Lush Money (Filthy Rich)

by Angelina M. Lopez

  He’d done “that” to her because he couldn’t stop himself, because he’d wanted to know if reality was as good as his sweat-soaked dreams. Reality was better. But perhaps a primal part had sought to make her as vulnerable as he was, had wanted her helpless with him, if only for the moments that his mouth played between her strong and velvety thighs.

  He raised his hands up, unable to stop the hurt mixing with anger in her blue eyes. “Why would I arrange a public scene like that? What possible advantage would there be to me? You heard what they said out there. They’re saying I’m your kept boy!”

  She held that gorgeous body tall. But she slid her arms over the delicate cashmere of her sweater and wrapped them around her waist. “Maybe humiliating me has more value than saving your kingdom. Maybe you’d risk the Monte to be rid of me.”

  When she’d displayed power over his kingdom and future, Mateo had pushed back. Mateo, it seemed, had power over her body. She was making him pay for her vulnerability.

  “Fuck!” The tie he’d worn for the press conference felt like it was choking him. He dug his fingers into it, wrenched it off, and hurled it across the room. Unbuttoning his top button, he whirled back on her. “Last night, in that truck, that was just you and me. You weren’t the powerful billionaire with a sex kink, and I wasn’t the penniless prince with nothing to his name but a big cock. That was just us, just Mateo and Roxanne. I, Mateo, took you, Roxanne, up there because...the hotel rooms make me feel like a prostitute. And I wanted to show you my favorite spot in the city. And...because I need you, and you need me, and it would be nice if I got along with the woman who’s going to save my kingdom and bear my child.”

  One arm still crossed her waist, but she’d raised her other hand to her lip. She petted and pinched that full lip he liked to suck on, her eyes full of doubt. He took a cautious step closer, looked down at her.

  “I haven’t forgotten the way you were in the truck with me last night.” Roxanne stiffened at the reminder and Mateo continued quickly. “Before I made love to you. You were nice to me. You listened to me grumble and moan, and you made me feel calm. You offered me help. Roxanne, if you believe nothing else, believe I wouldn’t fuck over the one person who’s offered to help me dig out of this mess.”

  He’d told her things last night he’d never told anyone. About his lifelong ambition to be superior to his father. About the certainty that he would fail. The contract gave him breathing room, a safe space to tell secrets to a temporary wife who didn’t care about his weaknesses and failures. She only wanted two things from him: his cock and then his absence. He was happy to give her both.

  Her fingers dropped from her lower lip. Her pretty blue eyes had rain clouds in them as she looked up at him. “I have no reason to trust you,” she said, echoing his words of two nights ago when, against all odds, Mateo had given her his trust.

  There was a light tap on the door. If it was that He-Man bodyguard... “Not now,” Mateo shouted.

  A chime on the smartphone her assistant had left on the counter drew Roxanne’s attention. She walked over to it, picked it up, read the message with a frown. “You’re going to want to open the door, Prínc...” She blinked. And then looked up at him. “...Mateo.”

  Those goddamn lips around his name. Roxanne Medina held every single card: she’d paid off his most demanding creditors, she promised a future for his kingdom, she held his personal reputation in her hands. And yet, she made him feel like he had power here, too.

  He lowered his eyes and grinned at her. He was pretty sure they could handle whatever was on the other side of that door.

  He strolled over and opened it without taking his eyes off of her.

  Until he had to grab a fighting, spitting, she-devil around the waist as she launched herself through the door and at his wife.

  “You bitch!” the girl yelled, folded over at the waist as she tried to escape the belt of his arms. “I’ll claw your eyes out for what you’ve done to my brother!”

  Mateo grunted as he tried to keep a handle on the lithe girl who could always slip out of his hold, no matter how small she’d been and no matter what rule she was breaking. “Roxanne Medina,” he called over his sister’s cursing. “Meet La Princesa Sofia Maria Isabel de Esperanza y Santos. My baby sister.”

  Roxanne raised a sleek eyebrow in amazement, still safely across the room. “Nice to meet you?” she hazarded.

