And Sofia was moaning right back. “There, allá, allá, Aish, just like that, no te detengas, don’t stop.” And groaning. “¿Por qué, Aish? ¿Por qué? Why is it so good? So...perfect.”
She’d grabbed his hair to lock together their mouths and he’d grabbed her back to lock together their bodies, and when he began to groan against her lips—“Fuck fuck, I’m going to...”—she held on tight and rolled her hips faster and he chanted his orgasm into her mouth. “Fuck...ahhh... Sofia... Sofia... Sofia—” as his come splashed over her belly.
The feel of him, desperate and wet and filthy and so familiar, flung her over the edge as well, made her jolt and spasm and cry out as she got him wet, too.
When he fell back against the chaise, she let him take her with him. When he reached for the blindfold, she stopped his hand. But she got up on quivering legs, turned off the lamps, and then climbed back on top of him.
With her head against his soft sweater and hard chest and his flaccid penis tucked between her thighs, she tugged off the sweat-soaked ribbon and threw it to the floor.
She’d leave. As soon as her legs stopped shaking.
But she fell asleep and so did he and when her ringing phone woke her up in the middle of the night, she was confused about the warm body beneath hers. Then horrified. She stumbled off, away, snatched on her dress, then answered the call.
The only reason she answered it was because the caller was Mateo.
When she hung up, she could see Aish staring at her, still and wary, in the dim light of her phone. He was probably as shocked by her grin as she was.
“It’s time, Aish,” she said. And knew, gratefully, they’d soon be too busy to fixate on dead friends and stolen songs and not-quite sex that shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t happen again.
Relieved, she grinned wider. “Harvest has begun.”
September 22
Sleep was disregarded and laughed at during the next several days in the Monte del Vino Real. Those whose lives centered on the fields and fruit—the growers, vineyard workers, and winemakers—were joined by friends and family who made their living other ways. The former mandate from dictatorial Monte rulers that every man, woman, and child work in the fields one day per harvest had softened to a tradition; during the height of harvest, every villager chipped in, even if it was only to deliver cold water bottles and hot coffee to the tireless workers. Curious tourists learned quickly not to stop and gawk unless they wanted to spend the morning carrying grape bins.
Those few souls who tried to sleep found it almost impossible. Chatter and good-natured ribbing constantly floated in from the fields, trucks hauling fruit to the wineries rattled continuously by, and lights from the village square shone all night long as restaurant owners stayed open twenty-four hours to provide hearty, simple meals to anyone needing quick sustenance.
The superstar interns suddenly found that this lark they’d embarked on two weeks ago, an all-expense-paid trip to a pretty corner of Spain with front-row seats to a sordid celebrity romance, now mattered to them. The princess they’d doubted had gotten under their skin with her steadfast beliefs, grandiose ambitions, and refusal to play the game the way everyone thought she should play it. They’d abandoned all objectivity in their desire to help her. The training she’d given them made them feel fit to serve.
The twenty interns were split into two groups. Half were deployed to the fields in the middle of the night, when the flavor compounds of the grape were stable, to cut off grape bunches gently but quickly with razor-edged shears. Although they would never be as quick as the hyperexperienced vineyard workers, it still was a matter of pride how many bins they filled and how fast they raced them to the end of the rows to dump their bins into the truck that would deliver the grapes to Bodega Sofia.
The other half of the intern corps helped to weigh and process the grapes arriving on flatbed trucks at dawn. The cavernous processing side of the winery, so long dim and quiet, now roared with noise, its bay door letting in sunlight and eager bees as forklifts drove bins into the winery and carefully tipped the fruit into the sorter. Interns stood over the sorting table, their eyes growing dry and backs aching as they watched eagle-eyed for leaves, bunches that shattered, or grapes that had raisined in the heat wave. They removed this detritus before it could spoil the batch in the crusher-destemmer. This machine ejected the stems and lightly broke open the berries, releasing the juice so that it could start to mingle with the skin and seeds, giving the future wine color and tannins.
