The Man to Be Reckoned With (3 page)

It had taken him a few years to get over the grief of his mother's death, to accept the fatality of his own condition. He'd been so scared, alone and he'd lashed out at the world.

But in the end, he had not only accepted it but also tailored his life to live it without being haunted by the fear of dying every minute. Had made sure he'd not formed an attachment to anyone, made sure that no relationship could leave him weak. Like the way it had left his mother in the end.

Had gloried in each day he had, lived it to the fullest.

Today, he hadn't been able to help himself from taunting the manipulative minx, from pushing her. But for all the steely will with which she had manipulated him, there was a naiveté to her that cooled his interest. In a million years, he wouldn't have expected his father to command such loyalty in anyone. So much that she was risking everything she owned.

But nothing he did or could do would shake that resolve. Despite the very clever way she had manipulated Maria and taken advantage of his attachment to the estate, he had to admire that resolve. And she was right about one more thing.

Engaging his father in a legal battle would gain him nothing but a deadlock for years to come. He would win in the end, but when, he didn't know.

Time was the one thing that Nate didn't have the luxury or certainty of.

He wanted that estate, and convincing Riya to sell it back to him as soon as possible would be the biggest win of his life. He couldn't dismantle her company for no good reason, couldn't just play with the livelihood of so many people.

But he had learned enough about the smart, steel-willed beauty. Just the thought of those beautiful eyes widening with awareness and shock, the way she held herself rigid when he had neared her, brought a smile to his face.

He was going to enjoy convincing her to sell the estate to him.

CHAPTER THREE

B
Y
THE
TIME
Riya drove past the electronically manned gates and along the gravel driveway lined with the tall century-old oaks, she was still wondering what she would say to Jackie or how she would bring up the subject of Nathan. Jackie had the most singular way of looking at the world and the people in it. Only interested in how they affected her own life and happiness.

Riya pulled the window down and took a deep breath. The smell of pine needles and the fragrance of the roses greeted her.

The sight of the mansion emerging just as the driveway straightened always revived her, filled her with an indescribable joy. For her, the brick mansion meant home.

Driving around the courtyard, she pulled into the garage, parked and leaned her forehead on the steering wheel. Disappointment and a perverse anger filled her. Nathan didn't love the estate as she did, had been gone for a decade without a thought for it.

Would probably kick them all out,
her especially
, without a second thought. And to leave this place, to say goodbye finally? The very thought made her chest hurt.

Grabbing her laptop bag and her handbag, she stepped out of her car. All she wanted was to have a bath and sink into her bed and deal with everything tomorrow. She entered the vast, homely kitchen through the back door intending to go up quietly when Jackie called her.

Dressed in a cream silk pantsuit, she looked perfectly put together, as always. Except for the frown marring her brow.

“Riya! I've been calling you for hours and you didn't answer a single time.” Her painted mouth trembled. “He's here, just...appeared out of thin air, after all these years.”

Riya froze, her gaze flying around the house, her heart ratcheting in her chest. Fighting the rising panic, because of course it had always fallen to her to be the calm one, she straightened her spine. “Mom,” she said loudly. “Calm down.”

She called her that so infrequently now that Jackie looked at her with alarm.

“Now tell me clearly what happened.”

“Nathaniel is here,” her mother said, awe coating her words. “Apparently he's some big-shot billionaire who can ruin us with one word or—”

“He said that to you?”

“Of course not. He won't even meet my eyes. It's as if I'm not there, standing right in front of him. That witch Maria said it. He looks so different too, all lean and so coldly distant and arrogant.”

Riya nodded, surprised that Jackie had noticed it too. There was something she couldn't pinpoint about Nathan either. A sort of cool detachment, a layer of frost as if nothing or no one could touch him. And yet he had been so angry when she refused to sign over the estate.

“Even Maria took a few seconds to recognize him. He just stood there looking as if he owned the place, when he didn't even ask after Robert all these years.” Riya bit the inside of her cheek to keep from correcting her mother that the estate
was
his. “He arrived a couple of hours ago. Showed up at the front door and sent the staff into a frenzy. They were all crying and laughing, and Robert's not even in town. He won't say why he's here.”

How? She hadn't even seen his car in the garage. “Where is he? Did he say what he wants?”

“He's been wandering around the estate, drops in every half hour or so. Maria said he wants to see you.”

