Her stomach’s loud and uncomfortable gurgle brought her back to the present and she grimaced at Mateo.
He shot out that sulky bottom lip she loved. “Want me to grab the trash can?”
“Yes...no? Maybe I just need a burger.” She clutched her non-gooey sides. “God, I wish your son would just make up his mind.”
He rolled over to fetch the small trash can just in case. “I hope you keep calling her ‘my’ daughter when she’s not causing you misery.”
She no longer cared whether it was a girl or a boy; she simply yearned for a healthy child. So, of course, now he always referred to the child as a girl and she always referred to it as a boy. Just to be contrary.
“I’m so sorry about the delay,” said Dr. Wan as she came back into the room.
Mateo got off her stool and stood on Roxanne’s other side. Dr. Wan refreshed the jelly on Roxanne’s belly, turned on the ultrasound screen, and pressed the transducer against Roxanne’s skin.
“So do you have any names picked out yet?” Dr. Wan asked as Roxanne squinted her eyes at the white fuzz on the black screen.
“No first names yet,” Mateo said, tilting his head to the side as he looked at the screen. “Her middle name will be Sofia.”
“His middle name will be Roman,” Roxanne echoed.
They’d made a drunken promise after their elegant “pre-marriage dinner” at Joël Robuchon in Vegas with his siblings turned into a twelve-hour “bachelor party.” Over tequila shots during a sunrise breakfast at a strip club, they’d toasted Sofia and Roman for their help bringing them together and swore to name their firstborn after one of them. They still thought it was a good idea the next day, nursing massive hangovers by the hotel pool.
Sofia was now a certified winemaker and had invented a winemaking chemical that could revolutionize the industry; Medina Now Enterprises was providing seed money for development and production. Roman had bought a home in the Monte and spent several months a year there between security jobs.
The Monte and Mateo’s reputation had, thank God, escaped the negative repercussions of Roxanne’s revelations. She’d taken a hit; there had been several “exposés” on her as reporters tried to uncover ways she’d lied or manipulated in order to hide her “scandalous” past. Fortunately, the most morally compromising thing she’d ever done was force Mateo to have sex with her, and the world already knew about that. She lost some business contacts, and a few deals stalled, but she could barely look at them as losses.
Considering all she had gained.
They now split their time between their homes in Blackhawk—conveniently located between San Francisco and Davis—and in the Monte. They also built a lakeside home outside of Freedom, where they spent a few weekends a year. After a long recovery, Father Juan was once again healthy and back in his pulpit and whenever Roxanne and Mateo were in town, parishioners always made sure to save them seats in the front pew.
She was so glad she hadn’t gotten pregnant during those first six months with Mateo. This baby, made three months ago during the hyper-sexed days that always accompanied harvest in the Monte, when Mateo would come home to her, dirty and sweaty, fuck her into the mattress like she was the earth and he was the plow, and then pass out for a few hours until he staggered into the fields again, was made with love. This baby was made with ferocity and sweat, with understanding and empathy. This baby was earned through hard choices and truth telling, by standing up to a world that was no fairy tale.
This baby was going to be able to take on the world and win.
Dr. Wan narrowed her eyes at this baby on the ultrasound screen. “Oh!” she said sharply. She peered closer at the screen as she moved the transducer on Roxanne’s belly. “Oh.”
“Oh?” Roxanne asked, mildly panicked. All she could see were white mountains of fuzz. She was going to invest in improving ultrasound technology ASAP.
“We’ve discovered the reason for your nausea. And why you’re the size you are.” A smile grew on Dr. Wan’s face as she pressed a button on the screen. A frozen still replaced the moving image.
“We have?” Mateo asked. Her genius husband was as clueless as she was.
“Yes. Morning sickness is caused by high levels of HCG and when you’re carrying twins, you’re dealing with twice the normal amounts.”
“Twins?” Roxanne squeaked.
“Yes! Twins!” Dr. Wan was jubilant as she pointed at one fuzzy lump, and then another.
Roxanne looked up at Mateo. He looked down at her, beautiful mouth hanging open in the same shock she felt, and shrugged his shoulders. Oh thank God. She hadn’t just failed Parent Test 101: deciphering your twins on an ultrasound screen.
“And...” Dr. Wan was like a game show host, building up what was behind the curtain. “You won’t have to pick which middle name you’ll use.”
“We won’t?” Mateo asked, lovely and deep and befuddled.
“No. You’ll get to use both names. You’re having a girl and a boy.”
