As he joined the group, he nodded at a former-actor-turned-winemaker he’d partied with and an elegant French woman who was the wine director for an international hotel chain. The large, black eyes of the cameras tracked his every move. Sofia’s eyes barely touched him.
She motioned at her mountains and continued to talk. “So it’s these mountains that allowed those ninth-century peasants to believe they could grow grapes here in the Monte del Vino Real. We’re thirty kilometers from the ocean, but the Picos de Europa create a barrier and a bowl of warmth that give the grapes enough sun to ripen.”
Aish caught the winemaker stifling a yawn behind his hand. He glanced around. It had been a late night for some of them—Aish had made a limp appearance at the launch party then escaped to his room—but they all looked a little sleepy.
He returned to watch Sofia and nodded like he’d caught every word.
“Now, as an Esperanza, with the vino that runs through my veins, I believe the quality of the wine begins and ends here. In the vineyard.”
She looked chic as hell in overalls and a long-sleeve T-shirt, her neck wrapped in a turquoise scarf and sunglasses holding back her short hair. She stood in front of a waist-high vine, its thick, gnarled arms hanging with almost-black clusters. For the first time in his life, Aish was seeing the Tempranillo fruit that Sofia used to talk about with the excitement usually saved for a lover.
Right now, though, she sounded as exciting as someone reading a textbook.
“As a winemaker, my duty is to ensure that the calidad of the water, the soil, the sun—the terroir—shines in the glass. So if I must get out of the way, ferment the juice in stainless steel and barely age it, I will. If it needs a year of American oak and a year in the bottle, that’s what I will give it. But I let the grape tell me; I don’t try to boss it around.”
What she said was interesting and smart, the same philosophy of minimal winemaker intervention that he’d learned from his uncle. But she was so...muted. She wasn’t smiling, those river-ripple eyes of hers didn’t flash the way he knew they could. She was working so hard to bury the good-time girl that she was mimicking everyone’s most boring aunt.
Devonte nudged him.
“What?” Aish whispered.
Devonte leaned toward him. “She said, ‘Boss it around.’”
Boss it? Oh yeah. “Boss it around” was the cue from his script.
Devonte had promised to talk to Namrita about how stupid—he was going to use unconvincing—these scripts were. Sofia was trying to plan to the second how she and Aish delivered five minutes of #Aishia time for the press and public. Today, Aish was supposed to praise the fruit, laugh at Sofia’s lame joke, then allow her to punch his bicep. His right bicep, as was highlighted in the script.
Everything in Aish shrank away from faking it with her.
Feeling like his balls were in ice water, he called out, “So these are Tempranillo grapes?”
Her wide eyes blinked at him like she hadn’t known he was there. “Yes, the world-famous Monte del Vino Real Tempranillo grapes.” He moved toward her as the script dictated, trying to judge the three feet of space it demanded. “Temprano means early, and these ripen earlier than other grapes, therefore, Tempranillo.”
Impossibly, her voice grew more robotic the closer he got.
He stood with the bush between them, facing their audience. “These vines look really old.”
“Yes, they are.” They sounded like pro athletes in an insurance commercial. “They are the oldest in the Monte. They were planted by Carmen Louisa’s great-great-great-great...”
She looked to the side where Carmen Louisa stood in the rows with other locals. The woman who’d glared daggers at him yesterday shouted out, “¡Dos ‘greats’ más!”
The interns gave an actual real laugh.
“As you can see, the yield on these vines are incredibly low,” Sofia continued. “But the quality is high. These are the grapes I choose when I need to add a bit more sabor to a blend. When I need it to pack a Monte punch.”
A memory had Aish rubbing his bicep. “You don’t need any help with your Monte punch,” he said, winging it. “I still have ten-year-old bruises.”
It was supposed to be Sofia who joked and Aish who responded, but the opportunity was there and she seemed to recognize it, so she laughed at the bad joke along with their audience and then leaned over to lightly tap his right bicep, her fist touching his skin in his short-sleeve T-shirt.
“As long as you behave, I won’t have to remind you,” she said with a swagger. It was convincing, drawing a laugh from a cameraman, and reminded him of the girl he knew. But she was looking over his shoulder, not directly at him.
She couldn’t even stand to look at him.
“One question, though,” he said.
The script hadn’t called for another question from him. The joke and touch was to be their #Aishia time for the day.
“The Monte’s regulatory board has got pretty strict rules about how you’re supposed to make wine,” he said. “You’re supposed to use a certain blend of grapes, age them only in French oak, and age them in barrel and bottle for a specific length of time.”
He took off his sunglasses and used the opportunity to really look at her. He let his eyes soak in her strong chin, those wide soft lips, that perky nose, and her big dark eyes aimed over his shoulder. He let himself stare, even if she wouldn’t. “Why are you so intent on