Riya's heart sank to her feet.

A calculating look emerged in her mother's eyes, her panic forgotten. “Why
is
he looking for you? I'm still shaking from the shock of seeing him, and all this time, if you'd known that he was—”

“Hello, Riya.”

Every time he said her name, it was like flipping a switch on inside her. A caress. An invitation. For what, she didn't even want to speculate. Her skin tingling, Riya turned.

He stood at the huge arched entrance into the kitchen.

Once again, Riya felt the impact of his presence like a magnet pulled toward a slab of iron.

The beard was still unshaved, but he had changed. Now his clothes reflected the casual power he exuded so easily. The rumpled shirt had been exchanged for a white dress shirt and a formal jacket this time. The snowy-white collar a contrast against his sunburned skin. His hair gleamed with wetness, looked more black than brown.

He looked knee-meltingly gorgeous. Case in point, her knees practically buckled beneath her.

“You didn't come back to the office, haven't been answering my calls,” he said, waving his cell phone.

“I didn't realize I was supposed to be at your beck and call,” she retorted, not trusting the invasive intimacy of his smile. In fact, she had liked him better when he was angry and threatening. “Not everything I do is about you.”

That small smile turned into a grin, and his teeth gleamed against his tanned skin. It lit up his whole face, softening the harsh angles of his features. And the mouth...she had been right. It was made for smiling and something else that she didn't want to think about.

“From now on, it's going to be all about me,” he said, stretching his arms by his sides. The casual gesture drew her gaze to the breadth of his shoulders. That jacket was cut perfectly, following the wide swath of his shoulders and the narrowing of his waist.

Alarm spiked through her. “No.”

“I have a proposition for you.” Something glimmered in his gaze. “You're not chickening out already, are you?”

Jackie gasped, and Riya wondered if her mother could explode from the tension radiating from her. She infused steel into her voice. “We don't have a deal.”

“We do now. You've...
persuaded
me to take a chance on you, Riya.”

There was no way to arrest the heat blooming up her face. He was doing it on purpose. Saying her name like that, insinuating with that smile that there was more between them than his hatred and her risky gamble. She wanted to run away and hide in her bedroom, hope it was all a bad dream.

Next to her, Jackie began again. “Riya, how dare you not tell me—”

Nathan shot Jackie a look. Pure arctic frost, it was the only way Riya could describe it. Granted, he probably was the one man who could shut Jackie up without meaning to, but Riya had a feeling he would have the same effect on all of them, even if he had just been Nathaniel Ramirez. And not the adored heir of the estate.

He had that kind of a presence. Contained and controlled with a violent energy brimming underneath the calm facade.

How was it possible that she could notice so much, understand so much about him just in a few hours?

“Come,” he said in a cajoling tone as if she were a recalcitrant child. When she still didn't move, he caught her wrist and tugged.

Her bare skin tingling at the contact of his rough fingers, Riya followed, past the nonplussed staff, who had gathered in the huge dining hall, and her pale mother, through the door and out into the lush acreage behind the house.

A cold breeze blew her hair in her face, and with a soft huff, Riya pulled it all to the side. The night was inky black, only the moon and carefully placed lights on the ground illuminating the path for them.

But instead of dulling his presence, the dark intensified her awareness of him. The graceful line of his shoulders, the taper of his lean chest to his waist and the corded energy of his thighs when she stumbled and he steadied her.

Her own senses revolted against her mind, determined to observe and absorb every little thing about him. They'd reached the well-lit-up gazebo in the south corner of the estate when Riya realized his long fingers were still wrapped around her wrist.

Dragging her feet on the grass, she tugged her hand away.

The splish-splash of water from another fountain, the relentless whisper of the cicadas, a hundred different fragrances carried around by the breeze greeted her. The very place she had always found blissfully peaceful was now ruined by the man playing a cat-and-mouse game with her livelihood. And something much worse.

Grasping the fear that was the only way to puncture her awareness of him, she lashed out. “You couldn't have given me an evening to brace myself? Let me figure out how and what I'm going to tell my mother, to figure out my future?”

“You left without a word to anyone. Is this how you run the company?”

“The very company that you threatened to tear into pieces?” she threw at him. “You asked me to get out. Very clearly.”

“You were blackmailing me.”

