She hummed with satisfaction when she didn’t find any. It seemed their full-court playacting to the media over the last month was working—of eighteen articles printed about them this week, only three mentioned the photo and four questioned the veracity of their marriage. Through leaks, intermediaries, press releases, and interviews, Roxanne and Mateo were bamboozling the world into believing they were giddily-in-love newlyweds. This New York Times article even did a wonderful job of highlighting Mateo’s many accomplishments and his dedication to the Monte, written just as Roxanne had dictated them to the writer.
Roxanne coughed suddenly, covering her mouth to avoid getting espresso all over the bronze silk of her dress. There, at the bottom of the article, was a quote she didn’t remember giving to the writer:
“If I couldn’t see or feel, I’d still be attracted to him.”
They’d pulled it out, highlighted it in big font so the words couldn’t be missed. Anchored it below a photo of her and Mateo, in San Francisco, at a charity ball as they chatted with the hosts, him with his tuxedoed arm around her and her giving him—a look. A look that Roxanne, who was the master of her own face, who knew exactly how to communicate with it, had never seen before.
She remembered, barely, chatting with the writer for a couple of minutes after she’d thought the interview was over. She remembered liking the aspiring female writer. And she remembered the writer mentioning Mateo’s killer good looks.
If I couldn’t see or feel, I’d still be attracted to him.
She snapped her laptop closed as the plane touched down and pulled her necklace from her dress to touch her cross. Maybe Mateo hadn’t seen the article.
Of course he had. It was The New York Times.
As the plane began to slow, the roar of the engine was replaced with the increasing roar of a crowd. Priscilla clicked on the intercom to let her know that Henry, who’d arrived the day before, had okayed Roxanne’s disembarkment and that they would be pulling up to stairs and a roped-off crowd of about three hundred people. Roxanne felt her first shiver of nerves. Glancing around the elegant leather-and-chrome interior of her plane, she caught Helen’s eye. Helen had been a flight attendant and former Army nurse when she’d met her, an astonishing flight attendant who’d kept her coworkers and two hundred passengers calm when their plane had been forced to take extra laps around the San Diego airport because of stubborn landing gear. They’d eventually landed safely and Roxanne, who’d observed Helen from her coach seat, began an immediate campaign to convince the woman to join her eventual empire.
From the jump seat, the fiercely loyal Helen gave her a wink. Roxanne returned a trembly thumbs-up.
In here, this was her kingdom: transportation she’d paid for and staff she supported and luxuries, the designer silk dress and the Tiffany earrings, she’d earned through sweat equity.
But out there, that was his kingdom. And in her impulsive and still regrettable announcements about their marriage, she’d humiliated him and undermined the Monte. She was working hard to make amends now. But she wasn’t sure what reception she was going to get when she stepped off the plane.
When she met his people. When she met, for the time being, her people. When she met the people who would call her daughter Princesa. The rising hum of the crowd as the plane settled to a stop made this future she’d planned and schemed for terrifying real.
With her view blocked by the closed windows, she undid her seat belt and stood to shake out her dress. It was a dark bronze silk at the top, gathered at her waist with a belt, and falling away in lighter gold-cream pleats to mid-calf. She wore delicate heels that cinched at her ankle, a gold bangle at her wrist, and simple pearl earrings exposed by her braid, styled softly to the side so that it flowed over her left breast.
She’d called in her personal stylist and hair/makeup person for this moment. And then sent them scurrying away. How did an essentially orphaned Mexican-American urchin from Kansas dress to meet the subjects of her husband’s European kingdom? What could she wear that said, “Hey, I know I screwed you and your prince over, but I’m totally cool and I hope you don’t hate me or my daughter who will one day rule you.”
Helen stood by the plane’s interior door and looked at Roxanne. Straightening her constantly lolling “wedding” ring and sweeping her hand down her braid, Roxanne gave Helen a nod and then took a deep, steadying breath. Helen took hold of the disarming handle with both hands, pulled, and then shoved the door open.
What she wanted most of all, she realized as the blinding Spanish sun poured into the plane, was for Mateo to think she looked pretty.
