“As you so aptly mentioned, you cannot own land or property of your own. How do you plan on starting your own business without a partner?”
“You seriously must not think I came all the way here without an alternate plan.” She put her hands on his chest and tried to shove him away, but he held her down. In the top drawer of the desk was a sharp silver letter opener, and Nila reached behind her and snatched it, pressing the tip to Thomas’s throat. “Let me go.”
He didn’t budge. Instead, he leaned forward, into the sharp edge of her tiny blade, forcing her to pull it back slightly. With his free hand, he shoved her arm away from his throat. Roughly, he turned her around so she was bent over the desk. His bare chest pressed against her back, and his mouth was so close to her ear she could feel his breath as he talked.
“You can lie to yourself all you want, convince yourself our time together was all a ploy, but I know the truth,” Thomas insisted. “I saw you drop your guard out in the woods. I felt you in my arms. You may be duplicitous, but no one is that talented an actress. The feelings you have for me are real. I believe you are many things, Nila, but a coward is not one of them. Why are you so afraid to love me?”
Nila could have slapped him. She did not want to venture out on her own to start a new business. She wanted Thomas. She wanted to wake up with him in her bed and build a future together. She could no longer think of him as a stepping-stone or the means to an end. He was real and wonderful and the answer to so many of her prayers.
His palms were flat on the desk on either side of her, and Nila laced her fingers through his, bringing his powerful arms around her waist. She sagged, and he held her up, his wrists pressing below her bosom. Thomas lowered his mouth and kissed her neck, and she angled her head to allow him better access. At the same time, she started to cry.
“Don’t do this,” she begged, her voice ragged. “I won’t have the strength to go.”
“So stay,” he murmured. Thomas would do whatever was necessary to convince her not to leave. He would stand up to his brothers, make her a full partner in the business and put it in writing. He would appoint her president if that’s what it took.
Thomas pushed the silk chemise off her shoulders and down to her waist. He cupped her breasts in his hands and reveled when she lowered herself into him. She pushed the papers off the desk and turned in his arms, her lips meeting his. Between kisses, as she unlaced his short trousers, she whimpered, “Stop. Thomas, please. Stop.”
But her heart was not in her protestations, and Thomas knew it. He knew it by the way she pressed into him instead of pushing him away. He knew it by the way she held his arms around her for support. He knew it by the tears on her face at the mere thought of leaving him behind and the guilt over her pitiless words and malicious actions. He knew it because he knew her.
Thomas lowered himself to the ground, kneeling in front of her like he was praying. His hands clasped her thighs, and he brought his mouth to the center of her.
When his tongue found the button of gratification inside her, Nila dug her fingernails into the tops of his muscular shoulders and held on for dear life. Her legs were wobbly, and she felt like she might melt into a puddle on the floor. He added his fingers to the delight, and it was as if her body was made of a thousand stars all falling at once. She bit down on her lower lip hard enough to draw blood until she could take it no longer and let out a moan and then a shriek of pleasure. He brought her to climax once, but her insides were still pulsing when he started again. This time it took only seconds of his tongue caressing her most private and guarded place, of his fingers exciting her nub over and over again before she was awash with so much pleasure she had to make him stop for fear of all her muscles and bones coming undone.
Nila grabbed his hair and tugged him up. Standing, his unclothed body covering her, she felt dizzy in their lovemaking and confused about her feelings.
She had to leave him.
She loved him.
He kissed her gently, their eyelashes fluttering together. “Nila, I’ll stop if you want me to.”
Her response was to lie back against the desk and pull him inside her. Her hips and back arched like a rainbow, and her magnificent gray eyes went blurry with the relief and pleasure of finally coupling again. He pressed her arms to the sides so she was spread out naked before him, vulnerable and trusting. This was the woman who four days earlier had run from him in terror because he crossed to her side of the desk. Now she lay bare, with the utter conviction he would keep his word that he would never hurt her.
In that moment, he knew she loved him, too.
Waves of ecstasy raked Nila’s body, and her toes curled as she wrapped her legs around the backs of his thighs. This was a deeper sensation, a pleasure she could savor all night and never want to end. As he thrust inside her, slowly stimulating her senses, he covered her body with his and took one of her nipples in his mouth. It immediately stiffened, and the fiery passion ignited again. She clung to him, now barely touching the desk, as he buried faster and deeper inside of her. He pressed his face to her chest, between her breasts, and let out a moan as he was completed. In a hot, satisfied heap, they tumbled to the floor, still wrapped up and around each other. With Thomas inside her, as content and fulfilled as she could ever imagine being, Nila fell asleep.
Thomas awoke in the morning alone and naked on the floor of the office. In her room, all her belongings were missing. He searched the house and her favorite spots in the woods but to no avail. Nila was gone.
For the first time in his life, Thomas felt cold.
Chapter Five
Three weeks after tearing herself out of Thomas Everett’s arms and weeping as she escaped under the cloak of darkness, Nila found herself sitting at the dinner table with Walter Clark. He was the man she’d researched while going through the Everett Shipbuilding books, the prudent second choice after Thomas. His was the only address she took before fleeing. Walter to take her in because he was settled, progressive, and lived his life with a touch of scandal. It was a good match and suited both their purposes.
