The Man to Be Reckoned With(28)

Because another night or a hundred of them wouldn’t change him, wouldn’t make him care for her. Just as she had a sinking feeling only a lifetime with Nathan would be enough for her. And she couldn’t let him see how much he had hurt her. She couldn’t bear it if he told her in ruthless words that she was naive and a fool and that he had warned her.

Pushing away from him, she wrapped the sheet around her nakedness. Picked up the dress she’d discarded in such passion. Padded to the bathroom and splashed water over her face. Swallowed the sharp knot in her throat and sucked in a deep breath.

Even the silky glide of the dress over her skin felt like too much sensation to her hyped-up senses.

Keeping her spine straight, she walked back into the bedroom. Instantly her gaze sought and found him, standing at the French doors, looking up at the sky. It was the darkest of the night, just before dawn. He turned just as she found her clutch.

“Riya, before you go, I know someone in Bali who can—”

“No. I don’t want your help. I’d like to get going now,” she said, and walked toward the door.

He didn’t move or speak. Only stared at her, with that utter stillness of his. His gaze devoured her, a maelstrom of emotions in it.

“Goodbye,” she whispered, and turned the knob.

But something in her wouldn’t calm down. Adrenaline spiking through her, she felt as if she were standing on a cliff.

“Are you ever coming back, Nathan?” When his mouth tightened, she hurried. “Not for me, don’t worry. I know that in the scheme of things I matter very little to you. But for Robert, are you ever going to come back?”

She wished he would lie, wished she could believe him if he did.

“No.”

Her stomach lurched, like the time it had on that fantastic ride with him. Only this time, he wasn’t going to hold her through it. He was going to let her fall and shatter.

“Dad knows that I won’t return.” He closed the distance between them, something shimmering in his gaze. “Riya, my leaving has nothing to do with you. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

His words were a soft whisper, but the blaze of emotion in his eyes was unmistakable. And the evidence of his emotion birthed her anger, and it flew through her, an anchor in the drowning storm of hurt and fear.

“Has it become that easy for you, Nathan? Have you become that much of a bastard? Or are you just blind to what you have become?”

His chin reared back as though she had pummeled him with her fists. “I’ve always warned you that—”

“I know that you have Long QT syndrome like your mom. I know that you fainted and almost died when you were thirteen. I know that that night in the lounge, you almost fainted again. I know that you’ve cut out every ounce of emotion to survive, that you don’t want to go...” Her voice broke. “...go like your mother did. But do you believe you’re truly living your life, Nathan?”

“Get out, Riya.”

Riya smiled through the tears blurring her vision. They had come full circle. “No, I won’t. You pushed the truth on me when I wanted nothing to do with it. You made me hurt, made me feel so much for the first time.”

“I already know my truth, butterfly. I’ve lived with it for more than a decade.”

“You think you’ve conquered your weakness, but you’re hiding behind it. You think love makes you weak. You think it’ll rid you of your control, leave you at its mercy. You think it will leave you with nothing but fear for yourself and for the ones you love... But you’re not your mother, Nathan.

“When I think of what you’ve achieved, the depth of your generosity...you’ve allowed yourself everything but happiness. How is it courage if you let it dictate how you live your life? How is it life if it has to be without love?

“You pushed me out of my comfort zone. You made me realize what a sterile life I’d built for myself. When my mother told me about you, I was devastated. I was so scared, Nate. In that moment, if I could erase ever knowing you, I probably would have.”

He moved then. Grabbed her arms and hauled her to him. It was like being pulled into a whirlpool of roiling emotions. Like being sucked into the heart of a tornado. “If it scared you so much, then why did you come?”

“I came to say goodbye,” Riya said, losing the fight. “I fought the fear that was roiling through me and came to see you. I came despite it, Nathan.” She pressed a kiss to his jaw and released the words that she was courageous enough to speak. She knew now he would always plan to leave. But it didn’t have to be today. “Tell me not to leave. Ask me to come with you.”

