The Man to Be Reckoned With

by Tara Pammi

  “Good night, Nathan.”

  She didn’t wait for him to speak before she hung up, probably realizing he wasn’t going to say anything.

  Her face disappeared from his screen, and he clenched his teeth, a soft fury vibrating through him.

  He threw his phone across the room, his chest incredibly tight. He sank to the bed and instantly the smell of her, the scent of sex, hit him hard, and he buried his face in his hands. Gulped in a greedy breath.

  There was an ache in this throat, something he hadn’t felt since his mother told him about his condition.

  It was self-pity, it was fear, it was how he felt when his emotions were out of control.

  With a curse, he swallowed it back.

  No.

  She wasn’t allowed to do this to him.

  No woman was allowed to send him back to being that boy. No woman was allowed to pry this much emotion from him.

  With a ruthlessness he had learned to survive without fear, with the resolve that had turned him from a runaway to a millionaire, he put her out of his mind. Dressed himself and ordered some coffee. Called housekeeping to change the sheets.

  He didn’t want any reminder of her, of what they had done together, of how he had felt with her beneath him, of how incredibly good the intimacy with her had been. Neither could he focus on how much he wanted to repeat the night, of how he wanted to find her at the estate and sink into her bed, of how much he wanted to hold her slender body in his arms and drift into sleep...

  She made him think of Nate Keys, the boy who had been desperately afraid for himself, who wanted to love and live, who wanted to be invincible. But he couldn’t be.

  He turned on his laptop and went back to being the man he had trained himself to be.

  Nathaniel Ramirez—billionaire, survivor and loner.

  CHAPTER TEN

  OVER THE NEXT couple of weeks, Riya threw herself into the wedding preparations with a rigor that left her with zero headspace. Between her increased responsibilities at Travelogue and the wedding preparations, not to mention the toll it was taking on her to avoid her own mother while living in the same house, it was a miracle she was managing as well as she was.

  But she liked it like that. Her days were busy to the point of crammed and when she fell into her bed at night, she was so exhausted that she went right to sleep.

  It was only when she was doing some mundane organizational task for the wedding that she found herself thinking of Nathan. She had tried to keep her thoughts free of him. But seeing him every day wasn’t conducive to purging him from her mind. After a while, she had just given up.

  “Are you well?” he had asked her the following Monday at work, his gaze intent.

  She hadn’t been able to stem the heat spreading up her neck. “I’m fine,” she had said, pleased that she had sounded so steady.

  He had tucked her hair behind her ear, clasped her cheek for a moment.

  Her heart had thundered in her chest, everything in her yearning to keep his hand there. Because that gesture hadn’t been about heat or attraction. It had been about affection, about comfort.

  Before she had done anything, however, he had jerked back. He had nodded, looked at her some more and that had been that. And taking his cue, she had thrown herself into work.

  Training her mind was still one thing. And absolutely another was her body.

  Every time she saw him—either at work or the house, because of course, to her growing annoyance, Nathan apparently couldn’t stay away from the house and Robert, she remembered the night they had shared.

  Their one night of pleasure. Her one night of freedom from herself. And it was in the most embarrassing and humiliating ways too.

  Humiliating because he didn’t seem to be facing any such problem. He was back to being the intensely driven slave driver and perfectionist Nathaniel Ramirez. The man really had to have a rock for a heart.

  Embarrassing because the memories of that night crept upon her all of a sudden.

  The taste of his sweat and skin when she had licked his wrist intruded on her when he extended some papers to her in a meeting full of people. She had stared at his wrist for a full thirty seconds before she grabbed the papers from him.

  The velvet hardness of him moving inside her, the stroke of his fingers at her core, the way his spine had arced and the way he had shuddered when he climaxed...she couldn’t look at him and not think of what she had let him do to her.

  With her late entry into the realm of physical pleasures, she understood her fascination with him. Like how he caught his lower lip with his teeth when he was thinking hard. The way he sometimes placed his palm on his chest and rubbed when he frowned.

  But what she missed the most was the man she had come to know. His irrepressible energy around her, his constant teasing of her...now one of them, or both, had erected a wall of politeness. They worked together perfectly, but now they were strangers.

  Having finalized the menu once again on the caterer’s online website, Riya shut her computer down.

  “Riya, I want to speak to you,” her mother’s voice came from behind her.

  Shaking her head, Riya shot out of her chair and grabbed her laptop. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Then why on earth are you doing so much for the wedding?”

  “For Robert. I’ll do anything for him.” Which was why she hadn’t packed her stuff and left the estate as her initial impulse had been to do.

  Jackie flinched and Riya felt a stab of regret and shock. The fact that anything she said or did could even affect her mom, except in the most superficial way, was a shock in itself. But however hard she tried, she couldn’t find it in her to forgive or even forget for a little while.

  Her jaw clenching and unclenching, Jackie stopped in front of her, blocking her exit. “I knew it. I knew it from the moment he stepped on the estate that he was going to ruin it all.”

