The corset of guilt that had been tightening since she’d sent out the press releases cut off her air.
Brains and bravado were her only resources when she started making her way in the world. But she realized quickly that she had something others lacked when she sat in class next to disdainful Ivy Leaguers with no empathy for the 99 percent or made decisions next to corporate bigwigs who cared more for their portfolio than their employees. She had good intentions. Yes, she wanted power and money. Yes, she wanted to control her destiny and never again be at the whim of another. She’d been able to acquire those things by helping—rather than harming—those around her, by assisting female entrepreneurs and helping them make their businesses the best they could be.
Roxanne had stopped asking permission long ago because she’d earned the right to demand what she wanted. Even when she’d made this deal with the prince, she’d truly believed it would benefit him.
But only blind, antagonistic anger had gone into conjuring those press releases. He’d made her crave something in that alley that she didn’t want from him or any man. Passion was fine. But not tenderness. Not vulnerability. She was punishing him because he was stronger than she was. He could admit that he craved to touch her even when that craving made him weak.
Roxanne was using her wealth, power, and influence to punish a man—not a prince or a scientist or her contractual husband—but a man who was just trying to hold his world together.
She would never be able to make this right while the eyes of the world watched.
She signaled the staff. The waiter, sommelier, and manager hustled over as the prince’s shoulders tensed in his jacket. “My handsome príncipe would like a little privacy before we dine,” she said, giving a secret smile to the female manager. “Is there a room where he and I could...chat?”
The excellently trained staff didn’t even blink. “Of course,” the woman responded. “Come with me.”
The waiter pulled out Roxanne’s seat as the prince rose, eyeing her suspiciously. She circled the table toward him and nestled her hand into the crook of his arm. Together, they followed the manager out of the dining room and down a low-lit hallway. Roxanne felt the diners’ eyes on her ass and the menacing anger of the prince all over her skin.
The manager unlocked a door and flipped on some lights with a murmur about it being an extra room for large parties. Right now, the room’s gold-flecked wallpaper and elaborate chandelier were only decoration for the dining tables, high-top bar tables, and accompanying chairs crammed into it, spare alleys of space running between the furniture. The wise manager closed the door without a glance back.
The instant she did, the prince pulled his arm out of her hold like she was toxic. “I’m not fucking you,” he said as he strode between a row of chairs and away from her.
In the closed off, slightly musty room, she could smell him; smell the wild, earthy spice of him. He walked like a caged lion through the aisles of the furniture, all of his rage in the shoulders of that sleek, expensive suit. “I don’t expect you to,” she said, letting her fingers rest on the gold cross. “I need to apologize for what I’ve done and letting this get so out of...”
He shoved into a chair as he turned, making it screech along the tile. “Stop it,” he said, glaring at her. “You give out apologies like junk mail and they’re just as worthless.”
Roxanne raised her chin and swallowed her pride. “I can make this right,” she continued, fingering the cross. “I’ll pay off the Monte’s outstanding debts now; we don’t have to wait until I’m pregnant.”
He laughed an ugly groan up to the sparkling chandelier. “After this, you think I’ll trust anything from you? I don’t want your money. I don’t want your body. I just want out.” His big hands curled at his sides. “Tell the press you’re divorcing me because...because I can’t get it up. Or whatever, I don’t fucking care. Just think of this as a failed experiment and walk away.”
She slapped her hands helplessly at her sides. “I understand why you hate me. But you know you can’t walk away. Without my money, the Monte will be destroyed.”
His dark eyebrows creased in disbelief as he shook his head at her. “Jesucristo, can you get over your savior complex? Yeah, it’ll be tough but we can manage it. I’ve still got three years of reserves to draw on.”
His words, his confidence, hit her ears like an off note. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Three years? You barely have a few months.”
“Because of you.” Thunder gathered on his brow as he pushed a barstool out of his way to get an aisle closer to her. “Because of the lies you told. You’ve made it harder for my people to get credit, but we can keep our heads above water until my vines start producing.”
Roxanne raked her fingernails through her hair. Frustrating and mule-fucking-stubborn the prince might be. But he wasn’t an idiot. His continued insistence that he had more time didn’t fit with the facts that Roxanne knew. That he should have known.
“How much time do you think you have before the Monte starts defaulting on its loans?” she asked.
“Why would I tell you?”
She watched his face closely. “You have fourteen months, tops.”
When the prince just smiled menacingly as he shoved between chairs to get closer to her, Roxanne knew something was very, very wrong. “Pulling scary numbers out of your fine culo is not going to make me...”
Only a row of high-top bar tables separated them now, and Roxanne put her hands on the closest, making sure it was squarely in his path before she delivered the blow he didn’t deserve. “I’m not lying. Fourteen months, tops, before the Monte del Vino Real is bankrupt. I’ll send my auditor’s reports over. Have them checked by an independent accountant.” The prince truly didn’t know, and Roxanne realized why he was being so obtuse. He’d been kept in the dark. “Don’t send them to your treasurer.”
His own hands came up to grip the table edge as he sneered at her. “Stop it! You want me jumping at my own fucking shadow. You’re not going to play me...”
