Chapter 4

The wizened old man gave Tobias the kind of stare which would have made a lesser man jump.

Instead, Tobias turned his back to him and stared out of the lobby door, fixing his eyes on the sleek, black Porsche Panamera that was parked outside. It seemed like a safe enough neighborhood, but this wasn’t Upper Manhattan and he could never be too relaxed. Not that there was any need to worry. His bodyguards would be parked somewhere close by; he peered up and down the street, looking out for their car. He often forgot they tailed him 24/7.

The elevator’s metallic ‘Ding’ sounded and his heart skipped a beat when any moment now he would see her again, for the first time since that meeting. He turned around slowly, his nerves jangling like nervous pups. She stepped out, wearing an oversized top with dark, casual pants and somehow she looked smaller. Her face was set hard and she looked as though she had been crying. The muscles around his heart clenched and he bunched his shoulders, hating himself even more.

She didn’t even glance at him once as she walked over to the concierge. He heard her say something about Jacob and as he slowly approached the desk, walking up behind her, he heard the man reply. “I’ll go right on up, Ms. Page. Don’t you worry about Jacob. I’ll wait outside the door.” The old man gave him another skewering look before he headed towards the elevator.

Savannah turned around stiffly, her arms still folded. A weighted ball landed in the pit of his stomach and her all too obvious distress made the weight of his guilt double as it settled heavily inside him. “Why are you here?”

He slowly removed his hands from his pockets and was at a loss with how to proceed. Placing them on his hips seemed too casual, and with his insides churning away with full on discomfort, Tobias felt anything but casual. He clutched his car keys even tighter.

“I came to apologize, Savannah.” He wanted to reach out and touch her, but her body language told him to get lost. Standing his ground, he stared at her face. She looked different with her hair scrunched up and held in place with a brown plastic clip. “I am sorry for the things I said, for the way I behaved, for the way I hurt you.”

She snorted at him. “It’s becoming quite a regular thing, isn’t it? You apologizing all the time. Maybe if you didn’t jump to twenty foot long conclusions in the first place, you wouldn’t hurt people’s feelings.”

He bowed his head. “That’s why I came. I can’t live with what I said and I’m ashamed of how I treated you.” She gave him a cutting look.

“It’s done and you can’t take your words back. You can’t repair the damage.”

“I can, if you’ll give me a chance.”

“Give you a chance? Give you a chance?” She said slowly, her eyes bulging. “You can’t buy respect and forgiveness. I know you think you can, because you live in this glass bubble where you think you can buy anything, but you’re wrong.”

“Savannah. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how—” She put her hand up at him, halting him mid-flow. “You were so off the mark, Mr. Stone. Paying for sex is what you do in your world. It’s not what happens in mine. You really thought I was going to blackmail you? Kiss and tell? You think I came to you for sex?” Her furious words lashed at him. “Do you seriously take me to be that kind of woman?” She pinned a brutal stare on him, leaving him speechless. “Times are hard,” she continued, rage spiking her words, “but I’m sure there are other ways of earning good money. I’m not quite in the gutter yet that I need to consider doing that. Not even for you, Mr. I-Can-Buy-Whatever-The-Hell-I-Want. I hate the sight of you.” She twisted the knife further. “I wish I’d never met you and I resent the fact that Jacob thinks so highly of you when you’re nothing more than a jerk.”

Her words landed like a whip on both cheeks: hard, raw and as good as leaving blood marks. He stared at her, ashamed to hear the accusations she now flung back at him. But she was right. “I was a jerk.”

“Was?”

“I am a jerk—but not all the time. I have my redeeming moments.” He lifted his lips slightly, trying to smile at her but she held her chin high and her nostrils flared. He had to back off in order to calm her down, before he lost her forever. “It was, it is unforgiveable.”

“You’re damn right it is,” she snapped, her eyes, bloodshot and angry, blazing at him. “I don’t even know why you’re here. What difference you think it can possibly make now? You can’t take back what you said. You can’t unsay those words.” He stepped towards her and saw that she flinched. He stopped, clearly aware of the depth of her hatred for him.

For him to fix this, he would have to tread lightly.

Goddamnit, anyone else, anything else, he wouldn’t have bothered but for the life of him he could not walk away from Savannah Page. Not with this—his wrongdoing—hanging over him. He had to at least try but in the face of her obvious reluctance to forgive him, Tobias was more determined than ever to do whatever it took to win her back.

“I can’t take back what I said, but I can fix it. I said things in the heat of the moment—”

“Sometimes people speak the truth in the heat of the moment. This isn’t the first time you’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion, Mr. Stone. You accused me of taking something from you once, do you remember?”

