by Tara Pammi
Even the magazine hadn’t been able to get a picture of him. It had been a virtual interview.
The quintessential loner, the magazine had called him, the perfect personality for a man who traveled the world over and over. The fact that he made money doing it was just a perk, someone had heard him remark.
He’d only said his name, and nothing more about what he was doing here, in San Francisco, in Travelogue, in their start-up company’s headquarters.
Why? Why would he give his name instead of stating why he was here?
She threw a quick look behind her and noticed Drew still stood unmoving at the bay windows, his mouth tight, his gaze swinging between her and Mr. Ramirez.
“You make a living out of traveling the world. What can a small online travel sales company do for you?” She shot Drew a look of pure desperation. “And why are you sitting in Drew’s chair?”
The intensity of his gaze, while nothing new to Riya, still had a disconcerting element to it. Men stared at her. All the time.
She had never learned how to handle the attention or divert it, much less enjoy it, as Jackie did. Only painstakingly cultivated an indifference to those heated, lingering looks. But something about him made it harder.
Finally he uncoiled from his lounging position. And a strange little wave of apprehension skittered through her.
“I bought controlling interest in Travelogue last night, Ms. Mathur.”
She blinked, his soft declaration ringing in her ears. “I bought a gallon of milk and bread last night.”
The sarcastic words fell easily from her mouth while inside, she struggled not to give in to the fear gripping her.
* * *
“It wasn’t that simple,” Nathan said, getting up from the uncomfortable chair. The whole cabin was both inconvenient and way too small for him. Every way he turned, there was a desk or chair or a pile of books ready to bang into him. He felt boxed in.
Walking around the table, he stopped at arm’s length from her, the fear hidden under her sarcastic barb obvious. Gratification filled him even as he gave the rampant curiosity inside him free rein.
Like mother, like daughter.
He pushed the insidiously nasty thought away. True, Riya Mathur was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and as a man who had traveled to all the corners of the world, he’d seen more than his share.
She was also, apparently, extremely smart and as possessed of the talent for messing with men’s minds as her mother, if everything he had heard and Drew Anderson’s blatantly obvious craze for her was anything to go by.
But where Jacqueline met the world with a devil-may-care attitude, flaunting her beauty with an irreverent smile, her daughter’s beauty was diluted with intelligence and a carefully constructed air of indifference.
Which, he realized with a self-deprecating smile, made every male of the species assume himself equal to the task of unraveling all that beauty and fire.
Exquisite almond-shaped, golden brown eyes, defiant, scared and hidden behind spectacles, a high forehead, a straight, distinctive nose that hinted at stubbornness and a bow-shaped mouth. All this on the backdrop of a golden caramel-colored silky smooth complexion, as though Jackie’s alabaster and her Indian father’s brown had been mixed in perfect proportions.
She had dressed to underplay everything about herself, and this only spurred him on to observe more. It was like a cloud hovering over a mountaintop, trying to hide the magnificence of the peak beneath it.
A wary and puzzled look lingered in her eyes since she had stepped inside. Which meant it was only a matter of time before she remembered him.
Because he had changed his last name, and he looked eons different from the sobbing seventeen-year-old she had seen eleven years ago.
He should just tell her and get it over with, he knew. And yet he kept quiet, his curiosity about her drumming out every other instinct.
“I had to call in a lot of favors to find your investors. Once they were informed of my intent, they were more than happy to accommodate me. Apparently they’re not happy with the ways things are being run.”
“You mean disappointed about the bucket loads of money they want us to make?” A flash of regret crossed her face as soon as she said it.
She was nervous, which was what he’d intended.
“And that’s wrong how, Ms. Mathur? Why do you think investors fund start-ups? Out of the goodness of their hearts?”
“I don’t think so. But there’s growth and there’s risk.” She took a deep breath as though striving to get herself under control. “And if it’s profits that you’re after, then why buy us at all?”
“Let’s just say it caught my fancy.”
Frustration radiated out of her. “Our livelihood, everything we’ve worked toward the past four years is hanging in the balance. And all you’re talking about is late night shopping, things catching your fancy. Maybe living your life on the periphery of civilization all these years, cut off from your fellow man, traipsing through the world with no ties—”
“Riya, no....” She heard Drew’s soft warning behind her. But she was far too scared to pay heed.
“—has made you see only profit margins, but for us, the human element is just as important as the bottom line.”
“You make me sound like a lone wolf, Ms. Mathur.”
“Well, you are one, aren’t you?” She closed her eyes and fought for control. “Look, all I care about is what you intend to do with the company. With us.”
Something inched into his features, hardening the look in his eyes. “Leave us alone, Mr. Anderson.”
“No,” Riya said aloud as Mr. Ramirez walked around the table and toward her. Panic made her words rushed. “There’s nothing you have to say to me that Drew can’t hear.”
