That shitshow in the desert was the first time Aish had left his house since John’s casketless funeral. Devonte had ordered him to the festival as a last-ditch effort to drum up some positive publicity before the label, worried about a threatening rain of lawsuits, terminated his contract. Aish had promised for months to deliver Young Son’s fourth album, an album that he hoped would wipe away the rumors and allegations, renew Aish’s career and John’s reputation, and firmly plant Young Son among the rock ’n’ roll stars.
Problem was, down in his basement studio, Aish had barely been able to strum two notes.
“Truth is man, you gotta get yourself together,” Devonte said. “You got an opportunity here to clear some of the stink off you.” The public’s seismic excitement over #Aishia had bought him a few more months with his label. “But no one’s gonna buy it if you keep pissing her off. Her ground rules make it seem like you’re starting with negative yardage.”
At the thought of her ground rules, Aish rested his knuckles against his teeth.
The first time he’d ever seen Sofia, she’d been like a sparkler that he had to touch, all glowing skin and long gleaming hair. He’d wrapped her in his arms within minutes and she’d stretched his T-shirt tugging him closer. That’s how it had been with them—instant obsession, unrestrained need.
Aish had ruined that when he’d broken her heart three months later. And any hope that she might have softened over the last ten years was demolished when Devonte slapped down the packet of her ground rules.
Rule 1: Aish Salinger will only speak to Princesa Sofia de Esperanza y Santos when it will benefit the arrangement. Therefore, there will be no personal interaction unless the media, the intern corps, tourists, or other public influencers are present. There will be no private, one-on-one conversation.
The rules forbade Aish to touch Sofia, required him to cover his tattoos, and demanded that he learn the scripts for five-minute daily interactions that were supposed to look like romance to the press and interns. The rules wrapped layer after layer of barbed wire around a woman he’d been desperate to be near for ten years.
Sometimes, when memories of her popped into his brain when he was on stage in front of a sold-out crowd, when he was accepting another platinum album, or when the paparazzi bulbs blinded him, his unending yearning for her felt like the worst thing that ever happened to him.
“La bodega está allá,” said the driver. “There is the winery, señores.”
Aish and Devonte scrambled lower into their seats to look out the windshield.
Beyond a rock wall and a gate scrolled with a large S was an ancient monastery of pale stone with windows of stained glass. A modern building made of the same pale stone stood beside it, with people leaning from the balconies and waving. A vineyard-covered hill rose up behind the winery, and a mountain with harsh peaks dominated the sky.
She’d whispered about this, about the winery she wanted to open and the wines she hoped to create, when he’d held her delicate body in his arms. She’d inked her stories into his brain—about her mountains, her people, the thousand-year history she was buoyed and weighted down by—as she’d licked and bit his ear.
Aish felt the anticipation of ten hungry years, and the nerves of one isolated one, in the back of his teeth. The gate opened and they drove into a sprawling courtyard.
The press was cordoned off on one side. A large group of people with wineglasses in their hands stood to the other. A line of people facing him stood in the center.
As the car slowed, Aish closed his eyes behind his Ray-Bans and took a couple of deep, jittery breaths. The moment he’d craved every day since the second he’d left her was finally here.
The door opened and Aish stepped out into the Spanish sun.
He was blinded by it. But he hid behind his sunglasses as he lifted a casual hand to the cheers of the guests and flicked his trademark side grin.
He hid behind his sunglasses as he hunted.
A dude—a huge blond dude who’d opened the door—was leaning close to say something when Aish saw her.
She stood in a ray of sunshine.
He felt her eyes on him like a shot to his heart. Gone was his erotic woodland fairy girl with her butt-length hair and miles of exposed golden skin, replaced by a badass woman who looked firmly sick of his shit. She’d cut her gold-brown hair short and right now it was slicked back from her perfect face. She wore a snow-white button-down shirt that covered her to her wrists, wide-legged pants that hugged the curves of her waist, and a heavy silver necklace in the open collar of her shirt. Her kohl-lined eyes, the firmness of her wide mouth, and the jut of her sharp chin told him what she thought of his late arrival.
