Sofia slipped her hand into Aish’s—because how could she not—then saw how the sound person wiped his eye, how the camera operator put a hand over her heart.
Aish continued, “I’d known since right before John died—I mean, when I thought he’d died—that he’d stolen songs. I didn’t know before then, but I also wasn’t following up on all the rumors. And I’ve got to take responsibility for that. So, I’m sorry to every hardworking musician who heard me sing a lyric or play a melody that you wrote. I’m relinquishing all royalties to Young Son’s songs; we’re gonna use it to pay those bands we stole from. And I’m...breaking up the band. Young Son is over.”
The squeeze on her fingers let Sofia know how hard this was for him. She squeezed right back. She’d be here for him.
“Will you continue to make music?” Amelia asked.
“Definitely,” Aish said immediately. “I can’t not. It’s going to be up to you guys to decide if you want to listen to it.”
Sofia squeezed his hand again, this time in excitement. Aish, on his own, out of the shadow of John and with no directives other than that of his fiery, artistic heart. She couldn’t wait to hear every song inside of him.
Amelia smiled, looked at them both through her big glasses. “So now, the question that everyone’s been waiting for...” She put up her hands. “What’s going to happen to #Aishia?”
Aish looked over at her.
“I don’t want to demand anything you’re not willing to give.”
Sofia took her hand from his and clasped both of hers in her lap. She could see the worry on Amelia’s face, saw the wide eyes of the camera person. She took a deep breath. She was about to declare to the whole world, adamantly and definitively, what she needed.
“From the beginning, Aish has literally worn his emotions on his sleeve,” she said. “I’m the one people are unsure about. I’d like to clear up any doubt about my feelings now.”
She pushed off the bar stool and stood. “I fell in love with Aish Salinger when I was nineteen years old. He broke my heart, and I swore to myself that I would never fall in love again.”
She began to lift the hem of her short dress. “I swore it as I walked into the tattoo shop in Madrid, six months after we’d parted.” She leaned on the wobbly legs of her wild child as she began to reveal her upper thigh. “I swore it as I showed the artist what I’d drawn, what I wanted her to ink on me.” She’d worn black, high-cut briefs, no more revealing than a swimsuit, but high enough to show what was on her hip. A hip she was showing to the world now, holding the skirt up on one side.
A hip she was showing to Aish.
“For those of you who don’t know,” she said, “Aish means fire. It means passion and inspiration.”
She looked down at it, at this constant reminder she’d inked on herself, thinking it meant one thing when it actually meant something else, this tattoo on the same spot where her mother had tried to cut away her ability to love. It was a flame two hands’ width long, at the bend of her thigh and up her waist, a gorgeous flame of yellow and oranges and blue black that reminded her of Aish’s hair. Of the star he’d inked into his chest.
Just beneath the flame, in simple black ink, was one word: Siempre.
Always.
She thought she wanted a reminder, forever, for always, that Aish’s love had burned and scarred. But the understanding that Aish hadn’t turned his back on her when she needed him, the belief that he would have been at her side in an instant, and the knowledge that he’d mourned her absence every day for the last ten years—just as she’d mourned his—helped her realize what her heart had been hiding.
She would never hide her brave, brilliant, loving heart again.
Keeping her skirt high, she turned her head and looked directly into Aish’s eyes. “I swore to myself I’d never fall in love again. It was an easy promise to keep. I couldn’t fall in love again because I’d never fallen out of love with you.”
Then she turned her back on the camera. She turned her back on the crew and the lights and the world and focused on the only thing that mattered: his stunned, open, glorious gaze as she surrounded him in her arms.
“Me too, Aish,” she murmured against his mouth. “I’ve always loved you. I’ll always love you. Let’s make the impossible come true.”
Then in the heart of her castle, in the heart of her kingdom, Princesa Sofia kissed the man who would always be her always.
* * *
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Acknowledgments
Hoo boy, thank you, Kerri Buckley for being honest about what this “first book written under contract” needed for improvement, and for believing that this debut author could pull it off.
Paloma Beneito Arias, I met you at a party and you don’t even read romance. And still, you went over the Spanish culture and language in this book with a fine-toothed comb. Thank you for your enthusiastic assistance, your diligence, your thoroughness, and your overall joy in a novel that still needed A LOT of work when you saw it!
And thank you to Peter, Gabriel and Simon, who’ve been so supportive on this journey, even though having a writer-on-deadline in the house has certainly changed our lives. You listen, you support, you cheerlead—it’s what everyone deserves but certainly not what everyone gets. I’m so appreciative I get it from you!
About the Author
Angelina M. Lopez wrote “arthur” when her kindergarten teacher asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. In the years since she learned to spell the word correctly, she’s been a journalist for an acclaimed city newspaper, a freelance magazine writer, and a content marketer for small businesses. At long last, she found her way back to “author.”
Angelina writes sexy, contemporary stories about strong women and the confident men lucky enough to fall in love with them. The fact that her parents own a vineyard in California’s Russian River Valley might imply a certain hedonism about her; it’s not true. She’s a wife and a mom who lives in the suburbs of Washington, DC. She makes to-do lists with perfectly drawn check boxes. She checks them with glee.
