Lush Money (Filthy Rich)

by Angelina M. Lopez

  His grin slid away.

  Fine. Feels like the calm before the storm, like all the bad guys are lying low until I leave. They probably think my stay is temporary. He glanced up at the bubble of isolation around him. Everyone seems to think my stay here is temporary.

  He watched the response dots throb as the sun warmed the wall at his back. He unzipped his canvas coat and let the rising Spanish sun in. He imagined his Tempranillo Vino Real doing the same, unfurling to let the sun feed it and nurture it. He imagined his people turning their faces toward him like a plant did toward the light.

  After several minutes, the response dots died away. Mateo continued to stare at the screen. It pulsed with her silence.

  Mateo had other questions he could ask her: When are you coming? Are you pregnant? He had other things he wanted to know about her: What were you like when you were little? Why do you try to hide your Mexican heritage? Does your back ever feel like it’s breaking under the weight of your responsibilities? Do you like to dance? Do you know how much seeing you in your reading glasses turns me on?

  It had been a tactical error when he’d suggested one late night that they didn’t need to wait a month to have sex. He’d been sitting shoulder to shoulder with her, wreathed in her rose scent as they stared into a laptop screen. She’d looked at him absently, her startling blue eyes blinking through those black frames, before she returned her gaze to the numbers on the screen. “Why would we have sex if I can’t get pregnant?” she murmured as she highlighted another miscalculation from his treasurer.

  Her response that night, like the empty screen now, implied that the conversation was over.

  A mighty crash jolted Mateo’s attention away from the phone. The lid of an olla ferroviaria rolled toward him, hit his work boot, then spun on the granite with a pleasing harmonic ring.

  He looked up and saw an older man in his sixties doing his best to hold up one side of a table collapsing under the weight of the portable cooking pots. Mateo stuck his phone in his jeans pocket as he rushed to his side.

  “Damela, señor,” he said, and the man shuffled over as Mateo took a corner, lifting the table to steady the squat cookers trying to slide off of it.

  “I got it,” Mateo told the man in Spanish as he shuffled his hands to the middle of the table, saw that a bent leg on the cheap card table was to blame. “Find something to prop this up.”

  “Gracias, Alteza,” the man said, but Mateo didn’t really need any of this “your highness” crap when his shoulders were yelling from the weight of the clay inserts and metal cookers. The olla ferroviarias were an invention of resourceful railway men who wanted hot stews on long, cold hauls through the mountains.

  The man kneeled down and began to hurriedly stack nearby boxes under the table. “This used to be Julio’s stand,” Mateo grunted to the bald spot at the back of the man’s head.

  “Sí,” the man said, continuing to stack boxes. “He’s my brother-in-law. I took it over when he caught the cancer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mateo said.

  “Don’t be,” the man shrugged, pulling up the heavy shoulders of his cardigan. “He was an asshole.”

  Mateo bit back a huff. Julio had been kind of an asshole, always complaining about his location on the outskirts of the market and trying to overcharge tourists.

  “I took the stand over three years ago,” the man said, his head still down as he began to work on a second tower of boxes. Mateo was going to feel this tomorrow. “I’ve been waiting to meet you.”

  Hands occupied as they were, Mateo couldn’t protect himself from the metaphorical gut punch. “Yeah, sorry...”

  The man withdrew his hands from the boxes and then signaled for Mateo to let go of the table. The tower of boxes held the weight and they both breathed a sigh of relief. The man stood on creaky knees and stuck his hand out to Mateo. “I’m glad you’re here now,” he said with a kind smile. “My name is Ricardo.”

  Mateo shook it, glad to be let off the hook so easily.

  “Príncipe, I have some ideas. I tried to talk to your father but...” Ricardo shrugged again. In that shrug, Mateo could see all the ways his family had let their people down.

