The Man to Be Reckoned With

by Tara Pammi

  He felt alien, yet familiar. Her thighs trembled, locked against the tensile strength of his; her belly dipped and she groaned.

  The tenor of the kiss went from slow, soft appraisal, a testing of fit and sensation to pure, exploding, ravenous heat.

  He bit and stroked, nibbled and licked. He kissed her as if they would both drown if he stopped, and that’s how it felt. So she let him. Stayed passive and panting under his caresses, let him steal her breath and infuse her with his own.

  A freeing desperation joined the molten warmth inside her.

  When he stopped, when he sucked in a shuddering breath, everything inside Riya protested that he did. She flushed as he pulled back and locked eyes with her. His gaze was the darkest she had seen yet, his breath coming in and out a little out of sync. The pad of his thumb moved over her lower lip, and she shivered again.

  “Did you enjoy that kiss, butterfly?”

  Riya fell back against the couch, her fingers on her still-trembling mouth.

  That kiss had been beyond perfect. But the mockery in his eyes grated; the laid-back arrogance in it stung. It was nothing but a challenge to him. Whereas the entire foundation of her life had shaken.

  “I would have been surprised if I hadn’t,” she said, dredging up the cool tone from somewhere. Her fingers still on his chest, she glared at him. Her heart still hadn’t resumed its normal pace. “Very altruistic of you,” she said, a little hollow in her chest, waiting for him to deny.

  He grinned instead. “I haven’t been called one of this generation’s greatest philanthropists for no reason.”

  “Forgive me if being your charity case doesn’t fill me with excitement.”

  Turning away from him, Riya sought silence. Fortunately for her, she felt them coming down again. They had just stepped out of the enclosure when they saw Sonia waiting there, her gaze stricken, her features pinched with pain.

  Mortification came hard at Riya. Had the entire crew seen them kissing? If Nathan hadn’t been satisfied with proving his point and stopped, how far would she have let him go?

  Next to her, Nathan turned into a block of ice, and Riya fled fast, wondering what she had stepped into. Reaching the villa, she couldn’t help casting a quick look at Nathan and Sonia.

  The way they stood close but not touching, the tension that emanated from them, their body language so familiar with each other—it was clear they were or had been lovers. And the pain in Sonia’s eyes had been real enough.

  Here was one clue to his past, an answer to the unrelenting curiosity that had been eating through her. A streak of jealousy and self-doubt held her still.

  Shaking, Riya wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. If only his taste would come off so easily. But her mind rallied quickly enough.

  He had stopped so easily when he was done. She was nothing but a naive, curious entertainment to a man who built castles in the sky, to the man who made billions by selling an experience.

  * * *

  Riya avoided Nathan over the next few days. With enough workload to challenge her and the very real threat of losing Travelogue, it was easy. Not that she had been able to get that toe-curling kiss or Sonia and her stricken expression out of her mind.

  Determined to assure Sonia, and herself, that there was nothing between her and Nathan, she had gone looking for her the next evening. Only to find that Sonia had left the island that morning.

  The fact that Nathan had so neatly, and quietly, dispatched her infuriated Riya. How dare he comment on her conduct when he possessed no better standards? Was this the true Nathan, flitting from woman to woman and walking away when he was done? Why did she even care?

  But she kept her thoughts to herself, the very absence of his easy humor over the next few days enough of a deterrent.

  He was her employer, and Robert’s son.

  She spent the rest of her days between work, fixing any defects for Travelogue’s software, and her nights, soaking up the sultry beauty of the island. One afternoon the day before they were set to leave, she was working in one of the bedrooms in the villa she was sharing with four other female members of the crew.

  The bedroom had open walls, with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views of the island, bringing cool breezes in. Riya smiled, having finally hit on a solution to a design problem she had been trying to solve for two days.

  She stood up and took a long sip of her fruity drink with a straw umbrella when Nathan appeared at the entrance. The cold drink did nothing to fan the flames that the sight of him dressed in a white cotton T-shirt that showcased his lean chest and hard midriff and tight blue jeans ignited.

  Wraparound shades hid his expression, but Riya couldn’t care. Her gaze glued itself to his freshly shaved angular jaw, traveled over his chin. The beard was gone, although there was already stubble again.

  And the mouth it revealed sparked an instant hunger in her.

  Men didn’t have, shouldn’t have mouths like his. Lush and sensual with the upper lip shaped like a perfect bow. A cushion of softness that contrasted against the roughness and hardness of the rest of him.

  She had the most insane, overwhelming urge to walk up to him and press her lips to his again, to see how it would feel without the beard. She pointed her finger at him and heard the words fall from her mouth. “You shaved it.”

  Instant heat flared in his gaze, and Riya gasped, only then realizing she had said it out loud.

  “What did you say?” he said, coming farther into the room, and she wished she could disappear.

  “Nothing,” she managed, lifting her gaze to his. “Were we supposed to meet?”

  He looked behind her and saw the papers she had been scribbling on and her laptop. “Riya, why didn’t you go with the rest of them for the submarine tour? The marine life you get to see here is unparalleled. With your record, it’ll be another decade before you leave California again.”

