The Man to Be Reckoned With(29)

“Because you love me.” She waited, as though she wanted him to feel the full impact of her outrageous announcement. “You can put thousands of miles between us, you can cut all connections from me, you might never even see me again. But you think about me all the time. That estate, that massive fortune of yours, that faulty but generous heart of yours...they are all mine.”

“You sound very sure, Riya.”

The sound of her laugh pierced through him. “I think I know you as well as I know myself now. I realized that I won’t ever have to work a day in my life again and still live like a princess. Because one of the richest and the most wonderful man in the world...I belong to him now. How’s that for security, huh?”

She sounded confident, even brazen, but he could imagine the tears in her eyes, her hands fisting at her sides as she forced the words past that beautiful mouth. “But the thing is, I would rather risk my heart for another moment with him than have all the security in the world.” He heard her suck in a breath. “That estate is the best waiting place for me when I come back.”

With every word she said, she was twisting his insides, unraveling him. And beneath his rules, his honor, his revulsion for fear, Nate saw something else. As if he had been sitting in the dark all this time, mistaking his cowardice for his guts.

He asked the question he knew he shouldn’t. “Waiting for what?”

“For you to come home.” The ache in her voice was as clear as the ache in his own heart. “For you to come back to me.” And she was crying and unraveling, right along with him, even though there were thousands of miles between them.

He rubbed his eyes with his fingers, a stinging heat prickling behind them. Her words gouged a hole through the emptiness he felt. “That’s never going to happen, butterfly. You’re wasting your precious life. You want a stable life with a steadfast man who’ll be with you for the rest of your life, remember? Me? I could be gone any time.” His own cheeks were wet now and Nathan didn’t feel ashamed or afraid, only ache.

“Yeah, well, you ruined all my plans for my life, Nate. Now I want something else.”

“Yeah? What?”

“A decade, a year, a day, or even another moment with the man I adore. With the man who showed me how to live, and love. With the man I’ll love for the rest of my life.”

He heard her grasping breath, the catch in her voice. Heard her tear-soaked voice as if she were looking at him with those beautiful brown eyes.

“I love you, Nate, with every breath in me. I have been a coward all my life. I was a coward even that night. I let you walk away. But not anymore. I deserve happiness and so do you. My life is empty without you, Nate.”

How he wanted to believe her; how he wished he had the courage to be the man she deserved. Because that was what he was lacking. Not the robust heart, not a body that would live for a century. But the courage to grab the love she offered, to trust her love and his, to risk his heart.

Whatever it was that was holding him back now, protecting his heart, this was fear.

He was in that moment he had dreaded his whole life. Fear and pain. And yet it was of not seeing Riya ever again, of not waking up to her, of not seeing her wide mouth split into a smile at the sight of him, of not holding her tight until they couldn’t breathe.

“I’m waiting for you, Nate.” She was crying now, in soft sobs and broken words. And the pain that caused him was more than any he had ever felt, hurt deeper than any other fear that he didn’t want to feel.

“I think I’ll always wait for you.”

And then she hung up.

* * *

Riya sank to her bed in her hotel room, her breaths coming jerkily. Grabbing the edge of the T-shirt she had taken from Nate that night, she buried her face in it. Every inch of her was still vibrating at hearing his voice. Her fingers hurt with how tightly she had fisted them, how she wanted to touch him, feel his arms around her.

Had he known that she was falling apart? How much it had cost her to say what was truly in her heart, even knowing that it might never change his mind? How big a risk she had taken by binding herself to him, by giving him her heart?

But to this new Riya whom he had brought to life, nothing less than what she wanted, what she deserved was acceptable.

Without him, nothing in the world meant anything to her.





             CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NATHAN FOUND HER a month later on a beach in Ubud, Bali, in one of the villas RunAway owned, sitting on the deck that offered spectacular views of rolling hills and valleys. The villa was the utmost in privacy and comfort. It perched atop a valley overlooking a lush river gorge.

