AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“But that’s what we agreed on!”
He sighs. “If I raise the minimum wage, will you relax about the salary I’ve chosen to give you?”
“Raise the—what?” Now he’s just being ridiculous, surely. “You want to raise the minimum wage for me?”
“Well, yes,” he says, with all seriousness, “and for all the other commoners receiving such a pitiful amount. Eight credits… Honestly, I’m shocked none of my ministers have brought this to my attention.”
“But—but the ramifications… You’ll have to restructure so much…”
He sighs, lifting his elbows to rest back against the bench. “You let me worry about all that.”
“Sir.” This conversation is seriously getting out of hand. “Sir, I just… You can’t pay me two thousand credits a week.”
All he does is lift an eyebrow as he stares at me, but I’m finding it difficult to express myself right now, to explain to him why this feels so wrong.“This is…it’s too much.”
“You are worth it,” he says simply.
“But…” Why do I feel like I’m panicking? I drop the antiseptic pad on the bench beside him, staring at my fingers pressing into the marble as if that alone can hold me up. “But the clothes and the holo-note and…and all those other things you insist on paying for me as well, I…I mean, what’s next? Will you buy me jewelry? It’s just…”
“Would that make you happy?” His voice is quiet as he speaks and doesn’t quite hold that teasing quality he sometimes gets when he’s trying to rile me up. I blink and slowly draw my eyes up to his.
Suddenly, I’m aware of how very close to him, I stand. My thighs are barely a few inches from his, and his face is right there beside mine, electric blue eyes boring straight into me…
“Analina,” he continues, his smooth voice low. “You are smart and efficient. You give me much more of your time and effort than we’d initially agreed on, considering your studies, and you go out of your way to help me, even if just to patch a scratch on my forehead. I should, by all rights, pay you even more than two thousand credits.”
“Please…”
“And I see how you are with my son,” he says, and something in his eyes heats as they flick back and forth between mine. “You understand him more than even I do at times. You love Asili. You treat him as one of your own, and I am so thankful for your care of him that I often wrestle with just how to show you the depth of my gratitude.”
For some reason, little butterflies are fluttering through my stomach as I stare nervously back. He’s looking at me with something almost like tenderness, and the way that he’s talking… I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him quite like this before, quite so open, and don’t know how to react.
I tug at my sleeve and fidget with the perfectly un-frayed edge, hardly even noticing as my shirt dips slightly off one shoulder.
I take in a small, sharp breath, and his mouth quirks very slightly upwards as his eyes dip briefly down to my lips. He lifts a hand towards me, and with a sudden, fuzz-brained sort of alarm, I find myself taking half a step back.
His hand pauses in the air, the pointed tips of his sharp black nails hovering between us for a moment before he finishes the motion and tugs gently at my shirt, righting it over my shoulders.
I thought for a moment there that he was going to touch my face…
“In any case, Miss Martin,” he says quietly as his hand makes its way back to his lap, “you are worth the raise, and you are worth the gifts. And I enjoy giving them to you, so you will, unfortunately, not be seeing an end to them any time soon.”
I recognize that he’s trying to lighten the atmosphere, but I feel an odd light-headedness as I look down, my fingers still twisting the edge of my shirt.
I mutter something to him—I honestly don’t even know what I say—and flee the room.
No matter how much I try to push the ridiculous notion away as I hurry to my bedroom, the thought that he had wanted to kiss me keeps floating insistently through my mind.
