“You haven’t needed me in four goddamn years. Why this sudden requirement?” She glared at him. “You can’t just play with people’s lives, Mr. Harrison. I’m not a toy. I’m a living, breathing person who needs that income right now.” She stepped up to him and poked a finger in his chest, her face flushed with fury.
“No you don’t,” Travis answered with a smirk. “And I think I liked it better when you called me Travis.”
She was quite sure he did because she’d actually been moaning his name in ecstasy. Ally exploded. “You bastard! You are a self-centered, egotistical prick.” Tears filled her eyes, the result of the burning anger spreading through her entire being. She’d just been intimate with this man, the same man who had gotten her fired from a job that she needed right now just because it was more convenient for him. She lifted her hand and let it fly, the satisfying crack of her palm against his cheek not nearly enough to appease the hurt of his betrayal. She’d confided in him about her life in a moment of weakness, and he’d used that information to get rid of anything that might inconvenience him. “Now I don’t have any job anymore, because I quit. You don’t have to fire me this time. I can’t work for you anymore. You’re just another man who can’t be trusted.”
With as much dignity as she could possibly muster with tears streaming down her face, Ally picked up both pairs of her shoes and her dress and stormed out of Travis’s office, shoving the clip for her hair into the pocket of her jeans. She gathered up her purse, leaving everything on her desk behind. She just wanted to get away from here. Asha would help her by retrieving the rest of her things later.
She fled out the main office door and down the hallway, literally running for the elevator.
Please be there. Please be there.
Ally didn’t want to wait for one of the elevators to get to the top floor. She wanted out of this building and away from Travis. Now!
She punched the down button impatiently, over and over, as though it would open the elevator door faster. Her vision was blurred by her tears as she bolted into the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby.
“Ally! Goddammit! Wait!” There was a desperation in Travis’s hoarse shout that she’d never heard before, but it didn’t melt the ice that had formed around her heart.
Travis was a billionaire, a manipulative man who was used to getting everything his way. And he hadn’t one iota of remorse for taking away a job she needed, so she could be at his beck and call if he needed her, whenever he needed her, and for whatever reason he needed her. Bastard! Did he think she was going to become his fuck buddy who he could call any time he wanted to take her out and play with her? Pathetically, she’d fallen under his thrall, and maybe he thought he could do just that now that she’d split with Rick. For the brief period of time when Travis had her body under his control, she’d thought she felt a connection, a deeper understanding between them. Oh, had she been so damn wrong.
He was sprinting for the elevator just as the doors were closing. For an instant, their eyes locked, and Ally could see despondency in his eyes as he caught a glimpse of her face. Or she thought she did. But it really didn’t matter. She turned her head, unable to look at him, as the elevator doors slammed shut.
“Ally!” Travis’s voice carried through the closed doors.
She pounded on the button for the lobby, willing the elevator to move. It jerked and went into motion, but it stopped on several floors on the way down, letting people in and out of the elevator on the way to the ground floor. Ally turned her face away, swiping at her cheeks to dry the tears on her face, hoping nobody would notice.
She stepped out of the elevator to the lobby as Travis came pounding out of the stairwell, his hair a mess, tendrils plastered to his forehead from taking so many flights of stairs in record time. “Ally. I need to talk to you.”
She didn’t want to talk to him. The last thing she needed right now was a lecture from Mr. Harrison. She flew out of the automatic doors and into the Florida heat, running as fast as she could in her stocking feet, juggling her clothing and shoes, digging her keys out of her purse as she went. She turned her head just as her feet hit the parking lot, trying to see if she was going to make it to her car before Travis caught up with her. He was almost close enough to touch, so she blindly bolted, seeing a brief moment of horror on Travis’s face as his feet left the ground in an explosive vault toward her. The impact with his powerful body slammed into her, and she sailed through the air locked together with him briefly before landing on the pavement with a slow skid alone for a moment, Travis quickly moving and rolling her on top of him. She shook her head, confused, before she rested her head on his chest, the fall having scrambled her senses.
From beneath her, she vaguely heard Travis calling her name hoarsely, the sound rumbling against her ear.
Strangely, the only thought she could form in her mind was that today, for the first time since she’d known him, Travis was actually calling her “Ally.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kade Harrison looked dubiously at his twin as he handed him a bag full of Duoderm, bandages, and ibuprofen. He dropped the overnight bag he had brought at Travis’s request to Ally’s house.
