’t know before.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
