He stepped closer and waved his hand above her head one last time before he planned to retreat to the back.
She grabbed his hand like it was a gnat she was going to crush. “Stop it!” she snarled, pushing his hand against his chest. She shoved, forcing him to stumble back.
He heard a chorus of sharp inhales.
Her eyes were meteorites. “Stop playing the idiot,” she said. “You can do better than this. I deserve better than this!”
A sharp, feminine sound of affirmation shot from the group.
She stepped away and his hand fell, burning, to his side.
No one around them breathed. The gnats were gone.
Thank God for the roar of a vehicle coming down the gravel road. It gave people something to focus on as a white truck came over the rise.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit... He stared at the back of her head, at her slight body in grower’s clothes. He kept his face impassive, aware of the cameras.
Shit fuck.
Stop playing the idiot. Was that what he’d been doing? For the last ten years, he’d done whatever he wanted—wrote songs, fucked, partied, performed, dicked around at his uncle’s winery—and received nothing but praise and money. Then John’s death had pulled back the curtain of how much he’d been ignoring.
You can do better than this. When they were young, Sofia had always made him feel adored and admired. But she’d also pushed him. She expected more of him than others did.
She’d been the one person who thought he was capable of being more than just perfect.
I deserve better than this, she’d insisted.
Aish needed to take a good, hard look at how he was fucking this up—his one, best, last chance.
Devonte nudged him out of his existential crisis as the truck, its windows heavily tinted, parked. People craned their necks and the media—thank Christ—turned their cameras.
The truck doors cracked open and a man’s heavy work boot appeared on one side, a woman’s high-heeled boot on the other. There were murmurs and high little voices.
Then the world’s most admired couple—Príncipe Mateo and his wife, billionaire Roxanne Medina—emerged around the truck doors holding their never-seen toddler twins. The birth of Liliana and Gabriel Esperanza y Medina three years ago had involved a breathless, worldwide countdown that ended with a gasping whimper because of the lack of photos the royal couple shared with the public. The two munchkins now wore sunglasses and ball caps—their dad was famous for his unprincely ball caps—but they were still painfully cute with their round cheeks and matching overalls. They waved excitedly at their aunt as they wriggled in their parents’ arms.
“Buenos dias,” Mateo called to the slack-jawed crowd, sunlight shining in his blond-streaked hair. Aish now got the whole “Golden Prince” nickname. “I’m getting the impression Sofia forgot to tell you we were coming?”
All eyes turned to Sofia.
She gave a cool Spanish shrug. “I thought they could use a surprise,” she said. And then she hurried over and embraced them all.
The interns murmured with excitement as the cameras focused on the beautiful bunch.
In the interview yesterday, that Consejo dickhead had threatened Mateo right along with Sofia. The fact that the royal couple were here, revealing their kids to the interns at the same time as the world, proclaimed exactly what the Consejo could do with their threats. If this was Sofia’s idea, it was a brilliant one.
The beefy bodyguard—Sofia called him Henry—also stepped out of the truck. Aish didn’t like how he popped up at random moments, keeping an eye on him like Aish was going to go claw at Sofia’s door. Aish didn’t like how blond and milk-fed he looked, like he could chew through linebackers with his strong white teeth while lobbing touchdowns. And Aish really didn’t like the way he touched Sofia, like he did now, walking up to her and squeezing her against him and running his hand over her waist while Sofia leaned effortlessly against him and chatted with her family.
“Who’s this Henry guy?” he whispered to Devonte.
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean...shit. Sorry.” He took a breath and shook out his fists. “Could you find out what his story is?”
“Yeah. If she’s sleeping with him, do you want me to tell you?”
No. Yes. Then he could kill him. Although a body that size would be hard to hide...
“Just...just let me know if it’s serious.” The hulk swept Sofia’s bangs out of her eyes just like Aish wanted to. If it turned out Sofia was in love with the giant...well, it wouldn’t be great for #Aishia. And personally, it would send Aish fetal.
Sofia laughed, head thrown back and beautiful. Happy. It was the first time he’d seen her genuinely smile in the week that he’d been here. Then, thank God for small favors, she stepped away from the behemoth and claimed Liliana from her mother. The little girl wrapped chubby arms around her aunt’s neck and squeezed.
When Sofia began walking toward the group, her family and the beefcake following her, the excitement from the interns became palpable. Namrita told them, quickly and quietly, that they would be introduced to the little prince and princess one by one then escorted into the field for that day’s duty.
Aish was thrown when he realized that Sofia and her troop were headed straight toward him.
Sofia looked over his shoulder and Mateo shot him death-ray glares. But they were still coming. Aish almost took a step back in surprise before Devonte stopped him with a hand at his back.
With the bland grin of a dinner hostess, Sofia said, “Aish, you remember my brother and sister-in-law?”
“Yeah,” Aish said, stupidly. Roxanne, in a floral red dress and leather boots, was woman incarnate as she leaned against her golden husband. He held her possessively close with one arm and carried his son in the other.
Aish was suddenly, blindingly jealous.
