“Why?”

“He wants control of his grandson and Savannah out of the picture.”

JT nodded his understanding. “She’s not willing to let that happen.”

“Siggy isn’t going to let Dylan go without a fight. He already made an attempt to kidnap his grandson.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I wish I was.” Trent went on to share the details of their visit to the company and how they’d come back to find Savannah’s hotel room empty. “She and Dylan are staying with me at the house. The whole thing really spooked her. She hasn’t left the property since she arrived.”

“But he can’t actually force her to give up her son.”

“No,” Trent agreed, his mind running through all the things Siggy could do. “But he knows how to play dirty, and I wouldn’t put it past him to take her to court over some sort of manufactured evidence that makes her appear as if she’s a bad mother.”

“But she could fight him.”

“She doesn’t have the resources for a prolonged battle.”

JT was assessing him through narrowed eyes. Trent could read his thoughts easily enough. The owner of Cobalt was wondering why Trent wasn’t doing everything in his power to help his sister-in-law fight.

“I’ve offered financial help,” he explained, preempting the man’s question. “She’s being stubborn about taking money from me. I don’t think she’d be living in my guesthouse if Siggy hadn’t spooked her by having the nanny bring him Dylan without Savannah’s permission.”

“You guys go back a ways, don’t you?”

“We dated.” As much as Trent liked JT, he wasn’t about to open up about his complicated relationship with his brother’s widow.

But that didn’t stop JT from asking. “And yet she married your brother?”

“Yeah.” Trent would’ve liked to leave it at that, but JT was staring at him and didn’t appear as if he was going to take Trent’s brief response as a hint to drop it. “She wanted family. Kids. You know.”

“Seems pretty cold of her to take up with your brother after you two stopped seeing each other.”

Trent would never describe Savannah as cold. “I don’t know that she chose my brother to spite me. She’d always liked Rafe. And she got pregnant.”

None of this showed Savannah in a flattering light, which didn’t strike Trent as being fair. And yet, wasn’t this exactly what he’d been thinking about her for the last year and a half? What was with his sudden urge to defend her?

“She’s been through a lot,” he concluded.

“She’s pretty lucky to have you.” JT’s demeanor went from curious to brisk and businesslike. “So it sounds like the problem you’re facing is this. Her son owns a majority share of a company that’s going under and she has no way of selling the shares and raising the money she needs to pay off her husband’s debts.”

“You summed it up perfectly.”

“But if I know you,” JT said with a smile, “you’ve plotted half a dozen ways to get her out of her predicament.”

“Actually, I’ve only come up with three. And I wanted to run them by you to see which you think might work out the best.”

“Fire away.”

Seven

Courtney Day’s unflappable smile concealed Savannah’s disappointment as she carried a glass of wine across Trent’s enormous living room to Scarlett Fontaine. All afternoon Savannah had been alternately nervous and giddy about the upcoming alone time with Trent. Instead of an intimate dinner between just the two of them, Trent had shown up a half hour late with Logan Wolfe and his wife in tow. To hide her disappointment, Savannah had donned her alter ego and was playing the perfect hostess, the way she’d done a hundred times as Rafe’s wife.

“It’s really nice to meet you,” Savannah said, in awe of Scarlett’s beauty. She’d seen her dozens of times on TV, but the real woman was so much more charismatic. “I’m a huge fan.”

“Ditto.” Scarlett gave a little laugh at Savannah’s expression. “What? You don’t think I know who you are? I’ll have you know Loving New York has been a total obsession of mine for years. I thought you were great on it.”

“Thanks. It was an interesting three years.”

Last visited: Page 29 of The Black Sheep's Secret Child

The Black Sheep's Secret Child - Page 29