“The old rules no longer allow for wines that meet modern needs.” She seethed behind her set smile. “We have better-developed palates, world competition, and climate change affecting the grapes. Let’s just say that the Consejo Regulador del Monte and I have agreed to disagree.”
“But it’s more than that,” Manon Boucher, the French hotel executive, spoke up. Others murmured behind her. “They won’t give you their stamp. Without that stamp, you can’t export your wine. If you can’t export it, I can’t buy it.”
The round eye of the camera recorded it all.
“Currently, the Consejo has expressed some reservations about my intention to forge a new way.” He wondered if anyone else could tell she was barely clinging to her smile. “I believe that in time, they will see the wisdom of my plan.”
She said so many words while saying nothing. These were nineteen knowledgeable wine folk with valid concerns. Sofia couldn’t gloss over their skepticism with idyllic storytelling.
Aish pushed her. “So you think you know better than people older than you, who’ve been making wine longer than you, who are drawing on generations of winemaking experience?”
“Yes,” she flared. Now he had her full attention. “Tradition has bred complacency and laziness. The entire world has changed but the Monte is stuck in amber. By letting the grapes lead, not the rules, I will create wines that people crave to drink.” Her eyes promised him fire and brimstone. “The Consejo can keep their stamps when my wines are streaming out of here in the suitcases of people desperate to get their hands on it.” She snapped her fingers in the air.
“¡Eso!” yelled one of the locals as her people hooted and clapped, breaking the tension and causing the group to laugh. The journalists got every word. Sofia dropped her glare from Aish, and he felt like a cloud had moved over the sun.
In her natural state, Sofia was Spanish to her core, full of bravado and hyperbole. Playing the restrained instructor wasn’t her gig. And as an expert in reading a crowd, Aish knew the act wasn’t going to change her interns from skeptics to believers. Only her passion would do that.
But if he kept pissing her off to prompt it out of her, no one was going to buy #Aishia. So he stepped close to her, fuck the three feet of space, and reached for her arm. It was warm through her sleeve, strong although he could wrap his entire hand around it, and he stroked down until he lightly gripped her hand. Folded his big fingers through her delicate ones.
“Sofia. Of course, you know better than a bunch of old guys,” he murmured to her bent head, intimate but loud enough that the others could hear. “But I had to give you crap about it.” The sun had warmed her hair and he wanted to bury his nose in its cinnamon-sweet scent.
When she punched him in the right arm this time, there was nothing light about it. “Just you wait, Mr. Salinger,” she said, her grin manic as she looked up at him. “Revenge will be sweet.”
She dropped his hand and moved away from him, looking again to the interns. “Today, we’re going to perform a green harvest. We will clip some of the underperforming clusters so the remaining clusters receive more of the vines’ energy and nutrients. Each of you will be working with one of our vineyard crew...”
Her people paired with an intern and she handed them gloves and hand clippers. Carmen Louisa appeared at Aish’s side. “You’re with me, señor.” She didn’t look happy about it.
Aish wasn’t happy about the Timberlands, tight jeans, and skintight white T-shirt he wore, clothes he’d let the stylist put on him without thinking about spending hours bending over in a vineyard.
Devonte joined him as they followed her to a row. “All you had to do was stick to the script, man,” he whispered.
“I know but...they’re not buying what she’s selling. You see that, right?”
Devonte pointed a finger at Aish. “Whatever steam’s building in your head, stop. We’ve got a plan; we’re gonna stick with it.”
He flipped around and walked toward the Jeep, where he was going to sit in the shade and work his phone. Aish adjusted his balls in his ridiculous jeans and wished he could join him.
As he slipped on the gloves, a frisson went up his spine. He looked up and saw Sofia watching him from another row. Even from here, he could see that little troubled line she used to get between her eyebrows. Her quick brain was working on a problem she hadn’t figured out.
That she was cogitating him gave him his first spark of hope since he’d stepped into Spain.
Aish began clipping off the grape clusters with too much shatter—fruit that didn’t fertilize—or that had a predominance of unripe fruit. Carmen Louisa watched him for a minute, gave a huff, and then left him alone.
Aish distracted himself from the growing burn on his pale arms and the discomfort in his too tight jeans with the spark growing in his chest.
He could help her. He’d come here to help her. Yeah, he’d ignored a couple of her rules and, yeah, she might make him pay. But he knew how to make a crowd love you—he’d been practicing it all his life—and he could put that knowledge to use helping her, even if she was too goddamn stubborn to realize she needed the help.
September 7
Sitting at her desk in the winery’s glassed-in office, Sofia watched the popular entertainment news channel on mute, her stomach in knots since Namrita had run in twenty minutes ago with a reporter on the phone. The reporter had waited until the last second to call; Sofia had given the hijo de puta a firm “No comment.”
Namrita and Carmen Louisa watched from behind her. The grower squeezed Sofia’s shoulder when Disgruntled Interns Threaten to Abandon Party-Princess’s Winery appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Sofia turned up the volume.
“...felt like they’d received a
