The Consejo and the queen were only hanging Sofia with the rope she’d given them.
“I admire the intentions that brought you to our little, insignificant corner of Spain,” Juan Carlos said, a derisive smile on his face. “But take my advice, señor. Cut your losses while you can. She knows little about quality winemaking. About love, even less. While she might have once called you her fuego, I assure you she’s allowed herself to be heated up by many others since.”
Sofia stiffened. Fuego, the Spanish word for fire that she’d called Aish, how did Juan Carlos—
The song.
Aish had used her love name for him in his song.
She made herself as impenetrable as the limestone walls that protected her wines.
“What the fuck?” Aish muttered. “Look...”
Henry moved his bulk so it blocked Aish from the view of the cameras, nodding sternly when it was safe to go on.
“How Sofia spends her free time is not your fucking business. No one’s going after me, and my stories are ten times wilder than hers. And about her winemaking? Sofia’s ideas about aging wine in something other than French oak are great. Tempranillo is better in American oak. And you guys won’t even try stainless steel barrels? At Laguna Ridge vineyards, we’ve been aging in stainless with oak staves for years. It gives us a lot more control...”
“Aish...” Sofia hissed, her eyes on the cobblestones.
“What?”
“Cállate. Shut. Up.”
She didn’t want him defending her. She didn’t want to know that he’d read about her winemaking techniques. She didn’t want to know why he’d said “we” when he talked about his uncle’s winery, the winery where they’d met. The Aish she knew had always viewed working at Laguna Ridge Winery as a good time with lots of pretty girls, clueless to how much his childless uncle enjoyed having him there.
“Sofia, how can you let him...”
“Stop,” she demanded.
“I want to help you.”
“Then be quiet.”
“But...”
She turned, ready to march into her winery and barricade the doors, when she saw them. The interns and her grower-partners. They stood near the winery entrance, far enough away to have missed the growing tension. Carmen Louisa, who could track Sofia’s emotions with one glance, gave a worried frown. But the rest of them, they grinned. Cheered. Waved. The superstar interns smiled with excitement, finding themselves in the middle of a media circus and eager to see Aish and Sofia jump through hoops for the next thirty days.
The growers smiled with hope.
It had been an act of bravado and stupidity when—instead of going to lenders—she’d convinced fifteen of the Monte’s top growers, including Carmen Louisa, to form a cooperative with her to create the winery and luxury hotel. Ready to enjoy the spoils after years of watching their best fruit go into foreign bottles they couldn’t afford, the growers committed money, their grapes, and their hopes for their children’s future to Sofia. She’d resisted when they’d nominated the name Bodega Sofia for the winery, and had swallowed her tears when the vote had been unanimous except for one.
Now, their winery was ground zero for the biggest pop culture spectacle in years. And every available room in the Monte was full.
This was what the world wanted. Aish, the disgraced rock star, standing next to Sofia, the party-girl princess. This was what Namrita and Aish’s manager, that muscular man who’d snuck out of the black car before it rolled away, had agreed to. Sofia and Aish would play out some farce of a romance for the next month—a pro-mance, Namrita called it—and maintain the public spotlight long enough to repair his crumbling reputation and gain positive exposure for the winery. Right now, Sofia had too much on the line to order Henry to toss Aish out of her kingdom.
And Aish was just playing his role to the max. He’d researched her parents’ peccadilloes and Sofia’s winemaking efforts, then playacted her defender when the situation called for it. She’d seen him perform, knew how good he was at working a crowd.
Sofia could pretend, too. This is how she became the princess her kingdom needed her to be. This is how to show them that their faith in her hadn’t been misplaced.
Chin high and shoulders relaxed, Sofia took Aish’s arm once again and walked toward a winery side door, Henry on her heels. Namrita and a cadre of security guards herded the press toward another door, where they would wait in a conference room for Sofia and Aish to join them and say a few words. A few well-scripted words. Then Sofia would ignore Aish for the rest of the night at the private launch party for interns, growers and friends.
The instant Sofia was inside the winery’s processing facility—a high-ceilinged, concrete-floored room full of large tanks and equipment and the home of Sofia’s glassed-in office—she dropped Aish’s arm. She embraced the dim and the cool as she moved away from him and into the protective shelter of Henry’s hulking shadow.
“How you holdin’ up?” he asked. Henry was way more Texan than her brother. Blond and burly, he looked like the kind of American she might have mistrusted before he opened his mouth. Within minutes of their first conversation, she discovered that below his thick neck was a big squishy heart. He protected Roxanne, and now Roxanne’s family, with his life. He was one of the dearest friends Sofia had ever had.
“Estoy bien,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “I’m fine.”
“Sofia?” Aish’s voice echoed through the empty warehouse.
She ignored him.
“No you’re not,” Henry said, squeezing her shoulder, forcing her to look up into his quarterback-pretty face. “But you did good out there. You pulled it off.”
Sofia let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She covered Henry’s big hand with her own. “Gracias,” she murmured. “I...”
“Sofia,” Aish called again, louder this time. A spark of anger tried to catch in her
