Henry’s cool gaze took in the prince before he nodded back at her. “Have a good evening, ma’am.”
Roxanne took a step up and settled herself into the big roomy cab that smelled of pine and tool oil while the prince closed the door with a little more force than necessary.
He got in on his side and they drove up the levels of the parking garage without speaking a word.
Near the exit, he said, “Duck down.” Roxanne slumped down on the vinyl seat but stayed high enough to see that, as they exited onto the city street, even the late hour and soupy fog hadn’t chased away a few determined paparazzi. Their collars raised against the damp cold, they barely glanced up from their phones as the truck passed them on the street. She imagined that even the most desperate celebrities wouldn’t stoop to riding in vehicles with rust decorating the fenders.
Roxanne glanced at the prince, who’d kept his head low and his shoulders hunched high as he’d driven past the photographers. “You were right. This car is good camouflage.”
He relaxed his shoulders and tilted his cap farther back on his head, revealing shadows of exhaustion that were almost purple. Then he turned right on the nearly empty downtown street, when their hotel was two blocks to the left.
“But the St. Francis is—”
“I can’t go there,” the prince cut her off. “Not right away. I need to fucking breathe.” He looked at her, chin raised, and she could see the pride he was swallowing. “Do you mind if we drive around?”
When they’d returned to their table last night, he’d played the part of the fairy-tale prince, the perfect, attentive gentleman as he held her seat for her and asked about her work and kept her wineglass full. Roxanne would have been as thrilled as the press and other diners, all who were snapping pictures, if the bleakness in his eyes hadn’t hollowed her out a bit. Seeing the prince ask her permission now, knowing that he’d accepted the bitter truth that she was the only person who could save him, should have made her relieved. He was finally amenable to the logical plan she’d drawn up.
She’d only wanted him to bend. Not to break.
She shook her head and lowered her eyes. “No, I don’t mind.” She looked out her window, the thick fog making the downtown buildings barely discernible as they drove up California Street. A shiver caught her unexpectedly.
The prince cranked on the heat without a word, the blower filling the cab with noise and warmth.
After a few minutes of silent driving, he asked, “Who was that guy? Back at the garage.”
Roxanne turned to look at him. Both work-hardened hands were resting on top of the steering wheel, and the gold of his wedding band caught the gleam of the traffic light he was focused on. He’d shaved and she realized, from this vantage point, she could see the sharp angle of his jaw and cheekbone. She could see the muscle ticking where they met.
“That’s Henry. He’s head of my security team.”
“Oh.” That muscle continued vibrating as the light turned green and the prince took a left on Masonic. The streets were quiet and the lights of the urban townhomes they passed were soft blobs of light in the fog.
“I don’t sleep with my staff,” she said, glancing at the ring again. She was surprised he’d worn it. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”
A humorless smirk bent his lips. “I’m proof that that isn’t true,” he said, low and bitter, without taking his eyes off the road.
“Ours is a trade agreement,” she said calmly. “You have a product I want. I am paying you for it. We meet as equals.”
The prince rolled his eyes and slumped against the doorframe, leaving one arm resting on top of the wheel. “Princesa, I’ve never come to anyone more hat-in-hand. At least that meathead can protect you. The only thing I’ve got for you is what every man who lays eyes on you is desperate to give.”
Roxanne felt a warmth bloom just under her gold cross that had nothing to do with the ancient heater. “Henry isn’t a meathead.”
“Then maybe you should be fucking him.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“I know.” He tilted his head to look at her, and his shadowed eyes under his cap, his dark, furrowed eyebrows, let her know that none of his disgust was for her. “I know you wouldn’t.”
He turned back to the road. “But maybe you should be. I imagine his ‘product’ is far superior to mine. I’m the idiot who allowed his kingdom to be robbed right under his nose.”
Roxanne looked down at her lap, squeezed her fingers around her silver clutch in the cloud of her skirt. The bleakness on his face was hard to look at.
