The Man to Be Reckoned With (4 page)

At that point, she had stuck her fingers in her ears and begged him not to continue. A few days after that, she and Jackie had left. Her father had never seen her again, never called her, never sent a birthday card.

For years, she had wondered if he thought of her, hoped he would write to her, call Jackie to ask about her.

Only utter and absolute silence had greeted her hopes.

Now...now she didn't even remember his face clearly. On the road with Jackie, hearing her crying at night, not knowing where they would go next—it had been the most uncertain time of her life. Until Jackie had met Robert and he had taken them to his estate, Riya had thought she would never know a stable home again.

And to see Robert ache to see Nathan, to speak a few words to him, she couldn't back down now. Not when Nathan was finally here.

“Fine. Come to work Monday morning.”

She saw the shadow of something in his eyes—a promise, a challenge.

“I'll stay two months. I'll even dance with you at the wedding.”

“I don't want to dance with—”

“You started this, Riya. I'm going to finish it.”

She breathed in cold gulps of air, only then seeing the faint shape of a chopper. “Stop saying my name like that,” she said, not sure when the words had exactly left her lips.

Frowning, he stepped closer. “Am I saying it wrong?”

There was that strange little tension again. Winding around them, tugging at them.

“No. I just...we're...”

The helicopter blades began whirring, and he bent toward her to make himself heard. A firestorm danced through Riya as his breath played on her nape.

It was a heated brand, a molten caress. The simple touch of his fingers on her waist as she swayed seared through the cotton of her shirt.

“Mr. Ramirez and Ms. Mathur are too formal when we're going to work in close quarters for a couple of months. And calling each other brother and sister, especially when we...” Her heart drummed in her ears, a flash of heat bursting all over her as he paused dramatically. “...
obviously don't like each other
will just earn us a place on a daytime soap opera, don't you think?

“Nathan and Riya, it has to be.”

She felt his smile instead of saw it, the faint graze of his beard against her jaw making her hyperaware of him. He lifted his head and Riya stared mutely at the striking beauty of the planes of his face.

All wicked, from the twinkle in his eyes to the dimples in his cheeks. And sexy all the way.

“See you Monday morning.” He stepped back, sending her heart pitter-pattering all over her chest. “And FYI, I'm what they call an exacting boss.”

By the time Riya walked the long way around the acreage back to the house, she was hungry and tired and her head hurt.

Turning the gleaming antique handle on the side door into the kitchen, she stepped in. Even though her stomach rumbled, all she wanted was to get into bed and forget that this day had happened.

She couldn't believe that Drew had sold her out so easily, couldn't believe what she had set in motion. And of all things, she couldn't believe the sharp and stringent quality of her awareness of Nathan, of his every word and gesture, of the flash of the same awareness in his. But she had no doubt, where she was floundering and flailing in the wake of it, it was nothing but a game to him.

The overhead ceiling lights came on, bathing her in a blaze of light.

Jackie stood near the curving staircase, her eyes glittering with fear and fury. “If you knew he was coming, why didn't you stop him?”

Guilt settling heavily on her shoulders, Riya sighed. If only life were as simple as her mom thought it was. “It's his estate we're living in. One of these days, he was bound to return.”

“Just when Robert has finally agreed to the wedding and—”

Unable to hear another word of her mom's self-absorption, she cut across her. “Robert will be happy to see him. I can't just send him away, even if I wanted to.”

Her elegant hands wringing in front of her, Jackie walked around the huge dining table. “What does he want with you?”

“He wants the estate back.”

“No,” Jackie said, her tone rising, her gaze stricken. “He'll probably just kick us out if you do that. You can't—”

Even as she wished her mother would think of Riya's feelings for once, she softened her tone. Whatever her weaknesses, Jackie had found stability and peace here with Robert and the estate. “I can't stop him from taking what is rightfully his, Jackie.”

Jackie's gaze zoomed somewhere far away, and Riya locked out the urge to shake her mom. That look meant nothing she said was going to get through to her now. “I don't care what you have to do. Just make sure he doesn't have the house back. Do something, anything to send him back, Riya.”

“I can't take him on,” Riya said, looking away. If Jackie found out he was here because of what Riya had done... “If I fight him on this, he threatened to drag us through the courts. I don't have a choice.”