  Sofia fought her way out of hair that scissors only glanced at to growl in response. “You make my brother look like a fool, you bring worry and fear to the Monte, you show off a picture of the best man I know down on his knees.” Holding her back was like trying to hang on to a willow branch in a storm. “You’ll be meeting my fists!”

  Roxanne just raised her hands. “It’s okay, guys. We’ve got this.”

  Mateo glanced behind him to see her entire security crew crowding the doorway. He-Man looked like he planned on folding Mateo’s little sister into a cube. “That’s right,” Mateo said, catching his foot on the door. “We’ve got this.” He kicked it shut and then grabbed his sister by the belt loop of her skinny jeans.

  “¡Para!” he demanded, swinging her around to face him. “What are you doing here?”

  Sofia’s dark eyes flashed wide as she looked up at him. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here? Why are you standing in front of those cameras with her como un bufón? Why are you letting her spread all those mentiras? ¿Por qué no me has llamado? ¿Por qué no hablas conmigo?”

  His sister, five years his junior, had spent her formative years at a Catholic boarding school in Santiago de Compostela with nuns determined to save her unrepentant soul. Spanish—and colorful Spanish curses—flowed through her accent and words more naturally than they did through his. Her texts let him know that she’d known about the contract, but never thought he’d agree to it. He’d only replied with a promise to tell her more “soon.” Her bewilderment about his abandonment—Why haven’t you called me back? Why won’t you talk to me?—seemed much worse in the language they used as children.

  He felt stripped of words. “I...uh... I needed to get a better handle on...”

  Roxanne spoke up from the other side of the room. “It’s my fault,” she called. “I’ve not treated your brother with the respect he deserved. If you haven’t heard from him, it’s because I put him in an uncomfortable position.”

  Sofia whipped a malicious glare at Roxanne. “He doesn’t need you to speak for him,” she spat.

  Roxanne raised her hands in a surrender position while Mateo shook his head at trying to get a word in edgewise around two strong, quick-witted women. He took his sister gently by the elbow and turned her toward him.

  “What she says is true. I regretted signing the contract, and we had some differences to work out. I wanted to get things under control before we spoke.”

  There was so much hurt on his little sister’s face. “So you let three months go by?” she said in a low but outraged Spanish. “Stop trying to solve everything by yourself. Talk to me. Be my brother. I’m tired of you hiding here.”

  Behind his sister, Roxanne was studying the light fixtures. Mateo leaned toward Sofia. “She speaks Spanish,” he informed her in English.

  Sofia rolled her eyes. “Of course she does.”

  “And she is trying to make things right. I trust her.”

  That’s when he noticed the tears in Sofia’s dark doe eyes. “You trust her but not me? You trust her but not your people? We’re all ready and waiting to help. But you...you don’t ask for our thoughts or our input. You act as though the only way you can stand us is when we’re 2000 miles away.”

  “Basta, Sofia,” he breathed. His distance had never been about her or the Monte.

  “And you,” Sofia said, flicking away the moisture from her lashes as she turned on Roxanne. “My brother won’t be of any use to you if the king has anything to say
about it.”

  Mateo had to blink before he could process Sofia’s words. “What?”

  His sister shrugged her narrow shoulders in her tan leather blazer, shifting effortlessly from an enraged banshee to a lithe and careless socialite, showing the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mood changes that were the special providence of Spanish women. “That’s why I’m here. I overheard the king on the phone.” She swayed away from both of them, toward the display of refreshments, and grabbed a Diet Coke. “He told the person on the other end that you’d humiliated him for the last time.” She popped the Coke and sat on the arm of a sofa. “He said he had a way to make sure you never became king.”

  And with that bombshell dropped, his sister took a long, long drink.

  During the harvest season in the Monte del Vino Real, Mateo would drive to the vineyards in the middle of the night, when the air was cool and the grapes had settled, to check the sugar levels and determine whether the fruit was ready to be picked. He’d known some of the happiest moments of his life on those nights, there in the dark with only his flashlight for light, the leaves of the vines stroking his cheeks, and the tang of fertile soil rich in his nose. But the land where his ancestors had chosen to build their empire was proud and didn’t give its gifts effortlessly. Winds from the Bay of Biscay would find their way through the Picos de Europa and come barreling through the vines, piercing Mateo where he stood and shaking his almost-ripe grapes to the ground.

