“That’s what this is all about? What I offered wasn’t enough?” Nathan said, coming closer. Satisfaction practically coated every word. “Name your price.”
“I don’t want money. I was trying to explain how much that estate means to me … I was—”
“Then what do you want?”
It took every ounce of her will to stand still, bearing the judgment in that gaze. The pain in his words cut through her. “I want you to see your father.”
The silence that dawned was so tense that Riya felt the tension wind around them like a tangible rope. The knot in his brow cleared, the icy blue of his eyes widened. It was the last thing he had expected to hear. That she had surprised him left her only shaking in her leather pumps.
“No.”
Fisting her hands behind her, Riya pushed the words that refused to come under his scornful gaze. “Then I won’t sign it over. Ever.”
She could practically hear him size her up, saw him reassess his assumptions about her in the way disbelief and then pity filled his gaze. He looked at her as though he was seeing her anew.
“Don’t push me into doing something I don’t want to. That estate—it’s the one thing in the entire world that means something to me.”
His words were laden with emotion and so much more. And she understood that attachment—because she loved the estate too. But she couldn’t weaken now … now that he was here in San Francisco, so close to Robert.
“I’ve already made my decision.”
TARA PAMMI can’t remember a moment when she wasn’t lost in a book—especially a romance, which was much more exciting than a mathematics textbook. Years later Tara’s wild imagination and love for the written word revealed what she really wanted to do. Now she pairs alpha males who think they know everything with strong women who knock that theory and them off their feet!
The Man to Be Reckoned With
Tara Pammi
MILLS & BOON
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From mathematics class to master’s degrees, through crushes on boys to crushing debts, through fights with our moms to marriages and babies—you’ve always been constant and unflinching in your support and love. This one’s for you, Sushma.
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EPILOGUE
“HE MIGHT DIE any minute of any day or he might live to be a hundred. There’s nothing to be done for it.”
Nathaniel Ramirez looked up at the snowy, whitecapped mountain peak and gulped in a big breath. The words he had overheard the cardiologist say to his mother all those years ago reverberated inside his skull. The cold air blasted through his throat, his lungs expanding greedily.
Would this be the day?
He raised his face to the sky as his vision cleared and his heart resumed its normal beat.
At some point during the trek, he had realized he couldn’t finish the climb today.
He didn’t know whether it was because, after almost twelve years of courting death, he was finally bored of playing hide-and-seek with it, or because he was just plain tired today.
For a decade, he had been on a constant go across the world, without planting roots anywhere, without returning home, making real estate deals in corners of the world, making millions.
An image of the roses in the garden his mother had loved, back in California, their color vividly red, the petals so soft that she had banned him from touching them, flashed across his mind’s eye.
A stab of homesickness pierced him as he followed the icy path down. Sweat drenched him as he reached the wooden cabin he had been living in since he closed the Demakis deal in Greece six months ago. Restlessness slithered under his skin.
And he knew what it meant. It meant he was thrashing against the cage he had made for himself; it meant he was getting lonely; thousands of years of human nature were urging him toward making a home, to seek companionship.
He needed to chase a new challenge, whether clinching a real estate deal or conquering a new corner of the world he hadn’t stamped with his name yet. Fortunately for him, the world was vast and the challenges it presented numerous.
Because staying still in one place was the one thing that made him weak, that made him long for more than he could have.
* * *
He’d just stepped out of a hot shower when his satellite phone beeped. Only a handful of people could reach him via this number. He pushed a hand through his overlong hair and checked the caller ID.
The name flashing on the screen brought an instant smile to his face.
He