Sofia’s heart jackhammered in her chest. She felt actual pain behind the bone. She didn’t want to share this memory lane with him. She didn’t want to know that he was involved with his uncle’s winery. She didn’t want to think about the bunkhouse and all the memories under its roof. She didn’t want...she didn’t want him here.
She lurched to standing, her chair rolling back and smacking against the file cabinet. “What is this?” she spat. “What are you doing?”
“I just want to... I’m trying to...” He ran his hand over his forearm, a move she remembered when he was stressed. He stilled and gripped it hard. “I’m trying to reach you, Sofia. I’m trying to get you to hate me a little less.”
Hijo de puta. Anger roared through her. After what he’d done to her.
She put her hands on her desk and leaned toward him. “That will never happen. You can fool the interns and the public and the press, but I know the truth about you. When push comes to shove, you don’t care about anyone but yourself. The rest of the world can call you a down-on-his-luck rock star, but I know you are the most selfish, self-involved man-child I have ever met.” Aish has thrown himself into the vineyard labor, they said. He’s been getting nothing in return but a cold shoulder. “You have turned me, my winery, and my efforts into a farce for your own benefit. You’ll destroy a kingdom so you can record another album of pop ditties.”
His stood and dropped his hands on her desk, too. “You won’t listen to Young Son so you don’t know what I’m recording,” he said, his powerful jaw flexing. “And you’ve got me all wrong, I am trying to help. If you would just start working with me instead of against me...”
Let him playact caring for the cameras. Let him touch and stroke her when it felt like being raked over coals.
“Follow my rules and—”
“They’re not working.”
“If you would stop going off script then we could—”
He laughed, harsh and cynical. “The script? Sofia!” He shook his head and she wanted to launch herself across the desk and claw his face. “You already hate me, so I can say what no one else will. You’re boring. You’re stiff and wooden. The interns are falling asleep out there. You look even less interested in entertaining them than fucking me. It’s not fair what people were saying about you before the launch, but trading in the party girl for the automaton isn’t working either. It’s like you unscrewed the real Sofia’s light and stuffed it in a drawer.”
Sofia slammed her palms against the desk. “The ‘real Sofia?’” Fury tinged her vision red. “You think the real Sofia is that girl who scraped and begged for your attention. That girl hasn’t existed in ten years and good riddance. Especially when the real Aish is this man-child who cowers behind his manager and hides in his house for a year.”
“Stop calling me a man-child,” he said, his black eyes flashing.
The rage washing over her was cleansing and glorious. “You’re not one? Only a man-child needs a crew of people to dress him every morning. Or needs special arrangements so he doesn’t catch piojillos from the interns. Or needs a constant companion. With John gone, you’re turning your manager into your new lap dog?”
“Fuck you, Sofia.”
“You’re the princess here. The pretty California boy faces one storm in his entire sunny life and dissolves into a puddle.”
He shoved his face, harsh and gorgeous, toward her. “Better a puddle than a fucking ice queen. You think this act is going to make people forget that you made out with that married soccer player or danced naked in that fountain or...how many people were at your orgy in St. Moritz?”
His checklist paused her anger. Yes, an orgy had broken out at her ski chateau. But Sofia hadn’t been there; she’d been in Madrid, consulting for her chemical’s manufacturer, who’d been opening their third processing plant.
The words escaped her mouth without her permission. “You said it wasn’t anyone’s business what I did.”
“It’s not!” He stopped and swallowed. “That doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
“Why?”
“Because I never stopped caring.”
All the anger whooshed out of Sofia’s system. “What?”
The muscles in Aish’s jaw did a jig. “I should have picked up the phone ten years ago.” Then his black-eyed stare became resolute. “I should have said I was sorry for—”
“No,” she said. Pain sluiced through her.
“Sofia—”
“No! Roman!” Her brother immediately put his hand on the door handle.
Moving quick with his surfer’s grace, Aish came around her desk toward her, his hand reaching out. “Sofia, please, there’s things I need to—”
She scrambled to the other side and grabbed an empty wine bottle by the neck. She lifted and waved it at him. “I swear if you say another word I’ll—”
Instead of coming in to thrash him, Roman spoke to someone outside the glass. Sofia froze. And saw intern Amelia Hill staring in at them with huge eyes.
Amelia was a wine blogger and a voice Sofia desperately wanted on her side. As one of the few black female master sommeliers, she was a writer who championed innovation over tired traditions. But she’d been skeptical of Sofia’s efforts so far. This morning, Amelia had sharply questioned the wisdom of putting a state-of-the-art winemaking facility in the bones of a medieval monastery. And she always looked embarrassed when Sofia tried to banter with Aish.
Was she the one talking to the press? She’d certainly have a story to share now. It looked like Sofia was about to brain Aish Salinger with a wine bottle.
This was why Sofia wanted rules and scripts. Yes, to manage their interactions. Yes, to control him.
But mostly to control herself.
Because left to her own devices, abandoned to her needy impulses and unruly emotions, Sofia destroyed her world better than Aish Salinger ever could. Proof was here, right now, as she gaped impotently at the wine blogger, quivering
