The Consejo and the queen were only hanging Sofia with the rope she’d given them.
“I admire the intentions that brought you to our little, insignificant corner of Spain,” Juan Carlos said, a derisive smile on his face. “But take my advice, señor. Cut your losses while you can. She knows little about quality winemaking. About love, even less. While she might have once called you her fuego, I assure you she’s allowed herself to be heated up by many others since.”
Sofia stiffened. Fuego, the Spanish word for fire that she’d called Aish, how did Juan Carlos—
The song.
Aish had used her love name for him in his song.
She made herself as impenetrable as the limestone walls that protected her wines.
“What the fuck?” Aish muttered. “Look...”
Henry moved his bulk so it blocked Aish from the view of the cameras, nodding sternly when it was safe to go on.
“How Sofia spends her free time is not your fucking business. No one’s going after me, and my stories are ten times wilder than hers. And about her winemaking? Sofia’s ideas about aging wine in something other than French oak are great. Tempranillo is better in American oak. And you guys won’t even try stainless steel barrels? At Laguna Ridge vineyards, we’ve been aging in stainless with oak staves for years. It gives us a lot more control...”
“Aish...” Sofia hissed, her eyes on the cobblestones.
“What?”
“Cállate. Shut. Up.”
She didn’t want him defending her. She didn’t want to know that he’d read about her winemaking techniques. She didn’t want to know why he’d said “we” when he talked about his uncle’s winery, the winery where they’d met. The Aish she knew had always viewed working at Laguna Ridge Winery as a good time with lots of pretty girls, clueless to how much his childless uncle enjoyed having him there.
“Sofia, how can you let him...”
“Stop,” she demanded.
“I want to help you.”
“Then be quiet.”
“But...”
She turned, ready to march into her winery and barricade the doors, when she saw them. The interns and her grower-partners. They stood near the winery entrance, far enough away to have missed the growing tension. Carmen Louisa, who could track Sofia’s emotions with one glance, gave a worried frown. But the rest of them, they grinned. Cheered. Waved. The superstar interns smiled with excitement, finding themselves in the middle of a media circus and eager to see Aish and Sofia jump through hoops for the next thirty days.
The growers smiled with hope.
It had been an act of bravado and stupidity when—instead of going to lenders—she’d convinced fifteen of the Monte’s top growers, including Carmen Louisa, to form a cooperative with her to create the winery and luxury hotel. Ready to enjoy the spoils after years of watching their best fruit go into foreign bottles they couldn’t afford, the growers committed money, their grapes, and their hopes for their children’s future to Sofia. She’d resisted when they’d nominated the name Bodega Sofia for the winery, and had swallowed her tears when the vote had been unanimous except for one.
Now, their winery was ground zero for the biggest pop culture spectacle in years. And every available room in the Monte was full.
This was what the world wanted. Aish, the disgraced rock star, standing next to Sofia, the party-girl princess. This was what Namrita and Aish’s manager, that muscular man who’d snuck out of the black car before it rolled away, had agreed to. Sofia and Aish would play out some farce of a romance for the next month—a pro-mance, Namrita called it—and maintain the public spotlight long enough to repair his crumbling reputation and gain positive exposure for the winery. Right now, Sofia had too much on the line to order Henry to toss Aish out of her kingdom.
And Aish was just playing his role to the max. He’d researched her parents’ peccadilloes and Sofia’s winemaking efforts, then playacted her defender when the situation called for it. She’d seen him perform, knew how good he was at working a crowd.
Sofia could pretend, too. This is how she became the princess her kingdom needed her to be. This is how to show them that their faith in her hadn’t been misplaced.
Chin high and shoulders relaxed, Sofia took Aish’s arm once again and walked toward a winery side door, Henry on her heels. Namrita and a cadre of security guards herded the press toward another door, where they would wait in a conference room for Sofia and Aish to join them and say a few words. A few well-scripted words. Then Sofia would ignore Aish for the rest of the night at the private launch party for interns, growers and friends.