The sharp rise of crowd noise hit her like a plank. She worked hard not to wince against it. Stuffing every fear and nerve and hesitation down deep, Roxanne stepped out onto the top of the stairs with a fixed smile on her face.
A wave of cheers rose up to greet her as if she’d just scored a goal for Real Madrid. Her smile softened and grew. So did the whistles. She raised a hand and gave a wave. “¡Viva Señora! ¡Viva la multimillionaria!” the people of the Monte del Vino Real shouted as Roxanne’s eyes adjusted to the sun and she saw them, packed in close against the velvet ropes, waving signs and blown-up photos.
The backdrop behind them—Roxanne’s first glimpse of this fairy-tale kingdom—was breathtaking. The lush, leafy rows of the Monte’s vineyards came up almost to the runway. In the distance, Roxanne could see the red terracotta rooftops of the town proper. The Castillo del Monte, the medieval castle with its tall tower and fortress walls that would be her daughter’s part-time home, stood on a hillside above the town. And looming above it all was the jagged Pico Viajadora, a member of the Picos de Europa, snow-covered peaks that sheltered the Monte, transforming the secret valley into a land whose thin layer of soil soaked up the sun and encouraged grapes to grow.
The best sight of all, however, was the man coming up the stairs to greet her. His smile was as dazzling as the sunlight. His eyes were as steady as the mountains, and he looked at her like they, together, shared its secrets. He reached for her when he stepped onto the platform, and she let him, found her hands reaching for his shoulders, like a toddler reaching for her parent, but there was nothing childlike in how he slid one hand around her waist and the other around her nape and pressed her against his body for a full, consuming, month-long wait of a kiss.
The crowd went crazy.
He tipped his forehead against hers, panting against her lips, before sliding his mouth to her exposed ear. “Welcome to my home, Roxanne.”
Her nails clenched into his suit jacket.
With his hand still around her waist, Mateo swung around to face the crowd and wave. Roxanne joined him, drawing on the poise she’d practiced facing down smirking CEOs and racing through screaming paparazzi and speaking in front of a thousand stockholders to manage this gobsmacking situation—waving with a kind, warm, and not-freaking-out smile at her husband’s cheering subjects while being wrapped in his hot prince arm.
How in the holy flying fuck did she get here?
It’s the sentiment she spoke in the ear of Mateo’s sister when the princess—who’d been waiting halfway down the stairs with a plastered-on smile—joined them up on the platform. Sofia snorted before she remembered that she hated Roxanne, gathered herself, and turned to join them in waving at the crowd.
Roxanne knew that only Sofia’s love for her brother was keeping the girl from pushing Roxanne off the platform.
“The king and queen send their apologies,” Sofia shouted as she waved.
“I bet they do,” Roxanne said. She glanced at Mateo, who didn’t react except for a tic in his strong jaw. Skipping their new daughter-in-law’s big reveal was a slight, an effective one if they were trying to distance themselves from Mateo. It was more proof that they were actively working to displace him.
If the enthusiasm of the crowd was any indication, their plan wasn’t working.
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Sofia led the way down the stairs. “But you’re to appear in the throne room at 8 p.m.,” she called behind her. “My parents had it remodeled this year; you’ll love it.”
“Can’t wait,” Roxanne said as Mateo slid his arm through hers and escorted her down. At the bottom, Sofia stationed herself on Roxanne’s open side and strolled next to her as they walked the red carpet to a waiting limousine, declaring her allegiance. It was a vote for her brother, not Roxanne, but Roxanne still appreciated the sentiment. When Mateo opened the limo door and Sofia slid in, Roxanne stooped down to tell her so.
But Sofia halted her with a palm in the doorway. “Tía rica, get your own ride.” Puzzled, Roxanne looked at Mateo, who only grinned as he motioned her out of the doorway. Roxanne stepped back, allowed him to close the door. The limo smoothly slid away.
A dusty white truck was parked behind it.