But he was not Thomas.
Thomas represented more than stability and opportunity. Nila remembered their passionate nights together, how she felt excited, out of control yet safe all at once. She remembered hiking through the woods, the tenderness with which he took her hand to help her cross a stream. She remembered his tropical blue eyes and the pure joy that filled her soul when she made him laugh.
Was it really so unforgivable, what he had done? Was it really his fault he did not know how to handle a woman such as her? He did not dismiss her immediately, laugh her out of the room, or raise a hand to strike, all reactions Nila endured from her father when she dared to open her mouth. If anything, Thomas seemed to enjoy her challenges. She was beginning to wonder if she left prematurely without giving him a fair chance.
But Everett Shipbuilding was a family affair, and she required acceptance from more than Thomas. This was better. The words rang hollow in her head, but she repeated it many times every day, a silent prayer she hoped would mend her heart. This is better. This is better.
But she wasn’t convinced, and her mantra wasn’t working. No amount of repetition could persuade her.
The sense of loss made Nila lose her appetite. One night over dinner, Walter Clark reached out and placed his hand over her wrist. “You seem far away.”
She looked down at her lap. “I suppose I am.”
“Are you worried about the business?” he asked with concern. He was a considerate man.
Nila shook her head. “We already have more demand than supply. We are nearly profitable already, which is remarkable. The business is fine.”
“But...” he prompted.
She twirled her spoon in soup that was growing cold. “How could I possibly be so attached to Thomas? I knew him for less than a week!”
“Darling, logic does not hold sway over matters of the heart.”
Walter smiled warmly at her, a
handsome man who was generous with kindness and support. Since arriving on his doorstep, she often wondered how different her life would be if her own father possessed even an ounce of Walter’s tenderness. He was mentoring her in areas of the business where she did not have experience and never once considered that she was inferior for being a member of the gentler sex. Had she not met Thomas first, Nila thought she would be quite fulfilled in her current venture. Until Thomas, she had no use for the impracticalities of love.
But she did meet Thomas and shared a part of herself she never imagined she would give to any man. Nila unlocked the vault of her secrets and was glad she did. She wanted him back, but not at the cost of her dreams or dignity.
“I don’t want you to think me an ungrateful shrew,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “I know all you have done for me, and I will forever be thankful. You know this. You must.”
“I do,” Walter answered. “I also know what it is like to pine for love you’re not sure you can have, and you wonder if you deserve it at all. I know what it’s like to question everything about who you thought you were because of feelings you cannot control and maybe don’t really want to.”
She chuckled. “You should write a book, sir.”
“Plus, salt processing, though lucrative, is not exactly the business of dreamers,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“Oh, I am no dreamer,” Nila denied. “I am a pragmatist through and through.”
“You’re a lass with a sound head on capable shoulders, I’ll grant you, but I see the way you light up like a candle when you talk about shipbuilding and sailing the world.”
“I did not know I was so obvious.”
Walter patted her arm and picked up his own spoon. “Not all business is the suppression of whimsy. Just like love does not always mean sacrifice.”
“If Thomas truly loved me, he would know asking me to give up something so dear is asking too much.”
“If you truly love Thomas, perhaps you should give him another chance to prove himself.”
Nila wondered if he was right, but she shook her head resolutely. “I cannot endure the heartbreak of leaving him again. I simply cannot.”
Walter Clark nodded. “You have a home here, Nila, for as long as you like.”
She knew he meant it sincerely, but in such a short time, she began to believe the only home she would ever truly have was with Thomas.
* * * *
A month passed without a word from Nila, and after two months, Thomas thought he would go crazy. When the new year began, he was long past despair. He was worried about her, yes, but that wasn’t the half of it. He missed her. He wanted her home, in his life, in his business, in his bed.
She hadn’t left a note. What she did leave spoke volumes. All of the copies she made in the office were still there. So was her dowry. It was her way of saying she would strike out into the world on her own, severing any ties they had. It would be more difficult for her, but the message was clear. She felt she owed him nothing.
Everett Shipbuilding was quickly going down the path of ruination Nila predicted, yet Thomas refused to touch her dowry to help matters. As long as it remained intact, he could harbor hope she would return.
Late one night, he was standing in the office, remembering all the passion he and Nila shared in this room. He ached for her.
“You can look here a thousand more times, she will still be gone.”
Thomas turned around to find his brother Will standing in the doorway. “It was your words that caused her to leave,” Thomas said in a bitter tone.
“Perhaps in part, but I daresay your actions might have contributed,” Will retorted.
“Not that it matters now.” He looked out the window, a fresh blanket of snow falling over the frozen lake. He thought of his hot-blooded betrothed, of how she was faring in one of the coldest winters in memory.
“Since when have you been a man who accepted circumstances as they are?” Will chided.
