by Zante, Lily
Tobias stepped inside the penthouse and she nervously followed him in. The open space, the spiral staircase, the huge windowed wall showing off the silver gray sky, all caught her attention while the rush of blood pounding through her ears, slowed time down. She heard him close the door first, before she heard the thumping beneath her ribcage, and the crazy flips in her belly.
They stared at one another for a few heated, questioning seconds.
“What was it about?” she asked, wanting to hear what he had to say before she asked him. She couldn’t ask him immediately because the memory of being alone with him knocked the sense right out of her head and sent blood pooling between her legs. He was about to say something, but she looked away as searing images of him and what she longed for him to do to her, colored her thoughts.
He stepped closer to her. “About Friday night…what happened then…,” His voice was lower than she’d ever heard it. “Look at me, Savannah.” She held her head up high, even though adrenaline burned beneath her ribcage. He paused, shoving both his hands in his pockets, and she could see the words didn’t come as easily to him. It gave her time to catch her breath but her nipples hardened, as if in anticipation, and she let out a silent, slow breath.
“Friday night?” She couldn’t go there, not at this moment, otherwise she would never get around to saying what she needed. It was already difficult enough to ask him what she needed to.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you all weekend, Savannah.” His voice was a murmur that was both husky and sexy, and should have been outlawed. She hadn’t been prepared for that. The intensity of his words, like his gaze, pierced deep inside her and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t focus, couldn’t speak. Sparks of electric blue seared her skin and bones and she licked her lips, trying to pull herself together, trying to think about the task at hand before he seduced her further. She would do anything for him in this moment—all he had to do was ask.
God help her, it had been difficult enough asking for money from her parents, but from Tobias Stone, even if it was an advance for a job she wasn’t sure would even stretch out that long, it was now almost impossible.
“I—” She wanted to tell him that she’d thought of him too, in her moments. That she wasn’t sure why she’d rushed away that evening; that she too had been thinking about him.
But her dilemma ripped her in two. Damn this mess she was in. Not Jacob being ill, but her being too dirt poor that she couldn’t provide for them; that she couldn’t weather any storm. She stared up at him. “I don’t know what came over me that day.” He started to say something but stopped himself, and she could see something tighten around his mouth.
“You don’t know what came over you that day?” His voice was hard. “You mean you didn’t feel anything?”
She stared at his lips again, wanting him to claim her with her mouth. He lifted his head, “Is this about Naomi?” Puzzled, she stared back, trying not to get caught up in the intense blue of his eyes.
“Naomi? No, I—” She swallowed. “I wanted to ask—” She stopped, and even though she was standing, she had the overwhelming sensation of falling to pieces in all scattered directions.
“What did you want to ask me?”
She blinked a few times, unsure how to say it. “I wanted to ask you for a favor.”
“A favor?” She could see the tension in his shoulders and his biceps and stared glumly at her hands. She already regretted asking to speak to him but it was too late to back out now. “I was hoping that maybe,” she cleared her throat. “I wondered if it would be possible to ask you for an … an…advance?” The last few words were almost a choked whisper.
“An advance?” He looked puzzled, as if he had no idea what she was going on about, and how would he? She’d been worried sick about her boy the entire weekend and he’d been caught up in how they had left things on Friday night. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if the explanation pierced her deeply. “I wanted to ask you if you could advance me a couple of months’ wages.”
“An advance in wages?” There was a hardness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “What exactly are we talking here?”
Maybe she should have considered returning to waitressing and working at the supermarket at the weekends instead of this. Tobias Stone glared at her.
“You’re not making this any easier for me, Tobias.”
“You want money from me? Is that it?”
God no, not when he put it like that. “I’ve had a setback, and I need to come up with some money. Fast. I don’t know who else to turn—”
“How much?” He sneered, making her feel like a dirty little tramp.
“Three and a half thousand dollars,” she whispered, unable to lift her gaze. “I thought if you could maybe—”
“Is this because I told you I paid Naomi for sex? Is that it?”
She lifted her head sharply, taken aback by his sudden outburst of anger which seemed disproportionate to the request she had made.
“No! This has nothing to do with Naomi,” she replied, hotly, not even sure what he was getting at.
“I bet,” he murmured and scrubbed his hand across his face. Her humiliation burned through her skin. “It’s for—”
“You want to slap me with a lawsuit for sexual harassment? Is that what you’re going to make of that night? Is this your idea of blackmailing me?” His words landed in her ears like a fist to her head. “You kissed me back, it wasn’t a one-way thing.”