Deaf to whatever the dude was saying, he turned and moved over the cobblestones to get to her with all the speed and compulsion she’d inspired in him when they were kids.
Her wide eyes flared as he came toward her. He put his hands on her warm, strong biceps and took in her gorgeous face. Thick-lashed cat eyes, pert nose, wide mouth that could stretch into the most peace-giving smile. She wasn’t going to smile for him now, and that was okay as he looked down to rememorize her. It was shocking to realize how small she was when she was so huge in his mind’s eye. He leaned down to brush his lips against the velvety softness of her ear, to say “I’m sorry” before he kissed the fine edge of her jaw.
I’m sorry I’m late, he wanted to say as he inhaled the treasured memory of her cinnamon-sugar skin. I’m sorry I released that song, he wanted to plead against her neck. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I broke your heart. He wanted to paint her in sorry’s and drown in her wide wise eyes and discover forgiveness and redemption in her.
He wanted to stop feeling so fucking shitty.
He moved to pull her into a much-needed hug when Sofia’s hands come up to rest on his chest—God, yes—then she wiggled out of his hands as she stepped back. She did give him a smile, then.
Oh no.
“Welcome to Bodega Sofia, Aish,” she said softly, nodding to encourage his grin. He gave it but dreaded what was coming next.
“We’re going to smile for the cameras,” she said in the same soft voice, her Spanish accent purring over his skin. “But next time you touch me, I’ll knee your polla so hard you’ll taste it. ¿Comprendes cabrón?”
September 1
Part Two
Only a lifetime’s worth of practice keeping it together while her parents humiliated her in front of the cameras kept Sofia from vibrating apart as she stepped away from Aish Salinger. Kept her from shaking into tiny pieces as the entire world watched with bated breath.
#Aishia was a fever and it seemed like every living soul was sick with it. According to Namrita, the past and speculative future of the wounded rock star and party-girl princess had infected the nightly news and entertainment tabloids and social media. Both camps had remained silent, so it made minor celebrities of every vineyard worker or coffee shop barista who’d known them that long-ago autumn. A part-time pot salesman was getting a spot on a reality dance show.
Her winery launch that couldn’t get the attention of a Reddit board a month ago now had coverage from every major news outlet in the world and the enthusiastic presence of nineteen superstar “interns,” movers and shakers from the wine and hospitality industries, who watched from the VIP section.
Sofia felt the weight of the world’s gaze as they recorded her first interaction with a man she hated. She did the one thing she never wanted to do again. She touched Aish Salinger.
For the benefit of her people, she hooked her hand into the crook of his elbow, fought back the sensation of heat and muscle, breathed through her mouth to avoid the scent of him, and moved to his side.
Henry, who was supposed to have escorted Aish through the receiving line before presenting him to Sofia, stepped to her opposite side.
“That slippery fucker
got away from me. You okay?” her best friend whispered in her ear. He was head of her sister-in-law’s security, but Sofia had borrowed him for the launch. She’d wanted Henry’s intimidating bulk and bullet-chewing smile to be the first thing Aish saw when he stepped out of the car, wanted Henry to relay warnings and orders as he walked the rock star through the line of Sofia’s family before Aish got anywhere close to her.
Now she had to improvise. She couldn’t lean on Henry’s hulking protectiveness. She had to stand alone just as she had when Aish had abandoned her.
Sofia kept the placid smile on her face as she nodded then tugged Aish toward the other end of the receiving line. Henry walked just behind her.
Low, Aish said, “I’m sorry I—”
“Shut up. Smile.” She kept her eyes forward as she smiled warmly and tipped her head toward him. “Don’t talk to me unless it’s for an audience. We have nothing to say to each other.”