“Nila wants to be a partner in our business, and I believe she deserves as much,” Thomas said. “If you, Father, and James cannot agree to it, then I have nothing left to offer her.”
“Other than your love.”
He shook his head. “Nila came from India with the thought that love was inconsequential. Even if she loves me as well, that is not enough for her to give up her dreams and become my tractable wife.”
“If she could possibly become that, my guess is you never would have fallen in love with her in the first place,” Will said, leaning against the windowpane with a smile.
“True enough. What shall I do, brother? The best thing would be to forget her, but I simply cannot. I would do almost anything for this family, to save this business, but I am ready to leave it all behind for Nila. I am ready to find her, whatever the cost. I don’t want to leave you behind, but I will. If I must.”
“This business was thrust upon Father through lucky circumstances,” Will said. “We are a family of lumberjacks who accidentally stumbled into shipbuilding. The business grew faster than we could have predicted, and there isn’t a one of us who wouldn’t rather be felling trees with our hands than sitting behind that infernal desk, huddled over charts and numbers. Except Nila Sarvani.”
“What are you saying?” Thomas’s heart quickened. He dared not hope for what he could not stop himself from needing.
“I’m saying we have hundreds of men relying on this business for employment, their wives and children counting on us to help their husbands put food on the table and clothe their families against this harsh season,” Will answered. “I’m saying this is not just about us, and if we had remembered that in October, perhaps none of us would be in this predicament. I’m saying if Nila can deliver what she claims, who are we to rebuff her simply because she is a woman?”
“Will, if you are not being serious—”
“James and I talked it over with Father. If you can find Nila and convince her to come back, she will be made a full partner in the business, and we will follow her guidance in making decisions.”
He was so excited that the bigger problem hit him with the force of a hurricane. “I have no idea where she is. If I did, I would have sought her out weeks ago.”
“You know her well, Thomas. Why did she want to marry you in the first place before she ever met you?”
“So I could be a front to her business, a man to buy property and command authority,” he said and realized what his brother was saying. If she were going to start a business of her own, she would still need those things. Nila said she had a backup plan in case her first one went awry, but he also knew she was not a woman who could deny her heart. She would not marry another man and take his bed just to find success. She may be unconquerable, but Thomas knew without a doubt that he owned her heart.
Suddenly, it dawned on him exactly where she was.
Chapter Six
The trip from Oswego to Syracuse took three days, but Thomas barely felt the cold or sensed the danger as he rode toward Nila. In the early afternoon of the third day, amidst a heavy snowfall and bracing winds, he arrived at the home of Walter Clark. He was a man who made his fortune not from innovation of his own but through wise investing. His reputation had been damaged by rumors of an ongoing liaison with his footman and constant companion, a gentleman twenty years his junior by the name of Jeff. People who cared about such things made Walter’s professional life difficult of late, but a marriage could dispel such rumors. Even if she were foreign, a wedded union with Nila would be far less scandalous than hints of an affair of a different sort. Thomas knew of Walter Clark only because he loaned their family money within the last year, and undoubtedly, that was how Nila found her way to him, through those records.
It was Jeff who answered the door. “Hello, Mr. Everett.”
“Is she here?” he asked desperately, too overwrought for niceties.
“Who?”
“You know who,” he said, pushing his way past Jeff and into the house. �
�Nila!” he bellowed. “Nila, come out here!”
Walter Clark arrived before she did. He was tall and stately, unperturbed by this invasion. Instead, he appeared amused. “I was wondering when you’d come calling. Nila insisted you wouldn’t, but I figured otherwise.”
“So she is here. Nila!” he shouted again, bent on shaking the rafters if necessary.
Finally, she came hurrying down the stairs. She was wearing a blue muslin gown fit tightly over her lithe body, and her black hair was even longer than before, wildly spilling about her shoulders and down her back. Those gray eyes were still as intense as molten quicksilver, and he knew he would not leave here without her.
“Thomas! What are you—” Nila’s words were cut off when he took her in his arms, lifted her off her feet and pressed his lips against hers. He had not shaved in three days, and she put her hands on his cheeks, rubbing the soft beard that was starting to grow beyond stubble. His touch ignited dormant passion almost as if they had not spent any time apart. She welcomed his tongue and unabashedly wrapped her legs around his waist, wishing they were alone so she could tear off his clothes and make love to him.
With a sigh of relief to finally have her back, he set her on the ground and held her face in his hands. “Come back with me.”
Looking into his blue eyes, reflecting as deep as the sea, and shaking her head no was the hardest thing she had done since leaving his home nearly three months earlier and the second most difficult moment of her entire life.
“You have to,” he insisted, his forehead pressed against hers.
“What has changed?” she whispered back.
“What has changed is that my family is ready to put you in charge of Everett Shipbuilding. If you cannot trust my family, then trust me. We can start a whole new business, if that’s what you need. I’ll do anything. I want you to be my partner in every sense of the word, but more than that, I fear I cannot live without you. Every second you’ve been gone has been torturous. Please, come home.”
Frozen: A Winter Romance Anthology Page 31
