I am not prepared for this.

When my family sent me to Madrid to pick up the American girl this morning, I’d anticipated meeting a scruffy student, like those who backpack through Europe wearing hiking boots and old T-shirts. Travelers more interested in experiences than style.

Not this woman.

A bombshell. Kim is a bombshell. I stifle a whistle at her delicious hourglass shape, which makes my blood rush through my veins.

I try to keep it under control. “Ready to get going?” I ask.

She’s smoothing down her clothes and her hair. “Yes! I can’t believe I’m here! Look! I’ve got the first mark on my passport!” Her short, polished fingernail points to a solitary stamp on the first page. Her hand shakes, perhaps from travel. “This is my first foreign country. Actually, it’s even my first airplane flight. I’m so glad to meet you!” Tucking her hands behind her elbows, she looks down, then rubs her forearms and twists her wrists.

Jesús, María, y José. As she’s talking, in a sweet, musical voice, all I think is, she’s going to live with me. If she gets this much joy from a plane ride, what would she be like with real pleasure? What would it be like to see her body with all the curves—those soft breasts and round hips—and to make her come alive with my tongue.

No. Stop.

With her dirty blond hair, wavy and parted on the side, she reminds me of my favorite beauty queen, Marilyn Monroe. Kim’s hair is darker and her eyes are hazel instead of the actress’s famous clear blue, but they’re just as attractive and full of light.

Kim wears neat dark Levi’s and a short-sleeve, navy blue polka dot shirt. Pearl stud earrings adorn her earlobes, a silver heart necklace encircles her neck, and a tiny diamond ring flashes on her finger.

It’s on her left hand. Maybe an heirloom from her grandmother or something?

“Do you need anything before we go?” I ask as we walk away from the meeting area. “¿Un café? Do you need to change money?”

Her speech is rushed. “I changed money before I left. I’ll have to get a SIM card while I’m here, but I don’t want to do that right now. I just want to get going.” She spins around, wide-eyed. Her pretty face, even after traveling for so long, is scrubbed fresh and clean. Her skin’s so pale it’s luminous except when she gets a pink tinge on her cheeks as she looks up at me. And she has this upturned nose that makes me think she is kind of like a conejo, a rabbit—and a sensual mouth that makes me think other things.

Deep, dark other things. Things that I should keep away from her.

“Let’s hit the street,” I say.

Her expression goes slack, gazing at me, then she recovers and nods several times, smiling. “Yes! Hit the road!”

Families reunite around us. Businesspeople in suits head for their hotel shuttles. Little kids run around adding to the noise. Suitcases roll on concrete, engines idle, people speak into cell phones, making arrangements to meet their loved ones. It smells like exhaust and jet fuel.

The commotion around the airport is not important to me because she takes all of my attention. She is a young fawn with new legs, unsteady and enchanting, yet determined. Like she knows she wants something, even if she doesn’t quite know what it is, or how to get it. But she’s moving forward, just the same.

I’m trying to walk with her bags and watch her at the same time without tripping over my feet.

Current status: I’m barely managing that feat.

As I proceed with Kim Brown through the clear, automatic doors of Madrid-Barajas airport, I watch her shiny spirit, which seems to expect something wonderful to happen at every turn.

“You-ah, did you have a good flight?” I ask, my insides reacting to the way the ends of her mouth point up.

“Yes, thank you. I thought I might get airsick, but I didn’t. They gave us these funny slippers. And a blanket. It was a long time in a plane to get here, but I liked it. I was too excited to sleep.”

“This way to my car.”

I’m obsessed with her every move, how her eyes sweep around and drink in the people around us, how her hands are animated, how she’s trying to form words in an unfamiliar tongue.

“So, um, ¿Cómo estás?” she asks, pronouncing every letter as she bounces next to me on the balls of her feet. Coh-moh-ess-tahss. Many of my friends say only about half the alphabet when they’re talking, sliding the letters together with a drawl. Co-mo-tah.

I stare at her and try not to laugh as we keep walking. She’s just too cute. “I’m fine, Kim.” She peers up at me, unsure of whether to be mad that I’m not answering her in Spanish, or grateful that she understood me and I understood her.

I want to understand everything about her.

Her nose has little, light freckles on it, just a dusting.

A taxi honks at us as we step out in front of it, too absorbed in each other to notice. I shake my fist at the driver, which is difficult while still holding her bag, and swear under my breath.

She gives me a broad smile, then starts paying attention to everything but me. I can feel her noticing me, though, through a cushion of charged air between us. Not wanting to stare at her, I stride faster.

The energy between us crackles. She has to feel it, no?

My feet hit the asphalt of the parking lot. We get to my car, and I set the bags down and help her into my Renault. “I’m sorry, the seatbelt has a trick to it.” I lean over her to fix it, and her sweet breath wafts on my cheek. As I mess with the belt, I inhale her vanilla scent. “Are you ready?”

“I’m very ready for something new.”

I close her door, put her bags in the back, and get in, then turn the key in the ignition and back up. With my foot on the gas, I tear out of the parking lot only to be stopped by a truck blocking the way.

