I took another gulp of wine and wiped my lips with the back of my hand. My red lipstick was smeared all over it but I was too comfortable to care. “So that is why my sister and I don’t get along. It doesn’t matter that I’m doing a science degree, or that I’m naturally smart. What matters is that I supposedly ruined my brother and that I’m not the perfect daughter that Mercy is. Especially now. Mercy is marrying a rich jerk and her upcoming wedding is the be all to end all event. I’m not even part of the bridal party! I mean, Jesus, how is that for family. I guess I would embarrass her, ugly up her whole event.”

“Ugly?” Mateo said in fervent disbelief. “No. You are terribly beautiful, Vera. So beautiful that it hurts. You would outshine her like the star you are.”

Whoa.

I felt like lava had been poured down my spine.

I slowly lifted my eyes to meet his and was taken aback by what I saw in them. The last four days I’d felt this thing building between us, always so subtle, so hard to place my finger on it. Even calling me beautiful was just a compliment, albeit a wonderful one. At least, it would have been. Now there was something in his eyes that I’d only seen hints of before. Now, his gaze, his brows, those strong, wide cheekbones, they smoldered with what could only be described as lust.

Lusty Mateo. This was a new side of him.

The most dangerous side of all.

Because I was certain I’d been nothing but Lusty Vera from the moment I saw him. Never acting, always thinking, always feeling. I did not need the temptation from him to make what we had—which was just friendship—into something more.

And yet the carnal way he was looking at me, it seemed inevitable.

Even after everything I had just told him.

I had to look away. I gave him a tight smile and pushed my glass of wine away. “I think we need to get going for the skits we have to do.” Two days ago we’d been broken up into teams of five and had to create our own plays based on things that are “lost in translation.” Tonight were the performances.

I got up before he could say something and started to walk.

He was fast though, his body moving out of his seat with grace. He grabbed my hand, lightly and pulled me to a stop.

“Hey, Vera,” he said in a throaty, low voice that made my body tremble. “Wait.”

I turned to look at him, my expression blank. “Hmm?”

He squeezed my hand softly. “Did…did I say something wrong?” He truly looked puzzled and I felt a pang of warmth deep in my chest. No, it wasn’t anything he said. It was how he looked at me, how he should never look at me and how much I wanted him to keep doing it. But how the hell was I supposed to say that to him? That wouldn’t fly in any language. Even I had trouble translating it to myself.

“No,” I said, keeping my tone airy and hoping my cheeks weren’t betraying me with my scandalous thoughts. “I just remembered that we’re cutting it a bit close. To the time,” I quickly added.

He was still holding my hand. As if he read my thoughts, he dropped it and casually eased his hands into his pant pockets. He was still wearing a suit, though, lo and behold, today he had worn a plain white tee under his stone-colored blazer. He’d also let his stubble flourish into a light beard. It was incredibly sexy.

“Of course,” he conceded. “I had nearly forgotten about it.”

Mateo wasn’t in my group, which was a shame because it meant I couldn’t rehearse with him but at the same it meant I’d get to see him acting. He’d loosened up a bit over the last few days—if his t-shirt was any indication—so I was curious to see him in a play.

Going to find our respective groups we parted ways like we usually did. A quick smile and a wave. Very civil and professional and oddly enough, completely the opposite when compared to how I said goodbye to everyone else. With Eduardo, Antonio, even Froggy Carlos—there was a lot of hugging and the double kisses on each cheek, regardless of if they were married or single. It was just the way things were, the way they greeted me and, in turn, the way I greeted them. I did this to the girls too.

But with Mateo, there was this strained politeness between us. I felt closer to him than anyone else here, but despite from the occasional times he’d grab my hand, there was always an acute physical distance between us. I knew that was probably a good thing. If I did the beso beso cheek kiss with him I’d probably head straight for his mouth.

While I walked over to Antonio’s cottage where my group was meeting, my mind kept going back to that thought. His mouth. I wondered what it would be like to kiss him, even though I knew it would be heaven. He had that perpetual smirk that only good kissers had, like he knew how to use his mouth in every way, everywhere. His sensual lips didn’t hurt either. His stubble would scratch you up perfectly, a bit of pain with the pleasure.