“I would also like to introduce you to my niece and nephew,” Sofia said, her smile growing real as she looked at her niece in her arms. Aish couldn’t believe this was happening. “This is Liliana and Gabriel Esperanza y Medina.”
She said their names solemnly.
The little girl held out her hand. Multicolored wisps peeked out from her ball cap. She had the same hair color as her aunt.
“Should I bow?” he asked Sofia. He really had no idea how to greet the three-year-old princess of a kingdom.
But the girl giggled. “No, you just shake my hand,” she said, her words high and lispy. “Like this...” She took one baby-chunky hand in the other and then shook them up and down.
Aish was mesmerized. “Like this?” he asked, holding both of his hands together and pumping them.
And everything wrong with the last week evaporated with the kids’ squeals of laughter.
“You gotta hold hands with me,” Liliana cried, her aunt wincing at the volume.
Aish took her hot and tiny hand in his and allowed her to shake it. “Thank you,” he said solemnly, looking into her black sunglasses, their lenses the size of quarters. “You have a very good handshake.”
“¡Prueba el mío. El mío también es bueno!” shouted the boy from his dad’s arms, waving his hand around.
Aish remembered to look questioningly at Mateo. “He wants you to try his handshake,” Mateo said gruffly. He looked uncomfortable having to move closer to Aish. “He’s decided he doesn’t like English. Won’t speak it no matter how much we bribe him.”
Aish shook the little boy’s hand. He had brown curls, dark as his mom’s, erupting from his cap. “English is for the birds,” he told the boy. “You stick to your guns, buddy. Your aunt used to tease me for not speaking more languages.”
As the boy tried to choke the life out of his hand, Aish remembered. “Oh yeah, you’ve got a good han
dshake, too.”
The boy beamed. “Me gusta tu canción.”
“We like your map song,” Liliana said, excited from her aunt’s arms. “Can you sing it?”
Sofia’s eyes went saucer wide, and she whipped to glare at her brother. He promptly nudged his head and threw his wife under the bus.
Roxanne looked gorgeous even when she was caught out. “I have a couple of their albums. I didn’t know! A few of the songs are okay for the kids to listen to.”
Most of Young Son’s songs, about sex and love and loss, weren’t okay for three-year-old ears, but he’d recorded “Make a Map,” the last song on their first album, like a lullaby, sweet and sad over his simple piano playing.
It was the second song he’d written for her. The first one he’d played for her. And the lip-gripped set of her mouth told him she remembered.
“Maybe I can sing it for you later,” he said to the kids. “You’ve got a lot of people excited to meet you and—”
Their twin groans were in as much harmony as his and John’s ever were; they had matching pushed-out lips.
“It’s fine,” Sofia said, her eyes on his chest and her niece on her hip. “You can sing it.”
She’d asked him to do better. He couldn’t have scripted this better to benefit him. But he was trying to peer through a decade’s worth of desires to see what this was doing to her.
With the cameras and the interns and the two baby faces all focused on him, all he could do was open his mouth.
“Make a map and show me, where you want to be...”
He was singing in her kingdom, in front of her, in front of her family and the world. He kept his eyes on her niece and nephew, on their rapt faces, who watched him like there was magic coming out of his mouth.
For the first time in a week, he focused on not looking at Sofia.
He drew it to a close after the first chorus, wrapping up as quick as he could. For a moment, there was no other sound than the quiet clucking of the chickens the workers let loose in the vine rows every morning.
Then the kids and the interns and even the media began clapping. The toddlers whooped and bounced.
This time, he did bow when the prince and princess thanked him for their song, which set them to laughing and squealing even more. He didn’t know how the adults’ arms were going to survive meeting nineteen more people.
He caught Sofia’s eye as her group began to move away and a grower stood beside Aish to lead him into the field. Carmen Louisa had shed Aish as her intern, now working regularly with Manon.
For once, Sofia looked back. Without a word, he tried to say sorry. He tried to say, “Not like this. Not in front of so many people.”
And, for once, Sofia gave him honest sadness from her dark honey eyes. With a nod, she gave him forgiveness.
As the group moved on to the next intern, Aish pushed past the grower and Devonte to head into the vineyard rows, wanting to get out of the camera’s sights before he knuckled at his eyes.
September 10
Two nights later, Sofia stood alone at the balcony railing of Restaurant Martín, a bistro built on a stone bridge, and watched the small river that flowed beneath it. The Río Cristo was the lifeblood of the Monte del Vino Real and mountain runoff from the winter’s heavy snowfall had the river running high and fast, providing plenty of water for her growers’ irrigation. It was a blessed thing. It was getting hotter every day, which was worrying this close to harvest.
Sofia took a deep drink of the Cerveza Estrella in her hand. Now was not the time for worry. She—along with her interns and employees—were here to celebrate.
Her ploy had worked. While she’d been loath to drag her niece and nephew into her media circus, when she mentioned it to her brother and sister-in-law, they reminded her that they’d been looking for a controlled environment to introduce the twins to the public and press. And Mateo had agreed that it was time to bring out the big guns.
The big guns had squeezable bodies and smelled like almond cakes and powdered sugar.