Stopping next to her, Drew met her gaze finally. The resignation in his eyes knocked the breath out of her as nothing else could. “Drew, whatever you’re thinking, we can fight this. We own the patent to the software engine—”
“Does nothing else matter to you except the blasted company? Statues possess more feelings than you do.”
Bitterness spewed from every word, and the hurt festering beneath them lanced through her. She paled under his attack, struggled to put into words why.
“I’m done, Riya,” Drew said, with a hint of regret.
“But, Drew, I...”
His hands on her shoulders, Drew bent and kissed her cheek, all the while the deep-set ice-blue gaze of the arrogant man who was kicking Drew out stayed on her without blinking.
Something flitted in that gaze. An insinuation? A challenge? There one minute, chased away by a cool mockery the next.
But Riya didn’t look away. Locking her hands by her side, she stood frozen to the spot.
Stepping back from her, Drew turned. “I’ll set up something with your assistant, Nathan.”
Without breaking her gaze, the hateful man nodded.
“Goodbye, Riya.”
The words felt so final that Riya shivered.
Leaving her flailing in the middle of the room, Drew closed the door behind him. It felt as if she were locked in a cage with a wild animal even as her mind was sifting and delving deeper.
Nathan...Nathan...Nathaniel Ramirez. Owns a group of travel and vacation companies called RunAway International, has traveled the world since he was seventeen...
A strange shiver began at the base of her spine, inched everywhere. She pushed her fingers through her hair, a nervous gesture she had never gotten over. “What did Drew mean?”
“Mr. Anderson decided he wanted to move on. From...” His gaze swept over her, a puzzle in it. “...Travelogue,” he finished, leaving something unsaid.
Riya felt as if he had slapped her. He had said so much without saying anything, an
d she couldn’t even defend herself against what she didn’t understand. She had never felt more out of her depth. “Who the hell do you think you are? And you can’t just kick him out. Drew and I own—”
“He sold his share of the stock. To me. I now own seventy-five percent of your company. I’m your new partner, Riya. Or boss, or really...there are so many things we could call each other.”
CHAPTER TWO
AND JUST LIKE THAT, her name on his lips, spoken like a soft invocation, unlocked the memory her mind had been trying to grasp from the moment she looked into that ice-blue gaze.
“She’s dead. And she died knowing that your trashy mother is just waiting at the gates, ready to come in and take her place. I hope you both rot in hell.”
The memory of that long-ago day flashed through her so vividly that Riya had to grab the chair to steady her shaking legs.
Robert’s wife had been Anna. Anna Ramirez.
Little shivers spewed all over and she hugged herself. She had brought this on herself. “You’re Nathan Keys. You’re Robert’s son. I read about you and I never realized...”
He nodded and Riya felt her breath leave her in a big rush.
Her little lie had worked and here he was, with the largest of her company’s stock, her livelihood in his hand.
Robert’s son, the boy who had run away from home after his mother’s death, the son of the married man with whom her mother had taken up, the son of the man who had been more a father to her than her own had ever been.
The son she had been trying to bring back to Robert.
She had lied to Maria about selling the estate, hoping it would lure him back home. Thought she would give Nathan a chance she had never had with her own father.
A hysterical laugh rose through her.
Leaning against the far wall, his legs crossed together in casual elegance, he smiled, his tanned skin glinting in contrast against the white of his teeth. “What? No ‘welcome home’ greeting for your almost stepbrother, Riya?”
There were so many things wrong about his fake greeting, the worst of which was how aware she was of him in the small room. Mortification drenching her inside, Riya glared at him. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“My acceptance of your offer for familial solidarity is almost a decade late, but—”
Her chest fell and rose as she fought for a breath. “You...you waltz in here, get rid of my business partner, wave the biggest chunk of my company in my face—” she pushed her shaking fingers through her hair “—and you want welcome?”
He stayed silent and her stride ate up the distance between them. Fear was a stringent pulse in her head. “If this is revenge for my mother’s affair with your father, let me tell you—”
“I don’t give a damn about your mother or my father.”
The very lack of emotion in his words stilled Riya’s thoughts. He was going to be livid when he learned what she had intended. “Then what is this?”
“You refused every offer I had my lawyers put forward for the sale of the estate.”
Her gut twisting with fear, Riya flopped into a chair. Hiding her face in her hands, she fought through it. He had moved to acquire her company because she refused his escalating offers for the sale of the estate.
What would he do when he learned she had never intended to sell it in the first place? What had she brought on herself?
* * *
Nathan stared at the lustrous swath of dark brown hair that fell like a curtain over Riya. Even as impatience pulled at him, he stood transfixed, stunned anew by the sharpness of his reaction to her.
Every minute they spent in this confining room, his awareness of her grew like an avalanche that couldn’t be stopped.
How she wore no makeup and yet the very lack of it only heightened her beautiful skin and sharp features.
How everything about her beauty was underplayed like her professional but bland brown dress shirt and trousers.
And how utterly she failed at masking that beauty.