The instant Sofia was inside the winery’s processing facility—a high-ceilinged, concrete-floored room full of large tanks and equipment and the home of Sofia’s glassed-in office—she dropped Aish’s arm. She embraced the dim and the cool as she moved away from him and into the protective shelter of Henry’s hulking shadow.
“How you holdin’ up?” he asked. Henry was way more Texan than her brother. Blond and burly, he looked like the kind of American she might have mistrusted before he opened his mouth. Within minutes of their first conversation, she discovered that below his thick neck was a big squishy heart. He protected Roxanne, and now Roxanne’s family, with his life. He was one of the dearest friends Sofia had ever had.
“Estoy bien,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “I’m fine.”
“Sofia?” Aish’s voice echoed through the empty warehouse.
She ignored him.
“No you’re not,” Henry said, squeezing her shoulder, forcing her to look up into his quarterback-pretty face. “But you did good out there. You pulled it off.”
Sofia let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She covered Henry’s big hand with her own. “Gracias,” she murmured. “I...”
“Sofia,” Aish called again, louder this time. A spark of anger tried to catch in her chest. She breathed in the cool.
Henry’s slate blue eyes looked into hers. “You know,” he whispered, “at some point you’re gonna have to for real talk to him.”
“Talk to who?” she said without smiling. “Now, has all the security been set up for the—”
“Sofia!” Aish’s voice rang off the steel fermenting tanks and the concrete floors, shot off the rafters and the stained windows. That demand vibrated through her winery. Polluted it. “Would you, just...would you look at me?” he said.
She turned and looked, refusing to let him make her a coward in her own castle. He stepped out of the shadows, tall and lean in his dark clothes. His manager had snuck in and muttered urgently behind him. She raised her chin and didn’t say a word.
He took off his sunglasses. His manager went silent.
For the first time in ten years, she met those black eyes.
“I’m sorry.” Those dark, sparkling eyes, moving over her face, still had power.
“You should be.”
Too sharp, too drawn, his face was still painfully beautiful. He revealed his dimple in a sad side smile. “You don’t even know what I’m apologizing for.”
She was stone. She gave him nothing.
His sleek black eyebrows quirked. “Why’d you let the guy talk to you like that?”
“That’s not your concern.”
He huffed a frustrated breath. “Well... I’m sorry about the song. I’m sorry about this whole—”
“We’re not discussing that.”
“Goddammit, Sofia!” Aish burst out.
Henry came to her side. “Watch yourself.”
“How the fuck is this supposed to work?” Aish asked, throwing up his big hands, his irritating tattoos flashing like contrails. “You won’t look at me, you won’t talk to me, I can’t ask a single fucking question.”
“You can ask questions,” she said coolly. “They will be in your daily scripts.”
“Scripts? Sofia! Between you and me?”
Her stomach dropped as he looked at her with everything they once were. They once had. Ten years ago, she’d been overwhelmed and honored by the naked way he’d looked at her, soul-deep stares, unashamed and obvious. His open adoration had worked powerfully on a young girl desperate to be loved.
“I know I’ve fucked up, over and over again,” he said, and his voice, Dios mio, she’d forgotten how his low voice with just a touch of roughness had lured her. “Just give me five minutes to apologize without...” He motioned to Henry.
Five minutes? After what he’d done to her, he thought he only needed five minutes and an empty room to bring her to heel?
How could she have ever loved this selfish, conceited, narcissistic man-child? How could she have let him back into her life?
Sofia, I fucked up, he would moan from his bed when he was too hungover to cover his interning shift and needed her to cover it for him.
I fucked up, he’d begged when he’d forgotten about their one-month anniversary date at Fisherman’s Wharf and played a gig in Santa Cruz. She’d wandered the piers for hours, certain she’d gotten the meeting spot wrong, holding twenty-four glittering “I Love You” balloons.
