The Man to Be Reckoned With. Tara Pammi
mouth to speak but stopped abruptly. Her heart in her throat, Riya took a step in his direction. He stiffened a little more and tilted his head.
That same awkwardness that had permeated their every conversation filled the air thickly now.
But this was work. Their company truly had been a product of them both. “The whole office is buzzing with rumors...” She came to a stop a couple of steps from him. “Whatever our personal differences, this is our company, Drew. We’re in it together—”
“It was your company until you took the first seed capital from an investor,” a new voice, every syllable punctured with a sardonic amusement, said behind her.
Riya turned around so fast she didn’t see him for a few seconds. Blinking, she brought her focus back to the huge table and the man sitting at the head of it. The chair faced away from the window. With his long legs sprawled in front of him, only his profile was visible to Riya.
The entire room was bathed in midmorning sunlight and yet the man sat in the one area of the room that the light didn’t touch. Ungluing her feet from the spot next to Drew, Riya walked across the room so that she could see better.
She felt the newcomer’s gaze on her, studying everything about her. Her usually articulate mind slowed down to a sluggish pace. The feeling that he had been waiting to see her tugged at her, a strange little premonition dancing in her gut.
“I’ve been dying to meet you, Ms. Mathur,” he said, turning the vague feeling into solid dread. “The smart mind that built the software engine that drives the company,” he added silkily. He had left something else unsaid. She knew it, just as surely as she could feel her heart skidding in her chest.
He had even pronounced her last name perfectly, elongating the a after the M just right. After knowing her since her freshman year at college, Drew still didn’t say it right. It was a small thing, and yet she felt as though this stranger knew her entire history.
Taking the last step past the overfilled bookshelf, Riya came to a halt. Her stomach did a funny dive, her sharp exhale amplified to her own ears.
Her first thought was that he belonged in a motorcycle club and not in a boardroom.
Electric eyes, a brilliant shade of ice blue, set deep in a starkly angled face, collided with hers. That gaze was familiar and strange, amused and serious. A spark of recognition lit up inside her, yet Riya had no idea where she had seen him.
Dark blond hair, so unruly and long that her fingers itched to smooth it back, fell onto his forehead. Copper highlights shimmered in his hair. The sunlight streaming in played hide-and-seek with the hollows of his cheekbones, the planes darker than the hollows. Which meant he spent a lot of time outdoors.
His skin, what she could see of it, was sunburned and looked rough. An untrimmed beard covered his jaw and chin, copper glinting in it too.
That beard, those haphazard clothes, his overall appearance—they should have diluted the intensity of his presence in the small room. It should have made him look less authoritative. Except those eyes negated everything.
They had a bright, alert look to them, a sardonic humor lurking beneath the sharp stare he directed at her.
He wore a dark leather jacket that had obviously seen better days, under which the collar of a faded shirt peeked through.
A cough from behind her brought her up short and Riya felt her cheeks heat up.
Amusement deepened in those eyes.
“Who are you?” The awkwardly phrased question zoomed out of her mouth before she realized. Suddenly it was tantamount that she remember him.
Because she did, Riya realized with a certainty.
He leaned back into his chair, not in the least affected by her tone. There was a sense of contained movement about him even though he remained seated. As though he was forcing his body to do it, as though staying still was an unnatural state for him.
“Nathaniel Ramirez.”
Riya’s mouth fell open as an article she had read just a few months ago in a travel magazine flashed through her mind’s eye.
Luxury Travel Mogul. Virtual Entrepreneur. Billionaire Loner.
Nathaniel Ramirez had been called a visionary in developing hotels that were an extension of the environment, a man who had made millions with zero investment. The string of temporary hotels, which he’d envisioned and built with various landowners in different parts of the world, were all the rage for celebrities who wanted a private vacation, away from prying eyes.
He had tapped into a market that not only had met an existing demand but had opened a whole new industry to the local men in so many remote corners of the world.
And more than any of that, he was an enigma who’d traveled the world over since he was seventeen, didn’t stay in one place past a few months, didn’t own a home anywhere in the world and worst of all, had no family ties or relationships.
Even the magazine hadn’t been able to get a picture of him. It had been a virtual interview.
The quintessential loner, the magazine had called him, the perfect personality for a man who traveled the world over and over. The fact that he made money doing it was just a perk, someone had heard him remark.
He’d only said his name, and nothing more about what he was doing here, in San Francisco, in Travelogue, in their start-up company’s headquarters.
Why? Why would he give his name instead of stating why he was here?
She threw a quick look behind her and noticed Drew still stood unmoving at the bay windows, his mouth tight, his gaze swinging between her and Mr. Ramirez.
“You make a living out of traveling the world. What can a small online travel sales company do for you?” She shot Drew a look of pure desperation. “And why are you sitting in Drew’s chair?”
The intensity of his gaze, while nothing new to Riya, still had a disconcerting element to it. Men stared at her. All the time.
She had never learned how to handle the attention or divert it, much less enjoy it, as Jackie did. Only painstakingly cultivated an indifference to those heated, lingering looks. But something about him made it harder.
Finally he uncoiled from his lounging position. And a strange little wave of apprehension skittered through her.
“I bought controlling interest in Travelogue last night, Ms. Mathur.”
She blinked, his soft declaration ringing in her ears. “I bought a gallon of milk and bread last night.”
The sarcastic words fell easily from her mouth while inside, she struggled not to give in to the fear gripping her.
* * *
“It wasn’t that simple,” Nathan said, getting up from the uncomfortable chair. The whole cabin was both inconvenient and way too small for him. Every way he turned, there was a desk or chair or a pile of books ready to bang into him. He felt boxed in.
Walking around the table, he stopped at arm’s length from her, the fear hidden under her sarcastic barb obvious. Gratification filled him even as he gave the rampant curiosity inside him free rein.
Like mother, like daughter.
He pushed the insidiously nasty thought away. True, Riya Mathur was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and as a man who had traveled to all the corners of the world, he’d seen more than his share.
She was also, apparently, extremely smart and as possessed of the talent for messing with men’s minds as her mother, if everything he had heard and Drew Anderson’s blatantly obvious craze for her was anything to go by.
But where Jacqueline met the world with a devil-may-care attitude, flaunting her beauty with an irreverent smile, her daughter’s beauty was diluted with intelligence and a carefully constructed