“You were the first fan that mattered.”
Self-destruction was a practiced art. She put her talents to work as she allowed him to reel her in between his thighs, as her mouth fell open at the feel of him running his big hot hands, never-forgotten hands, up her hips and sides.
She slid her hands into his thick, finger-encasing hair and tugged his head back.
He groaned a guttural sound of shock and pleasure against her lips. The warm burst of his breath felt like relief. The grip of his hands around her waist felt like law. All of her rules, all of her scripts and machinations, had been useless. They’d been careening toward this since the second he’d stepped out of the car.
A cloying tang of cologne made her wrinkle her nose, made her jolt back with its odd familiarity. Laughter burst into the room and then choked off as a group of people rounded the corner.
Sofia leapt out of Aish’s hold. She squeezed her eyes shut and froze, wishing those ghosts would carry her away.
She heard the group murmur and leave.
“Sofia,” Aish said.
She turned and fled. She tried to appear calm as she escaped the bar, but once she was outside in the deserted streets, she slipped out of her boots and ran. She ran over cobblestones and vineyard roads until she reached a secret side entrance into El Castillo, ran until she could shut herself in her childhood bedroom.
It was a room she hated. No matter how many times she’d ripped the silk and lace canopy down, her mother had always forced the staff to put it back up. But it was here, staring at its detested flounce, that she could remind herself of all the things she never wanted to need.
September 11
Aish was sitting barefoot on his balcony, plinking at his guitar and watching sunrise turn the mist and mountain gold, when the balcony door opened.
“Hey, man, you need to—”
Aish turned and nodded at his manager. “Morning. I ordered us coffee.”
Devonte’s eyes stuttered as he took in the two cups and coffee service, the fruit and the sliced meat and cheese set up on a table; he’d been the one making room service orders.
“I, uh...” Devonte slipped his phone back into his inside suit pocket. “How ya doin’?” His question was tinged with concern.
“Great. Awful.” Aish smirked at his own stupidity and ran his hands over the strings. “Who the fuck knows.”
He’d been using the view since dawn to even him out after a night of roller-coastering from peaks of hopefulness to pits of dread. The morning sun made the delineated green vineyard rows, lush hillsides, and the craggy mountain yellow and hopeful, birds twittered, and he’d heard snatches of workers giving each other shit as they headed to a field. The air was warm and soft against his T-shirt-exposed arms. The day was going to end up hot, but he’d dress proper before he saw Sofia.
Devonte made himself a coffee then unbuttoned his suit jacket to sit next to Aish. He nodded at Aish’s guitar.
“Haven’t seen that in your hands in a while.”
Aish nodded. He’d watched phenomenal Arabian musicians play in tiny teterías in Granada, and jaw-dropping taiko drummers play with the New York Philharmonic, and the Rolling Stones from the front row. But it was the band last night that had rocked him. To hear her music from her people in her village, to be at the source of what had made it click for him musically, had lit an urge that he hadn’t felt in a long time.
“I stayed up most of the night working on a couple of things.”
“That’s good,” Devonte said, surprised and gruff. “Real good.” He paused before he said, “Make sure you write it down.”
As kids, John used to record them practicing and performing all the time, already prepping for documentaries about the band. Once they were signed, the chronicling stopped, and, when the actual documentary makers came knocking, John told them he’d lost all the audio and video several laptops back. Aish had always worked out lyrics, chords, progressions, in his head, and the first lyrics-and-music-sheet draft he put into his computer was the final version. He’d never questioned when John presented songs to him the same way.
It meant that Young Son had no proof of drafts or revisions, and no time stamps of their early stuff, to battle the plagiarism claims against them. Aish had no proof of songs that were solely his, that carried his heart and soul, beautiful babies that now looked like someone’s second-class clone.
He inhaled the spicy evergreen scent of growing things and said, “I tried to kiss her last night.”
“I know.”