  But as he and Ricardo began to restack lids on the table and Ricardo explained that he’d run a successful marketing firm in Barcelona for thirty years, that he was climbing the walls trying to “relax and retire” in the Monte, that he could create a website for the market and a marketing plan that would bring tourists and their dollars to the Monte, Mateo realized that not all hope was lost. As one of the women who used to yell at him brought him a cool drink and Álvaro returned with a sobao, still warm and crumbly, he thought—just maybe—he could still lead his people out of the wrack and ruin his family had created.

  Mateo ate the cake and took notes on his phone and felt the closing of a circle when Roxanne’s response popped up on his screen.

  Sorry. Had to take a call.

  Your absence made your people distrustful. But your intentions and desires for them are pure—you made ME believe that and I don’t trust anyone’s intentions. Show them that good stuff inside of you. Let them see your hopes. They’ll come around.

  Dummy.

  Mateo smiled and texted Roxanne back with one thumb while he continued to listen to Ricardo’s plans for the Monte and felt the sun’s heat, soft and warm, on his neck.

  April: Interlude

  Part Two

  One Week After That...

  Mateo grinned, slumped down in his truck, his knee up on the dashboard, as he read Roxanne’s fourth enumerated reason why it was his fault that they hadn’t gotten pregnant.

  #4 Jeans-waaaaaaay too tight.

  The way I look in my jeans is why you wanted me to get you pregnant in the first place.

  Sure. That was then. Now I want you in loose pants. Baggy. Let the boys breathe.

  “The boys” have got too much breathing room. For all your promises of a non-stop sex marathon, we’ve actually only been doing it once a month. The boys are starting to ossify.

  He grinned at the silence on her end of the line after their rapid-fire back-and-forth. He wrote: Gotcha.

  Their texts over the last week had slipped from daily status updates to several-times-a-day conversations. When he’d texted her this morning to ask her if she was pregnant, he hadn’t truly wondered, of course she would let him know, but he’d been strangely preoccupied until she’d answered. If she was pregnant, he wouldn’t have a reason to touch her again.

  When he read her answer—No because #1-your golden sperm apparently thinks it’s too good for my lowly midwestern eggs—he’d just pulled up to the vineyard where they were testing the Tempranillo Vino Real in Monte soil. He’d chuckled out loud and sent his sister out of the truck to talk to the vineyard manager who was waiting for them.

  With the afternoon sun turning the vines gold, he got Roxanne’s next volley: #5 too much talk, not enough action.

  Oh no, lady. I volunteered to give you all the action you can handle. He paused a second, and then typed out an idea that had been knocking around in his brain. How bout this: You have sex with me just because we want to, and I’ll give up my night of conversation so you can have your third night of oh-so-sexy ovulation sex.

  He pressed send before he could rethink it. It made sense: even surrounded by a phalanx of photographers and bodyguards, or elbow-deep in financial documents, they’d been getting to know each other, sharing anecdotes through fake smiles, comparing observations while staring at spreadsheets. And these text exchanges felt more unguarded than any of their true life interactions. It felt silly to continue insisting on a no-sex night so they could “talk.”

  But instinct warned him that it would be unwise to concede too much ground to the indomitable Roxanne Medina without her own concession. He was willing to let her know that he enjoyed spending time with her—in a
nd out of bed—outside of their prescribed three days. She had to let him know that she wanted him for more than just his sperm.

  Mateo peered at his phone, the heat growing in the truck as he waited for a response.

  His driver-side door swung open.

  “Coño Mateo, Carmen Louisa is waiting for you,” his sister Sofia said.

  “I’ll be there in a moment,” he said absently as he watched for the dots on his phone to bubble.

  “Venga ahora. Fall in love with that woman later.”

  Mateo’s leg crashed to the floorboard. With her hair in a long braid down her back, Sofia looked like her twelve-year-old self barging into his room to bug him.

  “What? I’m not—”

  “Whatever. You stare into that phone like a lovestruck boy. Which is...sick and sad but I’m not responsible for your taste. Pero venga.” And with that bombshell, his sister turned and stalked back into the rows.