  His remark grated even as she was aware that it was true. “I was stuck on a tricky design problem and I wanted to resolve it. And I did. I have an initial model ready.”

  The surprise flashing through his gaze went eons toward restoring her balance. “Already?” he said.

  “You did put my life’s work under scrutiny and up for assessment,” she said sweetly, handing him her laptop.

  More than once, her work had come to her rescue. From a young age, she had been comfortable around numbers and equations and then code. Because you could be sure y would come out when you put in x.

  Not like people and emotions. Not like the crushing pain of abandonment and the cavern of self-doubt and longing it pushed you into. Nothing like this incessant confusion and analysis their kiss had plunged her into.

  He made no reply to her comment. Took the laptop from her and sat down at the foot of the bed. After a full ten minutes, he closed her laptop and met her gaze. Shot her a couple of incisive questions. Finally he nodded. “It’s better than I expected.” A deafening sound whooshed in Riya’s ears.

  “Upload the docs into the company’s cloud. I’ll have my head of IT take a look too. Travelogue can have this project based on how the rest of your team brings it together for beta testing. But, irrespective of your team, you’re RunAway material.”

  The whooshing turned into a roar. Exhilaration coursed through her and she damped it down. Too many questions lingered in her, and Riya couldn’t untangle professional from personal ones. Only that he would always do this to her...make her wonder about things she shouldn’t want. “I don’t want another job. I want my company back.”

  He stood up and faced her, close enough to see the small nick on the underside of his jaw. The scent of his aftershave made her mouth dry. “You’re halfway there, then.”

  “Until you remember why I’m not signing over the estate?”

  “Excuse me?”


  “I would like to know what you have in store for me, how far you’re willing to go for...” When he waited with a grating patience, she said through gritted teeth, “You kissed me.”

  Nathan frowned, fighting the impulse to kiss that wide mouth again. It was bad enough that damn kiss was all he could think about. Even the incident it had instigated with Sonia hadn’t been enough to temper the fire it had started in him. “And you kissed me back. I don’t see your point exactly.”

  Something combative entered her eyes. “What happened to Sonia?”

  The question instantly put him on guard. The hurt expression in Sonia’s eyes had been haunting him the past few days. And the fact that he had caused her pain, even after he’d been careful not to, scoured through him.

  “None of your business,” he said, turning away from Riya.

  Her hand on his arm stalled him. “Just answer the question, Nathan.”

  “You think one kiss gives you the right to take me to task?”

  “No. I’m trying to understand you.”

  “Why?”

  “You hold the fate of my company in your hand. You hold my fate in your hand. I don’t think it’s worth killing myself if you’re unscrupulous. If you make a habit of taking your employees as lovers and then firing them when things turn sour, I’d rather cut my losses now.”

  “That’s quite a picture you paint of me,” he said, laughing at the nefarious motives Riya attributed to his actions.

  Even preferred it to the truth. Because the reality of losing a friend who had known him for over a decade was all too painful, the hollow in his gut all too real. The number of people who were constants in his life over the past decade were two—Sonia and his manager, Jacob.

  The realization that he was condemning his very soul to loneliness still shook him.

  But then Sonia had left him with no choice, giving him an ultimatum between her love and her friendship. One time of seeking comfort with her, of breaking his rule, and she had forgotten he didn’t do relationships, forgotten that he lived his life alone by choice, that he’d turned his heart into a stone painstakingly over the years.

  That he couldn’t let himself become weak by giving in to emotions.

  He’d immediately told Sonia that it had been a mistake, that it changed nothing. That they could never repeat it.

  It was his fault that he hadn’t held her at arm’s length like with everyone from the beginning, that she was hurt. His fault that he’d given in to temptation with the woman in front of him, even more ill-suited to handle him than Sonia.

  Her fingers bunched in his shirt, Riya’s brown eyes blazed with anger and confusion. “How can you be so...so careless about someone’s pain? So casual about the havoc you’re wreaking?”

  “On her?” He gripped her hands with his, feeling a powerlessness course through him. He had punished himself by sending Sonia away, and that Riya judged him for that only fanned his fury. “Or on you and your plan? It was a damn good kiss, Riya, but don’t let it distract you from your plan.”

  She let go of him as if he had struck her. “I know I’m nothing more than an entertaining challenge to you. And that kiss...it’s nothing but you proving to me that I’m out of my element with you. But she and you have known each other for a decade, and now no one knows where she is.”

  He turned toward the stunning vista, his knuckles showing white against the brown of the wood paneling. “No injustice has been done to her. Sonia is a twenty percent shareholder in RunAway. She’ll be all right.” It was the only thing that gave him solace.

  “Then why did she leave?”

  “Because I told her in no uncertain terms that she has no place in my life anymore. Pity, because she was my only friend,” he said in a low voice.

  Riya reeled at how easily the words fell from Nathan’s mouth. But the affected disinterest didn’t extend to the pain in his eyes. Whatever he had done with Sonia, it hadn’t left him untouched. “Why?”