Tugging her hands away, he let her go and stepped back. And Riya knew he was putting her out of his mind. “One day, you’ll thank me for not taking you up on your offer, butterfly. One day when you find the man who’ll love you forever, you’ll be glad I left.”





             CHAPTER TWELVE

Three months later

RUNNING A HAND through his overgrown hair, Nathan waited as the cardiologist checked his heartbeat. It was always hard for him to sit still and even harder when it was this routine checkup.

His chopper was waiting on the roof of the hospital in a remote area of the island of Java. He had stopped seeing world-renowned specialists a long time ago. From day one, he had accepted that there was nothing to be done.

The doctor, who was seeing him for the first time, examined Nathan with warm brown eyes. “You’re in remarkably good shape for a man with your condition, Mr. Ramirez,” he said in perfect but accented English. “But I guess you know that. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Nathan nodded and thanked him.

“Your next checkup is in—”

“A month,” Nathan finished for him.

Thanking the doctor, he was buttoning up his shirt when his cell phone rang. Seeing the face of his virtual manager, he switched it on. “Yes?”

Jacob sounded wary. “Those papers have come back unsigned again.”

Nathan caught the fury that rose through him. It wasn’t Jacob’s fault. It was that manipulative minx’s. What the hell kind of game was she playing? Why was she bent on tormenting him? “From where?”

“From Bali again.” So she still hadn’t returned. “And there was no reply to our lawyer’s question about what she wants.”

It had been the same for the last three months. He would send the papers to her and she would send them back, unsigned. Without a reply.

Nathan clenched his teeth, the emptiness he had been fighting for months sucking him in. “Find her number for me.”

A few minutes later, Nathan punched in her number and waited. His heart leaped into his throat, his pulse ringing very much like the peal of the phone on the other line.

“Hello?” her voice came across the line, and his stomach lurched. Just hearing her voice was enough to drive him into that crazed, out-of-control need to see her, to touch her, to hold her close, to wake up to her face.

“Hello?”

Stepping back from the sunshine, Nate leaned against the brick wall. Took a deep breath. “Why the hell aren’t you signing the papers, Riya? What do you want now?”

The line was silent for a few seconds. And her face popped up in his mind’s eye, her expression stricken as she had left him that night.

“I... Nate, how are you?”

“I’m alive, Riya.” He heard her gasp and ignored it. At least now there was no need to pretend. “And if I weren’t, you would be the first one to—”

“Bastard.”

This time, he laughed, chose again to ignore the cutting pain packed into the single word. “Cut the theatrics and tell me why you’re refusing to sign away the estate.”

“I decided that it should be mine. That I don’t want to part with it, after all.”

Disbelief roared in his ears. And he let a curse fly. “Have you finally decided to listen to your mother, then?”

“I figured it was mine every which way it counted,” she continued smoothly, as though he hadn’t just insulted her and this thing between them, as though she wasn’t tying him up in knots.

“And how did you come to that impossible conclusion?”

“Robert, who’s my father as far as I’m concerned, deeded it to me with love. I’m strong enough to accept my right over it now. Of course, that’s thanks to you. And more than that, I figured it was mine because it belonged to the man I love with all my heart.”

He felt as if a fist had jammed up into his chest. He couldn’t breathe as her words sank in. There was no hesitation in her voice. “You’ve lost your mind,” he said, pushing the words out through a raw throat. “Gone over the edge.”

“Actually it’s the opposite. I’ve realized that my happiness is in my hands. Not Jackie’s or Robert’s or even yours. That I have to believe that I deserve love. That I have to risk pain to fight for it.” Now she didn’t sound that put together. “Admit it, Nate. If I asked you for it right now, you wouldn’t fight me. You wouldn’t deny me.”

His butterfly was getting reckless, coming into her own. Despite the ache in his heart, he smiled. “Why would I do that?”