She saw his big hands, his angry, white knuckles choked by that gold band as they gripped the table—and something ridiculous made her reach for them, made her try to soothe them with her palm. “Mateo, listen...”
The bar table flew from between them and landed with a deafening clatter against other furniture. Roxanne stumbled back and then kicked off her heels, jumping into a defensive stance as Mateo grabbed for her. “You’ll stop at nothing,” he roared. “Touch me, suck me, lie to me to get what you...”
Roxanne kicked out her foot and swept the prince’s legs out from under him, landing him neatly and with a thunderous crash on the tile floor space he’d created when he’d thrown the table. While he gasped for the air that had been knocked out of him, Roxanne jumped on him and straddled his chest, balancing the bulk of her weight on her knees to pin his shoulders down.
She leaned over him. “I’ve never lied to you. I even called an unnecessary meeting last month to ensure it. And I’m not lying now. Your financial situation is the main reason I chose you to be my husband.” As she spoke, her black hair cascaded around them. “I had my pick of impoverished aristocrats. And not one of them needed my money as urgently as you. Do you honestly think I would propose this crazy deal to someone who wasn’t desperate enough to agree to it?”
In the shadow of her hair, the prince’s eyes clenched as he took huge breaths through his teeth, moving her up and down. “I assumed you knew the razor’s edge your kingdom is on.” His body vibrated with resistance. “This was a business deal, Mateo. Disregarding my recent bad behavior, I’m actually not aiming to torment you. I want a baby, now. You need my money, now. I thought you knew that.”
Some of her hair was about to slip into his eyes and she flicked it away, brushing his broad forehead. His skin was warm and smooth. “You don’t like my apologies so I’ll stop offering them. Instead I�
�ll make you a promise. I promise to make this right. I promise to rectify the damage I’ve done to your reputation and the Monte’s reputation. And I promise to stop...being such a pain in your ass.”
His body was as stiff as marble beneath her. But he opened his eyes, golden fire joining her in the cavern of her hair.
She tensed, readying for whatever happened next.
“Now I know you’re lying,” he said, guttural and low. “You’re still going to be a pain in my ass.” She felt his shoulders jerk beneath her. “Get off.”
Roxanne shifted off of him, moved her butt to the dusty tile in her $3,000 Chanel dress. But she kept a leg slung over his torso, not holding him down but just...there. And he let her. He didn’t sit up. His hand settled on her bare knee.
Now that she was aware of it, she could feel that warm gold band every time he touched her.
“I have no reason to trust you,” he said, staring up at the ceiling.
“I know.” But she could see that royal brain of his working. She could imagine the square pegs of various financial details suddenly sliding neatly into their holes. But when his head lolled to the side, when his eyes caught hers, it wasn’t finances he asked about.
“Why did you call that unnecessary meeting last month?”
She stiffened under his gaze. But she didn’t look away. She knew what he wanted, he wanted the truth. He wanted her to reveal herself. He wanted something that would make her as vulnerable as he was, laid out on a dusty floor, embarrassing secrets exposed.
It was the only way he would trust the other truths coming out of her mouth.
She swallowed through a tight throat and thought of her daughter. “The way we were together in that alley was too...” She looked at him. But he wasn’t going to save her from this. “Just too. I assumed having sex with the Golden Prince was going to be all show and no substance.”
A hint of a smirk settled over his features. “I gave you too much substance?” Then the smirk fell away. “I want to see those reports tonight.”
Apparently, he was satisfied with her pound of flesh. She nodded, relieved he let her off the hook so easily. “I’ll have them couriered over the instant you’re home.”
“Our treasurer has been doctoring the books?”
“He must be. He answers to your father. Your parents’ spending actually went up after the offer from CML Resorts.”
When the prince closed his eyes this time, his forehead creased with pain.
“Príncipe...”
“Call me by my name.”
“Mateo...” She wondered if he knew he was stroking her knee with his thumb. She wondered if it felt as good to his thumb as it did to her knee. “None of this is your fault.”
“Stop.” He opened his eyes and pushed her leg off of him. “Let’s go finish dinner.” When he pushed himself up and stood, she was looking up and up and up at a dusty mountain of a man in a gleaming suit. She had enough respect for the fight to understand that she had held him down because he’d allowed it.
He took a half-hearted swipe at his suit pants and then extended his hand to her. She hesitated only a moment before she took it. “We don’t have to go back in there,” she said. Tonight, the fairy tale could wait.
“We do,” he said as he lifted her to her feet. “Eres mi salvador y única esperanza.”
His bitter smile as he called her his “savior and only hope” changed when he caught the gleam of her giant wedding ring. He brought her hand up to his face, straightened the heavy diamond, and surprised her by kissing it, his mouth warming the icy jewels. His golden gaze traveled up her arm and touched her hair, her eyes, the sheen of her lips, like it was the first time he’d seen her that night, before his gaze wandered over her bare shoulders and down, down into the V of her cleavage.
His low voice, when it came, felt like it traced the same path over her skin. “Unless you want to stay here and do what everyone already assumes we’re doing?”