  Despite every intention not to fall into the guilt trap her mom was so adept at laying, Riya still found herself getting sucked in. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nathan. He’s doing all this. Robert can’t stop talking about him. He wants us to leave the estate without complaint, says we can’t have the wedding here anymore because Nathan doesn’t want it. And when I argued, he raised his voice to me. Nathan’s all he can think about—”

  “Robert thought he would never see Nathan again. Can’t you be happy for him? For them?”

  Because Riya was incredibly happy. For both of them. A little part of her was even envious. Of course, Robert had cared about her. And she was so thankful to him for everything. But the light that came into his eyes when he spoke of Nathan made her a little sad too.

  “You’re so strong, Riya. Not everyone is so...self-sufficient. I made a bad decision. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. You can’t give up the estate just because—”

  “Are you kidding me, really?”

  “I’m telling you the truth. That’s what you want these days, right? I love Robert. And yes, I begin to panic when he gets mad at me. Just as I panicked when I thought your father would take you away from me.”

  Her insecurity was at the root of everything Jackie did. For the first time, instead of helplessness and then anger in the face of it, Riya felt pity for her mother.

  “Just because Nathan’s back doesn’t mean Robert doesn’t love you anymore. I don’t think it works like that.”

  “No? Look how he’s turned you against me. For years, we’ve been each other’s support, all we’ve had, Riya. And now, just weeks after he’s back, you won’t even look at me. All these years of—”

  “You were never my support. I was yours. You leaned on me when you shouldn’t have. If I’ve had even a little bit of a carefree childhood, it’s because of Robert. And if I’
ve known, even for only a few hours, what it means to live, it’s only because of Nathan. So excuse me if I don’t—”

  “Few hours? What’re you talking about?”

  At Riya’s silence, she became even tenser. “It’s none of your business.”

  Her gaze filled with shock, Jackie shook her. “You slept with him, didn’t you? Riya. How stupid are you?”

  As dramatic and distasteful as she was making it out to be, Riya refused to let Jackie ruin the most perfect time of her life. “That’s grand coming from the woman who fell in love with a married man,” she shouted, hating Jackie for reducing her to this.

  “At least Robert still stuck with me all these years. Nathan will leave and never look back. He’s the wrong man for you.”

  The fact that Nathan was going to leave was something Riya absolutely refused to think about. But she was aware of it, at the back of her mind, gaining momentum, beginning to rush at her from all sides.

  “This has nothing to do with the estate or you, or Robert. It concerns only Nathan and me. No one else. As hard as it is for you to accept it, I have a life. Am going to have a life that’s beyond you. I’m leaving after the wedding,” she said.

  She had been thinking about it, but there was no doubt in her mind now.

  She had made to move away when Jackie gave a laugh, and the genuine pity in it rooted Riya to the spot. “Now I see why he insisted. He’s planned it all along. And you went straight to his arms.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Nathan. He was the one who insisted I tell you about your father. He manipulated you into his bed, Riya. He doesn’t care about you.”

  The urge to slap her hands over her ears was so strong that she dug her nails into her palms. “No,” Riya denied, something inside her shaking at the revelation. She closed her eyes and his face, kind and resigned, flashed in front of her. “He didn’t manipulate me. He never could.” She kept whispering the word, too many things shifting and twisting in front of her.

  “He didn’t plan anything. He wanted nothing but for me to know that I was throwing my life away. He’s the first person in my life who thought about me, who cared enough to do something about it.”

  Her mom would never understand. And she needed to be okay with it. It wasn’t that she hated Jackie now. Only that she realized that she had a life beyond Jackie, beyond her father, beyond Robert and beyond the estate.

  On some level, she knew she should be angry with Nathan. He had been high-handed; he had brought her nothing but hurt. He had set it up without breathing a word to her.

  But she couldn’t be.

  Wasn’t it the truth that hurt her? Jackie who had hurt her? Even her father, to some extent, by threatening Jackie to take her away?

  Nathan had only liberated her from under the burden of the truth. And then he’d been there to catch her when she was falling. It felt precious, momentous, this molten feeling inside her, this expanding warmth in her chest that he had cared.

  * * *

  She went looking for him later that afternoon when she heard Maria mention that he was visiting. Found him sitting at the gazebo.

  He sat with his denim-clad legs stretched in front of him, with his head resting behind him, his face turned up. Sunlight hit his face in rectangular stripes. Kissed the shadows under his eyes. Caressed the planes and hollows of his cheekbones. The breeze ruffled his hair, the copper in it glinting in the sunlight.

  His tan was fading a bit and his mouth, not smiling, not teasing, was a tight bow, his lower lip jutting out.

  He looked strained, she thought with a pang. He was always such a dynamic, go-go-go, bursting-with-unending-energy kind of man that she didn’t like seeing this stillness in him. There was a melancholic quality to that stillness, a dark shadow to the quiet enveloping him.

  A sharp need gripped her. Not to feel his touch, although that was there too. But this was a clamoring to reach him, wrap her arms around him, hold him close. For herself, yes, but for him too.