You can find more about her at her website, www.AngelinaMLopez.com, and at @AngelinaMLo on Instagram and Twitter.
And available now from Carina Press and Angelina M. Lopez
A marriage of convenience and three nights a month.
That’s all the sultry, self-made billionaire wants from the impoverished prince.
And at the end of the year, she’ll grant him his divorce...with a settlement large enough to save his beloved kingdom.
Read on to be swept away by Lush Money, the first book in Angelina M. Lopez’s Filthy Rich series and the story that started it all...
January: Night One
Mateo Ferdinand Juan Carlos de Esperanza y Santos—the “Golden Prince,” the only son of King Felipe, and heir to the tiny principality of Monte del Vino Real in northwestern Spain—had dirt under his fingernails, a twig of Tempranillo FOS 02 in his back pocket, and a burning desire to wipe the mud of his muck boots on the white carpet where he waited. But he didn’t. Under the watchful gaze of the executive assistant, who stared with disapproving eyes from his standing desk, Mateo kept his boots tipped back on the well-worn heels and his white-knuckled fists jammed into the pits of his UC Davis t-shirt. Staying completely still and deep breathing while he sat on the white couch was the only way he kept himself from storming away from this lunacy.
What the fuck had his father gotten him into?
A breathy ding sighed from the assistant’s laptop. He granted Mateo the tiniest of smil
es. “You may go in now,” he said, hustling to the chrome-and-glass doors and pulling one open with a flourish. The assistant didn’t seem to mind the dirt so much now as his eyes traveled—lingeringly—over Mateo’s dusty jeans and t-shirt.
Mateo felt his niñera give him a mental smack upside the head when he kept his baseball cap on as he entered the office. But he was no more willing to take his cap off now than he’d been willing to change his clothes when the town car showed up at his lab, his ears ringing with his father’s screams about why Mateo couldn’t refuse.
The frosted-glass door closed behind him, enclosing him in a sky-high corner office as regal as any throne room. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed off Coit Tower to the west, the Bay Bridge to the east, and the darkening hills of San Francisco in between. The twinkling lights of the city flicked on like discovered jewels in the gathering night, adornment for this white office with its pale woods, faux fur pillows, and acrylic side tables. This office at the top of the fifty-five-floor Medina Building was opulent, self-assured. Feminine.
And empty.
He’d walked in the Rose Garden with the U.S. President, shaken the hand of Britain’s queen, and kneeled in the dirt with the finest winemakers in Burgundy, but he stood in the middle of this empty palatial office like a jackass, not knowing where to sit or how to stand or who to yell at to make this situación idiota go away.
A door hidden in the pale wood wall opened. A woman walked out, drying her hands.
Dear God, no.
She nodded at him, her jowls wriggling as she tossed her paper towel back into the bathroom. “Take a seat, Príncipe Mateo. I’ll prepare Roxanne to speak with you.”
Of course. Of course Roxanne Medina, founder and CEO of Medina Now Enterprises, wasn’t a sixty-year-old woman with a thick waist in medical scrubs. But “prepare” Roxanne to...
Ah.
The nurse leaned across the delicate, Japanese-style desk and opened a laptop perched on the edge. She pushed a button and a woman came into view on the screen. Or at least, the top of a woman’s head came into view. The woman was staring down through black-framed glasses, writing something on a pad of paper. A sunny, tropical day loomed outside the balcony door behind her.
Inwardly laughing at the farce of this situation, Mateo took a seat in a leather chair facing the screen. Apparently, Roxanne Medina couldn’t be bothered to meet the man she wanted to marry in person.
Two minutes later, he was no longer laughing. She hadn’t looked at him. She just kept scribbling, giving him nothing to look at but the palm tree swaying behind her and the part in her dark, shiny hair.
He glanced at the nurse. She stared back, blank-eyed. He’d already cleared his throat twice.
Fuck this. “Excuse me,” he began.
“Helen, it sounds like the prince may have a bit of a dry throat.” Roxanne Medina spoke, finally, without raising her eyes from her document. “Could you get him a glass of water?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
As the nurse headed to a decanter, Mateo said, “I don’t need water. I’m trying to find out...”
Roxanne Medina raised one delicate finger to the screen. Without looking up. Continuing to write. Without a word or a sound, Roxanne Medina shushed him, and Mateo—top of his field, head of his lab, a goddamned príncipe—he let her, out of shock and awe that another human being would treat him this way.
He never treated people this way.
He moved to stand, to storm out, when a water glass appeared in front of his face and a hair was tugged from his head.
“Ow!” he yelled as he turned to glare at the granite-faced nurse holding a strand of his light brown hair.
“Fantastic, I see the tests have begun.”
Mateo turned back to the screen and pushed the water glass out of his way so he could see the woman who finally deigned to speak to him.
“Tests?”
She was beautiful. Of course she was beautiful. When you have billions of dollars at your disposal, you can look any way you want. Roxanne Medina was sky-blue eyed, high-breasted and lush-lipped, with long and lustrous black hair. On the pixelated screen, he couldn’t tell how much of her was real or fake. He doubted even her stylist could remember what was Botoxed, extended, and implanted.