This time, when Mateo looked down at her, she could see it, the humor playing at the corner of his shock. She felt it, too. His girl. Her boy. His son. Her daughter.
As a billionaire and her prince, they always demanded perfection. And this was perfect.
* * *
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To purchase and read more books by Angelina M. Lopez, please visit her website at www.angelinamlopez.com.
Author’s Note
My writing used to be paralyzed by facts. I once took three days trying to find whether 1920s Mexico City had electric streetlights. Now, after some initial research, I let the muse fly free and lean on Google to save me.
I gave myself the freedom of a pretend place and people. But the place and people are set in the beautiful country of Spain with a nod to the Riojan wine region. I wrote with great respect for the country but leaned into the fantasy.
Please forgive any inaccuracies.
—Angelina
Acknowledgments
I never liked acknowledgments. They felt too much like Oscar speeches. But it was a long, difficult walk to get to this podium, and I did not make it alone.
Thank you, Kerri Buckley, Angela James, and everyone at Carina Press for responding to this book with immediacy and fervor, for behaving like this baby was as beautiful as I thought it was. Thank you Anna Sullivan for the spectacular title.
Thank you, my brilliant agent Sara Megibow, for thinking this book was magic, and for knowing exactly the tweak it needed to create fire.
Thank you, Washington Romance Writers DC, for consistently providing the training, access to industry professionals, and enthusiasm that made me believe I could succeed at this lightning-strike of a dream.
Thank you, Peter, Gabriel, and Simon. Every time I opened my mouth about writing or this book or the journey, you looked at me like I was a writer. Not mom. Not wife. But a writer. Your faith helped me believe.
About the Author
Angelina M. Lopez wrote “arthur” when her kindergarten teacher asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. In the years since she learned to spell the word correctly, she’s been a journalist for an acclaimed city newspaper, a freelance magazine writer, and a content marketer for small businesses. At long last, she found her way back to “author.”
Angelina writes sexy books about strong women and the confident men lucky to love them that way. The drinks, and sexy-fun times in her books imply a certain hedonism about her; it’s not true. She’s a wife and a mom who lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. She makes to-do lists with perfectly drawn check boxes. She checks them with glee.
Lush Money is her first published novel
. You can learn more about her and upcoming books on her website: www.angelinamlopez.com/email-sign-up.
You can also follow her on:
Twitter: www.Twitter.com/AngelinaMLo
Instagram: www.Instagram.com/AngelinaMLo
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/AngelinaMLopezDC
Coming soon from Carina Press and Angelina M. Lopez,
They were kids when they met. Two kids who fell in love crazy fast one California harvest season. Now, she’s a millionaire princess and he’s a chart-topping rock star. Both have regrets: he regrets breaking her heart, she regrets ever giving it to him. He’s sworn to get her back. And she’s sworn never to fall in love again.
Read on for a sneak preview of Hate Crush, the next book in the royally fabulous Filthy Rich series.
Prologue
The second bottle of fermented celery root gin went down much easier than the first.
His stylist was going to kill him for trading his Cartier sunglasses for the bottles. But as he slumped onto a vegan leather couch in the celebrity tent with his arm slung around his new best friend—a hemp-wearing gin maker wearing thousand-dollar shades—Aish Salinger thought the trade was totally worth it. The foul-tasting liquor had blurred the edges of his vision so the open flaps of the tent, the gyrating dancers in the distance, the burning fires, and the endless expanse of hot, white, flat Nevada desert looked like it had in the past. Exciting. Interesting. Like a place he wanted and deserved to be.
The liquor pillowed him in the memories of the other times he’d attended this flatulent art-and-music festival out here in the desert, when his bass player and partner-in-crime was at his side, and groupies and hangers-on answered every beck and call. The liquor convinced him that he wanted to be here, dressed like a Mad Max tool in graffited leather jeans and no shirt, instead of home. Alone.
The liquor gave him his new best friend.
“Got a question,” his new best friend said above the distant beats of techno coming from the main stage. Propped against Aish, the man reeked of pot and patchouli and unwashed days sweating in the desert. But that’s what you did for your best friend. You made sacrifices. The man’s name was Buck. Or Steve.
Aish called him buddy. “What’s that, buddy?”
“Who’d you guys write that song about? You know the one, ‘In You.’ Song’s good for rubbing one out.”
Aish tugged his head off the back of couch and looked blearily around the tent. The velvet chaises and play pits of satin pillows were empty in the glow of the chandeliers. The festival headliner was playing. And the stink of bad juju and a failing career had done the rest to erase Aish’s once-crowded entourage.
