The Man to Be Reckoned With Read Free Page B

Riya had to grab the chair to steady her shaking legs.
    Robert’s wife had been Anna. Anna Ramirez.
    Little shivers spewed all over and she hugged herself. She had brought this on herself. “You’re Nathan Keys. You’re Robert’s son. I read about you and I never realized...”
    He nodded and Riya felt her breath leave her in a big rush.
    Her little lie had worked and here he was, with the largest of her company’s stock, her livelihood in his hand.
    Robert’s son, the boy who had run away from home after his mother’s death, the son of the married man with whom her mother had taken up, the son of the man who had been more a father to her than her own had ever been.
    The son she had been trying to bring back to Robert.
    She had lied to Maria about selling the estate, hoping it would lure him back home. Thought she would give Nathan a chance she had never had with her own father.
    A hysterical laugh rose through her.
    Leaning against the far wall, his legs crossed together in casual elegance, he smiled, his tanned skin glinting in contrast against the white of his teeth. “What? No ‘welcome home’ greeting for your almost stepbrother, Riya?”
    There were so many things wrong about his fake greeting, the worst of which was how aware she was of him in the small room. Mortification drenching her inside, Riya glared at him. “You’re kidding me, right?”
    â€œMy acceptance of your offer for familial solidarity is almost a decade late, but—”
    Her chest fell and rose as she fought for a breath. “You...you
waltz
in here, get rid of my business partner, wave the biggest chunk of my company in my face—” she pushed her shaking fingers through her hair “—and you want welcome?”
    He stayed silent and her stride ate up the distance between them. Fear was a stringent pulse in her head. “If this is revenge for my mother’s affair with your father, let me tell you—”
    â€œI don’t give a damn about your mother
or
my father.”
    The very lack of emotion in his words stilled Riya’s thoughts. He was going to be livid when he learned what she had intended. “Then what is this?”
    â€œYou refused every offer I had my lawyers put forward for the sale of the estate.”
    Her gut twisting with fear, Riya flopped into a chair. Hiding her face in her hands, she fought through it. He had moved to acquire her company because she refused his escalating offers for the sale of the estate.
    What would he do when he learned she had never intended to sell it in the first place? What had she brought on herself?
    * * *
    Nathan stared at the lustrous swath of dark brown hair that fell like a curtain over Riya. Even as impatience pulled at him, he stood transfixed, stunned anew by the sharpness of his reaction to her.
    Every minute they spent in this confining room, his awareness of her grew like an avalanche that couldn’t be stopped.
    How she wore no makeup and yet the very lack of it only heightened her beautiful skin and sharp features.
    How everything about her beauty was underplayed like her professional but bland brown dress shirt and trousers.
    And how utterly she failed at masking that beauty.
    How exquisitely expressive her wide, almond-shaped eyes were and how she fluttered those long lashes down when she wanted to hide her expression.
    Her slender shoulders trembled and he felt a pang of regret. “All I want is the estate. However high I went, you kept refusing my offers. Refused to even give a reason.”
    She looked up, the flash of fear in her eyes still just as obvious. But now there was a resolve too. “So you made a play for my company?”
    â€œYes. It’s called leverage. Believe me, as innovative as your software engine is, your little company is not RunAway International material. Sign on the dotted line today and you’ll leave here a rich woman. I’ll even leave you