Lush Money (Filthy Rich)

by Angelina M. Lopez

  When she’d seen his email, she’d recognized the address as being in the heart of North Beach. She’d assumed he made reservations at one of the neighborhood’s renowned trattorias, some linen-clothed and candlelit place where they’d drink Brunello and he’d try to worm his way into her head. She’d dressed for war.

  But the prince had changed the battlefield. She was going to stick out like a diamond-encrusted thumb in this pizza shack.

  Roxanne straightened her shoulders and cut through the tide of people to get to the door. She’d eaten in places that would melt the prince’s silver spoon and had worn the wrong wardrobe until she’d made her first million. She opened the jangling door to a blast of punk rock and greasy air, and squeezed in among the hipsters and punks. The prince was going to have to do a lot more than this to push her off her game.

  Like, perhaps, sit at the bar and give his glorious smile to a tattooed and purple-haired bartender serving up her own impressive cleavage, her dark skin and great breasts stunning in a white tank top as she leaned over the bar toward him. Roxanne stopped short. He was wearing a damn baseball cap again. But the overhead fluorescents were bright enough to catch the gleam in his eyes as the bartender stroked his arm.

  He’d never given that happy gleam to Roxanne.

  A guy with gray in his chest-long beard bumped into her. Foam from his full beer splattered her neck, coat, and décolletage. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  A man at least ten years her elder had just called her “ma’am.” She said nothing. Just closed her eyes and took deep breaths as she counted to three. When she opened them, both the prince and the bartender were staring at her.

  She stomped over to them, beer dripping into her cleavage.

  “Charming place,” she spat as the prince, bemused, held paper napkins out to her. She snatched them out of his hand and patted at her skin and coat.

  “It’s the best pizza in the city.”

  “And so intimate.” She threw the napkins on the bar. “A wonderful place for conversation.”

  “It’s cozy.”

  “Sure.” She raised her voice over the Dead Kennedys shouting about the superiority of California. “You can hear a pin drop.”

  She turned her irritated gaze on the bartender who glared, the woman’s muscular, Maori-tattooed arms crossed over her monumental chest.

  “Yes?” Roxanne prompted.

  The woman raised her lip in a snarl. “You want something?”

  “Do you have wine?”

  “Yeah.” And that was it for the description of the Golden Boy Pizza wine list.

  Roxanne grabbed on to her composure like a life vest in a flailing ocean. “I’ll have a beer.”

  As the bartender stalked off, the prince murmured, “Good choice.”

  She lifted a finger. Not yet. She winced as she set her $2,000 handbag on the dirty floor and then slid out of her coat. The press of bodies made it six hundred degrees. She laid her coat over the cracked, red-pleather barstool next to him and clambered on. The bartender slammed a beer in front of her, and Roxanne wiped the rim with a napkin before she took a deep, soothing drink. The beer was lukewarm. She promised herself she would buy the building and shut down the restaurant the instant she’d gotten what she’d come for.

  Speaking of....

  She centered the beer bottle in front of her. “Príncipe, I assumed you were intelligent enough to read all of the documents you signed. Or, at least, hire attorneys who were.” She turned her chin to look at him and saw his bemusement fading. “Our contract states that you’re required to practice a certain level of sexual restraint during our marriage. You’ve already been tested and given a clean bill of health. I’d hate to have to test you every night we’re together. It would be so inconvenient for Helen.”

  The smile on those soft, sulky lips became narrow and brittle. He turned from her, shaking his head, and stared at his beer in his hand. “I thought I could do this,” he said, his deep voice reaching her under the blare of crowd and music. “I can’t do this. You think I’m your whore. Why would you let a whore father your child?”

  He took a long drink of his beer and then sat it carefully on the bar. He rose from the stool. There was nothing angry or dejected in his movements. He was simply finished.

  Finished with her. Wait. “I—I don’t think you’re a whore,” she stuttered.