I fucked up, he’d pleaded when he’d wandered off with a female lead singer at a music festival. He’d cried against Sofia as he reeked of patchouli and swore they only talked managers.
For ten years, despite how she’d deny it, she’d been haunted by the ghost of Aish Salinger. Now he was here, in the flesh, and she could effortlessly become spellbound once again by him. It was almost relieving to verify, once again, how craven and untrustworthy her needs were.
“Verdad, you fucked up,” she said. “Pobrecito.” She used to make this “poor thing” come with her voice. She walked toward him, her heels echoing off her concrete floor.
“You fucked up thinking your help was needed here.”
She moved through pools of soft warehouse lighting. “You fucked up believing your apologies were wanted.”
She inhaled the toasty char of barrels stamped with her name. “You fucked up imagining my kingdom was a place that would give you welcome or rest or redemption.”
She stood directly in front of him. It had been a while since she’d worn four-inch heels, but never had she been gladder for her ease in them. “You won’t talk to me or touch me or ask me a single question unless it’s written in the script. Those are my rules and you will follow them.” She let her eyes stroke over his arrested face, his tempting lips and nose, and that black hair she used to grip in her fingers and pull. “Right now everyone feels pity for you, the broken rock star who’s come to find his spark in the arms of a party-girl princess.”
She fisted his black T-shirt and pulled him down to her. Underneath the pomade and the aftershave and the artifice, she could still smell him, skin smelling of sun and salt. She pressed against his heat, foreign yet so familiar, so she could whisper in his ear. “They’ve stopped wondering if you’re a thief. I can remind them. I have proof that Young Son stole songs.” He jerked but she held him close in a tight grip. “You’ll stick to my rules or I’ll ruin your life. Just like you’re trying to ruin mine.”
She bit his jaw, a mockery of the kiss he’d given her outside, before she pushed him away and turned on a heel.
“Aish will need a minute,” she said as she returned to Henry and wound her arm through his. “Let’s join our guests.”
For a decade she’d hated her memories of Aish Salinger. Today she discovered that the essence of him still called to her as strongly as it did that fateful night ten years ago.
But for the first time, she was grateful for the brokenhearted reminisces of a spurned little girl. And she was exultant about the box full of treasures she could never bring herself to throw away.
Ten Years Earlier
Nineteen-year-old Sofia stood in the humid semidarkness inside a stainless-steel tank, reaching overhead with a long-handled brush to scrub off the shiny glasslike crystals of wine tartrates. The crystals glistened in the evening sunlight coming through the hatch at the top of the tank. She’d rinsed the tank down with warm water before she started, and the residual heat made her oversized sleeveless T-shirt and ragged jean shorts stick to her skin. Her arms ached—she’d arrived at Justin Masamune’s Laguna Ridge Winery a week ago and had been plunged into body-pummeling, twelve-hour days. The other student-workers, most of them in college or older with a few harvests under their belts, told her she’d be numb by mid-September. She focused on the Galician music blaring through her headphones and made long sweeps to the rhythm of acoustic guitar, hand drums, and bagpipes. As she moved, her long, heavy braid beat at her back.
The snapshot image of how Queen Valentina would react if she could see her now added a feral grin to the happiness she was already feeling.
When she’d finally deigned to answer her mother’s call several days ago, the woman had screamed that Sofia would rather be a “grubby laborer” working at a winery in America than taking the tour of the continent that she had arranged for her. As if the grubby labor of winegrowing wasn’t the source of the woman’s wealth. As if touring the continent still was a cherry-popping experience for a girl born in the era of the Internet and transatlantic flight.
Sofia had actually considered forgoing the job to go on a rare trip with her mother. She’d thought—for a brief, foolish second—that perhaps her mother was interested in getting to know her now that she was an adult. Then she discovered that her mother had also invited a Portuguese infanta and her wealthy and powerful uncle.
