Page 5 of The Billionaire Benefactor

Tony walked in front of him and started gesturing to him like Roman needed his help explaining this better. L’Trel was chuckling behind him. Roman walked to the front hallway where his voice echoed more, but at least he didn’t have to face the guys.

“Just basic stuff,” Roman said. “Nothing big. Mowing the lawn or…I don’t know. Anything you need. Just make a list or whatever and we’ll come by around one if that’s okay.”

Silence on the line. Roman felt the same irritation from earlier when he’d been at her house and her dog had peed on him and then she’d essentially slammed the door in his face. He was just trying to do something nice. Why was she making it such a big deal?

“Well?” he said.

“Fine.” She sounded as annoyed as he felt. What was her problem with accepting help? “You’ve got my address. I guess I’ll see you at one.”

The line went dead. Roman walked back into the kitchen, feeling the irritation rising.

“That’s the look you had on your face when we lost to Dallas last year,” Blake said.

Tony groaned. “Probably not the time to bring that up unless you want to see Roman break something.”

Roman dropped the phone on the counter. “I’m not going to break anything. But that’s the last time I listen to you guys. We’re on for thankless labor tomorrow at one. I hope you guys weren’t kidding because I’m definitely not going there alone.”

L’Trel laughed. “Is she scary?”

“She isn’t very…nice,” Roman said.

“Didn’t her husband just die? That’s cold. Cut her some slack,” Tony said.

Roman waved him off. “Yeah, I know. It’s just…anyway. You’ll see. I’ll text you the address and you can meet me there. It’s in the Woodlands, though.”

Blake and Tony groaned. Houston’s sprawl meant that suburbs were sometimes an hour out of the city itself where most of the guys lived. At least for now. L’Trel and his fiancé were talking about getting a house out in Sugarland, a suburb about thirty miles southwest of downtown. The Woodlands was so far North that it didn’t even look like Houston anymore, at least not like the West U area where Roman lived with live oaks stretching over the roads and historic homes. The Woodlands looked more like the piney forest parts of Texas, with master planned communities where everything looked shiny and new.

As Roman locked the house up after the guys, he tried not to think too hard about the next day. It shouldn’t bother him so much that this woman wasn’t responding the way he wanted. He could hear his father’s voice, reminding him about why he did so much charitable work in the first place.

“It’s not about what you get back, but what you give. If you’re not giving freely, you’ll always be disappointed. We give because God first gave to us,” his father always said.

Roman knew his father had been right. Just thinking about that convinced him that he wasn’t doing this with the right attitude or for the right reasons. He felt ashamed realizing that he’d made this all about him. Jenny had lost her husband. Whether she was grateful, angry, or anything at all, it shouldn’t matter to Roman if he was truly giving freely. It hadn’t been about serving God or even about Jenny, just about doing what was expected of him and what could get him more good press. When had he become so shallow?

Sighing, Roman wished—not for the first time—that his dad was still around.

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