The overhead ceiling lights came on, bathing her in a blaze of light.
Jackie stood near the curving staircase, her eyes glittering with fear and fury. “If you knew he was coming, why didn’t you stop him?”
Guilt settling heavily on her shoulders, Riya sighed. If only life were as simple as her mom thought it was. “It’s his estate we’re living in. One of these days, he was bound to return.”
“Just when Robert has finally agreed to the wedding and—”
Unable to hear another word of her mom’s self-absorption, she cut across her. “Robert will be happy to see him. I can’t just send him away, even if I wanted to.”
Her elegant hands wringing in front of her, Jackie walked around the huge dining table. “What does he want with you?”
“He wants the estate back.”
“No,” Jackie said, her tone rising, her gaze stricken. “He’ll probably just kick us out if you do that. You can’t—”
Even as she wished her mother would think of Riya’s feelings for once, she softened her tone. Whatever her weaknesses, Jackie had found stability and peace here with Robert and the estate. “I can’t stop him from taking what is rightfully his, Jackie.”
Jackie’s gaze zoomed somewhere far away, and Riya locked out the urge to shake her mom. That look meant nothing she said was going to get through to her now. “I don’t care what you have to do. Just make sure he doesn’t have the house back. Do something, anything to send him back, Riya.”
“I can’t take him on,” Riya said, looking away. If Jackie found out he was here because of what Riya had done... “If I fight him on this, he threatened to drag us through the courts. I don’t have a choice.”
“Of course you can. You have Robert on your side. He’ll never agree to Nathan taking the estate from you. If there’s a long court battle, then so be it. You can’t lose the house, Riya. I can’t take this uncertainty, this kind of stress at this stage of my life.”
And there was the heart of the matter. Bitterness pooled in her throat, but Riya shook it away. As she always did. “Robert will look after you, Jackie. Nothing will happen to you.”
“Does it occur to you that maybe it’s you I could be worried about?”
“There’s no precedent for me to think that, is there?”
Jackie paled.
Now Riya felt like the green scum that lived under a rock.
Jackie sighed. “You slogged over the estate for years. Where was Nathan when he was needed? Do whatever you have to do, but make sure you hold on to this house.
“You have just as much right to this as he. Or even more.”
Nathan’s dark smile as he’d stood close to her sent a shiver over her skin. His offer for Travelogue was more than she’d hoped for, but she didn’t like the look in his eyes.
It wasn’t just that ever-present energy between them. It was more. As if he could see through her, into the heart of her. As if he could see her fears and insecurities and found them laughable. As if he knew how to use them to trip her up.
She just had to remember that whatever he threw at her, she could cope with it. The only danger was if he had true interest in her. He didn’t. Nathan was a man who traveled the world over.
Like everyone else in her life, she would matter very little to him once he realized she wouldn’t budge from her goal. And then he would leave her alone.
For years, she had lived with the knowledge that her father hadn’t cared about her. For Jackie, she was nothing but a crutch of safety, the one who would never leave her. For Robert, she had been the means to assuage his guilt about Nathan and his mom. Not that she didn’t appreciate his kindness.
But the truth was no one had ever really cared about her, about her fears, her happiness. And Nathan would be no different.
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