A fake relationship could help Princesa Sofia save her kingdom. Only problem: She’ll have to fake it with the man who broke her heart.
Ten years ago, wild child Princesa Sofia Maria Isabel de Esperanza y Santos fell in fast crazy love with heartbreaker Aish Salinger during one California harvest season. Now, all grown up and with the future of her kingdom on her shoulders, she hates him as passionately as she once loved him.
Even if her body hasn’t gotten the hate memo.
Faking a relationship with the now-famous rock star for the press and public will ensure the success of her new winery and prosperity of her kingdom. All she has to do is grit her teeth and bear his tattooed presence in her village and winery–her home–for a month.
Trying to recover from his own scandal, fallen superstar Aish Salinger jumps at the chance to be near Sofia again. Leaving her was the biggest mistake he’s ever made, and he’s waited ten years to win her back.
He never counted on finding a woman who despised him so much she didn’t want to be anywhere near him.
A war of wills breaks out as the princess and rock star battle to control their fake relationship. She wants to dictate every action to keep him away from her. He wants to be as close as he can be. She’s already lost so much because of Aish–he won’t be the reason her people lose even more.
But he also won’t make her break her life’s most important vow: To never fall in love again.
Read Filthy Rich Book One, Lush Money, available now from Carina Press!
Also available from Angelina M. Lopez
and Carina Press
Lush Money
And stay tuned for book three in the Filthy Rich series by Angelina M. Lopez, coming in 2021!
Content Warning
Hate Crush talks about topics some readers may find difficult, including suicide and miscarriage.
Hate Crush
Angelina M. Lopez
To Mom and Clay, these books wouldn’t exist without your “crazy” idea to plant a vineyard. Thank you for including me in your dreams.
Author Note
The Monte del Vino Real is my make-believe kingdom in the mountains of northern Spain, but I leaned on the real and gorgeous wine-growing region of Rioja for inspiration. Go visit. Send pictures.
Contents
Prologue
Mid-August
September 1
September 1 Part Two
Ten Years Earlier
September 2
September 7
Ten Years Earlier
September 8
September 10
September 11
September 11 Part Two
Ten Years Earlier
September 15
September 16
September 16 Part Two
September 18
September 18 Part Two
September 22
September 22 Part Two
10 Years Earlier
September 26
September 26 Part Two
September 27
September 28
September 28 Part Two
September 28 Part Three
September 30
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Excerpt from Lush Money by Angelina M. Lopez
Prologue
The second bottle of fermented celery root gin went down much easier than the first.
His stylist was going to kill him for trading his Cartier sunglasses for the bottles. But as he slumped on a vegan leather couch in the VIP tent with his arm slung around his new best friend—a hemp-wearing gin maker wearing thousand-dollar shades—Aish Salinger thought the trade was totally worth it. After a year of sobriety, the foul-tasting liquor blurred the edges of his vision so the open flaps of the tent, the gyrating dancers in the distance, the burning fires, and the endless expanse of hot, white, flat Nevada desert looked like it used to. Exciting. Welcoming. Like a place he wanted to be.
The liquor pillowed him in the memories of the other times he’d attended this art and music festival with John Hamilton, his bass player and lifelong best friend, at his side, groupies and hangers-on answering every beck and call. The liquor convinced him that he wanted to be here, dressed like a Mad Max tool in graffitied leather jeans and no shirt, flashing his famous tattoos, instead of being home. Alone.
The liquor gave him his new best friend.
“Got a question,” his new best friend said above the distant beats of techno coming from the main stage. Propped against Aish, the man reeked of pot and patchouli and unwashed days in the desert. But that’s what you did for your best friend. You accepted them, stink and all. You never pushed them away.
The man’s name was Buck. Or Steve. Aish called him dude. “What’s that, dude?”
“Who’d you guys write that song about? You know the one, ‘In You.’ Song’s good for rubbing one out.”
Aish tugged his head off the couch and looked blearily around the tent. The festival headliner was playing so the velvet couches and satin play pits were empty in the glow of the chandeliers. And Aish’s once-packed entourage had disappeared with the stink of scandal and a failing career.
Still, he couldn’t be too careful with a secret he’d kept close for ten years, a secret that journalists and groupies and spies had been trying to squeeze out of him since ‘In You’ exploded on the charts and unleashed their band, Young Son, on the world.
But as Aish smacked the taste of spoiled celery root in his mouth, he thought he’d never met a trustworthier guy than Buck. Or Steve.
“Dude, not naming names, but she was amazing,” he said, closing his eyes as he settled his head back on the couch, feeling soothed and tied in knots like he always did whenever he thought of ‘In You.’ The song was pure sex, summoned the sensations of the purest sex with her.
He never should have let the label release it. “I fucked up so bad.”
“What’d you do?”
“Broke her heart.” He used to think it was the worst thing he’d ever done. “I was a douche. Young, so stupid.” Memories of her lit like a constellation in his brain. “She was one in a million.”
“You sound like you loved her. I thought she just rocked your cock.”
