Sofia took a deep drink of the Cerveza Estrella in her hand. Now was not the time for worry. She—along with her interns and employees—were here to celebrate.
Her ploy had worked. While she’d been loath to drag her niece and nephew into her media circus, when she mentioned it to her brother and sister-in-law, they reminded her that they’d been looking for a controlled environment to introduce the twins to the public and press. And Mateo had agreed that it was time to bring out the big guns.
The big guns had squeezable bodies and smelled like almond cakes and powdered sugar.
Namrita reported that the next day’s news cycle was dominated by images of the adorable prince and princess meeting the interns, stories about their delightfulness, and—thanks to the uncontrollable spontaneity of children—the video of Aish singing to them while Sofia looked on.
Namrita said the video’s numbers were surpassing the video that had gotten them into this mess. There’d not been another peep from the interns about going home.
Sofia turned around and leaned back between the railing’s flower boxes dripping red bougainvillea down the balcony. Through the crush of people laughing and talking and drinking, she met Namrita’s eyes and raised her beer in salute. This impromptu tapas crawl through the Monte’s taverns was keeping the good vibes flowing.
All she had to do was copy the behavior of the man she hated.
Aish liked to go off script. She could go off script, too, rip the interns’ attention away from him and his antics and focus it back on the real reason they were here—to help a royal family create a better future for their kingdom. She could pretend some affection for him just like he was pretending a yearning for her, give him the honor of meeting her muñecas first, and wipe away the discourse about her being petulant and cold.
She could hide her trembling as the degenerate rock star spoke to her precious ones, as he sang to them, soft and sweet, a song that he once sang soft and sweetly to her.
For a masochistic second, her masochistic mind wondered if they’d had a daughter, would he have sung to her, too?
But Sofia would never, could never have a daughter. And Aish was not a man who hung around to sing lullabies. Aish was the man who’d turned his back on her when she’d needed him most.
As the fairy lights strung around the balcony twinkled and a busy waiter slung garlic-soaked gambas on her high-top table and the conversation on the packed balcony swelled, Sofia put one hand over the other on her bottle to cover their shaking. She could do this. She could control her emotions and playact with him and be the princess her kingdom needed.
As if daring her to prove it, she looked up to find Aish Salinger staring at her as he lounged in the shadows of Restaurant Martín’s awning. Leaning against the stone wall, he was black clothes and black hair and intensely focused eyes, watching her through the vibrancy of the crowd.
She refused to be intimidated by his stillness when she’d only known him as kinetically energetic. She let him stare, raised her chin so he could see fully the deep V of her plum velvet dress, the heavy silver hoops that brushed her neck, the magenta lipstick at her mouth.
His side grin appeared as his eyes grew dark and devilish. He pushed off the wall and started toward her.
She grabbed the first people in reach. “Manon, Amelia.” She directed the hotel executive and wine blogger to the dish of sizzling shrimp on her table. “Por favor, don’t make me eat all of this by myself.”
Startled, the carefully coiffed French woman looked at Carmen Louisa, who they’d been talking to. They all gathered around.
Searching for a topic, Sofia nodded at the rustic glass tumblers they held. “How do you like the wine?” The Monte’s taverns served wine made locally as well as imported Tempranillo. Sofia hoped to shorten the distance their grapes had to travel to become great wines.
Amelia swirled the wine in her glass, took a sniff, tasted it along with a sip of air. “It’s jammy,” she said. “Lots of American oak.”
Sofia pointed at her glass. “May I?”
Aish joined them as Sofia took a sip. She noticed he carried a water bottle, then ignored him.
“That’s from the Villalobos vineyard on the sunny side of the Monte. They do high quad trellising to get even sun disbursement without having to drop leaves or fruit and they never...” As she spoke, Manon looked away and then down at the terra-cotta dish of shrimp, picking at it with a spare fork. Amelia narrowed her eyes behind her big glasses.
Aish drummed his long fingers on the table.
Show them who you really are. Show me.
“If you don’t like it, you can always offer it to the holy men who live in our mountains.”
She turned, held the glass over the balcony, and waited for the group to join her at the railing. Aish gave her the courtesy of not standing directly next to her. She closed her eyes and spoke:
“A los de las montañas
Quien nos abrigó y nos alimentó
Acepta nuestra ofrenda
Pero quédate ahí, entiende.”
Then she tipped the glass and poured a small measure of it into the river below.
“What does it mean?” Manon asked as Sofia returned Amelia’s glass.
“We believe our mountains are haunted by the hermetic monks who used to live in them,” Sofia said as she watched the water froth. “They were the first to teach
