“She says you two were married in a secret ceremony in St. Tropez. Does that chilly bitch ever leave her office? No one goes to St. Tropez.”
Sixty-four years and the seventy extra pounds of living a dissolute life full of drinking, food, and women hadn’t slowed his father’s anxious need to be invited to the latest casino opening or hottest nightclub or biggest party. Sharing a stage with the worst of the rich-and-selfish filled his father with haughty power the way taking care of his people never could. The rumor that his son was married in the “been there, done that” luxury of St. Tropez probably struck him deeper than any of the other horror stories being sold to the press over the last three weeks.
She’d done it. CEO and head demon Roxanne Medina had gathered her minions and unleashed her hellfire in a barrage of marriage announcements that painted Mateo as a sick-in-love boy toy, the Monte as a kingdom on the brink of financial disaster, and the billionaire as their only hope. She’d succeeded where his father had failed: she’d reached into the life Mateo had built for himself in California, the walled-off world he’d established away from the king’s manipulations, and made him a fool. More injuriously, she’d undermined the three years of financial tightrope he’d provided for his people to teeter on; now creditors were banging on the posts and they were going to start plummeting over.
All because Mateo had teased her in an email. All because Mateo had wanted to get to know her, to give her a kiss, to make this thing between them controllable and respectful, if not noble.
All because Mateo couldn’t keep his hands off of her.
If he’d walked away that first fucking night in her office, if he’d resisted and controlled his mindless impulse that slobbered at the thought of orgasms with her, he never would have been jarred awake at 4 a.m. three weeks ago by a phone call from El Mundo. The reporter asked if he planned on quitting his work as a “laborer” in order to stay by his new bride’s side. The barrage of phone calls didn’t end until he’d thrown the phone against the wall. His home line was now disconnected.
A worthier man would have just said “no,” he thought as the Escalade’s hard turn made him jerk against the seat belt. They’d crossed the bridge and were now in downtown San Francisco. The three-car caravan had to do more maneuvering to avoid the vehicles tailing them.
As he’d dreaded, the press and its horrible derivatives, the paparazzi, found and pounced on him at his home, at his lab, and even into his fields where ravenous photographers had trampled a row of prime Cabernet vines that he’d nurtured for five years. Had the police not shown up quickly, he would have done murder. He was always a little touchy this time of year, with all of the cold coffee and food truck burritos and lost sleep as he raced from field to field, overseeing his many crews gathering the scion wood that would fill the lab’s many orders. But the fact that his overworked days and exhausted nights were accompanied by this deliberate, vindictive, humiliating madness had him vibrating with pent-up anger.
Anger that was going to find its outlet once he got his hands around Roxanne Medina’s neck tonight.
“You don’t like your deal with the devil?” Mateo said, grunting as another hard turn had him jolting against the car door. “Give her a call. I’m sure she’ll make any changes you ask for. She’s flexible that way.”
His father scoffed his disgust. “You make jokes. I wouldn’t have been forced into this deal if you’d simply signed the papers from the Americans.”
“Joder,” Mateo growled. The king constantly nurtured Mateo’s weariness, disgust, and unending awe that his own father could be such a self-involved asshole. “This again?! I wasn’t going to give away half our land and displace half of our people just so you could keep filling your closet with Prada. Those families have been growing grapes on that land since Queen Isabella gave it to us.”
“Some of them could have continued to grow,” the man protested.
“Sure. Like the fucking robots at Disneyworld. Without pride or profit.”
Mateo had been struck by the gall of the American firm, CML Resorts Incorporated, when they’d approached him and his father about selling half the Monte to build a royalty-themed resort and amusement park.
“Your way of life is dying,” said the smug CEO of the firm, a blond and clinch-jawed Princeton grad near Mateo’s age named Easton Fuller. “But there’s no reason we all can’t profit from it.”
