The Man to Be Reckoned With

by Tara Pammi

  Had it begun with his fainting and near dying at the football game? Had it begun when his mother had been gradually getting worse and worse? Or had it begun when his father had started his affair with Jackie?

  Did it matter anymore?

  “Hello, Nate,” his father said softly, and closed the door behind him.

  Even having learned all the details of his father’s illness from Maria, Nathan still wasn’t prepared for the shock his father’s appearance dealt him. As much as he wanted to not give a damn, he found he couldn’t not care, couldn’t not be affected by how frail he looked.

  His blue gaze seemed dulled, haunted by dark circles underneath. His frame, always lean and spare, now looked downright skinny.

  Alarm reverberated through Nate.

  He didn’t want to feel anything for his father. Damn Riya for forcing him to this. The blasted woman was making it hard on herself and him.

  “It’s so good to see you, Nate. Riya’s been telling me all about your ventures and how powerful and successful you are. I’m very proud of you.”

  Nathan could only nod. He couldn’t speak. Was he as big a sap as Riya? Because one kind word from his father and he couldn’t even breathe properly.

  Fury, betrayal and so much more rose inside him. And that kind of emotional upheaval scared him more than the little fracture in his breathing the other night.

  If he let one emotion in, they would all follow. Until all he felt would be fear.

  There were too many things out of his control already. And to be in control, he had to remember things he’d rather forget, remember things that had driven him from his home, things that had driven him to live his life alone. “Let’s not pretend that this is anything but the fear and regret a man faces once he sees death coming for him, Dad.”

  His father flinched, and this time, nothing pierced Nathan. Not even satisfaction that he had landed a shot. Tears flooded those blue eyes that were so like his own. “I’m so sorry, Nathan, that you felt you couldn’t stay here after she was gone.”

  He couldn’t bear this, this avalanche of fear and love, of need and despair that it always brought. “It was so hard to lose her like that, so hard to see my own fate reflected in her death. But to learn that you were with that woman. Can you imagine what that must have done to her?”

  “I made a mistake, Nate, a ghastly one. I couldn’t bear to see her wilt away. I let that fear drive me to Jackie. I was so ashamed of myself. And your mother...I instantly told her. And she forgave me, Nate.”

  Shock waves pounded through Nate. “I don’t believe you.”

  He collapsed onto the settee and buried his head in his hands. There was an ache in his throat and he tried to breathe past it, but his dad’s words already stole through him.

  Because Jacqueline Spear was the one thing his mother hadn’t been in that last year—vivacious, brimming with life, an anchor for a drowning man. He had assumed that his dad had done that to his mom. But what if it was the reverse?

  What if seeing his mom lose all her will for life had driven his father to Jackie? It was still the worst kind of betrayal, but didn’t Nathan know firsthand what fear could do? How it could turn someone inside out?

  His dad reached him. “I don’t blame you for not believing me. All these years, I have regretted so many things and the worst of it was that my cowardice drove you away. How many times I wished I had been stronger for you.”

  “If you were sorry, then why did you bring them here? Jackie and Riya? What was that if not an insult to Mom’s memory?”

  Wiping his face with a shaking hand, his father met his gaze. “What I did was abhorrent. So much that I couldn’t bear to look at Jackie for years after that, much less marry her. She was my biggest mistake given form. But I couldn’t do anything to hurt Riya.

  “I couldn’t turn away from the child who needed a proper parent, and Jackie...she was still reeling from her separation from her husband. It was fear that drove us toward each other, that made us understand each other.

  “Riya made me think of what I should have been to you, gave me a chance to rectify the mistake I made.”

  Nathan nodded, his throat raw and aching, a ray of pure joy relieving the burden in his chest. Something good had come out of all the lies and betrayal.

  Because this man who looked at him now, this man who had cared for someone else’s daughter, he knew. This was the man he remembered as his father before everything had been ruined. “Is that why you gave her the estate?”

  “I had no idea what had become of you. I had no way of reaching you. And when I thought I would die...I thought it a good thing that she have it.

  “Riya loves this house, this estate, just like Anna did. Everything she touches blossoms. Jackie and Riya gave me a reason to live for, after I lost everything. I thought it fitting that it went to her.”

  Nathan shook his head, the most perverse emotion taking hold of him. He should be a bigger man, he knew that. His mother had been generous and kind. She wouldn’t have minded the estate going to Riya, going to someone who loved it just as much as she had. But he couldn’t just walk away, couldn’t sever the last thing that had some emotional meaning to him.

  Couldn’t let himself become a complete island severed from anything meaningful in the world. “She can have as much money as she wants instead. The estate is mine. If she’ll listen to you, ask her to stop playing games with me and sign it over.”

  His father frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “I asked her to sell it to me, and the condition she put in front of me was that I see you. That I remain here for two months.”

  “Oh.” His father sank to the couch, and Nate reached him instantly.

  “What is it? Are you unwell again?”