Still, he couldn’t be too careful with a secret that he’d kept for the last ten years, a secret that journalists and groupies and spies had been trying to worm out of him since “In You” infected the charts and unleashed Young Sons onto the world.
But as Aish smacked the taste of spoiled celery root in his mouth, he thought he’d never met a trustworthier guy than Buck. Or Steve.
“Buddy, she was amazing,” he said, closing his eyes as he relaxed back on the couch. He wouldn’t say her name. But it was soothing to summon her when everything was so shitty. “I fucked up with her.”
“What’d you do?”
“Broke her heart.” Images of her crying, her coming swirled on the inside of his eyelids. “I was a douche. Young, so stupid. I thought there’d be a thousand more like her.” Images of her dotted across his eyes like stars. “Turns out, she was one in a million.”
“I thought she just rocked your cock. You sound like you loved her.”
Rock your cock. Could Aish turn that into a song? It was better than what he’d been coming up with on his own.
“I miss her,” he said, eyes still closed.
“Dude, I’d miss her too if she was as hot as you say in that song. Miss her on my junk, you know what I’m sayin’?” He laughed and elbowed Aish.
His new best friend was kind of an asshole. But his old best friend had been kind of an asshole, too.
At the disloyal thought, Aish hung his head. “Don’t talk about her like that,” he murmured. When had his neck turned to jelly? “We shouldn’t have released that song. But the label, man... The label.” He flopped back and dug his palms into his eye sockets, trying to wipe away the images that were causing events in his tight leather pants. “She did things to me that turned me inside out.”
“Like what?”
Aish told him, just let the sexual memories roll off his tongue, until his new best friend shifted close again and put his hand on Aish’s thigh. The hand felt good. Warm. And the solution to nothing. Aish pulled his heavy head off the back of the couch and tapped the man’s hand gently before picking it up and putting it on the man’s own leg.
“Thanks but naw,” he said with a smile, trying to focus. His best friend had turned into quadruplets.
“Cool, cool,” Buck or Steve said, raising his eight palms into the air. “What’s she doing now?”
Wow. Buck or Steve was really a good guy. And there were so many of him. “She’s opening a winery.”
“For real? Classy for such a dirty girl.”
“Yeah. Yeah, she’s real classy. Royally classy.” He smirked at his own joke. Could that be a song? “She’s recruiting people to help open her winery. I’d kill to be one of ’em.”
Buck or Steve laughed dirty. “I bet you do. You’d open her winery real good.”
Aish shook his head. “No, man, I mean it. I could take some time off, soak in that Spanish mountain air, clear my head while I’m helping her out...” He cut himself off. “She’s got millions, she doesn’t need my help.”
“Wait a fucking second.” His new best friend’s sharp voice forced Aish to focus, forced him to see that he was just one man, one man with stupid hair and eyes that weren’t as blurry and red-rimmed as they’d seemed when they’d first started drinking. “A rich slut into wine in Spain? In the mountains? You’re not talking about that princess, are you? What’s her fucking name?” The man snapped his fingers and the sound was percussive over the thump of the headliner’s beats. Then he pointed a dirty fingernail at Aish.
“Princess Sofia! That’s who the song’s about.”
“Shhhhhhh,” Aish said, trying to concentrate as he looked around the tent again. But when he steadied his head, the tent kept swirling. He closed his eyes. “Buddy, keep your voice down.”
“Princess Sofia. She’s starting a winery? I thought she was in rehab.” Aish tried to open his eyes. But the gorge was rising in his throat. And the man’s words were crowding his ears. “Motherfucking Princess Sofia. Wasn’t she caught with that boy band last year? Fuck, her winery’s going to be a 24/7 orgy. You think you can get me in there, too? Damn, I’d like a go at her.”
Aish wanted to punch his new best friend. He wanted to tell him to shut up, to tell him he was wrong, to tell him that he’d kill him if he touched her or thought about her or told another living soul.
But he couldn’t.
Instead, the video from the camera hidden in a fern would show rock star Aish Salinger lurching out of view. The mic hidden in Buck or Steve’s poncho would pick up—over the thump of techno-surf—Aish Salinger heaving in a corner.
The viral video might have actually carried a virus. Because when the woman they were talking about saw the video the next day, a woman with a kingdom on the line and nothing going her way, a woman who’d blocked that catastrophic first love from her thoughts, she had to run for the bathroom, too.
Don’t miss Hate Crush by Angelina M. Lopez, available June 2020 wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.
www.CarinaPress.com
Copyright © 2019 by Angelina M. Lopez
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One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!
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Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Page 33