She was shaking and shivering all over as his words cut into her like razor blades. Heat swept over her face, coloring her shame and she tried to swallow but her throat muscles seemed to have packed up.
He stepped closer, his eyes blazing with hatred, the muscles along his jaw flexed. “Do you expect me to pay you for sex, Ms. Page?” His words landed in her stomach, heavy, like cannonballs, and sunk deeper into her gut, settling there and filling her with coldness and fear. She lowered her eyes in misery, unable to face him.
“I never expected this from you.” He jabbed his finger at her and walked away towards the center of the room. She wanted to run as fast and as far as she could. But something snapped inside her. Anger and humiliation mixed with her sense of being wrongly accused. Goddamnit. He wasn’t going to get away with this. “I’m not a whore, Tobias. I’m disgusted that you would think that of me.” Enraged, she stood her ground, her eyes burning back into his. Not only was he wrong, but he was also sick and twisted.
She wasn’t that desperate.
“I told you everything has a price, Savannah,” he murmured, walking back towards her with his eyes hard and unsmiling, digging into hers. “It seems to me you just found yours.”
“You sick man,” she hissed. She stepped back but he stepped towards her again, his voice low. “Think how convenient it would be to slip up here every so often. I would fuck you for hours, and pay you well for your services, and nobody would know.”
She flexed her fists to keep her hand from slapping him again. “You’re disgusting. I can’t believe you’re talking to me like this.” Her words came out low, like an angry whisper, as if she was sharing a dirty secret, her hopes falling to the floor like broken glass. “I’m sorry I ever laid eyes on you.” She said with as much menace as she could muster, before she rushed out of the door. She stabbed her finger at the button to the elevator but it didn’t light up.
She heard the sound of the door closing behind her and his soft footsteps along the carpeted floor. Forcing herself to stare ahead, she cursed the sudden moisture that had filled her eyes.
“You need a key to access this floor,” he muttered, invading her personal space as he reached over and lifted the button she had been pressing. Underneath was a slot into which he inserted a key and seconds later the elevator arrived.
She got in and stayed close by the door, refusing to look at him, her insides on fire as humiliation filled every cell in her body. Silence filled the elevator as she stood with her back to him, her breath coming
out faster than she could let air in. She closed her eyes until the elevator stopped at her floor and as soon as the doors opened, she fled, seeking the sanctuary of her office.
Chapter 16
“Is everything alright?” Candace asked, as she closed her folder and clipped her pen to it.
“Why?” Tobias barked.
“That’s why I asked.” She took a few steps towards the door. “You’ve been wound up all day.”
“I hate meetings that drag on for hours.” Candace nodded sympathetically. “Savannah Page was looking for you this morning,” she said.
“I know.”
“Was it anything I could have helped her with?”
“No.”
She seemed to hesitate, as if she had more to say, but he wasn’t in the mood to hear her whining. “I don’t need anything else, Candace.”
“Fine,” she said and clasped her pen and notebook to her chest, secretary-style. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He grunted a “Yes.”
So much for looking forward to returning to work. It had turned into a fuck awful day. Never mind the meetings with investors who wanted the impossible for their greedy and already fat little pockets. Now Savannah Page had shown her true colors as well.
He swiveled his chair around and stared out at the Manhattan skyline. He would never have figured her for a gold-digger. She had seemed so different; decent, so honest and honorable and filled with the salt-of-the-earth goodness. And fire.
Tobias had always been on the alert for people who wanted things from him but it was something he had never expected from her.
The moment he’d discovered that she’d come looking for him, his insides had heated, like bubbling lava. His hopes had come to life because she wanted him, or so he’d thought. He’d wondered if maybe they might have a chance to see how things would turn out.
But the moment she’d spoken about money, the moment she’d asked for an advance, his insides had hardened like cast-iron. His excitement quickly pulverized to nothingness, and instead something icy had slivered and snaked its way up from the pit of his stomach, leaving a trail of frost in its wake.
All weekend he’d thought of nothing but her and had wondered how things would be. He’d imagined what it would be like to hold her and to have her and he’d taken plenty of cold showers when the images in his head could no longer be reined back.
And she’d come to him for money.
Fuck it.
A million times over.
He had finally met a woman who had not only captured his interest, but who was special, and meant something to him but in the end, she was no different from the rest of them.
He would never again find someone as honest and as decent as Ivy. A woman like that was a rarity. They’d known one another since they were sixteen, way before he’d made his money. She’d known him when he’d been dirt poor and lived on ramen noodles. For her it had never been about the money. Too bad the rest of them wanted to leech off him.
