Billionaire Undone ~ Travis (Billionaire’s Obsession #5)(20)
Author: J.S. Scott

“I’m just scraped up, Travis. You can go now,” she told him adamantly after she’d swallowed the pills. “I’m grateful for what you did today. The truck driver said he probably would have hit me if you hadn’t prevented it. So thank you for saving me from that. But I’d prefer it if you left.”

Travis shed the ruined jacket of his suit and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, taking a seat across from Ally on the couch. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Ally. And I’m not letting you quit.”

Ally snorted weakly. “What are you going to do, Mr. Harrison? Handcuff me to my desk?”

Travis’s c**k twitched over that remark, but he ignored it. “No.”

“Since you already lost me a position I needed, you’d have to for me to ever set foot in that office again.” Ally sighed deeply. “I can’t work for you anymore because—”

“I raised your salary effective immediately,” Travis confessed. “I knew you wouldn’t leave the bar, and I couldn’t watch you work yourself into the ground. I asked Sullivan what your average salary with tips was at Sully’s, and I raised your annual salary by a little more than that amount. You don’t need to work there anymore. I thought that was what you wanted. I thought you wanted to have some time to pursue your other dreams. It was actually supposed to be a birthday surprise. When I got back to the office late, I was afraid I’d missed you. I wanted to take you out for dinner for your birthday and give you something you really wanted. When I saw you in that f**k-me lingerie, I forgot about everything else.” Not one single other thing in the world had mattered when he’d seen Ally in his office looking like an erotic fantasy. He’d needed to touch her, make her as crazy with need as he had been at that moment. There was only so much a guy could take, and he’d reached his limit when he saw her.

Ally gaped at him for a moment before she replied hesitantly. “So it wasn’t really for your convenience, was it?”

“Yes and no. It’s convenient knowing you’re safer and happier, but that isn’t why I did it. I do suppose there was some selfish motivation involved.” Hell, he couldn’t let her think that he was that altruistic, because he wasn’t. “But it wasn’t really about me wanting you available to me all the time. Ally, when have I ever demanded you be available after hours? I might be an ass**le, but I usually do it during work hours.”

“Then why did you say that?” Her green eyes flashed a look of confusion.

“Because I’m an ass**le?” he asked, trying to lighten the conversation.

Ally nodded. “Agreed.” She looked at him, her eyes searching his face. “Are you doing all this because we’re attracted to each other?”

Did she mean was he doing it because he wanted to f**k her more than he wanted to breathe? Maybe…or maybe not…he wasn’t quite sure. All he knew was that she’d been screwed over by her ex, and he wanted to make her life easier. “You deserve the raise. You’ve become more of an assistant than a secretary over the years, taking on more and more responsibility.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “You already pay me at the high end of the scale for my position.”

“For a secretarial position. I promoted you to executive assistant,” he told her calmly. “Now you’re on the high end of that scale.” Okay…that was a little bit of a stretch. She was still salaried higher than the top of the scale, but dammit, it was his company and Ally did the work of both an assistant and a secretary. He’d never needed anyone else. She was worth that and more.

She cocked her brow at him. “It’s still a secretarial position, Travis. It’s just a more important sounding title. Why are you really doing this?”

“I thought I already explained that,” he grumbled irritably. Christ! Couldn’t the woman just take the damn raise and promotion without arguing about it? “You’ve had to put up with me for four years. Before that, I couldn’t keep an assistant or a secretary.” That was totally true. He was an anal perfectionist, and nobody had performed like Ally had as an assistant or a secretary. She anticipated his needs before he even realized what he needed, on a professional level anyway.

“And you couldn’t have discussed all this with me first?” she questioned quietly.

“No. Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise.” And he hadn’t planned on letting her refuse.

“You just can’t go around arranging people’s lives, Travis. I appreciate what you were trying to do, but I’m a grown woman, and I make my own decisions.”

“Since when?” he challenged. “Every decision you’ve made over the last several years has been for your idiot ex, and he certainly never cared whether it was something you wanted or not. It was all for him. What the hell does it matter if I’m giving you something that you actually want?” Travis wasn’t used to being questioned when he actually did something nice, which he almost never did, and he managed people’s lives all the time, usually because they didn’t do it very well themselves.

She was silent for a moment, giving him a quizzical stare. “And what exactly are my new duties?”

Hell, Travis hadn’t really thought about that. She already did the work of two employees. “We’ll make it up as we go along.”

“I’m not sleeping with you,” Ally warned him with a frown.

Travis folded his arms in front of him unhappily and stared back at her. “You will. But when it happens, it won’t be because it’s part of your job description. You’ll do it freely because you want to.”

Ally took a swig of her soda before replying, “Don’t count on it.”

“And you’ll bring me my coffee every morning as part of your new duties,” he informed her.

She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

He’d already known she’d say that, but he didn’t care. As long as she was safe and he could persuade her to come back to work for him, he could live with that.

Chapter 7

When Ally awoke the next day, it was almost noon. How long had it been since she’d slept this late? She stretched, grimacing as her body protested the sudden movement. As usual, Travis was right: the scraped areas on her skin hurt more now than they had the day before.

Was he still here?

She got carefully out of bed, snatching up her robe to put it on over her skimpy nightshirt. Travis had sent her off to bed, telling her he’d be there if she needed anything. Had he really stayed just to make sure she was going to be okay? Really, the infuriating man was confounding her. One moment he was his same ass**le self, and then a moment later he was making her shake her head in confusion. It pissed her off that he’d meddled in her life. Yet, what he had done was also one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for her, even if it was highhanded and arrogant. Strangely enough, she believed him when he said he hadn’t done it for himself. But the unselfish actions just weren’t consistent with the Travis she knew. Certainly, she’d see him do some amazing things for his family, things they probably weren’t even aware he’d done for them. However, she was hardly family, simply a valuable employee.