Ah.
The nurse leaned across the delicate, Japanese-style desk and opened a laptop perched on the edge. She pushed a button and a woman came into view on the screen. Or at least, the top of a woman’s head came into view. The woman was staring down through black-framed glasses, writing something on a pad of paper. A sunny, tropical day loomed outside the balcony door behind her.
Inwardly laughing at the farce of this situation, Mateo took a seat in a leather chair facing the screen. Apparently, Roxanne Medina couldn’t be bothered to meet the man she wanted to marry in person.
Two minutes later, he was no longer laughing. She hadn’t looked at him. She just kept scribbling, giving him nothing to look at but the palm tree swaying behind her and the part in her dark, shiny hair.
He glanced at the nurse. She stared back, blank-eyed. He’d already cleared his throat twice.
Fuck this. “Excuse me,” he began.
“Helen, it sounds like the prince may have a bit of a dry throat.” Roxanne Medina spoke, finally, without raising her eyes from her document. “Could you get him a glass of water?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
As the nurse headed to a decanter, Mateo said, “I don’t need water. I’m trying to find out...”
Roxanne Medina raised one delicate finger to the screen. Without looking up. Continuing to write. Without a word or a sound, Roxanne Medina shushed him, and Mateo—top of his field, head of his lab, a goddamned príncipe—he let her, out of shock and awe that another human being would treat him this way.
He never treated people this way.
He moved to stand, to storm out, when a water glass appeared in front of his face and a hair was tugged from his head.
“Ow!” he yelled as he turned to glare at the granite-faced nurse holding a strand of his light brown hair.
“Fantastic, I see the tests have begun.”
Mateo turned back to the screen and pushed the water glass out of his way so he could see the woman who finally deigned to speak to him.
“Tests?”
She was beautiful. Of course she was beautiful. When you have billions of dollars at your disposal, you can look any way you want. Roxanne Medina was sky-blue eyed, high-breasted and lush-lipped, with long and lustrous black hair. On the pixelated screen, he couldn’t tell how much of her was real or fake. He doubted even her stylist could remember what was Botoxed, extended, and implanted.
Still, she was striking. Mateo closed his mouth with a snap.
Her slow, sensual smile let him know she’d seen him do it.
Mateo glowered as Roxanne Medina slipped her delicate black reading glasses up on her head and aimed those searing blue eyes at him. “These tests are just a formality. We’ve tested your father and sister and there were no genetic surprises.”
“Great,” he deadpanned. “Why are you testing me?”
Her sleek eyebrows quirked. “Didn’t your father explain this already?” A tiny gold cross hung in the V of her ivory silk top. “We’re testing for anything that might make the Golden Prince a less-than-ideal specimen to impregnate me.”
Madre de Dios. His father hadn’t been delusional. This woman really wanted to buy herself a prince and a royal baby. The king had introduced him to some morally deficient people in his life, but this woman... His shock was punctuated by a needle sliding into his bicep.
“¡Joder!” Mateo yelled, turning to see a needle sticking out of him, just under his t-shirt sleeve. “Stop doing that!”
“Hold still,” the devil’s handmaiden said emotionlessly, as if stealing someone’s blood for unwanted tests was an everyday task for her.
Rather than risk a needle breaking off in his arm, he did stay still. But he glared at the screen. “I haven’t agreed to any of this. The only reason I’m here is to tell you ‘no.’”
“The king promised...”
“My father makes a lot of promises. Only one of us is fool enough to believe them.”
She took the glasses off entirely, sending that hair swirling around her neck, and slowly settled back into her chair. The gold cross hid once again between blouse and pale skin. She stared at him the way he stared at the underside of grape leaves to determine their needs.
Finally, she said, “Forgive me. We’ve started on different pages. I thought you were on board.” Her voice, Mateo noticed, was throaty with a touch of scratch to it. He wondered if that was jet lag from her tropical location. Or did she sound like that all the time? “I run a multinational corporation; sometimes I rush to the finish line and forget my ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous.’ Helen, say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen said immediately. As she pulled the plunger and dragged Mateo’s blood into the vial.
Gritting his teeth, he glared at the screen. “What self-respecting person would have a kid with a stranger for money?”
“A practical one with a kingdom on the line,” Roxanne Medina said methodically. “My money can buy you time. That’s what you need to right your sinking ship, correct? You need more time to develop the Tempranillo Vino Real?”
Mateo’s blood turned cold; he wondered if Nurse Ratched could see it freezing as she pulled it out of him. He stayed quiet and raised his chin as the nurse put a Band-Aid on his arm.
“This deal can give you the time you need,” the billionaire said, her voice beckoning. “My money can keep your people solvent until you get those vines planted.”
She sat there, a stranger in a tropical villa, declaring herself the savior of the kingdom it was Mateo’s responsibility to save.
For centuries, the people of Monte del Vino Real, a plateau hidden among the Picos de Europa in northernmost Spain, made their fortunes from the lush wines produced from their cool-climate Tempranillo vines. But in recent years, mismanagement, climate change, the world’s focus on French and California wines, and his parents’ devotion to their royal lifestyle instead of ruling had devalued their grapes. The world thought the