It was here, in the organized chaos of crush at her winery, where Sofia reigned, relying on Carmen Louisa to oversee the picking and delivery of harvest. As she tasted samples of the grapes and lightly pressed juice, she made her first decisions about the wines that would define her legacy: Would she ferment the juice, skin, and seeds in steel, wood, or concrete tanks? Did she jumpstart fermentation in the tanks with cultured yeast or did she rely on naturally occurring yeast from the grape skins? After fermentation, the two to fourteen days when the sugars transformed into alcohol, how much time did she give the juice on the skins and seeds, which provided color and tannins?
She discussed these questions and decisions with her interns and staff, sought their input or made sure they understood her reasoning. Or sometimes, in dirty overalls and a kerchief tying back her hair, she’d stand with them in the bay doors as they waited for the next load of grapes and chat, joke, or dance along to whatever music they were adding to the playlist that boomed through the winery. It was in the arms of a Chilean grower hopelessly trying to teach her the bachata that the woman told her they were listening to a Young Son song. Seconds later, Aish confirmed it when he came running from inside the winery, wide-eyed denial on his face. Sofia had smiled, nodded without saying anything, and let the song play on.
Now, the interns, those scamps, seemed to be playing Young Son every third or fourth song, caught up in the same #Aishia excitement as the rest of the world at the easing tensions between the couple.
The fates that had been lined up against her now seemed to be directing things her way. Her growers were storing the shade cloth for future years’ use and praising her for its performance. A well-known documentary filmmaker wanted to produce a multipart series on the Monte del Vino Real. Reservations for Bodega Sofia’s hospedería were sold out for six months following its grand opening in the spring.
And a vice president from the Mexican conglomerate Trujillo Industries had contacted Roman; they wanted to support Bodega Sofia, however needed. Roman had rescued the kidnapped daughter of tycoon Daniel Trujillo when he’d been a recently discharged army ranger establishing a security business. Later, he’d convinced the industrialist to invest in the Monte when the kingdom needed capital, and Mateo had paid off the bulk of that investment in the intervening five years.
Sofia didn’t know why the billionaire who dominated Mexico’s auto industry wanted to get involved with a concern as tiny as her winery, but it felt like another cog aligning in her kingdom’s favor.
Juan Carlos and the Consejo were still agitating for her failure, with ever-shorter news stories appearing further and further away from the main page, but even he and his band of lazy winemakers were too busy with harvest to cast many stones. The vandal hadn’t been caught, but neither had the vandalism continued, probably because of the Monte’s current always-on status.
Behind the walls of the winery she’d built, creating wines she was proud of, surrounded by the kingdom she might actually save, Sofia could let Aish’s songs play and listen or not listen as the moment allowed. When she did listen, when she did discover herself humming tunelessly along like she was now as she walked the fifteen-foot-high walkway checking the temperatures of the giant steel tanks, Sofia found control by behaving like one of his songs was like any other.
Usually, however, she couldn’t feel the singer’s hot gaze on her as she hummed.
She glanc
ed up and found him, through the open door, watching her as he sprayed out just-emptied bins. He didn’t drop his ardent stare as he let loose one of his slow, aching grins.
He grabbed the end of the spray nozzle, twisted it to lessen the pressure, and raised it to send water cascading down over his head.
Sofia let out a surprised huff, watched the water slick back his hair and melt his long-sleeve black T-shirt to his shoulders, then ducked her head to study the temperature readings she’d written on her clipboard. Or, at least, pretend to study them.
The buzz of her phone was a welcome distraction. She pulled it out of her pocket, read the text, then looked toward her office. She didn’t look at him again as she made her way down the stairs.
Rushing into her office, she closed the door behind her, shutting out his music and the noise of the machinery. The only sound now was the delightful one of shrieks and giggles.
“Can’t you think of a way to entertain them that doesn’t involve tossing them around?” she asked Henry.