Plus he was hot, thirty-eight and an ex-athlete. That amounted to the type of experience that most men didn’t get.

Before I got started on what he’d think about the feeling of the tongue ring he’d admired so much, I cut myself off. This crush was getting out of control and I needed to just…

Fuck. I don’t know what I needed. I needed to go home and bring out my vibrator, that’s what I needed.

When I walked into Antonio’s cottage that he shared with Ed, an elementary school teacher from New York, I knew my crush on Mateo wasn’t the only thing out of control. The group—Antonio, Polly, Beatriz and Ricardo—were all listening to Faithless and dancing around the room like they were at a rave, bottles of beer spilling from their hands.

“What the hell?” I said loudly, closing the door behind me. They raised their beers at me but kept dancing. “Aren’t we supposed to be practicing for the play?”

“Oh don’t be such a wet blanket, Vera,” Polly said as her blonde pigtails and fake boobs bounced around her. “We know what we’re doing.”

Wet blanket? Since when was I ever considered the wet blanket?

Beatriz smiled at me, coyly. “We didn’t think you would show up,” she said, her English practically fluent now. “Since you were with Mateo.”

Hold up. Her comment practically floored me. I had half a mind to storm over to the iPod dock and pause the music and ask her just what the hell she meant by that.

I suppose it was all too obvious on my face.

Antonio stopped to take a sip of his beer, his chest heaving from the activity, his mustache covered in droplets of sweat. He grinned at me. “It is all good.”

I frowned. “Nothing is good. What are you guys talking about?”

“Hey, we’re all here to have fun,” Ricardo said in such an easy, cheesy way that I had to wonder who the hell he was fucking while he was here.

That’s not why your company spent money to send you here, I thought. It’s not why we’re all talking all day long until our throats are raw.

Perhaps I was being a wet blanket. Usually Vera Miles was a warm, comfortable blanket—the purveyor of wet dreams. Now I was annoyed and irritated and slightly embarrassed.

“I have no idea what you guys are talking about,” I said staunchly.

Polly and Beatriz exchanged a look.

“It is fine, Vera,” Antonio tried to reassure me with his big grin. “No one cares. We’re all friends.” He went over to the iPod dock and turned it off. The silence sounded odd. “We should do some practice now, yes?”

No. I didn’t want to practice anymore. I wanted to talk about what they were all being so damn coy about.

“You know Mateo is married,” I told them, making sure to look them all in the eye. “We are just friends. That is possible between a man and a woman.”

“Okay,” Beatriz shrugged. “I couldn’t blame you though. He is a very charming man….very…exciting.” She said the last word like it was made of candy. Like she knew him on a level I had only suspected.

I had no choice but to ignore it. If I defended our relationship more, it would seem like I had something to hide. And I had nothing to hide except my feelings for him. They weren’t so important. They were something that I could keep locked deep inside and no one would ever have to see them—not him, not me, not anyone.

It was just a crush.

We managed to spend ten minutes going over our play once. I was just going through the motions, not even finding the humor in it. It was some stupid skit that Polly and Ricardo basically took over and wrote. It was slightly funny but overall just dumb, about an American mugger (played by me, of course) and the Spanish family traveling in America. I asked them to hand over their money, they heard something else, and that was that. In the end I got shot though, so at least I got to fake an epic death scene.

With beers in tow, my group headed off down toward the reception and up the rickety iron staircase to the large room where we had the party and every after dinner event since then. Everyone seemed to be a barrel of nerves, even the usually confident ones like Nerea and Eduardo.

We all sat down in the rows of fold-out chairs and waited for Jerry to call out our group’s names. First up was a group that Angel and Claudia were in, a spoof on Monty Python’s parrot sketch. Claudia did really well, even sporting a fake mustache that kept falling off, much to everyone’s delight. After that went two more groups and then my group was called.

By now I didn’t care how stupid we might look. Everyone was being supportive, even when things weren’t entertaining or funny. I went with my group to the front of the room. Mateo was in the front row, smiling at me. I gave him quick smile back, all too aware that my group was probably watching my interaction.