There’s a fine line between love and hate.
#Aishia, they reported, was showing signs of life.
She could do this.
He took a step closer toward her.
“¿Estamos listos?” she called, straightening. “Are we ready for the next stop?”
For the first time, these people gave an enthusiastic reply.
She gathered a group of interns around her and turned, her velvet dress whirling around her shins. Feeling like el flautista de Hamelín, she headed for the back stairs, knowing that ratón was going to follow.
* * *
Goddamn, it was something to chase a woman like her, Aish thought as the laughing, chatting group walked through the village plaza. He had no practice with chasing; from that first moment in grade school when he became aware of dazzled grins aimed his way, people treated him like he was their gold-medal prize.
But here he was, a guy with a Grammy, an Emmy, and the panties and private phone number of a Hollywood A-lister, crossing centuries-old granite in his steel-toed boots to literally chase after her skirts.
It was more exhilarating than those podium walks and that limo blow job.
He didn’t care that she all but ignored him when she told her stories, stories from the heart of her, stories that made her shine. She’d be so pissed if she knew he was proud of her, but he hoped that some of her irritation with him had channeled into proving him wrong.
She ignored him, was annoyed by him. And yet, when she’d caught him staring at the bar, when she leaned back and taunted him with the unending sweep of skin from her breasts to her sharp chin, she beckoned him. Saliva had filled his mouth, and he had a drunk’s thirst to grab a handful of that cropped hair, arch her head back, and taste every inch of skin the velvet exposed. Fuck the crowd and the employees and the suspiciously absent security and media that had to be lurking somewhere. Fuck that big blond bodyguard that kept touching her.
You can do better than this. I deserve better than this.
And that was why Aish let her have her distance. Because he was trying to haul himself out of a year’s worth of thinking about nothing but his miserable self to spend a little more time thinking about her. About what she was asking for and why.
At this point, all he could realistically fantasize about was one decent conversation.
Sofia stopped outside a stone-fronted shop that looked centuries old. A few young guys came out of Bocadillos de Hernandez with trays of paper-wrapped baguette sandwiches and alcohol. Aish moved toward her as he watched Sofia greet a tiny, elderly lady with helmet-black hair. In a huddle of locals, it was a pleasure to watch Sofia speak a happy and knee-weakening Spanish.
He was such a fucking kid that her voice still did that to him.
As a waiter teased a young hospedería employee about moving to the big city, Aish saw Sofia’s happiness fall away. “Lourdes?” she asked the girl. “What’s he talking about?”
The girl—in her early twenties, round and cute—gave a retributionpromising glare to the waiter before she put her hand on Sofia’s sleeve. “You know my last semester is this spring. I have to start applying now if I want a teacher training position in the fall.”
Sofia smiled weakly. “The Monte needs teachers.”
“Si, señora,” the girl said. She could have been talking to the elderly lady, the way she was gently letting her princess down. “I might move back one day.”
What had Sofia thought, that a few smiles from the interns and couple of good news cycles had changed the tide working against her? He knew one of her hopes was stopping the flow of young people out of the Monte by providing them the jobs, opportunities, and fun that could come with increased tourism.
But everything was still on shaky ground. He and Sofia still needed each other.
He hated watching the little bit of joy he’d seen in her fade away.
He sidled in, brushing his leather-jacketed arm against her velvet sleeve, and said, “What’s a bocadillo?” He made sure to give the double Ls a flat L sound.
Sofia’s spine straightened. When she was annoyed at him, she was too puffed up to be sad.
“It’s bo-ca-diyyyyyyyyo, señor,” the older woman said in a heavy Spanish accent, stressing the y sound in the double Ls. She barely came up to his chest but her dark-eyed glare was formidable. “It’s a sandwich. This is my shop. Try one.”
She took a sandwich from a tray and handed it to him. Aish loved a late-night bocadillo when they were touring Spain, but this one—with crunchy-crust bread pillowing a perfectly seasoned tortilla española fixed up with paper-thin tomatoes and red onions—was truly superior.
He said as much through a full mouth. “Damn, that’s good!” he exclaimed before opening his water bottle to wash it down. “You can make a sandwich!”
The woman smiled at him patiently. Aish took another gigantic bite and forced Sofia to fill in the silence.
“She’s the finest bocadillo maker in Spain,” she said finally. Begrudgingly. “Aish Salinger, this is Loretta Hernandez.”
“Titi?” Truly surprised, a crumb flew out of his mouth. “You’re Titi?”
The smile of Sofia’s former nanny became real and glorious. “Sí, señor.”
This was the third most influential person in Sofia’s life—next to Carmen Louisa and her brother—a person who’d calmed the chaos created by Sofia’s dickhead parents. Without the nanny’s warm heart and firm demands, Sofia might have lost herself to her worst intentions.
Aish might have lost her before he’d gotten to love her.
He swallowed, gathered his sandwich and bottle into his arms, and then held out a hand. “It’s really nice to meet you,” he said, kissing both of her violet-scented cheeks and gripping her small powdery hand in his. He hoped she could forget the fool she’d met.