“Ay, puta madre,” I swear loudly at the imbecile in front of me. I throw up my hands and step on the brakes, honking the horn with a jaunty honk-honk-honk.

She stiffens in her seat, then juts her head forward, curious. “Puta madre?”

I laugh out loud. The word motherfucker coming out of her mouth doesn’t belong there. Like having Audrey Hepburn swear. She doesn’t say bad words, and somehow I want her to say all of them.

While I’m making her say them as she can’t get enough.

I pause. What on earth has gotten into me? No woman has ever affected me this way.

None. I need to knock it off.

I straighten my features and stop laughing. “Puta madre is a taco.” The truck moves and allows me to move ahead. I proceed out of the airport parking lot and get to the autopista headed south.

Her eyebrows knit together. “A taco? I don’t understand. You eat it?”

And I bark a laugh again as I realize the miscommunication. Castilian Spanish can be different than that Spanish used in the Americas.

She pokes her tongue against the side of her cheek, confused, and I immediately regret laughing at her.

Eyes on the road, Tavo. “In Spain, a taco is a bad word. It literally means ‘bad word.’ A profanity. You don’t eat it like in Mexico. I should teach you better Spanish.”

Dammit, I glance at her again. Her grin stretches across her face, and she gives me a conspiratorial eyebrow raise. “I don’t mind if you teach me the bad Spanish, too. I want to learn everything. Everything, Gustavo.”

My heart stutters. Did she say? What does this mean? Am I not understanding her?

Oh, the everything I could teach her.

“Tavo,” I correct her.

“Tavo.” On her lips, my name sounds like a Chupa Chups lollipop, rounded and sweet.

“How long have you studied Spanish?” Now that she’s in the passenger seat, I keep gazing at her. It’s difficult to watch the road.

“Tengo cuatro años de clases de español,” she tells me seriously, proud of her four years of Spanish. Her accent, I can’t place, except that it is American.

“Hombre. Es nada. Llevo veinte-dos años de español.” I tell her that I have twenty-two years of Spanish, and she gets my joke with a big smile.

She’s nothing like her Instagram account. She should have been taking pictures of her face. Of things she really likes. I don’t understand why it’s so boring, since within a minute of meeting her, it’s obvious that she has so much more going on than she shows on her social media.

Although I suppose I don’t use my account for much, either.

“I wish my English were better,” I continue. I’ve had English classes every year since elementary school along with plenty of practice, but it’s still a second language.

“It sounds good to me.”

“Thank you. I practice with a friend.”

My eyes focus back on the road. We roll down the windows of my car and watch the countryside go by.

“It’s so gorgeous,” she says under her breath. Then she turns to me. “Are we in the same classes?”

“Yes, we will be. Translation classes include all levels of proficiency.”

She nods, seemingly pleased. “When do you graduate?”

“The end of this year. You?”

“Same. Do you know what you want to do?”

How do I answer that? “I don’t have a job lined up after. I’m to work on the family farm.”

“I don’t know what I want to do either. There’s too many things.” A faraway haze comes over her face. She adjusts her seat back so it reclines slightly and settles in. The way she moves is so pretty. Her fingers lift and rest gently on the door, her elbow outside, then begin gliding with the wind.

“We have a few hours before we get to Granada. Do you have a request for music?”

“I want to hear a Spanish singer,” she says. “Please. Nothing I’ve heard before.”

Hitting a radio button, I recognize the music filling the space immediately, but she cocks her ear to the side. “Who is this?”

“Alejandro Sanz.” Without hesitation, I sing along with him. Everyone sings along with Alejandro. “You might know him from a Shakira song.”

She licks her lips. “You sing well.”

I wave off the compliment. “In Spain, we sing.” But it means more to me to sing. It means a connection with mi padre and my history.

“Do you dance, too?”

I nod gravely. “Por supuesto.” I’ll have to dance with her. She blinks and then yawns. I begin to tell her about the different kinds of dance—flamenco, paso doble, bolero, zambra, fandango, zarzuela.

The kilometers pass by.

Then I take my eyes off the road and check the passenger seat. La guiri is fast asleep, her head against the seat cushion. Poor guapita, so exhausted from travel. I think of how I’d sketch her face.

She must trust me to fall asleep so fast. To be comfortable in my company.

I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself into, but I know I really like it.

When we arrive at my family home, I put the car in park by the main house and turn off the ignition. The lovely sleeping girl in my passenger seat doesn’t wake up. She sighs, a smile playing on her lips. Her eyelids flicker.

I get out of the car. Soon enough, my family will start swarming. I come around to her side and open the door, then reach over to undo her seatbelt. She stirs, her blinking eyes just centimeters away. Her mouth so close. I look down. The lace of her bra peeks out from her blouse. She moans a little, with cute drool trailing down her lush lips.

I could just kiss her.

“We’re here?” she asks, yawning sleepily, showing straight white teeth and a delectable tongue.

How long I can resist this temptation?