  He’d apologized to Sofia for making her feel ignored and, during the last month, she’d been his ear on the ground and second in command. She’d taken a sabbatical from her apprenticeship to a winemaker in Rioja and Mateo was grateful to have his wild child of a sister beside him as he rebuilt his relationship with his people and endured the family meals. Not that there had been many of them; his parents were devoted to their out-of-the-Monte social lives. But there had been a couple for show with international guests whose names appeared on the front pages of the tabloids. They were as uncomfortable as his father could make them. Only Sofia made them bearable.

  But now—for her to say that he was in love with Roxanne?

  His phone buzzed in his hand.

  #6-Aggressively pursuing me for my hot bod during times when said hot bod is less likely to get pregnant.

  Mateo’s impulse was to type back: Chicken.

  He wanted to push against the boundaries they’d set. He wanted her to acknowledge him as more than her baby daddy. And in that—the more—he could see a bit of what his sister was referring to. He wasn’t in love, definitely not. But he might be in something. Roxanne Medina was a gorgeous, powerful woman who wanted to have sex with him while helping him save his kingdom. A man would have to be dead to not be in something with her.

  So, instead, he wrote back: As much as I would love to continue to discuss your hot bod and all the ways I’ve failed it, I gotta go talk to my vineyard manager.

  He sent the message. Maybe it was time to back off all the texting. Her boundaries—three days a month, sex only for conception—weren’t budging. He’d be an idiot to blink first against a woman who was so well-armed. Yeah, back off a little bit. It was the right thing to do, he thought, as his thumbs typed out: Talk later?

  Shit.

  He stepped out of the truck and determinedly stuck his phone into his back pocket before he stretched out his kinks. He took off his baseball cap and shook out his hair before putting it back on. He squinted his eyes against the afternoon sun and got a good look at how his vines were doing.

  Only when his phone buzzed did he realize he’d been doing all of that with his breath held. He let out a long exhale as he eased his phone from his back pocket.

  Sure. I’d like to hear how the vine is doing. And you’ve never failed me. Not once.

  With his heart thundering, Mateo made his way into his vines.

  One Week After That...

  Mateo slammed the ancient wooden door of his childhood bedroom and then, remembering, stopped short to glare at the king-sized bed. The replacement for his twin bed had been a bribe, like everything else his father offered, a negotiation tactic to get Mateo to accept an engagement to a thirty-something Egyptian heiress when he’d only been seventeen.

  Mateo had discovered the king-sized bed the same moment he’d discovered the heiress, naked, on top of it. A virgin, Mateo had been embarrassed by his stubbornly hard cock, her bored porno-flick come-ons, his father’s willingness to throw him to the fucking wolves. He’d shoved her and her clothes out of the room and slept wrapped in a comforter on the cold terracotta floor.

  If his sister hadn’t been in residence, Mateo would never have stayed in this six-hundred-year-old castle that was supposed to be his heritage.

  The Castillo del Monte had been part of Queen Isabella’s largesse; she’d deployed two celebrated Arab craftsmen to build it. With its intricate brick edifice, forty-meter-high tower, crenellated parapets, arched doorways, and mosaic-tiled ceilings, the Castillo was recognized as one of the best-preserved medieval castles in Spain. Infected by his parents’ presence, however, it had never felt like home.

  Mateo wrestled out of his tight suit jacket, threw it across the room, and pulled his phone out of his back pocket before he sat down on the cursed bed.

  He typed: I fucked up. Again.

  Only Sofia’s calming presence and his dedication to the Monte had gotten Mateo through the last three weeks of dinners with the wealthy and powerful who’d ignored his parents before Mateo’s marriage. He gritted his teeth through multicourse meals while he was side-eyed and asked pointed questions about his wife, her billions, and, once the drinks were flowing, if the picture in the truck was a publicity stunt. For the Monte, he withstood it. For Roxanne, he breathed and smiled, gave the relaxed answer her PR people had crafted so they had time to restore Roxanne’s reputation for her investors and the Monte’s reputation for the world.