  “No. I...” His father sighed, regret in his eyes. “I ended up being another person who leaned on her too much. When she told me you were back, I told her to do whatever she could to keep you here. After all this, tell me you’ll stay for the wedding, Nate.”

  Nathan didn’t want to hear the hope in his father’s eyes, fought the sense of duty that he had ruthlessly pushed away all these years. His father had needed him just as much as Nathan had needed him.

  But he hadn’t been alone. Gratitude welled up inside Nathan for everything Riya had done for his dad.

  The more he tried to do the right thing and stay away from temptation, the more entrenched she was becoming in his life.

  Lifting his head, he met his dad’s gaze. “I had already decided to stay for the wedding.”

  A smile broke out on his father’s face, transforming it. Clasping Nate’s hand, he pumped it with joy. “I’m so glad. Will you live in the house again? Anna would have—”

  Nathan shook his head.

  He wished he could say yes, wished he could let his father back into his life, wished the loneliness that ate at him abated.

  The bitterness inside him had shifted today. And the estate was the one place that meant something to him. It was also the one that would forever remind him that his time was always on a countdown, remind him of how his beautiful mother had turned into a shadow because of her fear.

  Because Nathan remembered that fear, remembered what his father had left unsaid, realized that he thought he could protect Nathan from the bitter memory. But beneath his anger for his father, his fury toward what Jackie represented, Nate remembered his darkest fear now.

  For the last year, his mother had become but a shadow of herself. It was what had driven his father, as deplorable as his action had been. It was what had filled Nathan with increasing fear for his own life. She had willed her heart condition to leach her life away, had only dwelled on being gone, on being parted from Nathan and his dad.

  And in the end, she had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Her fear had leached any h
appiness, every joy from her life until death was all that had remained.

  His father squeezed his shoulder, his voice a whisper. “You’ve achieved so much, Nate. You won’t become like—”

  And Nathan swallowed at the grief that rose through him. How perfectly his dad understood him without words.

  Turning around, Nathan smiled at his father. “No, I won’t. And that’s why I can’t stay.”

  “I’m strong enough to face anything, Nate. I would never—”

  Clasping his dad’s hands, Nate smiled without humor. It was Riya’s face that rose in front of his eyes. “I don’t know that I am.”

  Just as he had accepted his own limitations, Nathan accepted this too. Riya was dangerous to him like no other woman had ever been. Already he had broken so many of his own rules; already he was much too invested in her well-being, in her life.

  He couldn’t risk more.

  He could never care for anyone so much that the fear of being parted would pervade every waking moment. Couldn’t let any woman reduce him to that.

  * * *

  Over the next week, Nate arrived at the estate every evening to see his father. As if determined to create new memories for Nathan, his father insisted that he was too weak to leave the estate. And Nathan found a simple joy in indulging him.

  The evenings would have been perfect, the most peaceful moments he had known in a while if not for Riya.

  Every evening, he found the anticipation of seeing her build inside him. Only to learn that she was out on another errand, one of hundreds apparently and gone all evening. And the couple of times every day that he dropped into the offices of Travelogue, she was nowhere to be seen either.

  One evening, he had even walked through the entire grounds and the house itself wondering if she was having his dad and the servants lie to him.

  How could she be always out when he was visiting?

  It had taken him a week to recognize the pattern.

  The woman was avoiding him, going out of her way to make sure they didn’t even lay eyes on each other. He remembered the fear that had leaped into her eyes when he suggested he give them both what they wanted.

  There were three weeks until the wedding, and Nathan realized, with simmering fury, that she intended to avoid him until that day.

  He should have been happy with that knowledge. Riya was not equipped in any way to take him on.

  But as another day fell to dusk, he found himself thinking of her more and more. He was working long hours, negotiating a deal with an Arab prince about building a travel resort in his country, and yet every once in a while, he would look up from his laptop in his penthouse and imagine her on the floor, writhing beneath him, her curves rubbing against him, her gorgeous eyes darkened with arousal, her legs clamped around his waist.

  His name falling from her lips like a languid caress.

  Running a hand through his hair, he slammed his laptop with a force that rattled the glass table.

  Pushing away a hundred other warnings his mind yelled at him, Nathan looked at his watch. It was a quarter past noon on Saturday, one where he should be on his private jet in less than half an hour, flying to Abu Dhabi for the weekend.

  A fact that Riya was aware of. Switching his cell phone on, Nate called his virtual manager and ordered him to cancel all his plans for the day.

  * * *

  He found her in the grounds behind the house, knee deep in mud, pruning the rosebushes in the paths leading up to the gazebo.

  The white sleeveless T-shirt she wore was plastered to her body, her skin tanned and glistened. Her long hair was gathered in a high ponytail while tendrils of it stuck to her forehead.

  She looked as though she belonged there.

  Nathan swallowed at the sensual picture she presented. Her skin was slick with sweat, and the cotton of her shirt displayed the globes of her breasts to utter perfection.