“Of course you can. You have Robert on your side. He'll never agree to Nathan taking the estate from you. If there's a long court battle, then so be it. You can't lose the house, Riya. I can't take this uncertainty, this kind of stress at this stage of my life.”

And there was the heart of the matter. Bitterness pooled in her throat, but Riya shook it away. As she always did. “Robert will look after you, Jackie. Nothing will happen to you.”

“Does it occur to you that maybe it's you I could be worried about?”

“There's no precedent for me to think that, is there?”

Jackie paled.

Now Riya felt like the green scum that lived under a rock.

Jackie sighed. “You slogged over the estate for years. Where was Nathan when he was needed? Do whatever you have to do, but make sure you hold on to this house.

“You have just as much right to this as he. Or even more.”

Nathan's dark smile as he'd stood close to her sent a shiver over her skin. His offer for Travelogue was more than she'd hoped for, but she didn't like the look in his eyes.

It wasn't just that ever-present energy between them. It was more. As if he could see through her, into the heart of her. As if he could see her fears and insecurities and found them laughable. As if he knew how to use them to trip her up.

She just had to remember that whatever he threw at her, she could cope with it. The only danger was if he had true interest in her. He didn't. Nathan was a man who traveled the world over.

Like everyone else in her life, she would matter very little to him once he realized she wouldn't budge from her goal. And then he would leave her alone.

For years, she had lived with the knowledge that her father hadn't cared about her. For Jackie, she was nothing but a crutch of safety, the one who would never leave her. For Robert, she had been the means to assuage his guilt about Nathan and his mom. Not that she didn't appreciate his kindness.

But the truth was no one had ever really cared about her, about her fears, her happiness. And Nathan would be no different.

CHAPTER FOUR

W
HEN
R
IYA
ARRIVED
at work Monday morning, it was to find Nathan leaning against the redbrick building, head bent down to his tablet.

Pulling in a breath, she forced her nerves to calm down. She had agreed to this, actually forced him into this. Now she had to see this through for Robert and for her own company.

The shabby street instantly looked different, felt different. And more than one woman sent him lingering looks as they walked past. But he was unaware of the attention he was drawing.

Today, he was dressed in a V-necked gray T-shirt coupled with blue jeans that hugged his lean hips and thighs in a very nerve-racking way. His hair gleamed with wetness, his beard still hiding his mouth. The veins bulging in his forearms, the stretch of the cotton across his chest. Every time she set eyes on him, something pinged inside her.

So early in the morning, with no caffeine in her system, he was just too much testosterone to stomach.

“You're wasting my pilot's time.” His gaze didn't waver from his tablet.

“Pilot? What are you talking about?” Feeling heat in her cheeks, she dug through her bag for her phone.

For the first time in two years since she and Drew had started Travelogue, she had resolutely refused to check her work email. Now she just felt stupid because she had obviously missed some important communication.

“Not completely together still? Had to abandon the mother ship early today?”

“I need coffee before I can deal with you,” she muttered. “I turned off my email client all weekend.”

She had hardly finished speaking when his chauffeur appeared by her side with a coffee cup. Nathan's gaze lingered on her as she took a few much-needed sips.

His perception surprised her, but she wasn't going to confide about Jackie to him. Or anything for that matter. For all his generous offer, she didn't trust his intentions.

“I thought you slaved night and day, weekends and whatnot to build Travelogue. Didn't have a life outside of the company and the estate. Apparently you're a paragon of hard work and dedication and every other virtue. Except for the ‘small incident' with Mr. Anderson.”

Feeling like a lamb being led to slaughter under his watchful, almost indulgent gaze, she gulped too much on her next sip and squealed. He was instantly at her side, concern softening his mouth.

She jerked away as his palm landed on her back, scalded by his touch more than the coffee. Feeling like an irresponsible idiot, she cleared her throat. “Just...tell me what's on the agenda today.”

Wicked lights glinted in his gaze. “British Virgin Islands.”

Her leg dangled midway over the footpath as if she were a puppet being pulled by strings. “Like going there? Us?”

“Yes.”

Alarm bells clanged in her head. “Why?”

He moved closer. She caught the instant need to step back. “A project of mine has come to the execution stages. It'll suit very well to see what your precious team and you are made of. Sort of a test before I flush you guys.”

