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 ass**le 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 see what he bought. He never bought me a single piece of jewelry the whole time we were together. Yet he used my cards and credit to charge thousands on things for her?” 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 f**king bastard,” Travis growled, closing the top on the box with a gigantic slam.
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 leach, 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?
“I thought you wanted everything in the past.” Travis sounded confused. “And no, I’m not family, which is really a pretty disgusting thought when you take into consideration how desperately I want to f**k you. That would be awkward.”
Ally sighed. She had no doubt that Travis did want to screw her, but she had no idea why. “Is that why you’re doing this?” Men just didn’t run around paying their employees’ bills and organizing their lives for them to make things better for no reason.
“No,” Travis answered huskily. “I guess I just wanted to make you smile at me.”
That answered floored her. She searched Travis’s face, the scrapes he’d gotten from saving her life the day before still evident. With his hair mussed, his face littered with red marks, his clothes consisting of casual black jeans and a dark pullover, he looked almost…vulnerable.
Her lips trembled for a moment as she caught her breath, astounded. And then, she just couldn’t help herself; she smiled like a madwoman. Yes, she was pissed that he’d pawed through her personal files, but his desire to please her was there on his face, and that made her heart sing. Travis Harrison, billionaire extraordinaire, had actually taken the morning to help her, wanting nothing more than to see her happy. “Is this good enough?” she asked him, still smiling broadly as she made her way over to the coffee pot. “And we are going to have to talk about how I’ll pay you back and about how wrong it is to rifle through personal papers.”
Travis squirmed. “That smile was good enough for an all-day boner.”
Ally giggled as she poured herself a cup of coffee. She couldn’t help it. “But you wanted it,” she reminded him.
“I still do. But it will be damn uncomfortable. I guess I’ll just have to spend another night in your bed jacking off to fantasies about f**king you,” he said bluntly. “But I can guarantee just my fantasies about you were better than his sex with his bimbo could ever be.”