Still, she was striking. Mateo closed his mouth with a snap.
Her slow, sensual smile let him know she’d seen him do it.
Mateo glowered as Roxanne Medina slipped her delicate black reading glasses up on her head and aimed those searing blue eyes at him. “These tests are just a formality. We’ve tested your father and sister and there were no genetic surprises.”
“Great,” he deadpanned. “Why are you testing me?”
Her sleek eyebrows quirked. “Didn’t your father explain this already?” A tiny gold cross hung in the V of her ivory silk top. “We’re testing for anything that might make the Golden Prince a less-than-ideal specimen to impregnate me.”
Madre de Dios. His father hadn’t been delusional. This woman really wanted to buy herself a prince and a royal baby. The king had introduced him to some morally deficient people in his life, but this woman... His shock was punctuated by a needle sliding into his bicep.
“¡Joder!” Mateo yelled, turning to see a needle sticking out of him, just under his t-shirt sleeve. “Stop doing that!”
“Hold still,” the devil’s handmaiden said emotionlessly, as if stealing someone’s blood for unwanted tests was an everyday task for her.
Rather than risk a needle breaking off in his arm, he did stay still. But he glared at the screen. “I haven’t agreed to any of this. The only reason I’m here is to tell you ‘no.’”
“The king promised...”
“My father makes a lot of promises. Only one of us is fool enough to believe them.”
She took the glasses off entirely, sending that hair swirling around her neck, and slowly settled back into her chair. The gold cross hid once again between blouse and pale skin. She stared at him the way he stared at the underside of grape leaves to determine their needs.
Finally, she said, “Forgive me. We’ve started on different pages. I thought you were on board.” Her voice, Mateo noticed, was throaty with a touch of scratch to it. He wondered if that was jet lag from her tropical location. Or did she sound like that all the time? “I run a multinational corporation; sometimes I rush to the finish line and forget my ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous.’ Helen, say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen said immediately. As she pulled the plunger and dragged Mateo’s blood into the vial.
Gritting his teeth, he glared at the screen. “What self-respecting person would have a kid with a stranger for money?”
“A practical one with a kingdom on the line,” Roxanne Medina said methodically. “My money can buy you time. That’s what you need to right your sinking ship, correct? You need more time to develop the Tempranillo Vino Real?”
Mateo’s blood turned cold; he wondered if Nurse Ratched could see it freezing as she pulled it out of him. He stayed quiet and raised his chin as the nurse put a Band-Aid on his arm.
“This deal can give you the time you need,” the billionaire said, her voice beckoning. “My money can keep your people solvent until you get those vines planted.”
She sat there, a stranger in a tropical villa, declaring herself the savior of the kingdom it was Mateo’s responsibility to save.
For centuries, the people of Monte del Vino Real, a plateau hidden among the Picos de Europa in northernmost Spain, made their fortunes from the lush wines produced from their cool-climate Tempranillo vines. But in recent years, mismanagement, climate change, the world’s focus on French and California wines, and his parents’ devotion to their royal lifestyle instead of ruling had devalued their grapes. The world thought the Monte was “sleepy.” What they didn’t know was that his kingdom
was nearly destitute.
Mateo was growing a new variety of Tempranillo vine in his UC Davis greenhouse lab whose hardiness and impeccable flavor of the grapes it produced would save the fortunes of the Monte del Vino Real. His new-and-improved vine or “clone”—he’d called it the Tempranillo Vino Real for his people—just needed a couple more years of development. To buy that time, he’d cobbled together enough loans to keep credit flowing to his growers and business owners and his community teetering on the edge of financial ruin instead of free-falling over. He’d also instituted security measures in his lab so that the vine wouldn’t be stolen by competitors.
But Roxanne Medina was telling him that all of his efforts—the favors he’d called in to keep the Monte’s poverty a secret, the expensive security cameras, the pat downs of grad students he knew and trusted—were useless. This woman he’d never met had sniffed out his secrets and staked a claim.
“What does or doesn’t happen to my kingdom has nothing to do with you,” he said, angry at a computer screen.
She put down her glasses and clasped slender, delicate hands in front of her. “This doesn’t have to be difficult,” she insisted. “All I want is three nights a month from you.”
He scoffed. “And my hand in marriage.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “The king has produced more than enough royal bastards for the Monte, don’t you think?”
The king. His father. The man whose limitless desire to be seen as a wealthy international playboy emptied the kingdom’s coffers. The ruler who weekly dreamt up get-rich-quick schemes that—without Mateo’s constant monitoring and intervention—would have sacrificed the Monte’s land, people, and thousand-year legacy to his greed.
It was Mateo’s fault for being surprised that his father would sell his son and grandchild to the highest bidder.
“I’m just asking for three nights a month for a year,” Roxanne Medina continued. “At the end of that year, I’ll ‘divorce’ you—” her air quotes cast in stark relief what a mockery this “marriage” would be “—and provide you with the settlement I outlined with your father. Regardless of the success of your vine, your people will be taken care of and you will never have to consider turning your kingdom into an American amusement park.”
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 31