Namrita reported that the next day’s news cycle was dominated by images of the adorable prince and princess meeting the interns, stories about their delightfulness, and—thanks to the uncontrollable spontaneity of children—the video of Aish singing to them while Sofia looked on.
Namrita said the video’s numbers were surpassing the video that had gotten them into this mess. There’d not been another peep from the interns about going home.
Sofia turned around and leaned back between the railing’s flower boxes dripping red bougainvillea down the balcony. Through the crush of people laughing and talking and drinking, she met Namrita’s eyes and raised her beer in salute. This impromptu tapas crawl through the Monte’s taverns was keeping the good vibes flowing.
All she had to do was copy the behavior of the man she hated.
Aish liked to go off script. She could go off script, too, rip the interns’ attention away from him and his antics and focus it back on the real reason they were here—to help a royal family create a better future for their kingdom. She could pretend some affection for him just like he was pretending a yearning for her, give him the honor of meeting her muñecas first, and wipe away the discourse about her being petulant and cold.
She could hide her trembling as the degenerate rock star spoke to her precious ones, as he sang to them, soft and sweet, a song that he once sang soft and sweetly to her.
For a masochistic second, her masochistic mind wondered if they’d had a daughter, would he have sung to her, too?
But Sofia would never, could never have a daughter. And Aish was not a man who hung around to sing lullabies. Aish was the man who’d turned his back on her when she’d needed him most.
As the fairy lights strung around the balcony twinkled and a busy waiter slung garlic-soaked gambas on her high-top table and the conversation on the packed balcony swelled, Sofia put one hand over the other on her bottle to cover their shaking. She could do this. She could control her emotions and playact with him and be the princess her kingdom needed.
As if daring her to prove it, she looked up to find Aish Salinger staring at her as he lounged in the shadows of Restaurant Martín’s awning. Leaning against the stone wall, he was black clothes and black hair and intensely focused eyes, watching her through the vibrancy of the crowd.
She refused to be intimidated by his stillness when she’d only known him as kinetically energetic. She let him stare, raised her chin so he could see fully the deep V of her plum velvet dress, the heavy silver hoops that brushed her neck, the magenta lipstick at her mouth.
His side grin appeared as his eyes grew dark and devilish. He pushed off the wall and started toward her.
She grabbed the first people in reach. “Manon, Amelia.” She directed the hotel executive and wine blogger to the dish of sizzling shrimp on her table. “Por favor, don’t make me eat all of this by myself.”
Startled, the carefully coiffed French woman looked at Carmen Louisa, who they’d been talking to. They all gathered around.
Searching for a topic, Sofia nodded at the rustic glass tumblers they held. “How do you like the wine?” The Monte’s taverns served wine made locally as well as imported Tempranillo. Sofia hoped to shorten the distance their grapes had to travel to become great wines.
Amelia swirled the wine in her glass, took a sniff, tasted it along with a sip of air. “It’s jammy,” she said. “Lots of American oak.”
Sofia pointed at her glass. “May I?”
Aish joined them as Sofia took a sip. She noticed he carried a water bottle, then ignored him.
“That’s from the Villalobos vineyard on the sunny side of the Monte. They do high quad trellising to get even sun disbursement without having to drop leaves or fruit and they never...” As she spoke, Manon looked away and then down at the terra-cotta dish of shrimp, picking at it
with a spare fork. Amelia narrowed her eyes behind her big glasses.
Aish drummed his long fingers on the table.
Show them who you really are. Show me.
“If you don’t like it, you can always offer it to the holy men who live in our mountains.”
She turned, held the glass over the balcony, and waited for the group to join her at the railing. Aish gave her the courtesy of not standing directly next to her. She closed her eyes and spoke:
“A los de las montañas
Quien nos abrigó y nos alimentó
Acepta nuestra ofrenda
Pero quédate ahí, entiende.”
Then she tipped the glass and poured a small measure of it into the river below.
“What does it mean?” Manon asked as Sofia returned Amelia’s glass.
“We believe our mountains are haunted by the hermetic monks who used to live in them,” Sofia said as she watched the water froth. “They were the first to teach us how to survive in this valley. So we empty the last of the vino from our glasses and bottles into the Río Cristo with the belief that it will flow to them. We say:
To those in the mountains
Who sheltered and fed us
Accept our offering
But stay there, understand.”
As the group laughed and others joined them, Sofia settled back against the railing and began to entertain them with legends about the monks who haunted the mountain caves. These monks taught early settlers how to make sacramental wine; the early settlers taught them how to enjoy it. The caves were the entrances and exits of the many natural tunnels that ran through the limestone foundation of the valley. The ghostly legends kept most from exploring, but Sofia knew the pathways better than anyone.
As more people joined their group, Sofia stayed relaxed and smiling, shared the myths and fables, and held her breath as she waited for Aish to interject himself.
But he didn’t. He stayed quiet as he drank from his water bottle and watched her.
Del amor al odio hay un paso, a few Spanish tabloids had declared under two images of Sofia and Aish: one where she glared toe to toe at him, the next where she wistfully looked up at him as he sang, her hands twined around her niece’s back.
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 10
