The Man to Be Reckoned With(24)

“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.

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.”

“Sorry for me?”

“Yes. You manipulated the truth to bring me here, risked everything to patch things up between Dad and me. It has brought me a peace unlike anything. I thought I would pay you back the favor, lift the veil from your eyes, so to speak.

“We’re not anything, Riya. We can’t even be called a one-night stand. Because you weren’t even there for the whole night, right? And we’re definitely not friends.”