When she smiled, it made him miss his mom. “Y tú tambien. What do you think of our little village?”
“It’s fu—really beautiful,” he said, coughing away his curse. “You better watch it; you let people get a taste of your bocadillos and you’ll be overrun.” He said the word the right way this time, and he saw her dark eyes narrow on him.
It really was cool, being in this old plaza with its arches and stairways leading off to ancient streets, surrounded by these beautiful Spaniards under the stars, eating an everyman’s meal with Sofia’s people. Even with the big glaring thing that was missing—Sofia’s affection—it was kind of perfect.
Titi tugged him close. “I have one question for you, señor.”
“What?” he asked, leaning down. Had Sofia told her about him? He thought he was Sofia’s dirty secret. “And please call me Aish.”
“Señor Aish,” she whispered conspiratorially. “Do your tattoos go all the way down?”
“Titi!” Sofia gasped.
She shrugged as everyone but Sofia laughed. “¿Qué?” With the tattoo coverage over his top half, it was a question he got a lot, though never from an octogenarian.
She winked at him. “I am single.”
“Titi, I would show you,” he murmured. “But I’m not sure my heart could take it.”
She patted his cheek with a chiding “Sinvergüenza.”
“Vale, that’s enough, vieja,” Sofia said, the color high in her face as she kissed her goodbye. As she turned and walked away, Aish discarded his half-finished sandwich and hustled to catch up.
He matched her stride as her high-heeled boots—black leather that caressed her up to mid calf—cracked against the stones.
“You can ignore me,” he said, under his breath. “We can clock some #Aishia time for the interns and paps without saying a word.”
He assumed she was going to ignore him. But, as they went under an archway and out of the plaza, the group laughing and chatting behind them, she said, “We don’t have to worry about the paparazzi ton
ight. I paid to have the bars open just for us and Roman and his team are keeping a perimeter around us clear of tourists and the media. Everyone deserved a night off from the scrutiny.”
He said nothing as they continued walking down the winding street, aged copper street lamps glowing against the ancient granite buildings. He couldn’t say anything.
For the first time in ten years, Princesa Sofia Maria Isabel de Esperanza y Santos talked to him like he was a normal human being. For the first time on this odyssey, she spoke to him without a script or a plan, and without her words stinging with hatred. Energy filled him to his eyeballs. He wanted to ask about a storefront they were passing. He wanted to tell her about his boots. He wanted to find out if she’d rather be walking alongside that Texas He-Man. He wanted to wind his fingers through hers and pull her to him and whisper against her neck.
He wanted to apologize.
But thinking quickly on what doing better involved, he did nothing and absorbed the marvel of walking quietly beside her through her hometown streets.
* * *
Sofia kept her mouth shut for the rest of the short walk to Vino Secreto and was thrilled when she walked down the steps into the subterranean bar to see that its candlelit crannies and nooks were already stuffed with growers and winery staff who’d forgone the tapas crawl. The interns exclaimed at the winding brick and stone bar with its wine barrel tables and cracked leather chairs and iron-gated arches that were entrances into the tunnels. Early villagers had recognized that the subterranean space directly under the village made for excellent wine aging and storage.
Among the heat and the noise and the crush, a favorite three-piece band—gaita, hand drum and guitar—played in a little room that dead-ended at one of the gates, creating a gothic echo, and Sofia snuck through until she could squeeze in behind a high-back armchair, hoping she’d lost Aish in the crowd. The miasma of sour beer, candle smoke, and good-time sweat drowned out the scent of him, the wildly thrumming music the sound.
Aish, however, had stayed on her heels and the crowd squirmed and squished to make room for him next to her. Suddenly, she was trapped between old leather and Aish’s long body. He wasn’t pressed against her, but she could feel the open edges of his leather coat when he moved. And the smell of him, salt and sea, settled over her like a personal fog.
A strolling waitress handed her a glass of Manzanilla Pasada and Sofia grabbed on to the glass like a lifeline, downed the rich, nutty alcohol in big gulps. Aish, she noticed, didn’t take one until Sofia shot a desperate glance at the departing waitress. With a grin she caught over her shoulder, he grabbed two more glasses off the tray.
Staring resolutely at the band, she took the full glass that appeared over her shoulder and handed her empty glass back. There. That was plenty of #Aishia action for the night.
What was that in the plaza with her Titi?
There was nothing online about Loretta Hernandez, no refresher course Aish could have taken about the woman both Mateo and Sofia had relied on to be their soft landing when their parents dropped them from perilous heights. Titi had been paid to be their niñera but she’d loved and disciplined them like her own.
Aish remembered that. Confusion and his nearness created an unsettling buzz in Sofia.
The room was already warm, but he was the sun behind her. She knew without looking that his head was rocking and his shoulders were moving to the rhythm of her kingdom’s music. His hand—big, with long, elegant fingers and veins that popped out because of his guitar playing—probably tapped against his thigh. Inches from her body.
She remembered the way two of those fingers could exploit a crazy-making spot inside her.
I should have picked up the phone ten years ago, he’d said in her office. I should have said I was sorry for...