She could do this for a month, project a royal demeanor and blur her vision when she had to interact with him. She’d made a mistake when she’d watched him get out of the car, hoping to see the depressed, disregarded rocker Namrita described. Yes, he’d changed, stuffed his distinct beauty—a combination of a Japanese-American mom and a Jewish-American dad, all soaked in the California sun—into the costume of any overindulged rock star. Mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes and the ebony hair that once brushed his jawline was now short and pompadoured. His once-tanned skin looked pale in his black V-neck T-shirt and tight black jeans, looked pulled too thin over biceps and vein-throbbing forearms, now covered in indigo ink.
But still, he was beautiful.
When her eyes had helplessly trailed over his long, leonine nose and slashing cheekbones and plump bottom lip and wide shoulders and endlessly arousing height, she realized she would be attracted to him if he painted himself polka-dotted and wore a clown’s wig. When he pressed against her—too rangy, too hard, too rough ridden—she realized her body’s reaction to the smell and feel of him was programmed into her DNA.
She relied on her hatred to cool and calm her as they walked in her kingdom’s sunlight.
At the opposite end of the receiving line, she let go of his arm and wiped her hand against her hip, steadying herself to begin the introductions. This was fine. This was good. The cameras were going to love it and Sofia could talk around him while almost ignoring him. She’d positioned them so the lenses would catch the winery and her luxury hotel, the Hospedería de Bodega Sofia, the red-tile rooftops of her village, and the limestone outcrops of the Pico Viajadora, that mountain that had defended them for centuries.
In a manner uglier than the Moors’ cannons that tried to blast out her ancestors, Sofia would punch a hole through it and expose them to the world.
The first person in line looked at her with worry crinkling the lines that winged out from his handsome green eyes.
“This is my brother, Roman Sheppard,” she said, her tone different than her camera-friendly smile as Aish shook his hand. “He and his security team will keep an eye on you while you’re here. If you touch me again without my permission, I’ll ask him to break something.”
Aish stiffened beside her, but her half brother gave a begrudging huff. “We’re also here to keep you and your people safe,” Roman said, his gravel voice tinged with Texas.
Strong, dark haired, and dressed in black, the brother they discovered five years ago was head of a security firm that protected magnates and sheikhs. When #Aishia began to scream across the internet, Roman pulled his best people off other assignments and brought them to the Monte. Neck deep in winery preparations, Sofia hadn’t even conceived the need for security until one of her growers’ teen daughters was offered twelve hundred euros for her invitation.
Now, Roman was ensuring that the descent of a rock star, frenzied tourists, and roaming press on their village occurred without incident.
“But I am ex-army ranger,” he said. “So if she asks me to hurt you, I can make it real creative.” A taciturn man who seldom smiled, it was hard to know when he was joking.
Wisely, Aish stayed quiet.
Sofia motioned Aish to the next people in line while Henry stayed just behind her.
The crowd noise rose inside the courtyard walls, and outside, where a live stream of the event was being shown on screens throughout the village as rock star Aish Salinger stepped in front of her brother, Príncipe Mateo Ferdinand Juan Carlos de Esperanza y Santos, the next king of the Monte del Vino Real, and his billionaire bride, Roxanne Medina. The couple who had taken the world by storm five years ago with their fake then very real marriage looked so blindingly beautiful—him in a cream-colored suit with his gold-tipped hair held back by his sunglasses, her in a white, body-hugging dress with an artful blue flower painted over the side—that Sofia and Aish were the only ones close enough to see the annihilation in their eyes.
“Príncipe,” Aish said, clipped. His welcome here—or the lack of it—seemed to be finally sinking in.
“Aish,” Mateo said, clasping Aish’s long hand in both of his work-hardened ones. Mateo had stepped away from his role heading one of the world’s top winegrowing labs to focus on the Monte, but he still liked to work in the fields. While he pumped his hand, he said, “I should kick your ass for writing a song like that about my sister.”
“Look, Mateo, I was young and—”
“No te preocupes,” Sofia soothed her brother, telling him not to worry while preempting Aish’s excuses. He’d always had so many excuses. “I’ve never heard it and won’t. I haven’t heard any of their albums. I didn’t even know Aish was alive.” Out of her peripheral vision, she saw him jerk to look at her. She hoped the consummate performer remembered to keep smiling. “Let’s just get through this month and then we’ll go back to ignoring Aish Salinger and Young Son.”