  Standing in this technological fortress, Mateo could feel the battering of that proud, pointless wind.

  “Can he do that?” Roxanne’s question was soft as she walked up to him.

  Mateo looked at her. There was something about tracing his eyes over her high cheekbones and smooth, delicate skin that soothed him. He realized, as he looked down at her, that her skin wasn’t as creamy pale as he once thought. She had an olive undertone, more Latina than he’d originally realized. And there, right there at her hairline in the shine of the lights, was her hair slightly lighter there? More chestnut than black?

  “Of course not,” his sister snapped, tossing her tawny hair over her shoulder and bringing Mateo out of his musings. “The king only wishes he were all-powerful. If any of his wild schemes had succeeded, he’d have oil pumps in the middle of the village and an international chain of King of the Monte dance clubs.”

  Slowly, Mateo shook his head. “It’s different this time. You know that. That’s why you came.”

  Sofia narrowed her eyes and took a defiant drink of her soda.

  Mateo folded his hands over his heart. “Y mil gracias.” That seething twenty-something softened in an instant to the baby sister he adored. “The CML Resort deal has emboldened him. He was probably on the phone with that donkey’s ass of a CEO, Easton Fuller.”

  King Felipe was playing a very dangerous game. He wanted Roxanne’s money, so he was being cautious about sabotaging their relationship. He wanted CML’s money, so he was promising something that was improbable.

  But not impossible. Negative public sentiment was the first uneasy step in getting a prince deposed and, while Roxanne had unwittingly laid the groundwork with her hasty press releases, his father had fanned the flames by whispering rumors that the all-mighty Golden Prince was a gigolo to a billionaire. Mateo needed to make amends to the people of the Monte. Soon.

  But before he could go to the Monte, he needed to solidify his relationship with Roxanne. It was almost ludicrous, this shimmering panic in his gut that this woman he despised two days ago might leave, might decide that his Golden sperm wasn’t worth the hassle. He was no better than his father; he needed her money.

  The possibilities of a bankrupt Monte del Vino Real and a destitute citizenry were why his palms were sweaty. They had nothing to do with the thought of never touching Roxanne Medina again.

  Knowing how Roxanne liked his body, Mateo slid out of his suit jacket and hung it on a nearby chair, and then slid his hands into his pants pockets as he bit his lower lip. He knew Roxanne liked his lips, too. “So we need to satisfy a suspicious press that our marriage is real and get in front of whatever bullshit my father is brewing up.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “We’re going to have to spend more time together.”

  Roxanne’s blue eyes flared. “What?”

  He leveled his Golden Prince gaze on her. “We’re going to need to make this love affair look real.”

  “¡Qué asco!” his sister cried, leaping off the sofa arm in disgust. “With her?”

  He turned and walked toward his wife, taking in the stiffening of her body and the mutinous thrust of her jaw as he drew closer. He lifted her hand, which she would have tugged away if his sister hadn’t been there, and enfolded it and her ostrich egg of a ring against his chest.

  “Roxanne. Mi esposa.” The storm didn’t soften in her eyes. “It seems we’re going to have to make your fairy tale come true.”

  April: Interlude

  One Week Later

  Mateo leaned back against a six-hundred-year-old stone wall, his phone in his hands, as the sun slipped just above the snow-capped Pico Viajadora and began to warm the vendors setting up in the Monte del Vino Real’s plaza. April mornings in the Monte always began cold, warming up to the daytime temperatures that would encourage the vines to flower then set into the hard, green nodules that would become Tempranillo fruit. Mateo nodded to a passing vendor; the man gave him a quick bow and a “Buenos dias, Alteza,” but ducked away from further conversation.

  Mateo shook out his chilled hands, his burnished gold ring catching the morning light, before setting his thumbs on his smartphone’s keyboard. He stared at the blinking cursor.

