Then she turned her back on the camera. She turned her back on the crew and the lights and the world and focused on the only thing that mattered: his stunned, open, glorious gaze as she surrounded him in her arms.
“Me too, Aish,” she murmured against his mouth. “I’ve always loved you. I’ll always love you. Let’s make the impossible come true.”
Then in the heart of her castle, in the heart of her kingdom, Princesa Sofia kissed the man who would always be her always.
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Acknowledgments
Hoo boy, thank you, Kerri Buckley for being honest about what this “first book written under contract” needed for improvement, and for believing that this debut author could pull it off.
Paloma Beneito Arias, I met you at a party and you don’t even read romance. And still, you went over the Spanish culture and language in this book with a fine-toothed comb. Thank you for your enthusiastic assistance, your diligence, your thoroughness, and your overall joy in a novel that still needed A LOT of work when you saw it!
And thank you to Peter, Gabriel and Simon, who’ve been so supportive on this journey, even though having a writer-on-deadline in the house has certainly changed our lives. You listen, you support, you cheerlead—it’s what everyone deserves but certainly not what everyone gets. I’m so appreciative I get it from you!
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, contemporary stories about strong women and the confident men lucky enough to fall in love with them. The fact that her parents own a vineyard in California’s Russian River Valley might imply a certain hedonism about her; it’s not true. She’s a wife and a mom who lives in the suburbs of Washington, DC. She makes to-do lists with perfectly drawn check boxes. She checks them with glee.
You can find more about her at her website, www.AngelinaMLopez.com, and at @AngelinaMLo on Instagram and Twitter.
And available now from Carina Press and Angelina M. Lopez
A marriage of convenience and three nights a month.
That’s all the sultry, self-made billionaire wants from the impoverished prince.
And at the end of the year, she’ll grant him his divorce...with a settlement large enough to save his beloved kingdom.
Read on to be swept away by Lush Money, the first book in Angelina M. Lopez’s Filthy Rich series and the story that started it all...
January: Night One
Mateo Ferdinand Juan Carlos de Esperanza y Santos—the “Golden Prince,” the only son of King Felipe, and heir to the tiny principality of Monte del Vino Real in northwestern Spain—had dirt under his fingernails, a twig of Tempranillo FOS 02 in his back pocket, and a burning desire to wipe the mud of his muck boots on the white carpet where he waited. But he didn’t. Under the watchful gaze of the executive assistant, who stared with disapproving eyes from his standing desk, Mateo kept his boots tipped back on the well-worn heels and his white-knuckled fists jammed into the pits of his UC Davis t-shirt. Staying completely still and deep breathing while he sat on the white couch was the only way he kept himself from storming away from this lunacy.
What the fuck had his father gotten him into?
A breathy ding sighed from the assistant’s laptop. He granted Mateo the tiniest of smiles. “You may go in now,” he said, hustling to the chrome-and-glass doors and pulling one open with a flourish. The assistant didn’t seem to mind the dirt so much now as his eyes traveled—lingeringly—over Mateo’s dusty jeans and t-shirt.
Mateo felt his niñera give him a mental smack upside the head when he kept his baseball cap on as he entered the office. But he was no more willing to take his cap off now than he’d been willing to change his clothes when the town car showed up at his lab, his ears ringing with his father’s screams about why Mateo couldn’t refuse.
The frosted-glass door closed behind him, enclosing him in a sky-high corner office as regal as any throne room. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed off Coit Tower to the west, the Bay Bridge to the east, and the darkening hills of San Francisco in between. The twinkling lights of the city flicked on like discovered jewels in the gathering night, adornment for this white office with its pale woods, faux fur pillows, and acrylic side tables. This office at the top of the fifty-five-floor Medina Building was opulent, self-assured. Feminine.
And empty.
He’d walked in the Rose Garden with the U.S. President, shaken the hand of Britain’s queen, and kneeled in the dirt with the finest winemakers in Burgundy, but he stood in the middle of this empty palatial office like a jackass, not knowing where to sit or how to stand or who to yell at to make this situación idiota go away.
A door hidden in the pale wood wall opened. A woman walked out, drying her hands.
Dear God, no.
She nodded at him, her jowls wriggling as she tossed her paper towel back into the bathroom. “Take a seat, Príncipe Mateo. I’ll prepare Roxanne to speak with you.”
Of course. Of course Roxanne Medina, founder and CEO of Medina Now Enterprises, wasn’t a sixty-year-old woman with a thick