Thinking about it now, he’d crippled Savannah Page. He had seen it from the way her body had crumpled, like a battered ragdoll flailing weakly but it hadn’t stopped him from holding back.
It was a goddamn shame that she had turned to be nothing more than a gold-digger in the end. Disgusted with himself for thinking there might be a chance of something, a stab at something, he wanted to wipe all trace of her from his memory.
And he’d gone and dumped Naomi too. Tonight would have been a fine time to have her over. God knows he needed it.
“Come in,” he shouted, at the sound of a knock on his door.
“What’s going on?” Matthias asked. He was dressed in his coat, ready to leave for the day.
“Whaddya mean?”
“You snapped at most of the managers in that meeting.”
“They need to produce results quicker.”
“They are, Tobias. You know they all work hard. You’d have fired them by now otherwise.” Matthias frowned at him. “Seriously, Tobias, what’s going on? Is it Naomi?”
Tobias looked up sharply. “Hell, no. But thanks for your concern.”
“We can still be on target to achieve the goals for this year. It might take a bit more aggressive marketing and investing in places we discussed. Don’t write Xian Yanling off so easily.”
“I’m in no mood to discuss Yanling.” Tobias stretched his neck from side to side. He needed to fuck. Naomi did that very well, and she gave one hell of a sensual massage as well. His mind ignited at the thought of it but in his head Naomi’s image was replaced by one of Savannah, naked and oiled.
“I signed off the proposal for an extra person in Briony’s team.” Matthias told him, tactfully changing the subject.
“Why did you sign it off?”
“Because you weren’t around. Why, is it a problem?”
“No.”
“Briony’s been on at me this whole week. With an extra person to help her, she can help me, without her department falling to pieces. She’s got Savannah Page in mind.”
Tension crawled along Tobias’s spine making his shoulders bunch together. He hated the sound of that name. Matthias walked towards the door. “Shame about her son.”
“Whose son?”
“Savannah Page’s boy,” replied Matthias, holding onto the door handle. “He was in hospital for a few days. Had a bad asthma attack, apparently.”
The color drained from Tobias’s face.
“He’s okay now. But, yeah. Having her on the team would be good. I like the look of her, and she’s not bad at her work either. See you tomorrow, buddy.”
Tobias sat frozen in his chair, staring at the door. He shrank into his chair and then into his body, and let the guilt wash all over him. He wasn’t sure when Candace left, or how long he sat there but he recalled the exact moment he had turned into a total prick. A jerk, and a douchebag, a man who would never be able to make it up to her if he tried.
A man he felt sure she would never want to see again. He couldn’t have read the situation more wrong.
He got up and scrubbed his face with his hands, his insides twisting when he remembered what he had accused her of. What had he done?
Savannah Page would never let him back in again. Ever.
Unless he made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
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Booklist
Other books by Lily Zante: http://www.lilyzante.com/books
Standalone books:
Love, Inc
An Unexpected Gift
Unexpected Love (Bundle: An Unexpected Gift & Love, Inc)
Honeymoon Series:
Honeymoon For One
Honeymoon For Three
Honeymoon Blues
Honeymoon Bliss
Honeymoon Series Boxed Set (Books 2, 3 & 4)
Honeymoon Series Book 5 due Apr/May 2016
Perfect Match Series:
The Proposal
Lost In Solo
Heart Sync
Perfect Match Boxed Set (Books 1, 2 & 3)
A Leap of Faith
Tainted Love Series: (A spin-off from the Perfect Match Series)
Misplaced Love
Reclaiming Love
Embracing Love
Tainted Lo
ve Boxed Set (Books 1, 2 & 3)
Italian Summer Series: (A spin-off from the Honeymoon Series)
It Takes Two
All That Glitters
All That Glitters Sequel due Apr/May 2016
The Billionaire’s Love Story:
The Gift, Book 1
The Gift, Book 2
The Gift, Book 3
The Gift, Boxed Set (Books 1, 2 & 3)
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following wonderful ladies who look through my manuscript checking for errors, typos and other strange things that might have found their way into my story:
Marcia Chamberlain
April Lowe
Dena Pugh
Charlotte Rebelein
Carole Tunstall
A big thank you to Renata Lechner for her awesome books covers:
Website: http://thelemadreamsart.deviantart.com
About The Author
Lily Zante is the pseudonym for an author who writes contemporary romance. She lives with her husband and three children somewhere near London, England.
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PUBLISHED BY:
Lily Zante
The Gift, Book 3 (The Billionaire’s Love Story)
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