“Excuse for what?” he interrupted, a thread of anger in his voice. He leaned forward, his muscled forearms resting on his thighs. Gaze zeroed in on her with the focus of a laser beam. Lingered over every inch of her face until it was a caress. The decadent sides of the vehicle seemed to move inward until it was as if they were locked in a bubble.
“You’re welcome at any time to sign the papers and walk away. And I’ll do the same.”
Shaking her head, Riya looked away, trying to break the spell he cast around them. She was nowhere near equipped to take him on. On any level.
Soon they arrived at a private airfield. A sleek Learjet with RunAway International’s logo, a tangled-up R&A, was waiting. They boarded the aircraft and it was easy to keep her mouth shut, greeted by the sheer affluence and breadth of Nathaniel Ramirez’s standing in the world.
The interior of the plane was all cream leather and sleek panels. Her brown trousers and ironed beige dress shirt had never looked quite so shabby as they did against the quiet elegance of her surroundings. While Nathan spoke to the pilot, she took a quick tour and came away with her head spinning.
The master suite in the back was more opulent than her bedroom at the estate.
Still reeling from the sheer breadth of Nathan’s wealth, she made a quick call to Jackie and Robert, informing them of her sudden trip.
It took her a few minutes to settle down, to regain her balance that he tipped so easily. Soon they were leveling off at thousands of feet, with nothing but silence stretching in the main cabin.
“Robert asked me to tell you that he can’t wait to see you,” she said.
His mouth narrowed into an uncompromising line, his whole posture going from relaxed to tense in a matter of seconds. “Tell me what happened between you and Mr. Anderson.”
“That’s none of your...” Sighing, she tried to collect herself.
The last thing she wanted was to talk about herself and with him of all people. But if he couldn’t even tolerate Robert’s name, what was he going to say when he saw him? What was the point of all this if he just sat there and glared at Robert with that frosty gaze?
How hardhearted did he have to be not to wonder about Robert all these years?
If the price was that she answer questions about herself, then she would.
“There’s nothing much. Drew and I shared a professional relationship. For the most part.” Time for attack again. “Where did you go when you left all those years ago?”
Challenge simmered between them. If she went down this road, he was going to make her pay.
“New York City first and then I backpacked through Europe.” Promptly came the next shot. “So Mr. Anderson was just a hopeful candidate you were trying on?”
“For the last time, I was not trying him on. I never even went on a date with him.”
“That’s not the story I’ve been hearing.”
“I have no intention of humiliating myself or Drew just so that you can sit there and play us off against each other.”
He leaned back into his seat as they leveled off, and the gray fabric stretched over his chest. “You managed it quite well all by yourself. I reviewed all of last quarter’s reports, and he did nothing but run the company into the ground. With his head buried in love clouds and you averse to any risk, Travelogue would have died within a year.”
Drew and she had known each other for a while, their relationship always in a strange intersection between friends and colleagues. But things had slowly spiraled to worse in the last few months. “I never expected him to sell me out to you.”
“Selling out to me was the wisest thing he did. There hasn’t been a lot of financial growth in the last quarter. And anyone who had good ideas, Drew fired them. Like the marketing strategist.”
The sparkling water she had ordered came and she took a fortifying sip. “All the marketing strategy suggested was that we increase the cost of membership for customers who have been with us since the beginning, and take a bigger cut of the profits from the flash sales for vacations packages.
“These are middle-class families who come to us because we provide the best value for their buck, not international jet-setters who don’t have to think twice about buying and sinking companies like a little boy buys and breaks his toys.”
Nathan countered without blinking at her juvenile attack. “That marketing strategy is spot-on. Different tiers of membership is the way to go. An executive membership that charges more and provides a different kind of experience. There’s a whole set of clientele that Travelogue’s missing out on. If you don’t grow, if you don’t expand your horizons, you’ll be pushed out of the market.”
“That’s a huge risk that might alienate us to our current clientele.”
“It is. And it’s one I’m willing to take.”
Neatly put in place, Riya bristled. It was all her hard work and his risk. And the consequences would be hers to bear. “Does it ever get old?”
“What?”
“That high you’re getting from the casual display of your power and your arrogance?”
He laughed, and the deep sound went straight to her heart, as if it were a specially designed missile targeted for her. It seemed every little gesture of his went straight to her heart or some other part of her.
Parts she shouldn’t even be thinking about.
How did he get past all of her defenses so easily? Why did he affect her so much?
She had no answers, only increasing alarm that she would never figure out how to resist whatever it was that he did so easily.
“What will you do once I sign over the estate to you? Kick Robert and Jackie out?”
“Maybe. Or maybe we can all live under one roof like a happy family. Would that pacify your guilt?”
The idea of it was so absurd that Riya stared at him, taken aback.
“Horrifying prospect, isn’t it? Me and you, me and your mother, me and Robert—it’s a disaster every which way.”
“This is all so funny and trivial to you...you don’t care...” She had to pause to breathe. “You have all these resources, you own a damn plane and yet you couldn’t have visited Robert once in all these years?
The cabin resounded with her outburst.
“It’s not a one-for-one anymore, Riya.”
He slid some papers toward her, and the words Disciplinary Action printed neatly on top stole the remaining breaths from Riya’s lungs.
She fingered the papers, her heart sinking. “What is this?”
“His mismanagement of the company in the last few months meant Drew was the dispensable one between the two of you, for now. But it doesn’t mean you’re without culpability. I need to know the source of the problem between you two.”
“Ammunition to make me dispensable too?”
“I’m making sure it’s documented properly. It’s a standard HR policy in my group of companies.”
* * *
Nathan leaned back into his seat, wondering at the puzzle that Riya Mathur was. The software engine she had built, he’d been told by one of his own architects, was extraordinarily complex. And yet she blanched at using it to its full potential by expanding the client base, at spreading her wings in any way.
“This is your one chance to clear it all up,” he said, softening his voice. He wasn’t bending the rules, but he was also very curious about what happened between her and her colleague.
“Last year, on New Year’s Eve, a week after we had signed up the half millionth member, we had a party. Drew was drunk. I...I had a glass of white wine. We...ended up next to each other when it struck twelve. He...kissed me. In front of the whole company.” She looked away. But the small tremble that went through her couldn’t be hidden. “I kissed him back...I think. Before I remembered to put a stop to it.”
“You think? It’s not rocket science.”
She glared at him and pushed her hair back. “I don’t know what happened or how I let it happen. Just that it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. In my defense, I had got the news that day that Robert was out of danger and with Travelogue making such a big milestone...” She ran shaking fingers over her face. “I’ve been kicking myself for losing control like that. I never meant to...”
“Enjoy a kiss?”
“Yes. For one thing, it was unprofessional. For another, it was reckless on so many levels. A relationship with any man is not in my plan right now. Career is my focus.”
Nathan frowned, seeing embarrassment and something else. He admired her drive to succeed in her career, understood that it might leave very little time for a personal life. If not for the thread of wistfulness in her face.
Every time he had a conversation with her, he was struck sharp by how innocent she was. Yet from everything Maria had told him with grudging respect, Riya had always worked hard, pretty much taken care of herself even when she was a child. Had helped his father every way she could.
The parameters of her life—Travelogue and its current client base, the estate, his father and her mother—they were all so rigidly defined. To step out of any of them, he realized, sent her into a tailspin.
And the one kiss reflected her age, she was calling it a momentary lapse in judgment.
“You have a plan for your life?” he asked, disbelief slowly cycling into something far more insidious.