Rocked your cock. Could Aish turn that into a song? It was better than what he’d been coming up with on his own.
“Yeah, she did,” he said, dragging his fingers through his hair the way she used to, slow and tugging. “I miss her.”
“I’d miss her too if she was as hot as you say in that song. Miss her on my junk, you know what I’m sayin’?” He laughed and elbowed Aish.
His new best friend was kind of an asshole. But his old best friend had been kind of an asshole, too.
At the disloyal thought, Aish tried to straighten. “Don’t talk about her like that,” he grumbled. When had his neck turned to jelly? His best friend had turned into quadruplets.
“Sorry, man, no offense,” Buck or Steve said, raising his eight palms into the air. “What’s she doing now?”
Buck or Steve was a good guy. And there were so many of him. It’d been a long time since Aish had talked to anyone but his manager. It’d been a long time since he’d talked about her. “She’s opening a winery.”
“For real? Classy for such a dirty girl.”
“Yeah. Yeah, she’s real classy. Royally classy.” He huffed at his own joke. Could that be a song?
Buck or Steve laughed dirty. “I bet you’d help her op
en her winery real good.”
“That’d be nice,” Aish said dreamily. “Soaking in the Spanish air, getting my head on straight...”
“Wait a fucking second.” His new best friend’s sharp voice forced Aish to focus, forced him to see that he was just one man, one man with eyes that weren’t as blurry and red rimmed as they’d seemed when they’d first started drinking. “A rich slut into wine? In Spain? You’re not talking about that princess, are you? What’s her name?” He snapped his fingers and the sound was percussive over the thump of the headliner’s beats. Then he pointed a dirty fingernail at Aish.
“Princess Sofia! That’s who ‘In You’ is about.”
“Shhhhhhh,” Aish said, trying to concentrate as he looked around the tent again. But when he steadied his head, the tent kept swirling. He closed his eyes. “Dude, keep your voice down.”
“Princess Sofia. She’s starting a winery? I thought she was in rehab.” Aish tried to open his eyes. But the gorge was rising in his throat. And the man’s words were crowding his ears. “Motherfucking Princess Sofia. Wasn’t she caught fucking an entire boy band? Her winery’s gonna be a 24-7 orgy. You think you can get me in there, too? Damn, I’d like a go at her.”
Aish was going to kill his new best friend. He was going to shove his hand down Buck or Steve’s throat, rip out his tonsils, and dangle them in front of his eyes as the first body part he’d lose if he ever touched her or thought about her or told another living soul.
But a familiar sensation welled up in Aish.
And instead of violence, the video from the camera hidden in a fern would show rock star Aish Salinger lurching out of view. The mic hidden in Buck or Steve’s poncho would pick up—over the thump of techno-surf—Aish Salinger heaving in a corner.
* * *
The viral video might have actually carried a virus. Because when the woman they were discussing saw the video the next day, a woman with a kingdom on the line and nothing going her way, a woman who’d blocked that catastrophic first love from her thoughts, she had to run for the bathroom, too.
Mid-August
Princesa Sofia Maria Isabel de Esperanza y Santos stood in the arctic cool and ancient dark of her wine cellar, a hub for the endless tunnels that ran beneath her repurposed monastery, and tugged out the thick bung from a barrel. She purposefully placed the bung next to the hole—she’d lost them to pockets and distraction in years past—and stuck the wine thief into the barrel. The Tempranillo that slowly filled the glass tube sparkled like a ruby in the dim light of the LED lantern. She pulled the thief out when it had been filled to a precise amount, immediately plugged the barrel, and emptied the wine into her glass.
She gave the wine four hard swirls, the exact number she’d given wine from the other barrels she’d sampled, and studied it in the lantern light for imperfections. No off coloring. No unexpected lees or residue. The wine slid silkily down the inside of the bowl, just as she wanted it to.
She leaned her nose and upper lip into the bowl and inhaled, mouth open. Dark plum, cherry, tobacco, the rich, decadent aromas had been subdued by the year in American oak barrels. Screw the Consejo Regulador del Monte, the regulatory board that demanded the wines age in French oak to get their stamp of approval. These grapes from a sunny northern corner of the Monte del Vino Real cried for a different technique to display their best flavors.
Sofia was princess of the Monte del Vino Real, the small winegrowing principality nestled high among the Picos de Europa in Northern Spain, and legend had it that the juice from the grapes flowed through her family’s veins. Since it was her lifeblood, no one knew better than her what the grapes of the Monte del Vino Real needed to become great wines. No one cared more. No one had trained harder or convinced more people or had more at stake. It was up to her, the first winemaker in a five-hundred-year legacy of royal winegrowers, to convince the world that the Monte del Vino Real was capable of creating some of the most sophisticated, palate-tempting, tourism-building, and revenue-generating wines on the planet.
With a careful and restrained breath, Princesa Sofia put the glass to her lips and upended it, chugging the wine down like una cerveza light. She drank until the glass was dry. Just as she had from the other wine barrels she’d sampled.
She rubbed her sleeve across her lips and burped.