  “A man led by money and pussy. Yes you do.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. “I don’t cheat. I’ve never cheated. I would never cheat.” His looked at her with pity as he tossed cash on the bar. “If you can’t understand that about me, there’s no reason for us to continue.”

  Of course he wouldn’t cheat. Within moments of reading about his scientific expertise and quiet lifestyle, she’d known he was cut from a different cloth than his greedy, womanizing father. The king had settled two paternity cases out of court and was infamously known for stowing away the queen’s best friend so he could secretly screw her during the honeymoon voyage across the Mediterranean. Just last year, the sixty-four-year-old man had been photographed with an Italian porn star in his lap. The king had sent it to Roxanne as proof of Esperanza virility.

  Mateo de Esperanza wouldn’t cheat because he’d been mortified by it his entire life. He’d already told her, “I’m not my father.”

  But in the first moments of her campaign to break down his resistance with a carefully curated version of herself, that’s exactly what she’d accused him of. Of being just like his father.

  “Wait, wait, I’m sorry,” she said as he turned away, a second from wedging those wide shoulders into the crowd and getting lost in it.

  “You say that a lot,” he threw back at her.

  “But I mean it this time. You wanted to set me back on my heels. Congrats, it worked! You knew I wouldn’t be expecting this place; I’m totally overdressed. And you’re wearing that stupid baseball cap again.”

  Roxanne was babbling. She wanted to jam both hands over her mouth. But her prince had stopped. He turned his head, his cap shadowing everything but his ski-slope nose and those lips.

  “What’s wrong with my baseball cap?”

  “And on top of that...” Relief made her continue babbling, almost shouting to make sure he heard her over the music. “You bring me to a place where you’ve obviously slept with the bartender. I was jealous, okay. So, I’m sorry.”

  She’d known victory—over a conference table, in the ring, looking down on classmates who were certain they were better than her as she gave the valedictorian speech—but nothing compared to the win of having him turn around and study her. He crossed his arms, showing off those thick biceps in his faded concert t-shirt. She could feel his eyes assessing her, his dark brows drawn together as he searched her for bullshit.

  Finally, he said, “You know, Princesa, this is the first time I believe you.” He stepped closer and looked down at her, forcing her to tilt her head up. “When we’re together,” he drawled, “we’re going to have to find something better for you to do with that mouth than insult me.”

  His brim shadowed his eyes. But she could feel his gaze on her lips. Heat slid over her like slow-melting butter as moved to sit back on his barstool.

  “This really is the best pizza in San Francisco,” he said quietly. She turned around to face the bar again as he nodded at the beautiful bartender. “And I’ve never slept with Leah. I wouldn’t bring you here if I had.”

  “But she wants to,” Roxanne said, dragging her thumb over her beer label.

  He stayed quiet. Then he murmured, “I’m glad you overdressed.”

  She looked down at herself, at the cleavage, the knee, the red shoes, and turned to eye him with a begrudging huff of a laugh. “I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me with that cap on.” Tonight it was a black SF Giants cap. “Take it off and I might believe you.”

  “I can’t.
I had to come straight from work. I hope your expensive suite has a shower.”

  She leveled her eyes at him. “I’m overdressed. You can be greasy.”

  “How about this?” He grabbed the brim of his hat and twisted it around to the back, then smoothed his tawny hair behind his ears. He turned to face her with his hands wide. “Is this better?”

  It was fabulous. Without the shadow of his brim or the camouflage of his hair, his gorgeous face was fully exposed to her for the first time. The diner lights reflected off his high, hard cheekbones, the dark stubble on the sharp lines of his jaw and chin. His lips were pressed together, his smile wary, but his eyes seemed to watch her with the tiniest measure of hope. She was close enough to see that a ring of dark mahogany brown, the same color as his eyebrows, circled his golden irises and was the reason his eyes stood out so spectacularly. He’d shifted around his hat for her. He’d just, for the first time, done something to please her.

  Roxanne felt like she was teetering back on the heels of her cruel, red shoes.