In a conference room in Madrid, Fuller and his CML execs had shown them mock-ups of the resort. The Royal Buffet Hall would have parked itself on the Monte’s only primary school. The Ducal Manor—timeshare condos for the upper middle class—would have been built on the Monte’s most fertile vineyard. Fuller had highlighted vineyards he wanted to keep in production and tenants he’d like to keep on, and his lackeys had carried in a rack of “uniforms” the tenants would wear when tourists were driven past in horse-drawn carriages.
Mateo had thought—naively, stupidly—this one time he and his father were surely going to join forces to throw the assholes out of Spain. Instead, his father had stroked his $200 Brioni tie and called the idea “intriguing,” his father’s word when he wanted to appear hard-nosed but was actually salivating over the money. Fortunately, the rules in the charter signed by Queen Isabella stated that no part of the Monte could be sold without the consent of both the king and his heir. Without Mateo’s signature, the deal was a no-go.
Easton Fuller had smiled a smile full of shark-like teeth and recommended that Mateo rethink his answer. There’d been more threat in that purred statement than in the king’s months of screams.
“What kind of pride are you giving our people now?” his father said, his voice dripping with scorn. “The whole world is laughing at them. That bitch has everyone convinced that one of the greatest wine-growing regions doesn’t have two Euros to rub together.”
Mateo was shaking his head at his father’s obstinacy—the state of the Monte’s finances were largely the man’s fault—when he again banged into the car door. A beat-up car had thrown itself into the Escalade’s path and barely avoided being T-boned before Mateo’s excellent driver swerved away.
“If the Monte had more than two euros to rub together, I wouldn’t be married to a stranger,” Mateo growled as he watched a telephoto lens emerge from the car’s back window and begin shooting.
“I’ll tell you this,” his father said. “If that little cunt was under me, she’d be too busy thinking about the size of my cock to worry about the size of my bank account.”
“¡Cállate viejo!” Mateo erupted, seeing red. “You keep your filthy mouth shut!” His father’s obsession with a few inches of flesh had twisted the lives of everyone around him. “That’s my wife you’re talking about, the wife you forced on me. She’s my problem now, so you don’t think about her, you don’t talk about her, you don’t even fucking breathe in her direction.”
Instead of lashing back, his father purred, “She doesn’t have to be your problem.”
His lazy tone concerned Mateo the way none of the rest of this call had. “What?”
“Easton Fuller gave me a call. CML Resorts is still interested. And with the extra publicity you’ve given the Monte, they’re willing to double their offer.”
“What about the contract with Roxanne?”
“It covers one year.” His father’s tone implied he’d never talked to anyone as stupid as Mateo. “With the bigger offer, you can walk away now and pay her breach-of-contract penalty and still have plenty left over. But, if you don’t get her pregnant...”
Mateo scowled sightlessly at the lights of the bodegas, stores, and restaurants of San Francisco’s Mission District racing by. Stopping for red lights had become a thing of the past. “What are you saying?”
“All the contract asks for is a ‘good faith’ effort to fuck—oh, excuse me, Príncipe—make love to her for a year. If she doesn’t get pregnant, that’s her fault. We
can have her money and CML’s money.”
“So you want me to...”
“Fake it. Beat off before you see her. Squirt lotion into the woman, I don’t care. Just don’t come in her. Women fake it all the time.”
Mateo realized he was rubbing the band of burnished gold on his left ring finger. The ring had been courier delivered that morning. He’d thrown it into the trash, and then had to dig it out when the car arrived, fantasizing of ramming it down her throat.
All Mateo had asked of his father was time. The king knew about his work on the Tempranillo Vino Real, knew how close Mateo was, knew how hard Mateo had worked to find the money to buy that time. Instead, his father had unleashed on him...all of this.
And Mateo hadn’t been smart enough or strong enough to avoid it.
The ring was heavy as he clenched his fist in his lap. “You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’d agree to that,” he said tonelessly in English. At this point, he didn’t care who knew how sordid his life had become.
His father released a litany of screaming curses in rapid and colorful Spanish.