“We can stay with Ally,” Asha suggested quietly, looking at Travis quizzically.
“I’m staying with her,” Travis growled, not willing to relinquish Ally’s care to anyone after watching her nearly get plowed down by a truck in the parking lot of Harrison. “This is my fault. I made her run in front of that truck. I should have explained everything to her immediately.”
Kade shifted and folded his arms in front of him. “I’m not going to ask exactly how this happened because I doubt you’d tell me, but Ally’s lucky that all she has is a bad case of road rash. I have a feeling you took most of the impact and you kept both of you from getting smashed by that truck. I’m asking if you’re okay.”
Travis wasn’t about to tell his brother that his leg and back hurt like a son of a bitch. After what Kade had been through, Travis’s aches and pains were minor, and the slight road rash on his face would heal. Ally had gotten it worse, her bare arms and back scraped by the unforgiving gravel and pavement. He hadn’t quite been able to save her from the skid across the concrete from the impact of his body plowing into her. Since he’d been heavily covered from the neck down, all he had to bitch about was the soreness from the impact. “She could have died,” Travis told his brother huskily.
Travis knew he’d never forget the moment he saw the truck come barreling into the parking lot, Ally running right into its path. He shuddered as he thought about what could have happened, what had almost happened. Although he’d managed to throw them both clear of the oncoming truck, Ally had still gotten hurt. Because of him.
“She didn’t, Travis,” Kade told his brother solemnly. “You were there.”
I caused it. It was my fault.
Travis suddenly wanted to unload his guilty conscience, tell Kade everything, but he didn’t. “I’m sticking around to help her. You two can go on home. It’s not like we haven’t both had road rash a time or two.” That was putting it mildly. Since they were both addicted to moving at high rates of speed on anything with an engine, they’d both had their fair share of accidents in childhood and as adults.
Kade gave Travis a knowing grin. “I brought everything you’ll need.”
Travis had taken Ally to the hospital, and they’d cleaned the debris from her wounds. But he knew from experience they’d start to hurt like hell very shortly. Road rash usually hurt more later than right when it happened, the small nerve endings starting to protest some hours after the actual injury.
“Call us,” Asha insisted. “I want to know how you’re both doing.” She walked up to Travis and kissed him on the cheek, avoiding the area that was scraped up.
Travis shifted uncomfortably, still not used to Asha’s open affection. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it…exactly. He just wasn’t used to it. The only woman who had ever shown him that kind of affection was Mia, and Tate’s sister, Chloe.
Travis caught Kade’s smirk and he scowled at him. Kade knew damn good and well that Asha unsettled him when she treated him like a brother. He was a cold bastard, an asshole, and he didn’t handle open affection very well.
“Thanks,” Travis grumbled to Asha awkwardly, giving Kade another dirty look.
“I’ll handle the stuff at Harrison for a while. Just take care of Ally,” Kade suggested, wrapping his arm around his pregnant wife. “And go easy on the hero stuff, would you? You took ten years off my life today when I heard you were at the hospital.”
Travis shot his brother a grim look. “Now you know how I felt,” he admitted, remembering the day of Kade’s accident.
“I’m supposed to be the wild twin,” Kade told him with a chuckle as he led Asha to the door. “Seriously, call me if you need anything. Harrison will survive without you for a while.”
“It will have to,” Travis replied, not even giving business a thought at the moment. His main concern was Ally.
Travis locked the door behind them, grabbing his bag and the medical supplies as he returned to the living room.
“Why are you still here?” Ally’s hollow voice came from the bottom of the stairs.
“You’re hurt. I’m not leaving. Once those road burns start to hurt, you might need help.” He shot her an obstinate look, a warning that he wasn’t going anywhere.
“No offense, but you look worse than I do,” she answered matter-of-factly, coming the rest of the way into the living room, dressed in a thick, green robe that covered her from neck to ankles.
She’d showered, her damp hair just starting to curl on the ends. “It’s just my face, and it’s superficial,” he said, dismissing her comment.
Travis watched her as she sat down with a wince, curling her legs under her in a recliner. He dropped his overnight bag and took the sack Kade had brought him out to the kitchen, rifling through it for the ibuprofen. After shaking a few into his palm, he grabbed a can of soda from the refrigerator and brought them back to Ally. “Take these,” he demanded, handing her the can and dropping the medicine into her open hand.
“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 cock 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 fuck-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 asshole, 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 asshole?” 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 fuck 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.