“What?” The man who should know better, their bodyguard, was standing and slowly spinning in the open space. “They like it.”
Indeed, her three-year-old niece and nephew did like it as they hung from Henry’s huge hands and he spun like a helicopter propeller. It was a testament to the strength of his shoulders and arms how high he could hold them, their chubby legs in shorts kicking in the air, their heads flung back as they laughed and screamed.
“Tía Fia, Tía Fia, mira, mira,” they called. “Faster, tío.”
Sofia raised her eyebrows. “If you go faster, Helen is going to know.” She made the motion of spinning something over her head and launching it. He stopped on a dime.
Helen had been Roxanne’s personal assistant and consigliere until the twins were born and she’d informed the billionaire that she’d be moving laterally to take charge as the kids’ nanny. No one argued with the indomitable former army nurse.
Henry began using the next prince and princess of the Monte del Vino Real to perform bicep curls.
“What are they doing here?” she asked as they whooped.
“Favor for Helen. They’ve been buggin’ her about coming to see the cantador.” His accent was exaggerated as he said the singer.
“So I said I’d bring ’em.”
A quick flare of anger burned away Sofia’s smile. “That’s not your decision to make.”
Henry’s dark blond brows rose up into his hairline. “O...kay.” He gently set the twins down. “Sorry. Misread the room. I thought things were getting better between you two.”
Sofia went to her knees to steady the twins as they wobbled, and Henry joined her on the floor. Liliana leaned one chubby arm on Sofia’s shoulder and swiped back her tawny, sweaty hair from her flushed forehead. “That was tiring,” she huffed in English for Henry’s sake, the r in tiring transformed into a w.
Sofia wrapped her arm around her niece’s waist and nodded seriously. “I could see you were working hard.” It killed Sofia every time these little babies behaved like mature people. She tugged her niece against her and soaked up her smell of fresh-baked pan.
“Sorry,” she said to Henry, muffled in Liliana’s hair.
He settled back against the sofa, letting Gabriel climb up on the cushion and then onto his thick shoulders. Henry was Gabriel’s favorite jungle gym. “Where’d I get it wrong?” he asked.
She didn’t have much in common with Henry and they didn’t go places together. Sofia didn’t have friends like that. The big American was her best friend because he chose her. He wasn’t family or a villager, people that had to withstand her presence in one way or another. He sought her out when his job was in the vicinity, lazed around, asked her opinions, and laughed at her jokes. He’d shown her, in a hundred ways over five years, that he wanted her company and needed its constancy.
She leaned back against the sofa next to him and pulled Liliana into her lap, gave her a Wine Spectator. Liliana Sofia Esperanza y Medina loved looking at the pictures.
“Things are better,” she said tightly.
In the long nights and early mornings, between the shared lugging and sneaked staring, during the easy conversations and moments turned thick with memory because of a snippet of song, Aish Salinger’s sweat and grit were washing away a decade of hate. But that didn’t mean she wanted him to ingratiate himself into her life more than he already had. That didn’t mean, when he was gone, she wanted him to haunt new nooks.
“I don’t want him...too close. And I don’t want them—” she smoothed her hand through Liliana’s curls “—to be disappointed when he’s not around.”
“You sure they’re the ones gonna be disappointed?”
She narrowed her eyes at him over Liliana’s head.
He chuckled. “You can shoot me all the dirty-diaper glares you want. I’ve seen the way you look at him.”
She’d seen the looks, too, in the daily media roundups Namrita continued to send: her glance when he was working, her smile when he was entertaining the group with a story. They’d caught her staring at Aish in silhouette with a broom in his hand, and she’d looked like a ballet aficionado watching Misty Copeland.
Her eyes were lingering too long on Aish Salinger.
“Parra,” she said quietly, asking him to stop. “Why do you keep going on about this? It’s an act. I’m supposed to...”
“Sweetie, you’re not that good of an actress,” he drawled over her words. “And I noticed the looks because there was a time I was hoping to get ’em.”