Aish blinked. “You know?” He’d told Devonte to mingle and his manager had hung out with Namrita most of the night.
Devonte pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Aish. Princess Pr!!! Tease: #Aishia Almost Hooks Up in Crowded Bar was the headline that yelled from the screen.
There were two blurry pics, one of their almost kiss, her hands in his hair, and the other of Sofia fleeing. The story was about how the “pornographic” princess had forced the “teetering-on-alcoholism” rock star to get drunk, teased him throughout the night, and then pushed him away just as they were about to mount each other in public.
“We all know about the revolving door on Princesa Sofia’s bedroom—maybe it’s time for our poor boy to get off that ride.”
“What the fuck?” The tapas crawl had been a closed-door event. Only someone on the inside, someone supposedly loyal to Sofia, if only for a month, could have taken those pictures.
Devonte pointed at his phone. “Don’t break that. Give it back.”
Aish released his white-knuckle grip. “Why do they keep going at her?” Whoever was talking and lying to the media consistently made Sofia looked bad and Aish looked pitiable.
He cursed under his breath, focused on the sunrise, and fought off the self-pity that had become as comfortable over the last year as an old cardigan.
Last night, his newborn effort at restraint had been overwhelmed by...everything: her earthy eyes looking into his and her wide, soft mouth talking to him and her cinnamon-sweet smell and her questions—fuck, she’d been curious about him—and her skin and the velvet purple dress that begged for his touch.
He wanted to blame her for the inch. But he was the asshole who took a mile. They’d come together instantly and intensely as kids, but he had to be better than that twenty-one-year-old walking hard-on.
She was going to be so pissed today.
“It’s time to send the stylists home,” Aish said. His dependence on others to see to his basic hygiene and maintenance collided with her do better directive.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Devonte protested. “Probably want to look your best this morning.”
“I gotta stop playing the movie version of me,” Aish said. “The stylists are doing their jobs, but why would they think leather pants are a good idea when I’m going to be in a field for four hours? I had to cut those motherfuckers off.”
Devonte snorted into his coffee.
“I’ll have them pick up some stuff for me before they go,” Aish said. “But I look better, don’t I?”
He put his chin up, mugging for Devonte, but it was a serious question. He was doing better, wasn’t he? He wasn’t that ghost who’d haunted his own house for the last year. He wasn’t that man Devonte had barged in on a few times when Aish hadn’t opened his door, when Devonte’s face had showed what he was terrified of finding.
His manager huffed and smiled at him now. “Yeah, man, a little sun and work, you’re getting those GQ looks back.” He rose as a ringtone on his phone let him know the stylists were outside the door. “You sure?”
Aish nodded. “Sofia’s been putting in the work, every day, to show them how much this means to her.” He clenched the neck of his guitar. “I gotta show them how much it means to me, too.”
* * *
Today’s work,
Aish realized exhaustedly as he watched Sofia in the winery courtyard, was going to involve lobbing fireballs at Sofia’s icy wall. Again.
She’d mortared up the light and charm she’d begun showing the group, showing him, and she was monotone and academic as she explained the purpose of the mammoth crusher-destemmer set up in the open bay of the processing facility.
When he thought of her last night—velvet-dressed, grinning, softly content in the arms of her people and village and music and legends—Aish wanted to sit on the cobblestones and cry.
The interns had been surprisingly welcoming when he and Devonte had appeared on time for that morning’s workshop, showing none of the snickering from that fucked-up article. He got handshakes and good mornings, maybe a smile or two that was a bit more teasing, and even a nod of approval from the wine blogger.
“I like you better without eyeliner,” Amelia Hill said. Her no-nonsense manner was ruined by a mild grin. “I think she’ll like you better without it, too.”
In ungelled hair, a worn long-sleeve Cowboy Surf Shop T-shirt, jeans, and old Blundstones, clothes he’d thrown into an overnight bag when he left LA, Aish had felt like the goth dude who’d shown up in an oxford to ask out the prom queen. The whole senior class was rooting for him.