  She needed to regain control of this interaction. Or, at least, control of herself. She had nine years of sexual experience under her belt, the last five of them vast and rich and exotic. But she felt as awkward and tongue-tied as when she’d gotten her first kiss from her freshman year RA.

  When paper plates full of pizza were thrown onto the bar in front of her, Roxanne had never been happier to see a woman who despised her. She stared astonished at the quantity of pizza squares while the bartender asked the prince, and only the prince, if he wanted another beer.

  “Is all this for us?” she asked, the tempting scents of tomato, garlic, and cheese reminding her that she’d skipped lunch again.

  He reached an arm across her—his arm was tanned, and the hair on it sparkled blond—and grabbed for a paper plate, its slice covered in spinach and tomatoes, the cheese at the edges crisped to a char. “I wasn’t sure what you liked,” he said as he sank his teeth into the slice and got a smear of tomato sauce on his upper lip. He held the plate and the slice in the same big hand and motioned with it. “That one is gluten free, that one is vegan, that one is paleo...”

  The warm glow building just under her ribs, where her fury and fortitude and pride also made themselves known, was uncomfortable. “And that one?” she asked, pointing to a slice groaning with ingredients in the middle.

  “That’s the Golden Boy Supreme,” he said, smiling at her cautiously. “It’s got everything you could want.”

  She cocked her jaw at him. And appreciated his grin when she grabbed the plate and took a bite.

  “So you eat meat?” he asked, settling into his slice.

  She nodded and covered her lips as she chewed. “You?”

  “Vegetarian.”

  She looked down at the gobs of crumbled sausage and round slices of pepperoni burnt at the edges. “Do you mind?”

  His grin kicked up. “Not in the least.”

  She took another bite and resisted moaning at the combination of smoky meat, garlic sauce, and butter-rich, focaccia-like crust. But she had inadvertently closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was watching her, amused.

  She covered her mouth again as a huff of a laugh escaped her. “Okay, yes, it’s good. But don’t think the irony of the Golden Prince bringing me to Golden Boy Pizza has escaped me.”

  He wiped the sauce from his lip with a thumb and then picked up his beer. “It wouldn’t be any fun if it had,” he said, holding the bottle up to her.

  They were eating pizza. Verbal chess seemed unnecessary during pizza eating. So she allowed him the point, picked up her beer bottle, and clinked it against his. “Salud,” she said. They both drank deeply.

  “¿Hablas español?” he asked when he put his beer down.

  “Sí,” she answered. “Y francés y chino.”

  His eyebrows rose. “¿Chino? Dime algo.”

  “What would you like me to say?” Roxanne began immediately in Chinese. “Would you like me to validate your choice of pizza? Would you like me to tell you that this night is going so differently than I’d planned? Would you like me to describe how mesmerized you look as you watch my lips?”

  Roxanne was accustomed to the request, accustomed to how novel people found fluent Mandarin coming from her mouth. But the prince watched the soft curves and stretches of her lips like they were casting spells. Like her mouth was capable of magic.

  When she finished, his eyes flicked up to hers for only a second before he returned his attention back to his pizza and took a huge bite. But that second was more than enough. The hungry fire of his look lit her up. It was a look that should have been reserved for red rooms and tight leather and explicit, hard-core acts. That it was a look he’d given her here, in a bright-lit pizza shack, when she smelled of beer and could feel the gleam of garlic and grease on her skin, seemed very wrong. Seemed dangerous.

  “Why those languages?” he asked around the big bite, as if the moment had never happened.

  Roxanne took a steadying drink of her warm beer. “They were useful. And easy.”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “Learning an entirely new alphabet and phonetic structure is easy. Did you learn Spanish from your father?”

  Roxanne barely prevented herself from banging down her beer. She was not talking about family. But after years of manipulating the press, she knew that an emotional uptick to any question meant the question would be pursued. So she said, calmly, “No. My Mexican side is mostly theoretical. I never knew the man or his heritage.”