Shocked, Sofia met his blue-sky eyes. It was the first time she’d seen insecurity on this man built for big burly joy and bravado.
“I’ve been over it for a while, so don’t worry. But when you said that kiss didn’t work, it didn’t work for you.”
He tsk’d a laugh and then pushed his finger against her chin to snap her mouth closed.
“Henry, I’m sorry I...”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Don’t do that. That’ll just make it weird. I’m only telling you to get you to pay attention. I don’t know what happened in the past, but in the present, he’s stickin’. He’s staying and fighting and that’s the last thing I expected from him. And you’re... I don’t know...stronger and warmer when he’s around. And that’s the last thing I expected from you.”
Sofia didn’t want to think of the implications of her looks or Aish’s fight or the awareness from someone she deeply admired that she was changed when her ex was around. Of course she was. That was why she’d obliterated the thought of him for a decade.
So she just wove her arm around Henry’s massive bicep and leaned her head against it. With her eyes closed, as he squeezed her thigh, she tried to tell him without words how sorry she was she couldn’t fall in love with her best friend. It wasn’t personal. She wouldn’t fall in love with anyone.
And it was—of course—at that moment that the office door opened.
“Sorry.” She heard Aish’s discomfort over the blast of music and equipment. “I...there’s been a long lull. They asked me... I said I’d check to see when the next load is coming in.”
Sofia opened her eyes and the kids began to yell and wiggle free and Henry pinched her thigh and she tried to untangle her arm as she watched Aish take in what looked like an intimately domestic scene on her office floor.
In his knee-high muck boots, grape-stained jeans, long-sleeve T-shirt that clung to his shoulders, and wet hair shoved haphazardly back, this hardworking laborer couldn’t look any different than that heroin-chic rock ’n’ roller who’d stepped onto her cobblestones three weeks ago.
She’d forgotten how starkly the hard planes of his face showed emotion.
“Sorry, I’ll just...” He began to close the door but the kids were running toward him, gleeful shouts of “Aish, Aish” coming from their baby mouths and he was startled as
they grabbed his jeans and couldn’t help it as he was pulled inside.
Sofia finally got up on her feet as Aish squatted down to take in the kids’ babble.
“Te hicimos una canción. Puedes ponerlo en tu album,” Gabriel said, tugging on Aish’s wet shirt.
“We wrote you a song,” Liliana said, translating for her brother. Her hand was on Aish’s shoulder and she was looking seriously into his eyes. “It’s for you, for your next album.”
As Sofia walked behind them to close the office door, she realized this was the first time Aish was getting to see Liliana and Gabriel without their caps and sunglasses. There, in that squat he’d kept up in the vineyard, he was looking into her niece’s hazel green eyes, seeing her wavy hair the color of Sofia’s. Gabriel, with his big brown curls, sometimes looked more like Roman than Mateo.
Many people didn’t understand that you had to get down to a child’s level to really enjoy them.
Aish glanced behind his shoulder toward Sofia, but she just took out her phone to text Carmen Louisa about the next truck of grapes.
Henry stood and went over to lean on Sofia’s desk.
“Okay,” Aish said hesitatingly. “Um...do you want to sing it for me?”
They both nodded excitedly. Too young with lives lived with too much love to know shyness, they began to sing. The song was in Spanish, a convoluted tale about the cocker spaniel they had to leave back in San Francisco where the family lived half of the year so Roxanne could be close to her headquarters. The song also mentioned their devotion to chocolate y churros.
Their voices were high and warbly, Gabriel got a pouty lip when they disagreed on the words, and what Liliana lacked in tune she made up in volume.
But there was no artifice in Aish’s room-filling shatter of applause when they were done. “So good,” he praised, still clapping. “This is definitely going on the album.”
Sofia walked around to stand in front of him, and pulled Gabriel against her legs. While Aish singing to them left her bereft but suspicious, his enthusiasm for their singing left her weak kneed.
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 20
