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.
“So, all this interest in my personal life is only for your precious Robert, right?”
She would jump from the thirteenth story before she admitted to him how scarily right he was. Ignoring the charged air of the luxurious interior, she went through her email. “This whole trip is just an excuse for you to—”
“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