Page 20 of The Billionaire Benefactor

“Jenny!” She glanced down to see Blake hanging over the rail of the stands. He held out a boxed lunch. “Did you forget lunch?”

She made her way down the stands. “I didn’t know,” she said. “Are you sure this is okay?”

He grinned and pulled at his ponytail. “We had extras.”

“Thank you. I’m actually starving.”

Roman joined Blake at the railing. “Your boy looks good out there today,” he said.

Jenny beamed. “He’s good, isn’t he? I mean, I know I’m his mom, so my opinion doesn’t count.”

“No, he is good. Objectively good, not just mom-good,” Roman said. “I can’t wait to see him in a few years.”

Jenny’s smile faded. Would Roman be in her life in a few years to see Matt play? She opened her mouth but couldn’t find words to say. Blake was giving Roman a sly smile and Roman looked awkward, as if he just now realized the implication of his words.

“Well, better get back to the kids,” he said.

Blake left a second later after Jenny thanked him again for the lunch. She made her way back up to her seat.

“You know them?” A woman sitting a row away asked Jenny with wide eyes.

“Oh,” Jenny said, laughing a little. “Kind of. It’s a long story.”

The woman scooted over and sat down. She looked older than Jenny, but was dressed younger: skinny jeans and a tight V-neck shirt that was so low-cut even Jenny had a hard time not looking at her chest. “We’ve got time. Tell me the story.”

My husband died, and Roman and Blake and Tony put sod in my yard and rebuilt my fence and invited my kid to play football at this camp for free.

Uh, no.

“It’s not really a long story, I guess. I just happened to meet Blake and Roman and Tony. Pretty recently. My son’s out there. Matt’s eight and he loves football. Do you have a son on the field?”

The woman waved a dismissive hand. “My stepson. He hates football, but I signed him up so I could come out and spend the day watching Roman Bennett. And it has been to-ta-lly worth it. Think you could introduce me? I’m Staci, by the way.”

“Staci with an ‘i’ or a ‘y’?”

Staci laughed like this was the funniest joke she’d heard in her life. “With an ‘i.’”

“I’m Jenny. With a ‘y’.”

“Now that we can both spell each other’s names, how about it? Can you introduce me?”

“I mean, I don’t really know them well…we just met.”

Staci rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Just an introduction. It’s not a huge thing.”

Jenny watched Roman down on the field, running beside one of the boys, urging him on and high-fiving him when he got to the end zone. A strange sense of jealousy rose up at the thought of introducing Staci to Roman. She fought against it.

There’s nothing to be jealous about. He’s not yours.

“Sure,” Jenny said. “I’ll do it.”

Staci squeezed her arm, but it was hard and kind of hurt. “Thank you. I’m so excited!”

Thankfully Staci didn’t sit by her the rest of the long afternoon. While it was great to see Matt, a lot of the drills were boring, and Jenny started checking emails and Facebook. She was working on getting more freelance writing jobs, hopefully enough to pay the bills until she could get a real resume together and look for an actual job. Ideally, she’d find one that aligned with the kids’ school day. She didn’t really want to put them in after school care or ask her parents to watch them every single day. They helped out a lot, but a daily commitment seemed like too much to ask of them.

The writing was boring—not her dream at all. Sometimes it was ad copy for online products like those special cleaning cloths that soak up magical amounts of water and sometimes it was articles for news sites. She had a profile on a site where people could request her services and where she could search through job postings. So far, she had enough to cover the mortgage for the month, but not much else. There was some life insurance, but none of the legal things had cleared yet, so until she was out of the mortgage, it would be tight. While waiting for the last part of the camp to finish up, Jenny applied for three more jobs.

There was a listing for ghostwriting a whole book. She read the post three times. Could she write a novel? She’d thought about writing her own novels for years, but there was always an excuse: finishing college while caring for a baby, caring for a toddler and a baby. She told herself for years that once both kids were in school, she would carve out time every day to work on a book. But she hadn’t done it. Why? Jenny didn’t have an answer. Now that her circumstances had changed so much, she was thinking about everything in her life. She felt like maybe somewhere along the way, she’d gotten lost.

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