Ignoring him, Mateo saw a news van, now parked, that they’d barely avoided hitting a minute earlier. A cameraman and reporter were scurrying out of it. He turned to look through the front window of the Escalade. He bit back a crazy laugh.
This wild ride through the city had been useless. Mateo might as well have been driven in one of CML Resort’s horse-drawn carriages with a sign flashing “Idiot Prince” above it. He could have waved to the crowds. He could have thrown candy.
The press and paparazzi knew exactly where he and Roxanne were having their quiet, intimate dinner.
“I have to go.” He interrupted his father as he tapped his driver on the shoulder and pointed at the front of the restaurant, where a crowd and cameras jostled on the sidewalk. He wasn’t going to waste another second trying to outmaneuver them. He wanted to get this night over with.
“You go, mi hijo,” his father jeered at him. The king hadn’t called him “my son” in years. “But know this: Queen Isabella’s charter might not be as ironclad as you think. Get control of this situation. If you don’t, I will.”
March: Night One
Part Two
Roxanne adjusted the monstrous five-carat white diamond on her ring finger as the noise outside went up an octave, the crowd rattled the restaurant’s front window, and a police bullhorn shouted for everyone to make a lane. She gave a winsome smile to the ring for the benefit of the diners who watched her; the center diamond was wreathed in half-carat champagne diamonds to represent the earth, and the rose-gold band was entwined with emeralds to represent vines. In reality she wanted to rip it off. It was too heavy, too jagged, and it made her finger sweat.
Or perhaps that was simply her guilt. She’d gone too far this time.
She never should have called for an emergency meeting earlier that night to discuss the fate of the Iowa factory; one of her VPs was still angry that he’d missed his anniversary dinner with his husband. And she never should have woken the head of her PR department in the middle of the night to recite the first press release about her marriage to the príncipe. The prince had been correct in his assumptions—she’d canceled their last date in February because she’d been unsettled by their previous night together.
If she’d just met the prince as planned, just let him touch her again, she might right now be pregnant. Except for an occasional dinner to legitimize their marriage and wave at the crowd, she might right now be free of him.
Instead, she forced a smile for the benefit of the cameras and patrons in this $100 per-entree, free-range, locavore, Michelin-starred restaurant as an angry giant burst through the doors on a wave of crowd shouts. The giant wore a sateen, slate-gray suit that poured over his body like water, a tan that hadn’t been there the last time she’d seen him, dark eye circles that hadn’t been there either, and a fury that should have been familiar but was still intimidating.
Roxanne lifted her chin as his eyes homed in on her like sword points.
What was done was done. He had a kingdom he needed to save. She had a fairy tale to create. They were imperative to each other; the prince, for all of his grousing, had to understand that. She would apologize for the chaos she’d caused and make amends, and then they would do what was necessary, what they’d agreed upon, to ensure they each got what they needed.
Roxanne pushed back her seat, knocked a light cashmere shawl off her shoulders and stood. She heard the collective inhale as the restaurant goers caught a look at her dress as she strolled toward her husband. The gold dress, held up by two tiny straps near her neck, was gathered at the waist and ended mid-thigh. It would have been relatively simple if not for the hundreds of pearl-and-gold-colored sequins sewn to it; their weight made the dress cling and caress. Her back was naked except for the sheet of her hair and a thin line of gold cord that connected the straps to the rest of the dress, her deep cleavage bared to him except for her rose-gold cross.
If it was possible, the dress only made the príncipe angrier.
But if the world was going to think this were real, if the power of her money and his royalty had any chance of creating an immaculate life for their daughter, it had to start now, with the wall of cameras pointed through the restaurant window to capture the first glimpses of the “Golden Couple.” For all of the make-believe she’d already injected into the world press, the fairy tale truly began at this moment.
Reaching him, she ignored his furious, furrowed brow that warned her off and wrapped both hands around his rigid biceps, leaning into him.