The Dalton file, how could he forget?

“What is it that makes you want to punish me each time?” Her composure was calm, but her voice was spitting rage. He could see she’d been bottling it up inside her; he would even hazard a guess that she had probably resisted coming down to see him at all. Maybe she saw this as her only opportunity to have her say without Matthias, Candace or Briony interrupting, or the office logistics and dynamics getting in the way. It was what he’d been hoping for and the fact that she had at least come to see him told him that his battle to win her back, although likely to be long and strewn with obstacles, was not entirely lost. Not yet.

“It’s not you,” he said, looking down, guilt thrashing over him like the spray off a waterfall. She was always so good at highlighting his flaws and his inadequacies. He’d come to apologize but he should have known better, should have been better prepared for her attack. She smacked him back in the face with his shortcomings and there wasn’t a thing he could do but listen and agree. The psychological and business tactics that he used so effectively on his employees and other businessmen, bending them to his will easily, didn’t seem to work so well on Savannah.

“It’s not you, Savannah. It’s me.”

Not only had he never been able to get her to do what he wanted, she never seemed afraid of letting him know exactly what she thought of him—traits he found attractive, especially when everyone else around him was always eager to do his bidding.

He had tried to temper down his feelings for her, unsure himself of the attraction between them—but it was there, invisible and strong, and undeniable. After what seemed like a long spell of keeping his head down and focusing on his business, he was finally coming out of a long, slow hibernation and had connected with this woman who didn’t fall at his feet, or try to fall into his bed, as easily as many before her had tried.

It made him want her even more.

“I don’t trust many people.”

“No shit.”

“Please listen,” he said, anxious that she heard him out. “I don’t open myself up to them, or expose myself in any way which might hurt me.”

“We’re not so different, then.” Her voice still carried that hardness, but she had a point. He could see she was tough outside, that she needed to keep that hard shell about her, but unlike him, she was made of softer, warmer stuff, despite how she saw herself.

“I’m going to make it up to you,” he told her.

“You can’t.”

“Give me a chance.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Please,” he begged, something else that didn’t come easily to him.

“Why?”

“Because I messed up. Even more than last time. Let me, Savannah.”

Her face reddened. “I don’t want anything from you.”

“Let me try.” He would plead, beg and cajole—things he never did—but he would do them for her, if that was what it took. She shook her head. “No.”

He started to speak but something about the way she stared at him, told him he’d already lost her. He clenched his hands together, tightening his stomach instinctively, as if to prepare for the blow that he felt was coming.

“I can make it up to you. I hurt you, I know I did. The accusations I made were unacceptable. I—” But she’d started to walk away, as if she didn’t have the inclination or the desire to stay another minute. He shook his head. “Where are you going? I’m not done.”

“I am.” She pressed the button for the elevator but he walked over and stood in front of her, blocking her entry to the door. “You do things to me, Savannah.” His words floated from his lips in a soft whisper but she narrowed her eyes at him as they stared at one another. He wasn’t given to revealing his innermost secrets, but he had to lay his feelings on the line because he might not get another chance. Now his gut, which had been as unsettled as his nerves from the moment he’d arrived, turned to a jelly-like mess.

“I do things to you?” Her tone was almost mocking. The ‘Ding!’ of the elevator heralded its arrival and as the doors slid apart, she moved forward but he beat her to it, barricading entry to it with his body. “I heard about Jacob. About the asthma attack and I’m sorry I had no idea he’d been that ill. How is he?” If she was surprised by the way he’d prevented her from leaving, she seemed to take it in her stride.

“Fine, now.”

“I understand he was in hospital for a few days.” She nodded, looking away. He stepped away from the elevator and the doors closed. Facing one another, standing next to the closed doors, he needed to know before she tried to flee again. “That’s why you came to me for help, wasn’t it?” This time she turned to face him, her expression unreadable, and her face hard, as if it was made of lead. “Wasn’t it?” he asked again, needing a reaction, anything.

“What if it was? I don’t need your help anymore.”

“But I want to help. I hate that not only did I shoot you down, I got it so badly, badly and unforgivably wrong.” He stepped towards her again, and noticed that this time she didn’t flinch. He decided to take it slow, so as not to push her away. “Take the advance you asked me for earlier. I can arrange it, just say the word.” His eyes, so full of remorse, now fixed onto her face and he was tempted to reach out and take her hand. But they weren’t at that juncture yet; they could have been, had he not messed up.

“I don’t need your help, Mr. Stone.”

“It’s back to formalities is it, Ms. Page?” he asked, his voice hardening again. It was excruciating, dealing with someone who refused to budge, even a little. How was he ever going to make amends with her? “You have to give me chance, Savannah.”