Roxanne gently extracted Aish’s hand from her husband’s death grip and took it into her own. “Aish, you might feel that she owes you because of the attention you’ve brought to the Monte,” her sister-in-law purred in her throaty voice. Sofia had seen the billionaire cry during movie trailers and drop into the snow to teach her twin toddlers how to make snow angels. But right now she was every bit the world-dominating mogul.
“We want to correct that assumption,” Roxanne continued. Her thick brown hair was twisted into a sleek bun on top of her head, which she bobbed at Sofia. “She’s precious. Her goal, to improve the future of our kingdom, is precious. Behave and you can win here, too.” She gave him a lush grin and a wink. “Misbehave and there’s no limit to the ways we’ll destroy you.”
Sofia kept her smile while she blinked back tears.
No one—not Henry or her family or Carmen Louisa—had asked what had happened with Aish. Only Roxanne knew a hint of it, had seen Sofia fall apart when she’d asked her, years ago, if she’d ever been in love. Her family and dearest friends had no details, and yet they stood resolutely by her. Loyally at her side.
As if Sofia, her mistakes and her missteps, wasn’t the reason their kingdom’s future was partially in the hands of an out-of-control rock star.
Her mistakes and missteps were about to be showcased as Aish moved stiffly to the last grouping of people. They’d stationed themselves a few feet away from the others. Sofia took a steadying breath before she followed.
King Felipe and Queen Valentina did their best to look down their noses at a guy who towered over them. Aish gave them each a quick bow; he’d apparently done enough homework to know not to try to shake their hands. After getting caught blackmailing her brother and almost bankrupting the Monte five years ago, her parents had been stripped of their power and put on a strict allowance. The king and queen now had to satisfy themselves with petty displays of dominance. Like demanding bows and curtsies on introduction.
But the silver-mustached man who stood next to the queen, a person who should have never been standing with
the royal family, stepped forward to grab Aish’s hand.
Her mother had always liked attractive men whispering in her ear.
“Aish Salinger, this is Juan Carlos Pascual, owner of the Familia Pascual Bodega and head of the Consejo Regulador del Monte,” Sofia said. She was okay with everyone seeing her smile dim.
“Mr. Salinger, bienvenidos,” Juan Carlos intoned as if he was the king. As the leader of the Monte’s most prominent winemakers, he was almost as powerful and twice as wealthy. In a double-breasted suit and royal red tie, his full mane of silver hair swept back from his face, the sixty-something-year-old winemaker looked magisterial. It was a look he used to great effect slandering Sofia. “Welcome to our beautiful village. Hopefully, you will pull our princesa’s attentions away from changing generations of tradition and focus it on something else.”
She wanted to slap him. He had a chokehold on Monte winemaking. And yet, by invitation of the queen, he stood on the cobblestones of Sofia’s winery, among Sofia’s people, preening amid everything he was using innuendoes and rumors and lies to stop.
“I’m just here to help Sofia,” Aish said in his low, slightly scratchy voice.
“Indeed, Mr. Salinger,” the queen said. “My daughter loves the help of rock stars. You might have seen the help she got from that Irish boy band.”
Her mother’s white sparkly dress, brightened teeth, and sheet-straight platinum hair shone against her bronze skin. If Aish Salinger hadn’t gotten involved, she would have never had to invite her mother either.
Sofia had only slept with two members of Starting Five—at separate times—but the photo in the Jacuzzi overlooking the Dubai skyline suggested she might have been sleeping with all five of them. She’d been wearing a bathing suit, but the bubbles and the hands and everyone’s expression made her look very, very naked. The photo had sent the queen into apoplexy, probably because she hadn’t been the one in the Jacuzzi. But in recent weeks, it was the main image the press had been trotting out to remind everyone of Sofia’s party-girl reputation.
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 3