Читать книгу The Man to Be Reckoned With - Tara Pammi - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN RIYA ARRIVED at work Monday morning, it was to find Nathan leaning against the redbrick building, head bent down to his tablet.

Pulling in a breath, she forced her nerves to calm down. She had agreed to this, actually forced him into this. Now she had to see this through for Robert and for her own company.

The shabby street instantly looked different, felt different. And more than one woman sent him lingering looks as they walked past. But he was unaware of the attention he was drawing.

Today, he was dressed in a V-necked gray T-shirt coupled with blue jeans that hugged his lean hips and thighs in a very nerve-racking way. His hair gleamed with wetness, his beard still hiding his mouth. The veins bulging in his forearms, the stretch of the cotton across his chest. Every time she set eyes on him, something pinged inside her.

So early in the morning, with no caffeine in her system, he was just too much testosterone to stomach.

“You’re wasting my pilot’s time.” His gaze didn’t waver from his tablet.

“Pilot? What are you talking about?” Feeling heat in her cheeks, she dug through her bag for her phone.

For the first time in two years since she and Drew had started Travelogue, she had resolutely refused to check her work email. Now she just felt stupid because she had obviously missed some important communication.

“Not completely together still? Had to abandon the mother ship early today?”

“I need coffee before I can deal with you,” she muttered. “I turned off my email client all weekend.”

She had hardly finished speaking when his chauffeur appeared by her side with a coffee cup. Nathan’s gaze lingered on her as she took a few much-needed sips.

His perception surprised her, but she wasn’t going to confide about Jackie to him. Or anything for that matter. For all his generous offer, she didn’t trust his intentions.

“I thought you slaved night and day, weekends and whatnot to build Travelogue. Didn’t have a life outside of the company and the estate. Apparently you’re a paragon of hard work and dedication and every other virtue. Except for the ‘small incident’ with Mr. Anderson.”

Feeling like a lamb being led to slaughter under his watchful, almost indulgent gaze, she gulped too much on her next sip and squealed. He was instantly at her side, concern softening his mouth.

She jerked away as his palm landed on her back, scalded by his touch more than the coffee. Feeling like an irresponsible idiot, she cleared her throat. “Just...tell me what’s on the agenda today.”

Wicked lights glinted in his gaze. “British Virgin Islands.”

Her leg dangled midway over the footpath as if she were a puppet being pulled by strings. “Like going there? Us?”

“Yes.”

Alarm bells clanged in her head. “Why?”

He moved closer. She caught the instant need to step back. “A project of mine has come to the execution stages. It’ll suit very well to see what your precious team and you are made of. Sort of a test before I flush you guys.”

“A trip to Virgin Islands just to test us seems like the kind of extravagance that adds a lot of overhead to small, itty-bitty companies. I would rather—”

“Didn’t I tell you? Your finances, your projects—everything’s on probation.” Arrogance dripped from his every word, every gesture. “A skeleton crew will keep the website and sales going.”

She swallowed the protest that rose to her lips. She’d have to just show him what she and her team were made of. Navigating to the calendar on her phone, she synced it and opened his shared calendar. Tilting her head up, she leveled a direct look at him. “Robert is back tonight. Should I go ahead and block your time, then?”

A mocking smile lingered on his lips as he studied her. Her breath felt tight in her chest as she willed herself to stay still under the devouring gaze. “We won’t return for a few days.”

“I don’t see the need for—”

“I’m beginning to see why your investors were so eager to jump ship. You don’t want to make money, and you don’t listen to advice or input of any kind. It’s almost as though you live and work in isolation.”

“That’s not true. I...”

Folding his hands, he raised an eyebrow.

Something about the look in his face grated on her. But she didn’t want to give him a single reason to back out of their deal. “Fine. I’m ready to go.”

Faced with her increasingly unignorable reaction to him, she found it tempting to just accept defeat, sign away the dratted estate and walk away. Except she had heard the stunned silence when Jackie told Robert that Nathan was here. She had heard his hopes, his pain in the one request he had made of her.

“Whatever he wants, please say yes, Riya. I want to see my son.”

It was the first time Robert had ever asked anything of her.

Guiding her along with him, Nathan crossed the small, dingy street that housed their office to the opposite side. Every inch of her tautened as the muscled length of his thigh grazed hers.

“Which island are we visiting?” she said pushing her misgivings down. Robert and her company, she must keep her reasons at the center of her mind.

“Mine.”

She slid into the limo and crossed her legs as he occupied the opposite seat. “You own one of the Virgin Islands?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t even own a home.”

Amusement deepened his gaze. “Been reading up on me?”

She shrugged, as if she hadn’t devoured the internet looking for every scrap of information on him over the weekend. “There wasn’t really much.”

“What were you hoping to find?”

“Not the list of your assets,” she said, remembering the article he had been featured in in Forbes about the youngest billionaires under thirty. It galled her to admit it, but the man was a genius investor and apparently also one of the leading philanthropists of their generation.

He donated millions to charity and causes the world over, but there hadn’t been a byte about his personal life. What was she to make of him?

“I was looking for something of a personal nature.”

He leveled a shocked look at her. “Why?”

“Jackie told Robert you were back and he asked me a thousand questions about you. I had nothing to tell him apart from the fact that you’re a gazillionaire and an arrogant, heartless SO...”

He narrowed his eyes and Riya sighed. Antagonizing him was going to get her precisely nowhere.