  But tonight he let it get to him. When the slimy chairman of a German ski resort had asked about the picture, Mateo’s father had roared, red-faced and sweaty with wine, “Of course it’s not real! The Kings of the Monte never kneel. He makes that bitch get down on her knees and—”

  Mateo had wrapped his fist in the king’s tie and choked off his words. “You shut your mouth, old man,” he’d growled into his father’s gaping face. Then he’d shoved him back into his seat and stalked out of the room.

  The vibration of Roxanne’s instant incoming message soothed him like little else could. What happened?

  I just threatened my father in front of the ambassador to Luxembourg, the heads of a couple of ski resorts, and a Greek shipping magnate, Mateo typed as he toed out of his shoes.

  I’m sure he deserved it. What did he say?

  Nope. Not going there.

  K. Were you defending my honor?

  Mateo gave a begrudging smile to the lime-lit screen. A gentleman never tells.

  They’d texted every day this week, long conversations that Mateo wrote from bed while Roxanne had her lunch or she texted with a glass of wine in hand while Mateo had coffee in his.

  Her text dots oscillated on his screen. He’d begun to think of them—during their early-morning, late-afternoon, middle-of-the-night text conversations—as her thought bubbles, the visual version of her figuring out what to say to him. Was she as cautious as he was? Did she, sometimes, throw caution to the wind like he did and text the truth, the emotion closest to her heart? Did she wonder, too, what he was thinking? What he was feeling?

  You know, your father no more deserves you as a son than I do as a sperm donor. You’re a good man, Mateo. I trust whatever you did was justified. When I get there, I’ll help make it all better.

  Jesus. When Roxanne Medina, billionaire, giantess, his once worst enemy, said shit like that, it sent a bloom of warmth from his chest straight down the center of his body. He crawled backward up the bed and stretched out, his cock pulsing with want for her.

  When exactly will you be getting here?

  I’ll start ovulating in four days.

  Mateo huffed at the phone, relaxing into his mattress. Ooh baby. Stop with the sexy talk. He stretched out his legs, arching the evening’s tension out of his toes. His cock was a hard, happy friend stretched down his pant leg.

  I’ve got something that wants to be made all better right now.

  Sounds like a personal problem.

 
No, it’s definitely a you problem. Mateo typed rapidly into his phone. You, making me wait to touch you while you say kind things and tease me and flirt with me and make me feel better. You, transforming from a woman who only wanted to take from me to a woman who gives and gives and gives. You with your goddamned time restrictions when you’ve made me realize that inside that jaw-dropping body is a wicked-smart brain and giant, generous heart. Fuck you, Roxanne. I’m definitely having a you problem.

  He pressed send before his brain could catch up with his pounding heart.

  God love her, she didn’t make him wait long for a reply: I might be able to be there in three days.

  Something with wings took off in his chest. Make it two and I promise to make it worth your while.

  I’m a billionaire married to a hot prince. Not sure what else you could offer me.

  Mateo grinned wickedly as he began to text back with his left thumb, his wedding ring helping to hold his phone steady, while his right hand undid his belt.

  Oh, belleza. Let me count the ways...

  His location and the night’s event were forgotten as Mateo began to type, in heat-soaked detail, what he was going to do to his wife when she landed on Spanish soil.

  April: Day One

  Four days later, Roxanne clicked through the final articles Brandon had compiled for her as her Dassault Falcon 8X—the newest plane in the Dassault fleet—began its descent toward the Monte del Vino Real’s tiny runway. Her excellent pilot Priscilla effortlessly handled the steep approach angle through the Picos de Europa, and Roxanne’s espresso barely shimmered in its porcelain cup. Having already showered and gotten herself ready in her bedroom suite at the rear of the plane, she relaxed into the white leather recliner and sipped her coffee in her sun-bright luxury jet, enjoying these final minutes of peace as she scanned the last article, looking for any mention of their sex photo or deprecating comments about Mateo’s position in their marriage.