“A trip to Virgin Islands just to test us seems like the kind of extravagance that adds a lot of overhead to small, itty-bitty companies. I would rather—”

“Didn't I tell you? Your finances, your projects—everything's on probation.” Arrogance dripped from his every word, every gesture. “A skeleton crew will keep the website and sales going.”

She swallowed the protest that rose to her lips. She'd have to just show him what she and her team were made of. Navigating to the calendar on her phone, she synced it and opened his shared calendar. Tilting her head up, she leveled a direct look at him. “Robert is back tonight. Should I go ahead and block your time, then?”

A mocking smile lingered on his lips as he studied her. Her breath felt tight in her chest as she willed herself to stay still under the devouring gaze. “We won't return for a few days.”

“I don't see the need for—”

“I'm beginning to see why your investors were so eager to jump ship. You don't want to make money, and you don't listen to advice or input of any kind. It's almost as though you live and work in isolation.”

“That's not true. I...”

Folding his hands, he raised an eyebrow.

Something about the look in his face grated on her. But she didn't want to give him a single reason to back out of their deal. “Fine. I'm ready to go.”

Faced with her increasingly unignorable reaction to him, she found it tempting to just accept defeat, sign away the dratted estate and walk away. Except she had heard the stunned silence when Jackie told Robert that Nathan was here. She had heard his hopes, his pain in the one request he had made of her.

“Whatever he wants, please say yes, Riya. I want to see my son.”

It was the first time Robert had ever asked anything of her.

Guiding her along with him, Nathan crossed the small, dingy street that housed their office to the opposite side. Every inch of her tautened as the muscled length of his thigh grazed hers.

“Which island are we visiting?” she said pushing her misgivings down. Robert and her company, she must keep her reasons at the center of her mind.

“Mine.”

She slid into the limo and crossed her legs as he occupied the opposite seat. “You own one of the Virgin Islands?”

“Yes.”

“But you don't even own a home.”

Amusement deepened his gaze. “Been reading up on me?”

She shrugged, as if she hadn't devoured the internet looking for every scrap of information on him over the weekend. “There wasn't really much.”

“What were you hoping to find?”

“Not the list of your assets,” she said, remembering the article he had been featured in in
Forbes
about the youngest billionaires under thirty. It galled her to admit it, but the man
was
a genius investor and apparently also one of the leading philanthropists of their generation.

He donated millions to charity and causes the world over, but there hadn't been a byte about his personal life. What was she to make of him?

“I was looking for something of a personal nature.”

He leveled a shocked look at her. “Why?”

“Jackie told Robert you were back and he asked me a thousand questions about you. I had nothing to tell him apart from the fact that you're a gazillionaire and an arrogant, heartless SO...”

He narrowed his eyes and Riya sighed. Antagonizing him was going to get her precisely nowhere.

“So, all this interest in my personal life is only for your precious Robert, right?”

She would jump from the thirteenth story before she admitted to him how scarily right he was. Ignoring the charged air of the luxurious interior, she went through her email. “This whole trip is just an excuse for you to—”

“Excuse for what?” he interrupted, a thread of anger in his voice. He leaned forward, his muscled forearms resting on his thighs. Gaze zeroed in on her with the focus of a laser beam. Lingered over every inch of her face until it was a caress. The decadent sides of the vehicle seemed to move inward until it was as if they were locked in a bubble.

“You're welcome at any time to sign the papers and walk away. And I'll do the same.”

Shaking her head, Riya looked away, trying to break the spell he cast around them. She was nowhere near equipped to take him on. On any level.

Soon they arrived at a private airfield. A sleek Learjet with RunAway International's logo, a tangled-up R&A, was waiting. They boarded the aircraft and it was easy to keep her mouth shut, greeted by the sheer affluence and breadth of Nathaniel Ramirez's standing in the world.

The interior of the plane was all cream leather and sleek panels. Her brown trousers and ironed beige dress shirt had never looked quite so shabby as they did against the quiet elegance of her surroundings. While Nathan spoke to the pilot, she took a quick tour and came away with her head spinning.

The master suite in the back was more opulent than her bedroom at the estate.

Still reeling from the sheer breadth of Nathan's wealth, she made a quick call to Jackie and Robert, informing them of her sudden trip.

It took her a few minutes to settle down, to regain her balance that he tipped so easily. Soon they were leveling off at thousands of feet, with nothing but silence stretching in the main cabin.

“Robert asked me to tell you that he can't wait to see you,” she said.