  He turned on his barstool, the remaining quarter of pizza still in his hand. “What about this?” Without any warning, a hot finger flicked across her chest to lift up her cross.

  She was suddenly leashed by the small, rose-gold chain and pendant that her father figure had given her for her Confirmation. She’d worn it ever since. She couldn’t let the prince see how irritated she was that he dared touch it.

  “What about it?” she asked, working to hold on to her temper.

  “Aren’t you afraid of bursting into flames?” When she looked up into his face, when she saw that he was good-naturedly teasing, unaware of the raw spots he was rubbing, she had no reservations about smacking his hand away.

  “Believe it or not,” she said as she took another bite of pizza. “I’m a practicing Catholic.”

  “And that has nothing to do with your father?”

  How did he... But, no, the prince wasn’t asking about Father Juan, the only parent-like person she’d ever known, the man who’d helped her feel pride instead of shame about being half Mexican in an all-white town.

  “What would my absent father have to do with the religion I practice?” she asked.

  “Well, my people brought Catholicism to your people’s shores.”

  Roxanne rolled her eyes dramatically and threw her pizza back on the plate. “Oh God, is that what we’re going to discuss during these ‘talks?’” she drawled, wiping the grease off her hands. “‘My people conquered your people.’ The last thing we need to bring into this marriage is who vanquished whom.”

  She was choosing subject-changing sarcasm and expected sarcasm in return. But the prince folded his arms in front of his now-empty plate and considered her thoughtfully.

  “We’re married,” he rumbled, that little line appearing between his dark brows. “We’re married, you’re going to have my kid, and I just learned that you’re a meat-eater, that you speak four languages, and that you go to church.”

  He rested his chin on his bicep, unfairly calling attention to the bulk and muscle of it, while his eyes caught hers. “We’re married and I haven’t even kissed you yet.”

  She suddenly felt breathless. She covered it with a huge, alluring smile. “Yes, you really have.”

  She didn’t change his course. “No,” he said, his eyes steady. “That wasn’t a kiss. That was punishment
. I need to give you a proper first kiss.”

  She looked down to scrub at the grease that was no longer present on her hands. “A kiss is a kiss,” she said. “There is no reason to overemphasize it.”

  The warmth of him suddenly crowded her as he slid his arms along the bar toward her, into her space. Stunningly, through the thick scents of butter and beer and pepperoni, she could still smell him, could smell that beckoning clean spice of his.

  “Venga, belleza,” he murmured, close to her ear. “There’s a reason you picked me over a million impoverished blue bloods who would cry to have you. Let me give you your fairy tale. Don’t you want your first kiss from your prince?”

  February: Night Two

  Part Two

  Her heart was racing, her head was muzzy.

  This was ridiculous.

  She straightened the spine that had built a billion-dollar corporation and turned to face him squarely. “You know exactly what I want from you, Príncipe, and it isn’t found in children’s fairy tales.” He hadn’t moved his chin off his bicep, so she spoke down at him, clearly, so he could hear every word. “What I want from you is raw and wet and has nothing to do with first kisses. In fact...” She made a show of looking at the diner clock on the wall. “It’s time for you to stand and deliver. We’ve wasted enough of the evening on your get-to-know-you chitchat. Why don’t you say goodbye to your little friend? I’ll be outside.”

  She rose from her seat, leisurely, picked up her coat to fold it precisely over her arm, and bent over slowly to pick up her handbag. The audible groans behind her let her know that others had caught the show.

  But as she made her way to the door, taking her time, the crowd now parting in front of her, she was troubled that the one person she hadn’t drawn a reaction from was the prince. In fact, that bemused smile hadn’t wavered from his lips during her speech.

  The cool San Francisco night air was jarring as she stepped out into it. The sidewalk now was relatively empty. She slid her coat on and let the bracing chill wipe away the scents of pizza, the blare of punk rock, and the heat of mind-fogging temptation.