Page 243

“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 thatyouactually 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.
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 asshole 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.
Curious, she wandered downstairs, passing all the bathroom and bedroom doors as she went, every room open and empty. Travis’s bag was sitting on the bed in the master bedroom, the same room that she refused to use because Rick had banged his girlfriend on that bed. The proof of Travis’s presence in that room gave her a sort of deranged sense of satisfaction, the thought of him tussled and sleeping in that bed somehow exorcising a few of the ghostly images of the past.
Ally stopped abruptly as she entered the kitchen, eyeing the piles of papers on her kitchen table, Travis sitting in one of the chairs, moving papers from one pile to the next. He grumbled, and then dumped a sheet of paper on one of the piles, moving to the next with the intense concentration she saw on his face every day at work.
“What are you doing?” she asked, perplexed, noticing her box where she filed all her papers sitting beside his elbow.
Travis looked up at her, his dark eyes roving over her body and coming to rest on her face. “Contemplating how much I’d like to put your ex in the hospital for an extended stay. He’d be there right now if I didn’t think it would just cause more problems for you.”
Ally opened her mouth and closed it again, taking in the frustrated look on Travis’s face. For once, he didn’t look immaculate. He looked dangerously disheveled, his hair mussed as though he’d been running his hand through it over and over again. “Are those my personal papers?”
Travis shrugged. “How personal are bills?”
“Why are you going through my bills? How dare you?” Her outrage and curiosity were warring with each other as she asked.
“You said you needed to clean up the mess your ex made of your life so you can move on. So I’m cleaning it up.” Travis stated the fact with utter calm, giving her a questioning look like he didn’t understand why she’d protest. “You made it quite easy to find everything, by the way. You’re very organized. Everything was alphabetized. Although I’m not quite sure ‘asshole ex’ is quite the way you’re supposed to label and file certain bills.”
Ally took a deep breath and let it out, not knowing whether to laugh or strangle Travis. “I said I need to figure everything out. I can’t believe you’re going through my bills.”
“I’m finished, actually,” Travis stated calmly, picking up the piles and replacing them into her filing box. “And if you were engaged, why is it that the asshole never bought you a ring? Or did you just not wear it?”
“He didn’t. He said we couldn’t afford it.”
“He bought one. He charged it.” Travis gave her a concerned glance. “After you split up. Why the hell didn’t you take him off your accounts?”
“He bought it for her,” Ally said flatly, nausea starting to rise from her stomach to her throat, horrified once again because she’d been so stupid. “I only looked at the balances. I couldn’t bring myself to seewhathe bought. He never bought me a single piece of jewelry the whole time we were together. Yet he usedmycards and credit to charge thousands of things forher?” Ally paused for a second to get her emotions under control. “I was naïve. I guess it never occurred to me that a man I spent five years with would ever run up debt in my name after he’d already betrayed me.”
“Stupid fucking bastard,” Travis growled, closing the top on the box with a giganticslam.
Ally felt her eyes well up with tears, an overwhelming sense of worthlessness leaving her stunned. “I wasn’t important enough. No matter what I did, it wasn’t enough.”
“Don’t cry,” Travis told her ominously. “He isn’t worth it. It’s over. Everything is paid and you can move on again, Ally. He was a leech, a bloodsucker who doesn’t care about anyone except himself. It had nothing to do with you. Most men would kill to have a woman like you. It’s him, not you.”
Travis’s voice was so matter-of-fact, so sincere that it made Ally want to cry even more. “I have to pay you back. I’m not your family, Travis. You can’t just move in and take over my life.” She wanted to tell him off, be angry that he’d butted into her business. But really, what he was doing was one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for her, so she was having a hard time getting pissed off at him. Travis was bullheaded, and he was used to managing everything. But when had a man actually listened or cared about what she wanted, offering—or actually demanding—that she let him help make her dreams come true?