His mouth narrowed into an uncompromising line, his whole posture going from relaxed to tense in a matter of seconds. “Tell me what happened between you and Mr. Anderson.”

“That's none of your...” Sighing, she tried to collect herself.

The last thing she wanted was to talk about herself and with him of all people. But if he couldn't even tolerate Robert's name, what was he going to say when he saw him? What was the point of all this if he just sat there and glared at Robert with that frosty gaze?

How hardhearted did he have to be not to wonder about Robert all these years?

If the price was that she answer questions about herself, then she would.

“There's nothing much. Drew and I shared a professional relationship. For the most part.” Time for attack again. “Where did you go when you left all those years ago?”

Challenge simmered between them. If she went down this road, he was going to make her pay.

“New York City first and then I backpacked through Europe.” Promptly came the next shot. “So Mr. Anderson was just a hopeful candidate you were trying on?”

“For the last time, I was not trying him on. I never even went on a date with him.”

“That's not the story I've been hearing.”

“I have no intention of humiliating myself or Drew just so that you can sit there and play us off against each other.”

He leaned back into his seat as they leveled off, and the gray fabric stretched over his chest. “You managed it quite well all by yourself. I reviewed all of last quarter's reports, and he did nothing but run the company into the ground. With his head buried in love clouds and you averse to any risk, Travelogue would have died within a year.”

Drew and she had known each other for a while, their relationship always in a strange intersection between friends and colleagues. But things had slowly spiraled to worse in the last few months. “I never expected him to sell me out to you.”

“Selling out to me was the wisest thing he did. There hasn't been a lot of financial growth in the last quarter. And anyone who had good ideas, Drew fired them. Like the marketing strategist.”

The sparkling water she had ordered came and she took a fortifying sip. “All the marketing strategy suggested was that we increase the cost of membership for customers who have
been
with us since the beginning, and take a bigger cut of the profits from the flash sales for vacations packages.

“These are middle-class families who come to us because we provide the best value for their buck, not international jet-setters who don't have to think twice about buying and sinking companies like a little boy buys and breaks his toys.”

Nathan countered without blinking at her juvenile attack. “That marketing strategy is spot-on. Different tiers of membership is the way to go. An executive membership that charges more and provides a different kind of experience. There's a whole set of clientele that Travelogue's missing out on. If you don't grow, if you don't expand your horizons, you'll be pushed out of the market.”

“That's a huge risk that might alienate us to our current clientele.”

“It is. And it's one I'm willing to take.”

Neatly put in place, Riya bristled. It was all her hard work and his risk. And the consequences would be hers to bear. “Does it ever get old?”

“What?”

“That high you're getting from the casual display of your power and your arrogance?”

He laughed, and the deep sound went straight to her heart, as if it were a specially designed missile targeted for her. It seemed every little gesture of his went straight to her heart or some other part of her.

Parts she shouldn't even be thinking about.

How did he get past all of her defenses so easily? Why did he affect her so much?

She had no answers, only increasing alarm that she would never figure out how to resist whatever it was that he did so easily.

“What will you do once I sign over the estate to you? Kick Robert and Jackie out?”

“Maybe. Or maybe we can all live under one roof like a happy family. Would that pacify your guilt?”

The idea of it was so absurd that Riya stared at him, taken aback.

“Horrifying prospect, isn't it? Me and you, me and your mother, me and Robert—it's a disaster every which way.”

“This is all so funny and trivial to you...you don't care...” She had to pause to breathe. “You have all these resources, you own a damn plane and yet you couldn't have visited Robert once in all these years?

The cabin resounded with her outburst.

“It's not a one-for-one anymore, Riya.”

He slid some papers toward her, and the words
Disciplinary Action
printed neatly on top stole the remaining breaths from Riya's lungs.

She fingered the papers, her heart sinking. “What is this?”

“His mismanagement of the company in the last few months meant Drew was the dispensable one between the two of you, for now. But it doesn't mean you're without culpability. I need to know the source of the problem between you two.”

“Ammunition to make me dispensable too?”

“I'm making sure it's documented properly. It's a standard HR policy in my group of companies.”

* * *

Nathan leaned back into his seat, wondering at the puzzle that Riya Mathur was. The software engine she had built, he'd been told by one of his own architects, was extraordinarily complex. And yet she blanched at using it to its full potential by expanding the client base, at spreading her wings in any way.