The Man to Be Reckoned With by Tara Pammi Page A

the staff’s hatred at the estate. Don’t you see the effects of that in yourself?”
    â€œMy 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—”
    â€œAs 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.
    â€œI’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
    N ATHAN PACED THE