How exquisitely expressive her wide, almond-shaped eyes were and how she fluttered those long lashes down when she wanted to hide her expression.
Her slender shoulders trembled and he felt a pang of regret. “All I want is the estate. However high I went, you kept refusing my offers. Refused to even give a reason.”
She looked up, the flash of fear in her eyes still just as obvious. But now there was a resolve too. “So you made a play for my company?”
“Yes. It’s called leverage. Believe me, as innovative as your software engine is, your little company is not RunAway International material. Sign on the dotted line today and you’ll leave here a rich woman. I’ll even leave you to run your boring company. Of course, you’ll run it into the ground in two years the way you’re going, but being the uncaring bastard that I am, I’ll let you ruin your and your staff’s future.”
“What about all the money you spent on acquiring it?”
“A drop in the ocean. I’m sure the stock will be worthless in a couple of years anyway.”
Riya chafed at his grating confidence that she would only ruin the company. But she couldn’t focus on that now, and there was no good way to put it.
“I didn’t accept those offers because I never intended to sell the estate to anyone. I still don’t.”
“Then why did Maria assume that...”
Every inch of his face tightened as if it had been poured over by concrete and had permanently set with the fury in those chilling eyes. He was still leaning against the table, and yet he looked as if the seams of his control would burst any second.
But he didn’t move, didn’t lose control even by the flicker of a muscle. Only the sheer frost in his gaze was testament to the fury in his eyes. Finally he blinked and Riya felt the tightness in her chest relent infinitesimally.
The most unholy glint appeared in his eye, sending a ripple of apprehension through her.
“You manipulated Maria and me.” His words rang with awe and derision, his gaze studying her, as if he was reevaluating and coming to an unsavory conclusion. He moved toward her slowly. “You laid bread crumbs very cleverly to make sure I trailed after you.”
“Yes.”
The single word sounded like a boom in the wake of his silent chill.
“You took advantage of my attachment to that estate. You knew I would go as high as you wanted.”
Forcing a laugh, which sounded as artificial as it felt, she took a step back, her nerves stretching tighter and tighter.
“Actually I took advantage of your hatred for me and Jackie.” And because his silence confirmed it, she continued, battling the ugly truth. “I wasn’t even sure it would work. Maria just barely tolerates me. How would I know she would come tattling to you?”
Shaking his head, he covered another step. Though it was cowardly, Riya couldn’t stop herself from stepping back again. “Don’t minimize your accomplishment now. You knew exactly what you were doing.”
Heat flamed her cheeks. “Fine. Something she had said a few months ago stuck with me. About how you might have considered coming back long ago if only Jackie and I were gone. About how much you loved the estate, even the staff, and how dare Robert give it to me? About how I was stealing even this from you.”
“So you decided luring me here would make you the maximum amount of money on the estate.”
“That’s not true. I felt guilty. I never asked Robert for the estate. I know it’s not—”
“And your guilt, your insecurities give you the right to play games with me?”
The depth of his perception awed Riya. Despite constantly reminding herself that she had been too young to change anything, she had remembered his grief-stricken words again and again, felt guilt carve a permanent place inside her gut.
His gaze met hers, an icy resolve in it, and Riya forgot what she had been about to say. There was not an inch of that grief-stricken boy in him. Only a cold fire, an absolute detachment.
He reached her, and her heart slammed against her rib cage. She couldn’t blink, couldn’t look away from that piercing blue. And a slow tremor took root in her muscles. Like the time when she’d had the flu. Only in a less hurting and more disconcerting way. As if every fiber of her were a stringent pulse vibrating in tune to his every move.
His lean body neatly caging her against the alcove, his gaze was a fiery frost. “Why are you doing this?”
“You were gone for eleven years. Eleven years during which time I helped Robert with the administration of the estate, with the staff, with everything. You were off doing who knows what and I slogged over every account, every expense and income number, in the face of a staff that hated the very sight of me. I did everything I could to keep that place going.” She had tried to be a model daughter to Robert and Jackie, had taken care of him when he fell sick.
Nothing she had done had removed the shadows of guilt and ache in Robert’s eyes.
“That’s what this is all about? What I offered wasn’t enough?” Nathan said, coming closer. Satisfaction practically coated every word. “Name your price.”
“I don’t want money. I was trying to explain how much that estate means to me...I was—”
“Then what the hell do you want? How dare you manipulate me after your mother turned my mother’s last few days into the worst of her life?”
It took every ounce of her will to stand still, bearing the judgment in that gaze. The pain in his words cut through her. “I want you to see Robert.”
The silence that dawned was so tense that Riya felt the tension wind around them like a tangible rope. The knot in his brow cleared; the icy blue of his eyes widened. It was the last thing he had expected to hear. That she had surprised him left her only shaking in her leather pumps.
“No.”
Fisting her hands behind her, Riya pushed the words that refused to come under his scornful gaze. “Then I won’t sign it over. Ever.”