She was silent for a few moments before she answered solemnly. “Thank you. But I’m going to have to pay you back when I get a job.”
“You don’t need a damn job right now. You just need to focus on getting well,” he told her gruffly.
“I need to find a job, Zane. I can’t handle this. I can’t not want to feel normal again. For me, that means making a living.” She put her face into her hands in a gesture of defeat.
Zane’s heart fell to his feet. He hated seeing her this way. He wasn’t used to it. Ellie was a capable, anally organized, cheerful type of woman. Seeing her all but destroyed was killing him.
“Then work for me, Ellie,” he offered before he could even think about his words. “I need you. Look around this house and you’ll understand why. I need a personal assistant I can trust, and that’s hard to find. I need an organizer for things inside and outside of work.”
She moved her hands to look at him curiously. “Don’t you have an assistant?”
“No. The last one I had almost sold company secrets to one of my competitors. Luckily, we caught him in time. I haven’t trusted anyone enough since then, and it happened a few years ago. We have secretaries at varying levels of security at the lab, but most of them don’t have access to personal documents or research results.”
She frowned. “Somebody who worked for you tried to betray you?”
It hadn’t been the first time, and definitely wouldn’t be the last, but Ellie didn’t understand what people were willing to do for millions or billions of dollars. “I know you think I’m paranoid because everything is on tight security here, but when I’m home, I have a lot of information with me—research results and projects that some of our competitors would want for all the wrong reasons. It has to be secured.”
“There has to be a ton of people who are more qualified to work for you. I don’t have a college education,” she argued. “I don’t know anything about biotechnology.”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I just have to have someone I trust, someone to help me stay organized outside of the lab. I have faith in you, Ellie. If anyone can get me organized, it’s you.”
She looked at him for a few minutes before asking, “What would I do?”
He grinned at her, suddenly knowing exactly how he was going to get her to drive her new vehicle. “Whatever I say. The first thing you’d do is accept the car I gave you.” He saw her open her mouth to protest, so he held up a hand. “You’ll need a car. What if you have to run errands or do something for business?”
She glared at him, but dropped the subject. “What would my duties be?”
“Anything I want. When you’re feeling better, you’ll see how badly I need some organization in this house. My home in Denver is about the same, although it’s cleaner thanks to my housekeeper. But she never wants to touch my personal stuff. My brain is usually so busy thinking about current projects that I don’t get much else done.” The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of Ellie taking on the job as his personal assistant. It might put him in a hell of his own making by having her around him a lot, but it was better than worrying about how she was doing all the damn time.
“Would I have to move to Denver?” she asked cautiously.
“No. When I’m there, you can stay with me. My house there is just about the same size as this one. We’ll be going back and forth.” Zane wanted to start spending more time in Rocky Springs. His mom wasn’t getting any younger, and Rocky Springs was still home for him.
“Are you doing this because you really need me, or because you feel sorry for me?” Ellie asked bluntly.
“Believe me, I need you,” Zane answered honestly, a double meaning in his words, his cock hard just from sitting across from her at a fucking kitchen table. He admitted he was desperate for her, but not in a way that he could confess to Ellie.
“Will you allow me to pay you back from my paycheck for the car and other things you’ve bought?”
He shook his head. “No. Those are the perks of working for a rich man. Personal assistants get personal gifts sometimes.”
“Not like this,” she muttered, sounding unhappy. “What’s the salary? Benefits?”
Zane named a yearly salary and explained the benefits, as much as he knew anyway. He had a human resources department that dealt with that kind of thing.
“Oh, my God. That’s way too much.”
“It’s not much more than I paid my last assistant,” Zane said insistently. “And that was a few years ago.” He paused before adding, “I really do need you, Ellie. After what happened, I doubt I could trust anybody else to do the job.”