  In that moment, there was a loneliness around him. The same one inside her that she had covered up as the need for security.

  The realization brought her up short. And she shook her head. It was ridiculous. Just because she felt alone in the world didn’t mean Nathan was. It was his choice in life. It had been her choice too, but she hadn’t even been aware of it.

  As though he could hear her thoughts piling on top of each other, he looked up. His eyes were a different blue in the sunlight, but even the sharp gaze couldn’t hide the strain around them.

  There was that instant heat between them. He leaned forward onto his knees and frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  She shook her head.

  For a full minute, she stood there, holding his gaze, not knowing if she wanted to step forward or turn back.

  He sighed, a harsh expulsion of breath and anger, she thought. “Come here,” he said.

  And she went, silencing the clamor inside her. Settled down next to him and stretched out her own legs.

  It was a beautiful day with a soft breeze that carried all kinds of fragrances with it. The silence between them, even though a little tense, slowly drifted into a comfortable groove. And she didn’t fight it, didn’t seek to cover it up or change it.

  Was this where they were going to settle? In this place between simmering heat and a strange intimacy?

  Slowly she covered the gap between them. Scooted closer until her thigh grazed the hard length of his. Leaned back and sideways until she hit the wall of his chest. Wound her arm around his lean waist. Held herself tight and still, bracing for his rejection.

  Seconds piled on top of each other, her breath balled in her throat. He didn’t push her away. Her heart thundering just as fast as when she had stripped in front of him, she wrapped her arm around his torso and leaned her head on his chest.

  She almost flinched when his right arm came around her shoulders and pulled her closer. Her breath left her in a shuddering whoosh and she settled into his embrace. He smelled familiar, and comforting. He felt like home. And this time, she knew it wasn’t the estate. It was the man.

  She didn’t know how long they sat like that.

  “You don’t want the wedding to be here?” she finally asked, loath to ruin the peace but needing to. Because if she didn’t, she had a feeling she would never let go.

  And that was definitely reason to panic.

  He tensed, but when he spoke, there was no anger in him. “No.”

  Feeling his gaze on her, Riya looked up. He ran his thumb over her temple. Pressed a kiss to her forehead. And yet there was no shock in either of them that he’d done it.

  Because how could anything that felt so right be wrong?

  “I have no anger for her, your mother,” he said, and her chest expanded at the kindness in his words, at the rough edge of emotion coating it. “I just want this place to remain my mother’s.”

  Riya nodded, her throat clogging. “Do you miss her very much?”

  His mother...she was asking about his mother. The woman who had died with fear in her eyes. She couldn’t have jolted him out of the moment better than if she had electrocuted him, reminded him of everything wrong that he was doing. Sitting here, sharing this moment with her, comforting her, finding something in her arms, this was wrong.

  All of it, every precious second, every incredible touch.

  Nathan jerked away from her and shot up from the bench, fear filling his veins. Every inch of him vibrated with a feral need to ask her to come with him, to show her the world, to have her in his bed for as long as they wanted each other.

  And he couldn’t let her have this much power over him, couldn’t yearn for things he could never have. He steeled himself against her beauty, her heart, and willed himself to become cold, uncaring.
<
br />   It was the only way to save her from a bigger hurt.

  “My manager’s taking care of all the arrangements to have the wedding somewhere else. You don’t have to redo them. And Robert too. There will be a nurse who will check on him once every day. He and your mother, I’ll take care of them, Riya. You’ve carried their burden long enough.”

  He had thought of everything. He was making arrangements. Before he... And suddenly she couldn’t lock away the questions. “Thanks. So you’ll be at the wedding?”

  He laughed, and now there was no more easy humor in the sound. The moment was fractured. And she didn’t know why. He tucked his fingers into the pockets of his jeans. Looked anywhere but at her. And Riya tried not to show her utter dismay.

  It was obvious withdrawal, painful retreat.

  “I would like nothing but to leave this very instant and not look back. I’ve stayed too long already and I’m getting restless. But I did give you my word.”

  He was not joking and the utter lack of any emotion in his words shocked her. She had barely made friends, or any other relationship for that matter. And he...he was one relationship she didn’t want to lose. “Are we friends, Nathan?”

  His jaw tight, he stared at her for several seconds, anger dawning in his gaze. “We are nothing, Riya.”

  She flinched at the cutting derision in his words. The entire tenor of the conversation had changed. “Why are you acting like this? What did I do wrong?”

  “You were fun that night.” Her palm itched to knock the derisive curve of his mouth. “Today, you’re falling into a pattern that I’m allergic to.”

  “Because I want us to be friends? I know that it was you that forced Jackie to tell me truth.” When he opened his mouth, she put her hand over it to hush him. And felt the contact jolt through her. “I know you did it because you cared. I don’t want explanations. I just...I think I would like us to be friends, Nate. I...” She stopped, arrested by the look in his eyes.

  “I did what I did because I felt sorry for you, for what your mother and this estate—for what they all did to you.”