  “She messed up at the one thing I asked her not to do.”

  “What could she have done that you removed her from your life like you would delete a file?”

  He smiled at her consternation, but there was no warmth in that smile. There was no mockery, there was no humor in his gaze. Only the shadow of pain, only unflinching honesty. “She fell in love with me. Despite knowing I’m allergic to the whole concept.”

  The impact of his words came at Riya like a bucket of ice-cold water.

  “She knew I didn’t want her love. She knew nothing was ever going to come out of it. But she didn’t listen. Now she’s cost us both a friendship that should have lasted a lifetime.”

  It didn’t matter that it hurt him to lose that. He had still cut Sonia out of his life. He had never turned around for Robert. He was exactly the kind of man who walked away without looking back. The why of it didn’t matter in front of his actions.

  It was all the proof Riya needed to realize that of all the men on the planet she could have been attracted to, Nathan was the most dangerous of all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  FOR THREE WEEKS after they returned to San Francisco, Riya slept in one of the extra rooms that had been booked at a downtown hotel in addition to the conference room for the Travelogue team.

  Nathan had given her team three weeks to put together a package for the launch event, and for her, to build the software model that would support that package. Even though he could still dismantle them if they didn’t come up to scratch, he was definitely giving them a chance first.

  It didn’t help knowing that his own team from another company was also putting something together at the same time. He expected her company to fail and she was determined to prove him wrong.

  Three weeks in which Riya had backed off from pestering him about their deal, in which she had slept only minimum hours to develop the final model for software, in which he had set a relentless pace, driving every member of Travelogue and his own team crazy. Three weeks in which Jackie had figured out somehow that Nathan was back because of Riya, that she had willingly offered to sign away the estate.

  Nothing Riya said helped, not that she had a lot of time.

  Nathan worked just as hard as they did, putting in long hours, giving much-needed direction and expertise. If they encountered a problem, there was nowhere to go until a solution was found.

  As manic as he had been in his energy, he also had tremendous motivating capabilities. With the entire team working together in a conference hall, exchanging ideas and finding instant solutions for challenges they encountered, it had been the best workweek of her life.

  There was something to his energy, to his credo of doing everything right then, of implementing an idea as best and as soon as possible.

  Now the beta testing they had done of the model had been a spectacular success, and they had entered the next iteration. It was three weeks since Nate and she had struck that deal, and he had yet to see Robert.

  She’d been trying to get a word with him for two days and failed. The man was a machine, traveling, working, managing teams all over the world... Knowing that tonight he was just a few floors above her, in the penthouse suite, she had to take this chance.

  Squaring her shoulders, Riya took the elevator. The doors swished open and she entered the vast black-and-white-tiled foyer.

  For a few seconds, she was lost in the brilliant San Francisco skyline visible through the French doors. Subdued ceiling lights cast a hushed glow over the steel and chrome interior.

  She spotted Nathan in the open lounge, clad in gray sweatpants that hung precariously low on his hips, doing push-ups.

  The line of his back, defined and pulling tight over stretched muscles, was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. The copper highlights in his hair glinted and winked in the low lights.

 
Sweat shone over the smooth, tanned skin of his back, his breathing punctured by his soft grunts. Warmth uncurled in Riya’s belly, her own breathing becoming choppy and disjointed.

  In a lithe movement that would have made a wild animal proud, he shot to his feet and grabbed a bottle of water.

  Her mouth dry, Riya watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed. A drop of sweat poured down his neck and chest, which was lean with sharply bladed muscles. A sprinkle of copper-colored hair covered his pectorals and formed a line down his hard stomach. His shoulder bones jutted out, his throat working convulsively as he swallowed. He wasn’t pumped up with bulging muscles, but what was there of him had such sculpted definition that her fingers itched to trace it.

  She had the most overwhelming urge to cross the hall and to press her hands against that warm skin, breathe in the scent of him.

  Shivering from a heat that speared across her skin like a fire, she was about to clear her throat when she saw him sway. He was so tall and lean that it was like seeing an immovable thing buck against a faint breeze. Her heart lurched into her throat as his knees buckled under him.

  Riya didn’t know she could move so fast. Working on auto, she grabbed his shoulders just as he sank onto his haunches, his head bent. She tapped his cheek, fear twisting in her gut. “Nathan...Nathan...”

  She ran her hands all over him, his shoulders, his neck, her throat aching. “Nate, honey? Please look at me...”

  His fingers closed on her upper arm, almost bruising in their grip, and he slowly raised his head. His gaze remained unfocused for a second longer, before it rested on her face. He blinked then. “Did I scare you, butterfly?”

  Fear still clawed at her, but she fought it. This was ridiculous. He was right in front of her, solid and arrogant, as always.

  “Riya?”

  “Yes?”

  His fingers moved from her arm to her wrist, firing neurons left and right. “Don’t leave just yet, okay?”

  She nodded, the stubble on his jaw scratching against her palm. He didn’t look dizzy or disoriented.