“This is probably your MO. Seduce a woman, say goodbye and walk away. And cut her out if she doesn’t accept your decision. Like you did with Sonia. But I won’t fall for you. You have no heart. You’re the last kind of man that I should kiss, or want, or...”
Fury dawned in his eyes, turning them into blue fire. “Is it helping, then? If my being here is turning you inside out, how about you give me the blasted estate? I’ll leave tonight.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Damn it, Riya. You’re not responsible for Jackie or Robert or anyone else. You were what? Twelve? Thirteen, when my mother died?”
“Robert regrets his mistakes. I know he does. He gave Jackie and me a home when we’d have been on the streets. He always had a kind word for me. He gave me shelter, security, food. He treated me like a daughter when my own father didn’t bother to even ask after me in a decade.”
“Where is your father?”
“How the hell should I know? He never asked about me, never checked how Jackie has been all these years. And this is after he divorced her because she was emotionally volatile. And he let her take me. He let his volatile wife have charge of his eight-year-old daughter.
“For all her weak nature, Jackie at least looked after me in her own way. That’s more than I can say for—”
“She didn’t do you a favor by doing that, Riya. It was her minimum responsibility. And she failed you in that. She exposed you to her fears, to the staff’s hatred at the estate. Don’t you see the effects of that in yourself?”
“My life is perfectly fine, thank you. And my professional one even better, thanks to you. The last few days, working with you, have been amazing. I love your energy, I love the way you do things, Nathan. And if Travelogue can—”
“As of this morning, Travelogue has an investment of ten million dollars from RunAway International. I have ordered my lawyers to put the papers together.”
RunAway International Group. The brilliant boutique of his companies offering flights, vacations, adventure trips through faraway lands... And now Travelogue was a part of that prestigious group.
Her small company...it was at once the most exciting and breathtaking prospect. She had no words left.
“I’ll double the figure you make now and you’ll have stock options in RunAway too. I’ve started the headhunt for a new CEO, and we’ll find one by the time I leave.”
He was going to leave. That was what she had wanted; that was what she needed. That was their deal.
Then why did the prospect sit like a boulder on her chest? What had changed in a mere three weeks?
Concealing her confusion, Riya forced a smile and thanked him just as the physician knocked on the door.
All the way through him checking on her and the limo ride back to the estate, she couldn’t figure out why reaching the goal she had set for herself, why impressing someone of Nathan’s vision, why achieving the financial freedom she had always craved was suddenly not enough.
Whatever his behavior toward Robert, Nathan was unlike any other man she had ever met. All her rules, all her fears and insecurities, nothing stayed up when she was around him. He made her want to know him on a visceral level, made her want to abandon her own rules, made her yearn for a connection that she had denied herself for so long.
Nothing mattered with him. Not the pain of the past, not the fear for her future, only the present. And she couldn’t let this continue. Already she was in too deep, lost at the thought of him leaving.
* * *
Nathan had no idea how long he stood staring at the closed door after Riya left, the silence of his suite pinging on his nerves. Everywhere he looked, he saw her now.
Laughing, smiling, arguing, kissing, moaning, gasping, glaring...even as she denied her nature, there was such an innocence and intensity to the emotions that played on her face.
He wanted her with a sharp, out-of-control need that crossed all lines. Now that he knew how she felt underneath him...
Everything inside him wanted to make her his. Ached to own her, possess her, show her how wild and good it could be between them, longed to make her admit that she felt something for him.
Why not? a voice inside taunted him.
They were both free agents. They were both adults. And she wanted him. There was no doubt about that.
No.
How could he tangle with her knowing what she wanted in life? Even if she was determined to hide from it. How could he touch her knowing that when it was time to leave, she wouldn’t be able to handle it?
She hadn’t recovered even now from her father’s abandonment, from her mother’s negligence. Even his father’s acceptance and caring of her hadn’t been enough to erase that ache from her eyes.
It was in the way she was hiding from life, had slaved herself over her company and the estate, the way she took responsibility for the adults who should have looked after her.
In the way she had risked his wrath and her ruin just to make Robert smile. In the way all the light had gone out of her eyes when she mentioned her father.
And yet she was loyal, she was caring and she was strong. Exactly the kind of woman who could plunge him into his darkest fear if he let her. But by the same token, how was he supposed to walk away without stealing a part of her for himself?
CHAPTER SEVEN
NATHAN PACED THE STUDY in the home he had avoided thinking of for so many years, fighting the surge of memories that attacked him. The study had been one of his favorite rooms with huge floor-to-ceiling shelves covering two walls completely and French doors on the opposite side that opened onto the veranda.
Thick Persian rugs that had been his mother’s pride covered the floor. He remembered playing with his toys on those rugs sitting at her feet.
The smell of old books and ancient leather stole through him swiftly, shaking loose things he had forgotten beneath layers of hurt and fear.
Emotions he didn’t want to feel surged inside.
They had laughed here, the three of them. Spent numerous evenings in front of the fire—his father reading to him while his mother had sat in the cozy recliner with her knitting. There had been good years, he suddenly realized, years of laughter and joyful Christmases before ruined football games and hospital visits had become the norm. Before fear had become the norm, before fear had infiltrated every corner and nook.
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?