“How far were your numbers off?” she asked quietly.
“Farther off than I thought possible,” he said, voice hollow. “Thank you for the...” She heard him swallow and shift away from her. “Payments. There were creditors on that list I didn’t know about. Brandon writes a very succinct report; maybe your assistant wants to run my kingdom. He’d do a better job than me and the king.”
It was like he’d pulled off a layer of skin and now sat next to her raw and exposed. She’d seen him furious and she’d seen him cocksure. And at times, she’d not seen him at all, only a tool to achieve her goal. But right now, with his self-disgust stripping him naked and vulnerable, Roxanne saw an echo of herself, a shadow of what she felt when a business venture failed or when she had to tell a female business owner that her losses had surpassed even Roxanne’s ability to save her. She imagined that if she looked in the mirror when terror of failure startled her awake, she would look very much like the prince right now. For the first time, Roxanne—a poor girl from Kansas who made an empire out of nothing—felt a kinship with this Spanish man born into royalty.
He stared blankly out the window, his jaw stiff, as they headed up into the San Francisco hills, passing million-dollar homes crushed together on the slopes.
“What happened to you could have happened to anyone,” she said as the yellow light from the dash glinted off his face. “Do you know how many corporate tycoons invested in Bernie Madoff’s scam?”
Those sulky lips pulled back in a grimace. “I wasn’t fooled by a friend of a friend’s financial advisor. I was lied to by our treasurer, a man I’ve known and trusted my whole life. Worse, I was lied to by my father, a man I don’t trust. I should have checked the facts.” He punctuated “facts” with a punch to the steering wheel.
Then he gripped the wheel like it was his father’s throat.
“I should have known better. I should have been better. My whole life...” He swallowed like he was choking on the words. “I’ve lived my whole life declaring I was going to be better than the king. I did well in school and stayed away from my parents’ excesses and...fuck, just figured I was some superior fucking creature who was going to swoop into the Monte and save it just in time. But in the end...” He shook his head, shoulders weighted down in pain. “I’m just as worthless as my father. And, just like during the reign of my father, the innocents will suffer most for it. Your baby, our child, will be the one left to clean up the mess.”
The truck snapped to a hard stop. Roxanne slapped her hands against the dash and glanced out the windshield. Her mouth fell open.
Through the glass, a wide view of the city spread before her. They were above the fog but could look down on the city encased in it, lights glowing inside its soft billowy cotton. The Transamerica building mightily poked up its triangle peak, and a bright full moon hung above the Bay Bridge.
She looked at the prince. “Where—”
He jerked his thumb over his left shoulder. Behind him, she could see the red legs of Sutro Tower, a gigantic radio tower that was both a landmark and an eyesore for San Franciscans. She’d never thought of coming up here. They were in an empty parking lot, surrounded by trees and dark. She wondered how many others who looked on this radio tower every day had missed the opportunity to look out from it, to take in
this spectacular view.
The prince turned off the truck, leaving them in a silence that was dense after the roar of the heater and the rattle of the muffler. The light of the full moon cast a pale blue light inside the cab.
“If someone scattered diamonds in your skirt, it would look like that,” the prince said quietly, his head lowered but his ball cap nodding at the view.
It was an affecting way to describe what they were looking at. Or he was giving her shit.
Setting her clutch on the seat, Roxanne leaned toward him and plucked the ball cap off his head.
The prince’s hair tumbled into his face, releasing the clean, woody smell of his shampoo. Slowly he raised his hand to brush it back, and then he lifted his head to look at her. The misery was still there, in that dent between his dark brows. But his eyes also glowed with what he wanted to do to forget his misery, if only for the evening.
Roxanne swallowed. And then pushed the cap against his canvas coat.
“If you keep wearing these to our dates, I’ll—”
His hands came up to capture her hands against his chest. “Rob me blind? Beggar my people? Get in line,” he smirked.
She pulled her hands away from him. “I’ll be annoyed.”