It had been his very own slice of paradise. When Jacob told him that a request had come in from his property manager that a woman named Riya Ramirez, who’d claimed to be his close friend, had wanted to use it, he had laughed for a full minute. The woman was relentless, stubborn, manipulative, and he loved her for all of it.

And yet, with the setting sun casting golden shadows on her striking face, it was loneliness that enveloped her now. And it clawed at his heart.

It had taken him three weeks to consolidate his worldwide holdings, to find and hire efficient managers where he needed, to fight the voice that whispered no every second of the day.

But there had also been one that kept counting the time down, telling him that he had wasted enough as it was. And he realized, if he had lived without fear, he had also lived without joy for too long.

Once he had decided, it had taken him a week to find her, and every minute of waiting to hear more had been excruciating. Until the stubborn woman herself had sent him a clue.

Did she love him that much? Would she have stopped at nothing until she got through to him? Could he always prove himself worthy of it?

Feeling a knot of anxiety, he clenched and unclenched his fingers.

She was dressed in a sleeveless, floral dress that rippled around her knees with the breeze.

“Riya?” he said, unable to say anything else past the emotion clogging his throat.

She was off the lounging chair and deck before he could blink. Standing before him with her hair flying in her face before he could draw another breath. Her chest falling and rising, her mouth pinched.

And the love in her eyes undid Nathan as nothing had ever done. “I love you, butterfly,” he said, and she swayed, a gasp falling from her lips. Threw herself into his arms like a gale of wind. Knocked the breath out of him, knocked him off his feet.

He buried his mouth in her neck, filling himself with the scent of her.

Her arms wound around him so tight that he laughed. Pulling her head back, she glared at him. “I’m never letting you go, ever. You even talk about leaving me again and I’ll chain you to myself.” A shudder swept through her in direct contrast to the bravado in her words.

“I love you so much, Nate. I’ve missed you so much. Every day, every night, wherever I want, I thought about you. It hurt so much that I wanted it to stop for a while. It felt like—”

“Like you were missing an essential part of yourself?” he said, and she nodded.

He tasted her in a rough kiss, needing the fortification, needing tangible proof of her taste. She clung to him with just as much desperation.

“Do you know what you’re signing up for, butterfly?” he said, when his desperation had blunted, when his heart beat normally again. When the shadow of a lifelong fear clasped him tight. “It would kill me much sooner to see—”

Her palm closed over his mouth and she shook her head. “I do feel fear, and sometimes I can’t breathe thinking of this world without you. But I’d rather fight that fear every day than live another moment without you. I’ll do it, Nate. I’ll only ever try to be your strength. And all I ask is that you give me the chance. To love you, to be loved by you, for as long as possible, that’s all I want.”

Clasping her hand in his, he dragged her to the edge of the deck and looked out into the valley and beyond. Turned her toward him and dropped onto his knees.

“I love you, Riya, with every breath in my body, with every beat of my faulty heart. I was so lonely before I met you. I thought I was protecting you by walking away. When you called me, when you so bravely put into words what you felt for me...to hear you say what I felt for you, to hear you tell me you chose to love me even as you were afraid, it made me realize I wasn’t living, merely existing. You’ve taught me what it is to be brave, butterfly.”

Riya kissed him, tears stinging her cheeks. Running her hands over him greedily, she clung to him, fear and joy all bubbling inside her. Her biggest risk had paid off and her heart stuttered in her chest. “All I want is to be by your side for the rest of our lives.”

His eyes shining with unshed tears, he kissed her temple. “Will you be my wife, butterfly? Will you tie yourself to me, then?”

Riya nodded, the small doubt in his tone doing nothing to abate the intensity of her own love. He had come for her; he had shown her his heart. It didn’t mean years of protecting himself from fear and hurt would be gone this very second. But she was strong enough for both of them. “Yes.”

He dragged her into the cradle of his arms, his lean frame shuddering. “That’s the sweetest word I’ve ever heard, Riya.”