SWNOVELS Chapter 2
He had to claw his way out of this hole which was as wide as a crater.
Tobias pushed out of his chair and stared vacantly out of the floor-to-ceiling windows of his Park Avenue duplex. He scrubbed his face as he considered the options for getting himself out of the category five shitstorm he found himself in.
How the fuck was he going to get himself out of this one?
He had a battle ahead of him. Making it up to Savannah Page was going to be more than difficult, if not goddamn impossible, especially when the woman wasn’t giving him a chance. But he had wheedled his way out of tighter corners before and he would do so again.
When he’d first seen her this morning, when she’d told him she needed to speak to him, he had assumed it was because she wanted to discuss more personal matters. She’d been coy, almost hesitant when she had approached him, and wishful thinking made him believe she’d come to talk about them.
No way had he been prepared for the request she’d hit him with and in his instant anger, he hadn’t been able to hold back either. Then at the day’s end, when he’d finally sought out the solitude of his office, Matthias had turned up and delivered the bomb: that Jacob had been ill and in the hospital. And that was when Tobias had discovered the real reason Savannah had come to him.
Discovering his mistake, he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think, and couldn’t function. Letting his emotions spiral out of control with Savannah the way he had was dangerous and he wasn’t used to it. But her request for an advance had been so unexpected that it had completely derailed him. Always on guard for people wanting and expecting things from him, Tobias had reacted to her as he would have for any unsolicited request for money.
But he saw now that his paranoia, along with his feelings for her, had blinded his judgement and had made him jump to the wrong conclusion. He should have known better. Savannah Page wasn’t that kind of woman.
Of course he’d gone to find her, needing to apologize to her, feeling guilty and haunted by the look on her face and the way her body seemed to crumple under the weight of his harsh words. Seeing the damage he’d inflicted on her had left him with a bitter taste he couldn’t get rid of. But when he went to her office, she was nowhere to be found. Briony told him she had probably gone for lunch.
His day had progressively worsened. One goddamn meeting after another; sucking his soul and draining him dry. How the hell were they supposed to attract new clients and find new companies to invest in if they spent so much time analyzing the minutiae of every decision?
He walked away from the windows and sauntered into his state-of-the-art kitchen. A copy of the WSJ lay spread-eagled on one of the white Corian countertops along with some paperwork he had been looking through.
He had been trying to read, to focus his mind elsewhere but he couldn’t. He’d been unable to think of anything else and now, with the time approaching almost ten o’clock at night, he was going crazy still thinking of her and of what he had done. A proudly independent and steely woman such as Savannah must have been in a desperate place to come to him for money.
He re-read the report that Ludwig, his trusted head of security, had prepared and dropped off earlier. He turned to Ludwig whenever he needed intel and the man always delivered. Savannah Page had money worries—nothing overly major—$10,000 on a credit card and a hospital bill for just over $3500. With that jerk of an ex-husband up to his eyeballs in gambling debt, she wasn’t going to get any help from him. Twenty-eight years old, soon to turn twenty-nine in three weeks’ time, she was the sole provider for Jacob Samuel Page.
He had to fix this soon, before it was too late. It didn’t matter how he went about it, what mattered was that he fixed it.
Turning up at her apartment now was the only way to do that. He’d been thinking about it ever since he’d returned home but the idea had seemed so preposterous that he’d pushed it to the back of his mind. Yet here he was three hours later, still thinking about it.
He had to see her. He had to make sure she was going to be alright, because she had looked anything but alright by the time he’d finished with her. There was no point summoning Morris—not at this time of night. Picking up his car keys, Tobias rushed out of his apartment and headed towards Sunnyside.
He and Savannah were going to sort this out tonight.