Overhead lights flared on as the cellar door at the top of the stairs crashed open. “¿Dónde demonios estás? ¡Sal ahora mismo!” yelled her winery manager.
Only the constant state of horror, shock, and fury she’d been living in for the last forty-eight hours kept Sofia from reacting to the crash, the blinding lights, and her employee telling her to “Get your ass up here.”
And the wine. The wine helped, too.
“It’s fine,” said an all-business voice, also from the top of the stairs. “I’ll meet her down there.”
Sofia slumped on the closest barrel and kept her focus on her empty wineglass instead of on the improvements she’d made to this chamber beneath the medieval monastery. The spectacular cathedral space now boasted a two-stories-high wood-beam ceiling and black, Corinthian marble floors. Barrels branded with Bodega Sofia were stacked two deep on the sides. At the room’s edges, cut-stone archways led to tunnels that ran beneath the Monte, providing an underworld of primeval pathways that Sofia knew like the back of her hand.
This was the heart of Bodega Sofia, where the stone and the cold blocked out everything and allowed Sofia’s sensitive nose and palate to do the intricate work of creating great wines that proudly displayed the thousand-year history of her land and people.
Sofia shut down the images of this space filled with people relishing their first sip of Bodega Sofia wine. She wished her brain was as empty as her glass.
As they descended, the boots of the PR woman rang louder against the metal and the winery manager’s grumble grew more distinct. “... Just been hiding down here and I can’t get her to do anything...”
“I’ll take care of it,” the American promised as they turned the corner of the stairs. Sofia marveled again at how tiny and delicate the woman who was taking on the Herculean task of managing Sofia’s PR woes appeared to be. In an emerald-green baby doll dress, her black hair cut into eyebrow-brushing bangs and a bob, Namrita Mirakhur looked like a fragile hipster butterfly. What Sofia had come to realize after months of working with her on a winery launch plan was that the PR exec was about as fragile as a steel-punching drill bit.
Sofia propped her back against the cold rock walls of her cellar and tipped her empty glass at the women as they noticed her.
Carmen Louisa, her winery manager, stopped in her muck boot tracks. “¿Estás borracha?”
“No, I’m not drunk,” Sofia replied in English, for the sake of the PR rep. “Not yet.”
Sofia had known and looked up to Carmen Louisa for the entirety of her twenty-nine years; it was immensely soothing to play the teenager around her. With her caramel and curly shoulder-length hair and a body used daily as a tool, the forty-eight-year-old woman looked like a model hired to play the role of a winegrower, rather than the accomplished grower she’d been all of her life.
Right now, she looked like she was going to seriously blow her top.
Namrita put up a calming hand. “How’s it going?” she asked, tucking her arms around herself.
It was chilly down here, just like Sofia needed it. “Bien,” she replied through a fake smile.
Carmen Louisa scoffed. “No, she is not bien. She’s ignoring the phone and her emails, thank God you sent that press release or people would think she was dead, no sé cuando she ate last y she says she’s topping off the barrels, does she look like she’s topping off the barrels to you y no sé qué hacer y ella no me habla...”
Carmen Louisa’s university-learned English went to hell when she got wrought up.
Both of her brothers and her best friend Henry had given
up texting or calling. They didn’t try to visit. Sofia knew the tunnel system that ran into the mountains better than anyone. When she’d played escondidas with her brother Mateo in it, she’d always won. Not even the power of being the next king gave Mateo the confidence that he could find Sofia if she wanted to hide.
Namrita put up a slender hand again.
“I know this is rough,” she said, in her trademark not-going-to-sugar-coat-it voice. “You’ve been working your ass off and then this video comes out two weeks before launch. Things might seem hopeless but they’re not going to get any better with you hiding down here.”
The majority of the wine world had already treated Bodega Sofia as a joke, calling it the worthless vanity project of a party-girl princess. Wine industry influencers had essentially ignored her invitation to take part in an all-expenses-paid launch of the winery and its adjacent luxury hotel. And here at home, many in the village were concerned and suspicious about Sofia’s efforts to innovate Monte winemaking.
“I’m sorry to ask, but I have to,” Namrita said. “Is it true? Were you in a relationship with Aish Salinger?”
His name. A name she’d successfully blocked out for ten years. Sofia slipped her hand into her front pocket, palming her hip, and pressed back against the cold rock wall. She nodded once.
“Okay,” Namrita said, gentle for once. “And have you seen him since the relationship ended?”
Gracias a Dios, no. She’d thought the universe had been kind.
After that disastrous autumn, Sofia put her energies into getting her dual degrees in enology and wine chemistry from the University of Bordeaux, learning all she could apprenticing to top winemakers, and filling in for her absent brother and careless parents as a leader for the Monte. Once her brother, Príncipe Mateo, found his brilliant billionaire bride and took his rightful place at the helm of the kingdom five years ago, Sofia had left the Monte and filled her days developing a chemical to correct a wine fault that had long harassed the industry. Her nights...well, she’d learned in her wild-child teen years that pretty boys and parties were an effective distraction from whatever she didn’t want to think about.
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 1