“I don’t have to give you a damn thing.”

“And yet you did, willingly.” She stared up at him, her hazel eyes glistening under the harsh lobby spotlights. “That day, you and me,” he reminded her. How could she forget so easily when that moment had taunted him for days?

“The kiss?” She snarled, baring her teeth.

“Tell me it didn’t mean anything.”

“It didn’t mean anything,” she shot back.

“I don’t believe you. You felt something, I know you did. I could see it in your eyes. I’ve been pretending it didn’t exist, but I think about you and that moment more than is healthy for me.” He felt tempted to thumb her lips, to run his fingers through her hair as she stood with her arms folded in that ridiculously large sweatshirt. He didn’t doubt that she was soft and warm underneath that tough metal exterior and he yearned to hold her and to set everything straight again but one thing was clear: winning Savannah Page back wasn’t going to be easy.

She placed her hands on her hips in defiance. “You have to understand something about me,” she said, the corners of her lips curling up into a cruel smile. “I’m lousy when it comes to picking men. I’m a magnet for attracting the ones who hurt me the most.” Her hazel eyes burned into him fiercely as she licked her lips, staring at him provocatively. Was she taunting him? “I haven’t been in a relationship for years. I was desperate for a man’s touch.” The last words were a whisper that spoke directly to his core. “The way I reacted to you, I’d have done the same if it had been Matthias.” Tension inched along his spine, pinching the back of his neck with its spiky fingers. “Is that what you tell yourself?” The breath sucked out of his body, as if she’d punched his solar plexus and he almost struggled to breathe. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. He knew the way she had kissed him that night.

“Believe it,” she hissed. “I haven’t tasted a man’s lips in years. That wasn’t me reacting to you. I’d have done the same with anyone else. We don’t have anything, Mr. Stone. Don’t mistake that kiss for deep attraction or lust. I’m like a dried up abandoned well that’s suddenly found water again.” His mouth tightened and he refused to believe her. But he couldn’t resist asking, “Who’s going to help you? Your husband?”

“That loser?” Her expression hinted at surprise even though her response was sharp. “I told you, it seems I only ever attract men who hurt me. Men whose self-esteem is so low the only way they can feel good about themselves is by making others feel worse than bad.” Her words knifed him and he clutched his car keys desperately, like a man who was on his last legs. Once more she had managed to hit him where it hurt. He grabbed her arms, his fingers lingering on the fabric of her sweatshirt as she shuffled her arms free and out of his grip. “It’s not my self- esteem I have a problem with, I assure you,” he told her, trying to keep his voice even. She’d embittered him further by her reference to Matthias. “Don’t mix me up with the type of man you married.” He couldn’t say too much without alerting her suspicions.

And he didn’t believe her when she said she wasn’t reacting to him. Enough women had hit on him that he could tell deceit from full on emotional entanglement, and even though Savannah Page could deny it all she wanted, she’d felt something for him that evening. He had to find a way to show it to her again. “I can give you the advance and not only for a few months’—for a year, whatever you need. I can—the company can pay for Jacob’s medical bills and you’ll have all the healthcare benefits too.” He’d been thinking of how he could help her and had the loose bare bones of something unraveling in his mind. He would have to act on it immediately.

She shook her head. “It’s too late. I never want to see you again, Tobias Stone. I don’t want to work for your company and once I’ve worked out my notice, you’ll never see or hear from me again. I can’t wait for the day when we won’t ever have to cross paths again.”

“What do you mean?” She was leaving?

“I have another contract with a new agency and it starts in a few weeks’ time, hopefully sooner, if I can convince them to take me on.” With those words she punched the air out of his lungs. “With who?”

“Southwood Select. They came through for me in the end. So you see, Mr. Stone, you don’t need to concern yourself with putting things right for me. I’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

He almost stepped back, fighting the shock of her words as they bulldozed through him. He struggled to accept the reality of her words, a reality which left him winded. He couldn’t let her walk away now, not when he finally believed he had a chance at something.

“Goodnight.” She turned and pressed the button to the elevator, and this time, when the elevator doors flew apart, she stepped in and was gone, leaving him with his knees liquefied and his steps unsteady.

By the time he staggered outside, Tobias’s jaw had set harder. She thought she’d be out of his hair, did she? He climbed into his Porsche and called Ludwig. “Southwood Select, it’s a recruitment agency who have offered Savannah Page a job. I want the details on my desk by 8 in the morning.”

“I’m on it, Tobias.”

He hung up. I can’t wait for the day when we won’t ever have to cross paths again.

As if he was going to let that day arrive.