All of his fantasy about the situation faded, however, the moment Sofia opened her mouth. As she robotically recited the manual about the huge machine that was so much cooler to see in action, Aish raised his hand.
She aimed scorching hate in his direction. She flicked her head away, showing him a sliver of tender, sensitive neck. She’d once been sensitive all over to his touch, like a bare nerve.
He kept his hand up. Devonte nudged him. “Dumbass. Put your hand down.”
But it was an easy hop for him to touch a basketball rim. He was a hard man to ignore.
“What?” Sofia shot out, startling them all. “What do you want, Aish?”
“Are you worried about the heat?” His question sounded like a demand. He needed to pull back. But dammit... “It’s hot so close to harvest.”
A hair’s breadth from harvest was an anxious time for growers and winemakers, when the fruit was days away from full ripeness and vulnerable on the vine. Wind gusts, rainstorms, unexpected cold, or heat spikes could ruin a crop. Laguna Ridge Winery once lost 75 percent of a year’s fruit thanks to a thunderstorm and the subsequent mildew.
The increasing heat in the Monte could burn Sofia’s not-quite-ripe fruit before it was picked.
When Sofia glanced at Carmen Louisa, he knew the answer was yes. She was worried.
Aish had spent night after night in his uncle’s truck, nodding off as they drove from vineyard to vineyard, his uncle nudging him awake as they obsessively checked the grapes. Here, he’d spent sleepless nights in bed while Sofia, who had yellow smudges under her furious eyes, had spent those same nights running from field to field. How many vineyards was she taking harvest from? Fifteen?
She spoke through gritted teeth. “We’re keeping an eye on the temperature and putting together a contingency plan. Now, back to our crusher-destemmer...”
“What contingency plan?”
Goddammit, Sofia. He felt the urgency, the frustration, in his spine, his clenched fists, his molars. Goddammit, Sofia, let these people help you. They want to help.
Let me help you.
He could see her anger, equal to his, as she glared back.
But Namrita, who’d been on the phone, moved quickly to Sofia’s side and murmured close to her ear. Sofia’s mouth dropped open with dismay. Then her narrow shoulders slumped and she nodded.
Namrita spoke into her phone.
The black-iron gate that barred the entrance to the winery slowly opened. A gleaming red Mercedes-Maybach rolled in and purred up to where the interns were gathered. When the car stopped, Juan Carlos Pascual, that slime bag who was head of the Consejo, slid out. He strolled around the back of the car—the picture of power in a morning-grey double-breasted suit with a fuchsia tie and pocket square—and opened the door.
A feminine leg that ended in a white-glitter heel stepped out onto the cobblestones.
Juan Carlos helped Queen Valentina out of the car. Aish looked at Sofia.
She was still as a statue.
Queen Valentina and her husband had once regularly made the list of the world’s worst royals for their gross extravagance, showy extramarital affairs, ugly fights, and snobby lack of interest in their own people. They’d gone quiet after their son took control of the kingdom several years ago.
Privately, Aish knew that Queen Valentina had made her affection something impossible for Sofia to gain. In the spaces between Sofia’s stories about the fights, parties, and ever-changing hair colors of her teen wild-child days, Aish had heard a girl who’d decided that if she couldn’t get her mother’s attention through pleasing her, she’d get it through pissing her off.
As she’d told him her stories, whispered them to him, he’d run his nails up and down her tattoo and squeezed her tight.
Now her mother had brought Sofia’s enemy into her camp.
Juan Carlos and the queen stopped just short of Sofia, forcing her to move to them. They exchanged stiff air kisses. The queen looked into the air as if she were tolerating her daughter’s affections.
Her smile for the interns, however, was full and slick lipped.