If Roxanne thought the loudest the crowd was going to get was when they kissed, she was mistaken. The people of the Monte erupted in cheers, whistles, and no small amount of catcalls. “¡Planta las vides!” they shouted. “¡Las viñas son vida!”
Without dropping her smile, Roxanne narrowed her eyes. “Why do I get the impression that planta las vides isn’t referring to planting the vines?”
Mateo shrugged as he escorted her toward the truck. His body, in an elegant dark gray suit, felt sure and firm brushing against hers. “I have no idea,” he said, his innocence belied by the tilt in his grin. “I’m taking you on a tour of the vineyards.”
He opened the door for her and held her hand to help her hop inside. It was no horse-drawn carriage, but the truck was immaculately clean and a strangely appealing accessory of the gorgeous, sun-stroked European prince who walked around the front of it. When he stepped up into the driver’s side and started the truck, Roxanne rolled down her window and rested her arm on the door. How surreal that she was driving away with her prince in the same vehicle that was ubiquitous in the small Kansas farming community where she’d grown up? The same vehicle that Father Juan had driven—he’d had a rattling orange Ford 100—when they’d brought Communion to people who couldn’t make it out of the house.
As the truck began to move, Roxanne tilted out a hand and waved a thank-you and goodbye to the people of the Monte. The crowd cheered and waved back.
As they passed out of the airport gate, Roxanne checked her sideview mirror before rolling up the window and leaning back in her seat. “There are no photographers following us,” she said.
Mateo kept his eyes on the road. “The Monte is a pain in the ass to get to without a private plane.” He glanced into his rearview. “We also told the international press that you were coming later in the day.”
Roxanne quirked an eyebrow at him, knowing how important positive world opinion was to Mateo’s goals.
“This was for them, my people,” he said, gripping the steering wheel. “I didn’t want to share you with the fucking paparazzi.”
“Oh,” Roxanne said, turning to look out her window, wishing she’d left it open, wanting a little breeze to cool her as her stupid, stupid body flooded with heat.
Remembering what was at stake—his reputation, her reputation, the Monte’s future, her daughter’s entire life—had made it easy to maintain her parameters with him when they’d been surrounded by observers or shut away in her office. Even when her body had leapt at his suggestion that they have sex when she was less likely to get pregnant, at the realization that he was as vibrantly attracted to her as she was to him, she’d kept her head on straight. It would serve neither of them to let this get emotional.
But then she’d let her thumbs get away from her.
Mateo had been so far away, and the texted words—once he’d opened the door for them, once he reached out to her and told her he needed them—came so easy. While in her mile-high office or luxury condo, she’d given him advice that he’d listened to, she’d teased him and poked at him, she’d offered him insight just to...just to bolster him. Or to make him laugh at the end of a trying day. She liked that she could make him laugh. She owed it to him, to fix the damage she’d caused. So that he could build a strong kingdom for their daughter.
She might have even told him, lying in bed with a half-empty bottle of wine, about her dressing room fantasy. The one about the mirrors and the handsome stranger and the tight skirt shoved up to her waist. She might have even texted those messages one handed.
The words had seemed so...impermanent, just a letter on a button that sent a black mark to a faraway screen. The words were like bubbles, something that would float away and pop, leaving nothing behind but a delightful moment.
But the words now felt like lead links to a very, very, very bad idea. The words, coming back to her now as she inhaled the earthy spice of him and shimmered at his nearness, made her want to fling herself out of the truck and hide herself in the vine rows racing by.
When she realized she was holding her own breath to listen to the quiet huffs of his, she spoke just to have something to fill the cab.
“What vineyard are we seeing first?”
She jerked against her seat belt as the truck took a sudden left onto a dirt road between vine rows. Mateo slowed to a crawl, preventing dust from coating the baby grapes and leaf canopy, but when Roxanne glanced at him, she noticed the hard grip he had on the steering wheel as he glared out the windshield. He didn’t look at her—hadn’t looked at her for the entire drive, she realized—and didn’t speak as they were surrounded by an ocean of green. A hundred yards in, Mateo took a right and pulled the truck up to a small rock-walled cabin with a terracotta roof and powdery green doors and shutters. The shutters were open wide to the breeze. Vines grew up the porch columns and created dappled shading over the hammock and rustic picnic table on the patio.