He tossed the cap to the floor. “Well, you’d better get used to them. I’ve got a good reason to hide my face.”
The beautiful view and the extra degree of heat in his eyes hadn’t made Roxanne forget his gut-wrenching tirade. The prince truly wanted to make the Monte a better place for his people. For their daughter. And he believed that he had failed his life’s mission. She couldn’t imagine, after all of the work, all of the focus, what that must feel like. “I’ve lived my whole life declaring I was going to be better than the king.” Hadn’t she, in her own way, said the same thing to herself? Never out loud. Never to another living soul. But hadn’t she also said she was going to be a better person, a better mother, than her mother? Hadn’t so much of what she’d accomplished been about getting far away from that woman in her run-down rooms with run-down men?
If she discovered that all the work, somehow, had been for nothing; that she was still going to end up a victim to her mother’s whims and inflict those same mistakes on her daughter? Well, she’d probably stick a gun in her mouth.
“You won’t need to hide your face when you realize how lucky you are,” she said, clasping her hands together and settling them in the puff of her skirt. “Righting sinking ships happens to be one of your wife’s specialties. We’ll get the kingdom’s financial affairs in order.”
Paying off the most insistent creditors had been effortless. Garbage would once again be collected in the Monte. The bulk of the money would still have to wait until Roxanne was pregnant or the year was up, whichever came first. She wasn’t a fool. Still, there was plenty she could do that didn’t involve cash. She was excited to roll up her sleeves and attack the books.
She pulled her thoughts away from her daydreams—she was a nerdy bookkeeper at heart—to find that he’d settled back against the door to watch her. She realized that she’d just called herself his wife.
“All of this is for the sake of our daughter, of course,” she said quickly.
“Of course,” he responded. Was he mocking her? “It’s a perfect story, how mommy saved daddy.” His soft voice took away the bitterness of his words. “Why do you keep insisting it’s going to be a girl?”
She felt the flush along her chest, exposed by the low wrap of her off-the-shoulder sweater. “Because I’m going to have a daughter.” She kept her head lifted and eyes on him. “Don’t you believe in the power of positive thinking?”
“I believed I could build a better kingdom for my heir and look how that turned out.” While shadows darkened his eyes, his grin grew teasing. “You know this is one area, my beautiful billionaire, where your money won’t buy you what you want.”
“I know. But I’m still going to have a daughter.” She tilted her head, felt her hair slip across shoulders that were growing cool.
What could she tell him? That she’d never considered the possibility of having a son? That would sound delusional. And she wouldn’t tell him—no matter how nakedly honest he’d been with her—that only to a daughter could she give the childhood denied herself. That she wanted a friend and companion, a girl who could one day inherit her company the way his heir would inherit his kingdom. That sometimes, in her tower above so many, she was a little lonely.
She shivered, as much from the raw truth at the tip of her tongue as from the rapidly growing cold in the cab. Instantly, he zipped down his coat, leaned forward to pull it off his arms, and scooted forward to wrap it around her.
Roxanne leaned her head forward as he closed the gap at the front of the coat, leaving her completely surrounded in the spicy green smell of him. He wore a plain white t-shirt that pulled across wide shoulders and showed off a hard chest. He was as close to naked as she’d ever seen him.
“Gracias, Príncipe,” she murmured.
His warm hand settled on her nape, under her hair. “Don’t call me that. Not tonight.” Slowly, he pulled her hair out from the collar of his coat, and then brought it over her shoulder, his fingers trailing through it as he spoke. “In fact, don’t ever call me that again. Use my name. I’m your husband.” She could feel her hair catching in his calluses as he gently raked his fingers through it, creating sensitive prickles on her scalp. “Tonight, I’m just a man who brought his wife to a make-out spot so he could try some new ‘firsts’ with her. Use my name.”
As her hair slipped from his fingers onto her shoulder, Roxanne turned to look at him over its long black fall. “You’re never just a man. Príncipe.”