  It was 9 p.m. in San Francisco, a good time to write Roxanne if he wanted a quick response. He didn’t need a quick response. He didn’t need to contact her at all. But after the last week of evening strolls and long dinners and cuddling close during ballet or opera performances, making sure to smile and stare longingly into each other’s eyes for the benefit of their paparazzi entourage, he’d become...accustomed to her presence. Her smell. Her under-her-breath smart-ass retorts as she gazed at him like he was the most glorious thing ever born. It was nice being looked at that way, even if it was only playacting for the hundreds of cameras and cell phones trained on them whenever they were out. It was nice looking back, especially when—in private—she dropped the act and rolled up her sleeves, shoved on those little black reading glasses to attack the documents spread out on her conference room table, working with Mateo to get a handle on years of financial mismanagement by the king and his advisors.

  Her sincere desire to help the Monte gave him a convenient excuse to contact her now, just a couple days since he left her in San Francisco.

  He huddled into his worn canvas coat, shifted on a wall that was the last crumbling remains of fortifications that once encircled the village, and typed, Need some help. He pressed send before he could chicken out.

  The decadent odor of fresh-baked sobaos—butter, lemon, and a dash of rum—filled Mateo’s nose as a lanky twelve-year-old boy lugged past a basket filled with the breakfast cakes.

  “Helping your mamá, Fernando?” Mateo asked in Spanish.

  The boy stopped and blanched. “I’m...I’m Álvaro, your highness,” the boy stuttered, his arms quivering. “Fernando is my brother.”

  Inwardly, Mateo cursed. But he gave the boy a smile. “Of course. I’m sorry. Don’t let me interrupt your work.” As the boy staggered away, Mateo realized it had been three or four years since he’d seen Fernando. Fernando was probably preparing to leave the Monte for college or work, destined to never return like so many of their best and brightest young people. Mateo’s infrequent visits hadn’t paused the Monte in amber, stopping its changes. His kingdom had kept moving forward; Mateo just hadn’t been paying attention.

  His phone buzzed, almost leaping out of Mateo’s hand. He caught it, tilted it to read
the message in the growing morning light.

  K. What do you need?

  She’d said “K.” Not “maybe.” Not “why?” Just “K.” Yes.

  Still can’t get a lead on the guy the King is trotting all over the Monte. And mystery surveyors have made themselves scarce, too. Any chance you can get your investigators to find out if Easton Fuller has close ties to a dark-haired man named Roman?

  Mateo had eked out all the time he could pantomiming a happily wedded couple with Roxanne before the daily phone calls from his sister—she’d returned home as his spy—reached a crescendo of panic. Surveyors had been popping up on the Monte’s vineyards and taking measurements before they could be chased off with hoes and pruning shears. The king had been showing a dark-haired American around the Monte, introducing him to villagers who said that while the man was more pleasant than the usual people his father brought around, he left them no clue to who he was, what he was doing there, or what he wanted.

  Mateo pressed send before he could re-read the text. Asking her for help made sense, right? He’d had no luck discovering what his father or CML Resorts was up to. It wasn’t a totally transparent reason to write her. Was it?

  Her response was immediate.

  Good thought. I’ll see what I can find out.

  Shit. Now what?

  Thank you, he typed back.

  Lame.

  Fortunately, the reply dots began to bubble. No prob. How’s it going?

  He found himself grinning underneath the worn-out brim of his Giants baseball cap. He took in the marketplace hustle growing around the tortured statue of San Vicente de Zaragoza, the patron saint of wine and the Monte, as vendors set up stands for produce and vegetables, for hanging meats like jamón and chorizo, for the pungent queso picon made from the milk of mountain-shepherded goats, for handwoven baskets and locally created bagpipes, and most importantly, for the heavy bottles of local wine. He took in the laughing and the backslapping and the chiding owners gave each other. And then he took in the circle of timeworn granite the vendors maintained around him, like hot lava that they couldn’t cross. During his high school and college days, when he was home more often, he would have been yelled at by some gray-haired citizen to get off his lazy culo and carry something.