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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 force 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 thatfuck-melingerie, 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.