The only problem, he’d told Sofia in her office, was that the white, treated, mesh cloth was still in the developmental phase because it was prohibitively expensive. That’s probably why Sofia and Mateo hadn’t heard of it.
Once she’d had her brother’s buy-in—a buy-in that had come intimidatingly fast as Aish had tried to sound knowledgeable and confident standing in the man’s fucking castle—she hadn’t hesitated to buy all the material the thrilled manufacturer could provide at a moment’s notice. The euro amount when Aish had signed the invoice as they’d loaded the bolts into the plane had made his eyes pop. He knew she was rich. He was rich. But he wasn’t that rich.
And she’d dropped that fortune based on his word.
Fuck, he hoped this worked.
Sofia stepped into the spotlight. “So you know your crew assignments and where you’re going. I’ve made recommendations on your sheets for rows or locations that are the most vulnerable. But growers, you know your vineyards best.”
The spotlight outlined her body in a white shirt and dirty canvas overalls. She’d tied back her hair with a bandanna and the brown-caramel-blond stood up in tufts and curls. Her pointed chin was high; her neck was long and sleek and perfect.
His fingertips tingled as he listened to her command her army.
“I wish we could protect every grape in the Monte, but we can’t. So please be mindful; this shade cloth is finite. Buena suerte and let’s hope tomorrow’s sunrise is kind.”
The manufacturer only had so much shade cloth to sell. So Sofia and Mateo had to prioritize which vineyards and rows would be getting it: young Tempranillo Vino Real vines first, then vineyards on the Monte’s eastern ridge getting the intense western sun, and finally, dry-farmed vineyards that couldn’t be irrigated.
Aish shook Devonte’s hand before the manager headed to the trucks with the growers, workers, and superstar interns who never thought they’d be participating in a life-and-death struggle for the survival of the Monte. Namrita had sent the press away after Sofia’s speech.
He and Sofia were left in the roaring spotlights with their crew of nine. They broke into three groups to cover this quadrant of young Tempranillo Vino Real vines, and neither Aish nor Sofia fought the assumption that they would be in the same group. As the vineyard worker in their group went to cut lengths of fabric, Aish held up the loose cloth in the example row. “Who wants to go down on their knees first?” he asked.
Sometimes, being an ass was the only way he could get through the enormity of his feelings for this woman.
“Definitely you,” she said, rolling her eyes with a smirk.
He could almost imagine they weren’t at each other’s throats a week ago.
She took the cloth from his hand and attached it, tight but not too tight, to the next trellis stake. She moved further down and Aish bent to attach it under the grapes. He could smell her, spicy and sweet, mixed up in the scents of green growth and ripe fruit.
“I should be annoyed that a rock star knows something about the wine industry that Mateo and I don’t,” she said.
He duck-walked to her in the dirt; the yoga he’d reintroduced into his morning routine made it easier. “I thought I noticed a tic in your brother’s jaw.”
“You saw that?” She grinned down at him. But then, as if realizing, her smile fell away and she turned her face back toward the canopy. One good day wasn’t going to erase ten years of hurt.
“Everything I know is because of Justin,” he said.
“You hadn’t planned on staying involved with the winery,” she said into the leaves, like maybe he wouldn’t hear.
“That was before I met you.”
They attached the cloth for a few yards in silence.
“What do I have to do with it?” she finally asked.
“You made the work interesting. Romantic.” He sped up talking to cover up that word. “You were the first person to point out how much he wanted my involvement and how lucky I was to have someone need me that way.”
He would call his uncle when he got back to his room and tell him he’d helped save a kingdom’s harvest. Hopefully. “He’s a successful Japanese-American winemaker whose mother was born in an internment camp. I don’t want that legacy lost, or worse, sold off to a conglomerate when he’s gone.”
He glanced at the fruit before he hooked the cloth underneath it; there were a couple of tired-looking grapes on the cluster, but not the intense shrivel he’d expected. “And when you take care of something like this, watch it grow, year after year, you feel essential. Like being a parent. You know what that feels like.”
Sofia had circled around the end of the row and Aish stood, flexed his legs, before moving around to join her.
She was staring stock-still into the canopy.
“Sofia?” he asked, concerned by the paleness of her profile in the spotlight.
She turned her face away and snagged the cloth on the pole. “Actually, I don’t know what that feels like.”
“Wha—”
“Bodega Sofia is important.” She was moving down the row away from him, and Aish crouched and hurried to catch up. “But if it doesn’t work out, no one will miss me if I’m gone.”
He plopped to his knees then reached over to snag her by her overalls pocket before she could move further away. This far into the row, her face was in shadow, with only touches of light coming through the canopy hinting at what was going on in her eyes, on her