  His reaction was feral, instantaneous, all-consuming. His mouth dried, all the blood rushing south. Never had deprivation of oxygen to his lungs felt so good. Never had the dizziness he felt just looking at her been so pleasurable before.

  He cleared his throat and she looked up. A bead of sweat dripped down the long line of her throat and disappeared into her cleavage.

  Nathan fisted his hands and shoved them in his pockets. He wanted to touch her, he wanted to push her down right there on the dirt, spread her out for him and cover her body with his own. He wanted to feel his heart labor to keep up as he plunged himself inside her and pushed them both over the edge.

  “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  “I’ve been busy with the wedding preparations. Jackie’s been waiting for so long for it and she’s so excited that she’s practically useless and of course, Robert is ecstatic that you’re here. There’s a lot to do.”

  “Then why didn’t you ask for my help?”

  Her movements stilled. He realized with a pang that she hadn’t even considered it.

  He got onto his haunches, and her gaze flew to him. “You really think hiding is the solution? Will you hide at the wedding too? Will you hide from everything that threatens to shred your damn rules? One day, you’ll be a hundred years old, Riya, and you’ll be alone and you’ll realize you didn’t live a moment of your life.”

  Her mouth fell open on a gasp, and the shears clattered to the ground. She looked as though he had struck at the heart of her deepest fear. Feral satisfaction filled him.

  “Get out, Nathan. This estate is not yours yet. I could dangle it over your head just as you dangled the company over mine.”

  He laughed and inched closer, the challenge in her gaze playing with his self-control. “You’re becoming reckless, butterfly.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I’m tired of being dictated to by you. I danced to your tunes for my company, for Robert. Now I have a new condition. Stay away from me. Or else—”

  “Or else what?” he said, a fierce energy bursting into life in his veins. A hot rush of lust swamped him. “You’ll be all alone at the wedding too.”

  “No, I won’t. My plan needed modification, true. And you just happened to be the one that made me realize that. I already found someone I like very much, someone I’ve known a long time. I even have a date with him tonight.”

  He tugged her toward him until their noses were almost touching. Until the scent of her, dirt and sweat and something floral, infused his very bloodstream. “With whom?”

  “Do you remember Maria’s son, Jose? He’s stable and nice and dependable.”

  Clenching his teeth, Nathan released her, awash in burning jealousy. Because that was what it was.

  The very fact that the knowledge was sweeping through him with such impact should have warned him. But he didn’t heed. He couldn’t even see past the red haze covering his vision.

  That Jose would kiss that luscious mouth, that Jose would make love to her, that Jose would have her loyalty forever because she would give it all.

  “No, you went for him because you think he’ll never leave you. Jose might as well be the oak tree in the estate. You’re using him. But he’ll realize one day that he’s nothing but a security blanket for you, that the reason you actually chose him is that you think he’ll never leave you. And he’ll resent you for it, even hate you for it.”

  She fell against the dirt, a stark fear in her eyes. “I don’t need advice from a man who could cut his best friend out of his life. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date to get ready for.”

  Nathan watched her walk away, his blood boiling in his veins.

  He told himself that he had no interest in her. He just couldn’t stand by and watch her make a colossal mistake, waste her life like this anymore. If it was up to her, she would never leave this estate, never leave her mother and Robert, never experience anything.

&
nbsp; Everything in him wanted to fight the chain of responsibility he felt for her, shackling him.

  He made a quick call to his PA and then went back toward the house, intent on finding the woman who was going to marry his father.

  He’d first hated her for a decade and then avoided her for the past few weeks. But it was time to talk to Jackie, high time for someone to think of Riya.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TWO DAYS LATER, Riya was rooting through her closet searching for a beige, ankle-length dress she’d once bought in a small designer boutique in downtown San Francisco. It would do very well for the Travelogue Expansion Launch event.

  She’d asked Jose if he would come with her after the longest evening of her life. It wasn’t Jose’s fault that she kept imagining Nathan all evening or that Nathan pervaded her every thought.

  In the end, Jose had kindly and laughingly kissed her cheek. With a twinkle in his eyes, he’d told her that, as flattered as he was that she wanted something between them, there was nothing.

  She heard a knock at the door and turned around.

  Jackie stood at the door. Terrified was not an exaggeration to describe her expression.

  Unease clamping her spine, Riya walked around the empty cardboard boxes she had brought for packing. “Jackie, what is it? Is it Robert?”

  “No. Robert’s fine.” She straightened a couple of books on the chest of drawers, her hands shaking.

  Her unease deepened. “Jackie?”

  “I’ve been lying to you,” she said in a rush, as though the words wanted to fall away from her mouth. Her arms were locked tight against her slender frame, her words trembling.

  Riya clutched the wooden footboard, anxiety filling her up. “About what?”

  “About your father.”

  Her entire world tilting in front of her, Riya swayed. She felt as if she were falling through a bottomless abyss and would never stop. “What do you mean?”