She bristled at the outrage in his voice. “I was doing no such thing.” And because she couldn't bear to simply stop thinking of it as her company, she continued. “Even if your plan is to dismantle the company and sell it for bits, you'll need a skeleton staff to see through the memberships for the rest of the year. I recommend you keep Sam Hawkins on. He's been there from the beginning and Martha Gomez too. She needs this job and she'll be invaluable to—”

All of her panic ground to a halt as his long-limbed stride ate the distance between them.

“I don't remember firing you. Are you resigning, then?”

Riya reached behind her and grasped the wooden column. But there was nowhere to go and he was standing too close.

The lights from around the gazebo cast him in shadows.

Close enough to realize how many different shades of blue his eyes could turn depending on the light. Close enough for her to see the shape of his mouth, which had a hint of gaiety to it. Close enough for her to breathe and learn the scent of him and realize why he affected her so much.

She had never before experienced the weird pull in her stomach, the feverish tremble that gripped her, the constant fascination with every aspect of him.

Fisting her hands by her sides, she clamped down the shaky realization.

His gaze rested on her mouth for a nanosecond. Only an infinitesimal fragment of time, but her lips tingled. “I didn't quit. But have you left me a choice?”

As if the tension became too much even for him, he moved to her side and leaned against the structure. “The staff's murderous glares after you left would have turned me into dust if I hadn't told them you were just having a tantrum.”

Her breath left her in a huge whoosh, the sound amplified in the silence. “Building up their hopes that everything's okay is just cruel. Does nothing get to you?”

“No.”

His response wasn't threatening or emotional. Scarily, it was honest.

His watch glinted in the light as he folded his hands. “I'll give you and your staff one chance. Prove that Travelogue and you are worth taking on as part of RunAway International.”

Catching the immediate thanks that rose to her lips, she turned toward him. Her heart thumped hard in her chest. Whether it was because of how close he was standing or because he was giving her a chance, she had no idea.

Ruthlessly killing her own hopes, she shook her head. “I don't want to work for you.”

“Why not?”

“What do you mean
why not
?” She moved away, exasperated by him and her reaction to him. “Because you and I have a history, that's why. And not a good one. Whatever you think of me, I lied because...”

He gave her such an arch look that she backpedaled quickly. “Fine. I manipulated Maria and you with good intentions. Whereas you...you are doing this out of some twisted need for
revenge
. That's it. You want to torture me, guilt me and then—”

He grinned, and his blue eyes glittered. Her knees wobbled. “Have you always been this prone to drama or is it me that brings it out in you?”

How she wanted to say he affected her in no way, but they would both know she was lying. Better instead to focus on fighting it. “Why the sudden change of heart, then?”

“A strong sense of familial duty? A core made of kindness?”

Rolling her eyes, she swatted him. Deftly, he caught her hand in his.

Her breath stuck in her throat. Her fingers moved over his in the dark, registering the different texture of his palm—rough and abrasive, devoid of any softness, so different from her own.

It was his absolute stillness next to her, just as powerful as that latent energy, that made her realize what she was doing.

She jerked her hand away, the air she had been holding rushing out of her.

What the hell was she doing,
pawing
him like that? He was her employer, her enemy...

No man had been so dangerous to her internal balance as him. No man had ever spun her senses so easily.

Rubbing shaking fingers over her face, she struggled to think back to their conversation. “You're agreeing to see Robert, then?”

“If you give me a date now as to when you will sign the deed over to me.”

“Stay here in San Francisco until their wedding. See Robert, let him speak to you. And I'll sign over the estate the day after the wedding. Also, none of my staff will be made redundant. When this is all over, I want you to go away and leave Travelogue alone. Forever.”

“That depends on if Travelogue stays intact that long.”

“If you give us a fair chance, I have no doubt it will.”

His eyes gleamed ferociously. “You've got a lot of nerve, setting conditions to sell my mother's house back to me.”

“You're a billionaire, you're your own boss and as far as I understand, you have no one in your life that you're answerable to. What's two months in the big picture of your life, Nathan?”

“Everything, Riya.” There was no humor in his smile now, only a dark warning. “This is your last chance to let it go.”

She didn't take even a beat to think it over. “No. Robert...he...I'll do anything for him.”

His curious silence swathed her and Riya felt like the rabbit in the story her father had told her when she was little. The rabbit had gone into the lion's den, determined to change his mind about eating one animal every day.