“Hate your dress,” Aish murmured as he handed her a glass of wine. Globe lanterns and up-lighting transformed the already magical courtyard of tinkling fountains, intricately patterned tiles, and lemon trees into something fairylike. Aish looked like a rock god Dionysus in the middle of it, devilish and tempting with his dark scruff, perfectly coiffed hair, no tie, and one-button grey suit that sleeked over his long body.
His smile was so banal he could have been talking about the weather. “Your dress makes me wanna rip it off, sink my teeth in to hold you still, and fuck you in front of all these people.”
Sofia smiled calmly to hide her shiver. “I’m not stopping you,” she murmured. “There’s a reason I’m naked beneath it.”
She watched his tongue tap at his thin upper lip. Met his dark eyes to see how close to the edge she’d pushed him. Then he moved in a whisper of languid body and fitted suit and sun and salt smell to stand by her side.
“Just came,” he said, low and dusky as he took her arm and wound it through his. “Feeling better.”
Sofia tucked her laugh into her wineglass.
He said he liked her neck, so Sofia gave him her neck in a shoulderless silk dress that matched the summer tan of her skin. It covered her torso and arms sleekly, banded at her waist, and fell to the ground. But it left her shoulders, chest, collarbones and neck bare. She’d emphasized her nakedness by loosely pinning back her hair at her nape, leaving off necklace or earrings. She’d put on a light touch of bath oil to make her skin gleam.
She’d dressed up for her people, the tireless villagers and growers and employees and interns celebrating the success of what could have been a tragic season. But she’d selected this dress for him.
She raised her glass to Manon, the French hotel executive who was watching the two of them, and gave a sympathetic grimace. Manon was stuck in a conversation with Juan Carlos Pascual and the queen.
Manon winked back.
“What’s he doing here?” Aish asked, openly glowering at Juan Carlos.
Sofia couldn’t help the cheap thrill it gave her. “He has every right to be here,” she said. “Whatever our differences, Consejo board members are still my people.”
“That asshole doesn’t know how good he has it,” he grumbled. “He doesn’t deserve your devotion.”
The declaration warmed her through.
The Consejo had been surprisingly subdued in recent days, either bowing to the direction of the wind or simply too consumed with their own duties to harass Sofia. While most of the Monte’s residents could relax until the next growing season began with pruning in late winter, winemakers and their employees would be busy the next few weeks with fermenting the must, pressing to separate the wine from the skin and seeds, transferring the wine into barrels for aging, racking the wine to clarify it, blending when warranted, and, ultimately, bottling for longer aging.
The extra hands of the superstar interns would be sorely missed at Bodega Sofia when they left in four days.
Sofia had four days with Aish standing tall and solid and supportive by her side.
When she realized the queen was closely mimicking their stance, her naked bronzed arm wound through Juan Carlos’s, Sofia tried to withdraw her own. But Aish caught her hand and gently held it against his bicep as he looked down at her.
“She should be so proud of you,” he said quietly. “Not...” He nodded at the spectacle of Queen Valentina in a teal gown cuddled up to a man who’d said horrible things about her daughter. The king and queen had separated to opposite ends of the party the instant they’d arrived in a blast of fanfare trumpets blown by men in livery. Her parents had clung to those red-and-gold flouncy uniforms like misers when her brother tried to eliminate them.
She couldn’t track when she’d given up on having a relationship with her father. Maybe she’d never entertained the notion. But her emotions for her mother were complicated. Sofia cursed herself for still needing affection...admiration...something from her after so much proof that she was never, ever, ever going to get it.
“You’ve got to be one of the more accomplished princesses in the long line of them,” Aish said.
Sofia tried to shrug off the intensity of his gaze. “Don’t be so sure. Princesa Margarita founded a leper colony and washed the children herself. And it is said Princesa Fabiana invented the radio five years before the Americans. Princesa Martina de Rosa conquered more women than Casanova.”
Aish huffed. “Okay. Other than Martina de Rosa, you’re more accomplished. Why does your mom have to be such a bitch?”
Sofia lowered her eyes to her wineglass. “I know her secret.”
“What’s that?”
He was too close and his gaze was too direct and his hand was too comforting. She met his eyes again. “Why would I tell you?”
To his credit, he didn’t flinch. But his hold on her hand became less possessive and he straightened.
“I was getting pushy again,” he said, and Sofia could just hear his low voice through the merriment of the party. “Sorry.”
She would not let his respectful retreat make her feel guilty.
Yes, he would be leaving in four days. And Sofia would wave him goodbye, following the exit strategy Namrita had planned in the initial #Aishia negotiations. They would allow distance, careers, and banal press releases about “still friends” and “hopes for the best” do the work of their “breakup.”
Because regardless of the amount of sex they’d been having and the perfection of the orgasms they shared and the fact that Aish had truly committed to the work here, she still hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to her. She would never forget, and if all of these laughing, smiling, winking, nudging people knew what he’d done, what he’d said to her as she lay terrified in an American hospital, they wouldn’t have thought of this as some fairy-tale