In the flare of his perfect nose and the gleam of his white teeth, Roxanne knew he’d caught the gauntlet she’d just thrown down.
The prince was a good man. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. She’d come prepared to play, to seduce and distract him out of his despair, if only for a couple of hours. She owed him that much. She could revel in the heat they’d discovered together, tease and touch him on her terms, while firmly keeping control.
She returned her gaze demurely back to her lap as the prince moved closer to her, the old springs of the truck seat squeaking. He tucked her hair behind her ear, and then leaned down to it. “And you, belleza? Are you never anything but a billionaire and captain of industry?” His low voice, rumbling directly into her ear, dripped straight down to the core of her. “Are you never just a woman, demanding her pleasure in a stranger’s doorway. Are you never just...Roxanne?”
Her teeth bit into her lower lip as she heard her name cross his. He’d never said her name before, although she had, at times, said his. In moments of weakness. She resisted making this another one of those moments as his deep voice encased her name in velvet, made it something exotic and sensual with the whisper of his Spanish accent. “Roxanne... Roxanne.” His big hand dipped under the mass of her skirts and found her knee, traced delicate circles on the sensitive inside through her stocking. “It tastes good. My spouse’s name. You should try it.”
“Okay,” she said, breathlessly. Those circles were making her crazy. “I’ll try it.” She raised her head and looked at him, licking her top lip. A long lick, making it shine, as if the heat between them had evaporated all its moisture. She dragged her teeth across her bottom lip and then opened her mouth, inhaling as his eyes focused on her lush lips.
“Roxanne,” she said, long and breathy.
His blunt nails scraped halfway up her thigh, the unapologetic sensation making her legs jolt apart. His glare turned calculating. “My sweet Roxanne, you obviously need some help. I know how easily you lose your mind when I touch you. Here.”
And as effortlessly as if she were his baseball cap, Mateo lifted her up and pulled her over him, forcing her to straddle him as her skirt billowed over his lap and his coat fell
off her shoulders. His big hands engulfed her jaw, the furnace of their heat surrounding her face as his fingers stroked her nape. “Now focus.” He held her inches from his face, her eyes flooded by him, her body controlled by him. He was thick and hard in his worn, soft khakis. She gripped his strong wrists for something to hang on to. “Ma-te-o,” he said, those soft lips taunting her. “Mateo.”
He was so fucking gorgeous. She licked her lips for real this time—all the moisture had left them—and when he watched the journey of her tongue, the taunt in his eyes turned into something hotter. “Let’s try this,” he rumbled. And he pulled her mouth to him. “Mateo,” he said, stroking his name against her lips, breathing his name into her mouth.
She could taste his name on her tongue. She couldn’t... She tilted her head and pressed her lips against his. For a spare second, he closed his eyes and kissed her back.
Then his hands clenched on her jaw as he jerked her head away. “Uh, uh, uh. Mateo,” he demanded. But he was no more immune than she as he pulled her mouth slowly back to him, his eyes losing their fight to keep their domineering gleam. He kissed her, cradling her face as he tasted her lips and then licked into her mouth. That pleasure of a whole month ago came roaring back as he tilted her head to taste every corner, and Roxanne dropped her hands to grip his t-shirt, welcoming him inside her as she tilted her hips to nestle him closer. She spread her hands wide to caress his chest. When she bit at his tongue and then licked to soothe it, his groan drowned out her gasp of pleasure. God, she loved the way he tasted.
With a ferocious suck on her lower lip, he pulled her away again. His fiery eyes burned into her. “Mateo,” he said, shaking her head slightly with his powerful hands. “Say it.”
Roxanne rolled her hips against the thickness of him, clawed her nails down his torso. “Príncipe,” she groaned.
Never had she seen excitement and fury war so determinedly on someone’s face. His expression made her pussy squeeze like he was already inside her. And then his eyes narrowed.
Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Page 9