The Man to Be Reckoned With Read Online Free PDF Page A

electronically manned gates and along the gravel driveway lined with the tall century-old oaks, she was still wondering what she would say to Jackie or how she would bring up the subject of Nathan. Jackie had the most singular way of looking at the world and the people in it. Only interested in how they affected her own life and happiness.
    Riya pulled the window down and took a deep breath. The smell of pine needles and the fragrance of the roses greeted her.
    The sight of the mansion emerging just as the driveway straightened always revived her, filled her with an indescribable joy. For her, the brick mansion meant home.
    Driving around the courtyard, she pulled into the garage, parked and leaned her forehead on the steering wheel. Disappointment and a perverse anger filled her. Nathan didn’t love the estate as she did, had been gone for a decade without a thought for it.
    Would probably kick them all out,
her especially
, without a second thought. And to leave this place, to say goodbye finally? The very thought made her chest hurt.
    Grabbing her laptop bag and her handbag, she stepped out of her car. All she wanted was to have a bath and sink into her bed and deal with everything tomorrow. She entered the vast, homely kitchen through the back door intending to go up quietly when Jackie called her.
    Dressed in a cream silk pantsuit, she looked perfectly put together, as always. Except for the frown marring her brow.
    â€œRiya! I’ve been calling you for hours and you didn’t answer a single time.” Her painted mouth trembled. “He’s here, just...appeared out of thin air, after all these years.”
    Riya froze, her gaze flying around the house, her heart ratcheting in her chest. Fighting the rising panic, because of course it had always fallen to her to be the calm one, she straightened her spine. “Mom,” she said loudly. “Calm down.”
    She called her that so infrequently now that Jackie looked at her with alarm.
    â€œNow tell me clearly what happened.”
    â€œNathaniel is here,” her mother said, awe coating her words. “Apparently he’s some big-shot billionaire who can ruin us with one word or—”
    â€œHe said that to you?”
    â€œOf course not. He won’t even meet my eyes. It’s as if I’m not there, standing right in front of him. That witch Maria said it. He looks so different too, all lean and so coldly distant and arrogant.”
    Riya nodded, surprised that Jackie had noticed it too. There was something she couldn’t pinpoint about Nathan either. A sort of cool detachment, a layer of frost as if nothing or no one could touch him. And yet he had been so angry when she refused to sign over the estate.
    â€œEven Maria took a few seconds to recognize him. He just stood there looking as if he owned the place, when he didn’t even ask after Robert all these years.” Riya bit the inside of her cheek to keep from correcting her mother that the estate
was
his. “He arrived a couple of hours ago. Showed up at the front door and sent the staff into a frenzy. They were all crying and laughing, and Robert’s not even in town. He won’t say why he’s here.”
    How? She hadn’t even seen his car in the garage. “Where is he? Did he say what he wants?”
    â€œHe’s been wandering around the estate, drops in every half hour or so. Maria said he wants to see you.”
    Riya’s heart sank to her feet.
    A calculating look emerged in her mother’s eyes, her panic forgotten. “Why
is
he looking for you? I’m still shaking from the shock of seeing him, and all this time, if you’d known that he was—”
    â€œHello, Riya.”
    Every time he said her name, it was like flipping a switch on inside her. A caress. An invitation. For what, she didn’t even want to speculate. Her skin tingling, Riya turned.
    He stood at the huge arched entrance into the kitchen.
    Once