The band’s song crescendoed and ended with hoots and applause as the singer announced, “We’re going to take a short break and we’ll be right back.”
Gracias a Dios.
But as the band left the tiny room to go to the bar and the sweaty audience followed them out for drinks, air, and cigarettes, Sofia found herself staring at her empty glass. Aish settled on the arm of the armchair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. Sofia leaned back against the wall.
He plucked her empty glass out of her hands and replaced it with a full one.
“You’re not having any?” she asked and caught the shake of his head as he put her empty glass on the ground.
“I stopped drinking a year ago.”
Quick and angry incredulity made her meet his eyes. His presence in her kingdom proved that to be a lie.
His lip tilted self-mockingly. “Besides a slip a few weeks ago, the only thing I’ve had to drink since John died is half glasses of your wine.”
Sofia didn’t have many memories of him at meals from the last ten days; he either wasn’t present or she was ignoring him. But he’d never seemed drunk. Or hungover. And tonight, she’d only seen a water bottle in his hands.
“Why?” she asked, despite herself.
“Because I wanted a drink so bad,” he said simply. “Because I was tired of the way drinking sometimes made me an asshole.”
A decade ago, he’d never behaved like an asshole in the typical way drunk men throw around their bravado and fists. He’d been helpless. Embarrassingly slurring and boneless and careless with his words and behavior. Worse, there’d been no way to monitor when it was going to happen. She’d seen him walk a straight line after she’d shared two bottles with him and mumbling on her shoulder after two glasses.
“Should you be drinking my wine?” she asked.
The glint in his eye showed he’d read her unwanted concern.
“I’m not an alcoholic, Sofia. But I don’t want to become one. I wouldn’t be any good to my uncle. With John gone—” He cut himself off like he was surprised at his words; his broad shoulders tightened. He dropped his eyes to his hands. “It’ll be easier to tone down the partying on the road.”
She didn’t care about that. She had no interest in his future. But there was something she needed to say about his past. She should have said it ten days ago, blurted it out on the first day rather than letting it guiltily fester.
“I’m sorry. About John. I’m sorry he’s gone.”
When he raised his eyes to hers, the look in them had her pressing her shoulder blades back into the stones.
All he said was “Thank you,” soft and deep. But she had to look away. She looked through the gate, down into the tunnel. It was long and instantly dark, eating up the light. Half-full glasses and bottles congregated on one side of the arch, placating the ghosts who wandered this far.
“You know I borrowed from this style of music for our sound?”
That caught her by surprise. “How?”
His eyes took on...a look. Just for a beat. Then he gave a quick smile—dimple—and said, “Do you know about microtones?”
She shook her head.
He smiled wider and she’d forgotten how much joy he could pack into his cockeyed grin.
“Actually, you do,” he said. “You introduced me to them.”
She took a deep drink as he sat up to curve his fingers over an imaginary keyboard. “Think of microtones as the red keys between the black and white keys. Microtonal music is prominent in the Arab world. They have an ear for it; the western world doesn’t. But you hear it in Irish music and in flamenco and definitely in Celtic-style folkloric music popular in Northern Spain.”
He used his hands when he spoke—it had always been imperative for him to speak with his body—and nudged his hair off his forehead. He’d left it loose, with less product, and the blue-black thickness looked as soft as her dress.
“The music you introduced me to that fall, the world music I hadn’t heard before, a lot of it had microtones. So after we...after that fall...”
&n
bsp; Queen-like reserve stomped out her flare of anger, allowed her to stutter-skip over the wound.
“I reworked our songs to put microtonality in them. It was one way to stand out among the millions of talented bands. And it worked.”
She shrunk back as he seemed to reach for her. But he just tapped the silver ring he wore against her glass, making it chime.
“That music helped me create something unique that still appealed to the masses. I have you to thank for that. I’ve always wanted to thank you.”
Sofia remembered one of Aish’s favorite quotes from that fall. “Music’s just sound if no one is paying attention,” she said.
His eyes went wide and bright. “Right.” His dimple dug deep.
She looked down in the amber depths of her glass. “You certainly have my niece and nephew’s attention.”
“About that... I’m sorry—”
She shook her head. “You’re good with them. I was surprised.” She was floored. She was agonized.
“You know me, Sofia,” he chuckled. “I know how to kiss babies and press the flesh. I should run for president.”
She was surprised by the mockery in his voice. “Those kids can smell mierda; they’re not sweet to frauds.”
She felt a miniscule tug on her skirt. He’d reached over and taken an inch of the plum velvet near her thigh between two long fingers.
Heat like a summer breeze blew through her.
“Then maybe you could listen to my music with them sometime.” His voice was dropping low, dipping into the depths of her.
“Why is that so important to you?”
He slowly moved those tactile fingers until he’d pleated her skirt around his knuckle and held it between three fingers. “You have good taste in music.” She watched as his thumb stroked an inch over the fabric. “I’m hoping you’ll be a fan.”
“A million adoring fans aren’t enough for you?”
She made the mistake of raising her eyes. She made the mistake of feeling want when he—lightly, letting her deny the pull—tugged her toward him.
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 11