Queen Valentina just wanted to use Sofia for convenient cover as she lured another man between her legs.
When Sofia realized the whole trip had been a ruse, that the woman had never wanted to spend time with her, she’d grabbed the first train to Madrid, gotten her first tattoo, showed it off to the first paparazzo, and then taken the first plane she could to the United States.
The only thing she regretted, she thought as the urgent beat of a hand drum filled her ears and the last of the tartrates fell to her brush, was that she hadn’t been there to see her mother’s reaction when the blood-red “The Queen is Dead” inscription on her forearm appeared all over European tabloids.
A finger tapped Sofia’s shoulder.
She whirled around, holding the long-handled brush like weapon, and would have clobbered the tall boy if he hadn’t blocked it with a thick forearm. He grabbed the broom handle, pulled it down, then immediately let go, mouthing urgent words as he raised his hands—big, big hands—palm up in front of him. His thick, dark hair fell into his face and framed his cheekbones, hard jaw, intense eyes, and full bottom lip. He was tall, really tall, with broad, muscular shoulders in a black T-shirt.
The frenetic, Celtic-like rhythm of her favorite Galician band rose to a crescendo.
She yanked her headphones out of her ears and pulled the broom handle closer to her.
“Whoa, whoa, sorry,” he said, shoving his hair out of his face while he kept the other palm up to her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Her heart pounded. But after a lifetime of being on the defense, she knew it wasn’t because of fear.
“Who are you?” she scowled. “What are you doing in here?”
The 3,500-gallon tank was only six feet across; he backed up, but could only move a couple feet away. She still had to look up at him, still felt covered in his shadow.
“My uncle, Justin, he wanted me to check on you,” he said, voice low and a little scratchy.
Ah, so this was the owner’s nephew. Aish. The student-workers who came back harvest after harvest had repeated his name breathlessly over the last week while they waited for his arrival. He apparently sprinkled excitement, hijinks, and orgasms wherever he went.
“Justin said you’d volunteered to clean some tanks, but when you didn�
��t show up for dinner he got worried.” His eyes narrowed at her, eyelashes black and thick. “You know you shouldn’t be inside here too long.”
Carbon dioxide gases could build up inside tanks and asphyxiate the people cleaning them. Sofia had been a sidekick to winegrowers and winemakers her whole life and knew the hazards. At his assessment that she was some amateur, she relaxed the handle and settled it against the bottom of the tank.
“I might not be the great Aish Salinger, but I know how to stay safe in the tanks.” She cocked a hip as Aish lowered his hands. “I tested the atmosphere levels before I got in, I’ve got airflow—” She jerked her head up to the open top hatch. “And I’m keeping track of the time I’ve stayed in here.” She watched him bite into his plump bottom lip, watched a dimple try to appear in his firm cheek. “Why didn’t you just knock on the tank and stick your head in? You didn’t have to frighten the mierda out of me.”
“I tried,” he said, finally letting that dimple dig in. He pushed a hank of hair behind his ear. His smile was wide and easy as he looked down at her. “You couldn’t hear me. What’re you listening to?”
Tinny sound still came out of the headphones looped around her neck. “Milladoiro,” she said. He was so tall. There was something about looking up at him, about being the recipient of that smile and the focus of those dark eyes that made her a little breathless. Maybe the oxygen was getting thinner than she realized. “They’re a Galician folk band.”
“Oh.” His eyes watched her mouth. Had he moved closer? “Can I listen?”
She nodded, and he did move closer as she leaned the broom handle against the side of the tank and handed him her earbud. She felt a flare as their fingertips brushed. He stooped down to put it in his ear. With a lack of self-consciousness she’d never known in boys her age, his eyes stayed on hers as the headphone cord leashed them together. His skin, deeply tanned, glowed with the moist heat inside the tank. She wanted to dig her hands into that thick, black hair and anchor him there. She wanted to lick the long, straight line of his nose.
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 4