Standing next to the raw heat of him, she was tempted. For a moment. Staying in that room would further her own ends. But the prince was wounded; she couldn’t take advantage of him while he was bleeding. Looking into the shadows in his eyes, misery he wanted to forget for a few minutes while he thrust inside of her, Roxanne felt nothing but regret for the blows she’d struck against him.
Surprised by her own tumble of emotion, Roxanne looked away from him. “No... I... The contract...”
“Right.” His voice was raw and self-deprecating. He straightened his coat, held out an elbow for her to take, and then motioned to the door with a sarcastic flourish. “Then let’s go put on a show. Let’s show them how a prince earns his millions.”
March: Night Two
Roxanne stood in the fluorescent-lit lobby of the Medina Building’s underground garage, quickly scanning an update on the Monte’s creditors from her assistant while she chatted with her bodyguard. Henry was a blond-and-burly Texan and a fierce Cowboys fan. With her 49ers skybox and the bad taste in her mouth left by those Dallas Cowboys cheerleader posters of her youth, Roxanne could not let that pass.
“But you can see the fear in your quarterback’s eyes,” she said, looking up from her phone to tease him. “That’s why he screwed up that snap during the wildcard game. He was afraid the ball was going to hit him.”
Henry chuckled, crossing his mammoth arms over his tight black knit shirt, the silver clutch he held looking like a coin purse in his huge hand. “The 49ers ended the season with a losing record. You want to talk about playing scared. Every single one of their starters is shaking in their boots.”
“Hey, those starters got us to the playoffs.”
“Which they lost.”
“Sure, but when was the last time the Cowboys even saw...” Roxanne stopped talking when the ex-Marine put his finger to his ear and snapped to, dropping all pretense of ease. He tilted his thick neck to talk into the mic at his shoulder. “Yep. The garage is clear. Send him on down.”
Henry handed her the clutch, which he’d been holding while she checked her email. “Your husband is on his way, Ms. Medina.” Roxanne took a longer glance at him before returning her eyes to her phone to finish her email scan. She wondered how he could say “your husband” with a straight face. As head of her security, Henry was one of a handful of employees who helped coordinate her life outside of the office. He knew where she went and with whom. He knew there’d been no romantic trips to northern Spain, no wedding in St. Tropez. She paid those employees generously for their discretion and knew that they would jump in front of a bus for her—it was in their makeup, showed in the Myers-Briggs and other personality tests she required of her closest employees. She’d spent holidays with them, had been invited into their homes and met their families.
And she knew not one of them could be trusted.
That was the human condition. Given the right levers and stresses, any person could turn on you. So she paid her employees well, treated them better, and looked forward to the day her baby—her daughter—would stand by her side not because of bribes and bonuses, but because standing by her side was a pleasant place to be.
With the reminder that she would be working on producing that daughter tonight, fingers of sensation tip-tapped up Roxanne’s spine. She opened her clutch to throw her phone into it and noticed her mirror. She hesitated before she pulled it out quickly, turned slightly away from Henry, and opened the compact to check her lips, hoping the bold, glistening red hadn’t smudged. The casual waves of dark hair trailing over her shoulders still looked smooth and glossy.
“You look gorgeous,” her bodyguard said behind her, voice full of humor.
“Shut up, Henry,” Roxanne said. She snapped the compact closed, put it in her clutch, and then straightened herself to her full five-foot-four inches, five-foot-seven with the heels. She raised her chin to add another inch.
Just in
time to watch a faded blue pickup truck straight out of the ’70s come rattling around the corner. It was covered in road dust and bug smears, and Roxanne was shocked when, instead of calling for backup, Henry moved to the lobby door and opened it for her. The death rattle of the truck echoed louder in the underground garage as it pulled up to the curb.
Henry grinned at her as he held the door open. “I’m pretty sure this is your ride.”
With a percussive crack of the driver’s door, the prince’s head and shoulders appeared above the truck’s roof. Roxanne walked out into the garage slowly as the prince walked around to the passenger side, his eyes unreadable under his worn ball cap. He pulled the truck door open for her, a weld of duct tape across the top of the door apparently keeping the window in its frame.
“What are you driving?” Roxanne asked at the same moment he asked, “What are you wearing?”
Roxanne glanced down at her off-the-shoulder gray wrap sweater, multilayered chiffon skirt that floated around her waist to her knees, sheer black stockings, and demure patent leather heels before looking back at him. “What? It’s a skirt.”
“That’s not a skirt. That’s a dust bunny.” The prince’s fashion selection for the evening was a beat-up canvas coat, old khakis, and dusty Blundstones. “Don’t you own a pair of jeans?”
Roxanne cocked her hip. “If I’d known we were heading to the rodeo, I’d have dressed differently.”
His grip on the truck door tightened. “The truck belongs to one of my guys. It was the only way I could sneak away from the paparazzi.”
Roxanne sighed and eyed the interior of the truck. It, too, had some duct tape repairs. But at least it looked clean. If the prince wanted her to pay penance for unleashing the world press on them, she’d better start writing those checks now. She looked back at her bodyguard and nodded. “Thank you, Henry.”
Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Page 8