“Mi esposo,” she murmured, as if they were truly married, as if work and circumstances really had separated them and this was her first opportunity to touch his warm, strong body in weeks. Her heart didn’t seem to know this was make believe; it beat faster against the clinging V of her dress as she caught the woodsy scent of him, as those fiery eyes seared her with anger and then, as if he couldn’t help himself, stroked over her suddenly tender lips. She had a visceral memory of cool bricks against her back and his hot mouth devouring her as he pulsed inside her.
That hot mouth, those sulky, pleasure-giving lips, filled her vision as the prince slowly leaned down. He was so big. She could feel his hard arm muscles shift under the sleekness of his suit. She squeezed, just a little, and then held on. This was going to be good.
He gave a quick, perfunctory kiss to her forehead. The shutters of a hundred cameras could be heard going off outside the window.
“I’m starving,” he said. He pulled out of her hold so fast she stumbled and had to take a step in her delicate gold heels to right herself. He was already around her. His big hand smacked her ass, lightly but audibly, as he passed. “Let’s eat.”
The cameras sounded like a stampede of bugs crawling across the glass.
Roxanne didn’t let a millisecond pass before she raised her face to their round blank eyes and smiled. Warm and wide. She turned around, straightened her shoulders, and walked calmly through the dimly lit restaurant as conversation returned to the room. She felt the speculative eye of every dinner guest. Her “husband” was already seated at their table, draping a linen napkin over his lap while he read the menu, forcing a waiter to hustle over to pull out her chair. She settled into her own seat, strategically facing the cameras, smack dab in the middle of the restaurant, and picked up her own menu.
With the cameras capturing her every breath, Roxanne let her eyes skim over the menu while her blood boiled.
Remember, her inner voice chanted to calm herself. Remember, remember. He can make you a fool. She slowly filled her lower belly with air and, just as slowly, pushed it out again. Remember. Only you can make yourself weak.
She’d misstepped with him...several times. Now she had to add the uncomfortable weight of guilt to her own frustrations. She needed to clear the air. She needed to make
it right.
Only by prostrating herself could she regain the upper hand.
She glanced over her menu at him. He’d left dark scruff on his jaw and chin, giving him a savage air in his Armani suit. He hadn’t had a cut since she’d seen him last. His hair curled blond where it touched his white collar. The candlelight caught at the shadows under his eyes.
She placed her menu perpendicular to her fork and picked up her wineglass, steepling it between her fingers so that it hid some of her face from the cameras.
“Well, that was an inauspicious beginning for the Golden Couple,” she murmured from behind the glass.
“Hmmm,” the prince said without raising his eyes from the menu. “I guess we don’t have pictures of your mouth around my cock. Or me jacking it into a cup. Those’ll be missed from the scrapbook.” His deep, low voice was placid with apathy.
Roxanne felt the annoying prickle of frustration at the back of her throat. She dragged her teeth across her lower lip and lowered her glass to the table. And then plastered on a smile. “Look,” she said through her grin. “I wanted to wait until we had some privacy, but...what I did was wrong. So wrong. I shouldn’t have announced the marriage without your consent and I shouldn’t have created such an exaggerated tale about...”
“My growers became garbage collectors last week,” he said, his eyes focused on the dinner courses.
What? “Why?”
“The Monte has a contract with a garbage collecting service. We’re behind in our payments, but I’d convinced the owner that we’d catch up soon. When your stories broke, the garbage trucks stopped showing up. No word. No warning. The man won’t return my calls.” His eyes continued to read over the menu. “So, last week, I asked some of my more loyal growers to collect the town’s trash and haul it away. They’re the only people I could mobilize quickly who had trucks. So you can apologize to the men and women who heeded the call and moved mountains of trash when they needed to be working in their fields.” He looked for all the world like he was completely at ease. Only Roxanne could see his white-knuckled grip on the thick, linen card stock. “But don’t apologize to me for spreading your lies. You wanted my degradation. You got it.”
Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Page 7