Sofia introduced them tonelessly while Juan Carlos and the queen nodded with matching smirks. Aish could imagine what temper tantrums they’d threatened if Sofia hadn’t let them in. Without any warning, already exhausted, and on the day that the world’s tabloids called her a drunk cock tease, Sofia had to deal with the head of the regulatory board that had been doing all it could to badmouth her.
This was no fucking coincidence.
But Aish saw none of his building head of steam in Sofia. She was good at aiming anger at him. But toward her mother and this asshole actively trying to make her winery fail—nothing. She was the star that had winked out.
The queen pressed a manicured hand against her diamond necklace. That was a lot of carats before noon. “Forgive me for not returning sooner. The king and I have been waiting for an invitation.” Her accent was affected, semi-British. She sounded like American celebrities when they’d spent too much time in the Hamptons. “But a princess who shirks her duties as hostess does not mean I can shirk mine. Please, at long last—” she swept her hand away from herself “—let me welcome you to our kingdom, the Monte del Vino Real.”
Her hand waved over the winery built by her daughter.
“We have a rich tradition of working together as a village, a community, and a kingdom, despite what you may have heard from my daughter. When a person puts her own selfish glory in front of the kingdom’s needs, she breaks us into pieces.” Sofia slid her hands into her front pockets and looked down at her boots. “I would like you to hear from a winemaker whose family has been setting the standard for Monte del Vino Real wines for centuries. Juan Carlos?”
The winemaker stepped forward. “Mil gracias, mi reina,” he oozed. He swept a hand toward Queen Valentina. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”
As she was put on display to bring credit to this sleazeball, Aish felt a surprising tug of pity for her. Smiling widely, she looked like the unhappiest person he’d ever met.
“I’m disappointed the press is not here,” Juan Carlos said as he looked around. The press portion was scheduled for the post-hangover second half of the day. “Pero vale. Perhaps one of you will share my words with them.”
That motherfucker.
“Our kingdom has been growing grapes and making wine for a thousand years,” Juan Carlos said, the rings on his fingers catching the sunlight. “The Consejo Regulador del Monte was given the noble duty of ensuring only the highest quality wines went to Reina Isabel. We chose the barrels that the conquistadores carried to the New
World to bargain with the indios.”
Bargain. Aish felt the group twitch. Dude. Read a textbook.
“Now, every century or so, we have a prince who thinks he can reinvent the wheel, that he knows better than hundreds of years of communal experience. Call it youth. Call it naivete. Some call it...delusion.” He spoke behind his hand. “Those are the Esperanza strains we don’t talk about. But each time, the people relied on the Consejo to bring him back to sanity. Why waste our fruit, the sweat from our growers’ brows, on an experiment? That is why, por ejemplo, my family’s bodega is called Familia Pascual. Porque la familia es lo más importante. The family, the community, the kingdom is what we value. There is only one bodega in all the Monte that is named after only one person.”
That one person was still looking at her boots.
Enough.
“El Gato con El Queso?” Aish called in an American accent. He’d noticed the Cat with the Cheese bodega on the way to the square yesterday.
The interns laughed, breaking up the tension. But Sofia shot him a dark look. Like he was the one being a dick.
Juan Carlos gave him a patronizing smile. “Señor Salinger, you have the leisure time to make jokes, but these good people do not.” He looked around. “You’ve been lured from your lives to prop up a charade. I encourage you to end it and go home. If not for your sake, then for the sake of our villagers. Let’s end this media circus and allow them to get back to work. Then they can focus on their real futures and not the fantasies of a princess who imagines herself the hero.”
This fucking guy. “You can’t come in here and say shit like that.”
“Aish,” Sofia reprimanded quietly.
Her mother’s eyes narrowed at him. “I am the queen and it is my duty to defend our home and our people. I brought Juan Carlos to make you and the others see the truth.”
Aish scoffed. “The truth? You’re only in your home and with your people because your son cut the purse strings. You and the king defended the Monte so well you almost bankrupted it.”
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 12