The truck was barely in park before Mateo was out his door and pulling Roxanne from the vehicle.
“Mateo, what’re we—” She almost stumbled on her delicate high heels as Mateo pulled her by her hand, but he turned, caught her, then swung her up into his arms, her pleated, bronze skirt fanning down his legs like a matador’s cape. She gasped, clenching her hands around his hot-to-the-touch neck as he muttered, “Uneven ground,” still without looking at her. In a few powerful strides, he was up on the patio, his back against the intricately carved wooden door, and pushing inside.
Roxanne barely got a glimpse of the interior of the one-room cabin—a heavy iron bed frame, a basin, an ancient armoire—before he slid her to her feet, buried both hands in her hair, and wholly took her mouth, his tongue tasting and stroking and plundering like he’d been starving and she was his only sustenance in eons. Mateo banged them both back against a hip-high bureau. Roxanne gasped, ripping her mouth away, lightheaded as all her blood felt like it was rushing to the surface. “What are you doing?”
“Can’t wait. Can’t think,” he growled, taking advantage of her turned head by attacking her neck, by sucking her earlobe into his mouth and making it feel absolutely filthy. He began to pull up the silk of her skirt. “Need you.” Moaning, Roxanne clenched her nails into his biceps, into the $3,000 suit jacket that did nothing to hide the animal.
“Fucking silk,” Mateo groaned as his fingers stroked hard up her naked legs. “Can’t tell the difference between you and the dress.” When his fingers brushed against the lace of her panties, he reared back, gripping her skirt at her waist. The way he stared in the half-light of the small room, the way he licked those full, gorgeous lips, made Roxanne’s thighs tense and rub together. He slid to his knees on the stone floor. “Hola cariño,” he whispered, like he was having an actual conversation with her pussy as he lifted her leg and hooked it over his shoulder. “You always look so pretty for me.” And with only that for preamble, he shoved the crotch of her bronze, lacy panties to the side and sucked her into his mouth. Tongue and teeth and lips set to hard, devouring work as he lifted her, g
ot one ass cheek up onto the bureau, to aim where she was most wet and open against his mouth. The words coming out of Roxanne were wrecked nonsense as she supported her weight back on her hands and rolled her hips, helpless to the pleasure.
He fucked her hard with his tongue, getting his jaw into it, before biting into her thigh. “The taste of you gets me so hard,” he growled against her skin. He dropped her leg to his side as he swooped to standing, towering over her, lips shiny with her, his suit pants open and his thick, long, gorgeous cock—the friend she’d barely gotten to taste or stroke or know in any meaningful way—already ready for her, hard and angry red from where he’d stroked it as he ate her. She reached for it with desperate hands, and he let her as he wiped his face on his shoulder. But he slammed her back against the bureau as her hands stroked its length, ripped her panties down her legs until they were hanging off one ankle, and cupped her ass in his hands as he raised her to him and then—all unceasing power—pushed inside of her.
The way was warm and wet and sweet.
“Fuck,” Mateo groaned, slamming into her like a declaration. Roxanne hunched against his chest at the pleasure. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He pulsed into her, fast and hard, his fingers digging into her ass, until he slid one hand away to grab the mirror behind Roxanne, a mirror she didn’t even know was there, and used it to gain more leverage. His huge body shadowed her, dominated her, and she clutched at him, her legs wild, to draw him closer. When he grabbed her ass to lift her, Roxanne gave a half-shriek at the deep, G-spot-stroking punch. He turned, took a long stride, then collapsed with her on the bed, the ancient springs squealing. He was on her, over her, his big body overwhelming her with heat and strength and Roxanne would have closed her eyes at the pleasure if it wasn’t for Mateo’s beautiful hungry face looking down at her, eyes glowing with lust, white teeth bared, so much gorgeous demand that she wanted to wrap herself around him and hold him close.
Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Page 13