Page 20 of Recruited By the Billionaire

But Robert didn’t have that accusatory look in his big emerald eyes. He was actually touched that she would even bother to ask. Nobody else ever did. But somehow it didn’t surprise him that she would.

And he couldn’t lie to her. “No,” he said to her. “But I’ll get there.” Then, to Jerry’s shock, he even tried to smile. “Thanks for asking.”

Frankie smiled, too, pleased that he didn’t lie to her, and then he turned his attention back to the window view. And although his assistants were staring daggers at her again, with thathow dare you upstage uslook on their beautifully ambitious faces, a strange feeling swept over Frankie. This man she’d just really met seemed to have affected her in such a powerful way that she couldn’t even verbalize what that feeling was. It was as if they had an instantaneous bond between them when she knew they had no such thing. There was nothing between them, not even a friendship. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something about him that tugged at her.

But by the time they were out of Portland and coming into what looked like a very poor, very tiny town called Grapeville, Frankie wondered where in the world was this man taking her. And when they turned onto a dirt road that was even more poverty-stricken than those other dirt roads they had just driven over, and stopped in front of a small, wooden house that was so dilapidated it appeared to be leaning, Frankie was even more confused. How could a town that was that close to such a prosperous city as Portland look as if it belonged in another country? She could see a town like this in Haiti, but not in the USA.

Her curiosity was at its zenith by the time they all piled out of the limo and Robert and his assistants began making their way toward the dilapidated steps that led to the front door. Frankie touched Jerry on the arm. “What’s this about?” she asked him. “Who lives here?”

“Bevis Dent lived here before the accident,” said Jerry.

“Who’s Bevis Dent? And what accident?”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re new. You probably haven’t even had a chance to get book on our seventh-round picks.”

“I’m barely familiar with our first rounders,” admitted Frankie.

“Well Bevis was one of the kids expected to go in the last round, if he was selected at all. He was with Aaron in that motorcycle crash. He unfortunately passed away too.”

Frankie was shocked. “I had no idea somebody else was on that motorcycle with him. Laine never mentioned anybody else being involved.”

“Nobody’s mentioning Bevis,” said Jerry. “Not even the media. It’s been all about Aaron ever since the story broke. It pissed Robert off. That’s why he’s here. He already paid his respects to Aaron’s family late last night. He wants to pay his respects to Bevis’s family today. And even though Bevis was projected to be near the bottom of the draft picks, something like number two-hundred-and-sixty-two in the seventh round, which would be dead last, Robert was thinking about snatching him up if some other guys he were eyeing ahead of Bevis were no longer on the board.”

Frankie and Jerry began making their way up the rickety steps too. “Are you telling me Mr. Marris flew five hours to offer condolences to the family of a young man he didn’t seriously recruit and may not even draft?”

“It’s crazy,” said Jerry. “But that’s Robert.”

Frankie’s face couldn’t hide her astonishment, but inwardly she wasn’t terribly surprised for some reason. It fit with that initial feeling she got from him when she first laid eyes on him.

Robert had to knock a few times before somebody bothered to open the door. An older black man who appeared to be in his sixties, looked at them, looked at that limousine parked in front of his house, and then looked at Robert. “Yes?”

“Hello, sir, I’m Rob Marris,” Robert said to the gentleman as he held out his hand. “I’m looking for the grandparents of Bevis Dent?”

“I’m his granddaddy,” the man said as he shook Robert’s hand. Then he glanced at Frankie and Robert’s only black assistant for some reason. As if seeing their faces made it alright. “Come on in,” he said as he opened the door wider and stepped aside.

When they walked into the house a smell of dampness and mold and mildew hit them in the face so violently that their first reaction was to pinch their noses. And although those Ivy league assistants to Robert did just that, Robert, Frankie, and Jerry did not. And although that smell was ever-present, the house was very clean. Frankie could tell those weren’t filthy people who didn’t take care of the little they had. They were just poor.

“She back here,” the man said and then he escorted them across the living room to the kitchen in the next room over. Larger than the living room, there was a table and chairs in the middle of the kitchen and some chairs against the wall. An old black woman in her sixties, too, was seated at the table along with two younger boys whom Frankie assumed were Bevis’s siblings. They were all in shock over the news of their loved one’s death, and none of them seemed to know who Robert really was, nor did they much care. Bevis was gone. That was all they seemed to be able to register.

“Y’all can sit down,” the old man said and Robert and his assistants sat at the table with the older woman and the boys. With no room left after the old man sat down in the eighth and last chair, Frankie and Jerry sat in two of the chairs that lined the wall. They were facing Robert, who looked just devastated it seemed to Frankie.

“My name is Rob Marris, ma’am,” Robert said to the grieving woman. “I wanted to come by and convey my deepest sympathy over the passing of young Bevis.”

“You from the college?” the old lady asked him. “You knew my grandson?”

“I’m not from the college,” Robert said, “and I did not know him, no ma’am. But I understand he was a fine young man.”

But the old lady looked confused, as so she should, Frankie thought. “You didn’t know him, and you ain’t from the college. Then why you here? Who you with?”

“I’m with the NFL.”

When Robert said those three letters, everybody at the table were shocked.

“The NFL?” the grandfather asked. “But the coaches said Bevis probably wasn’t going to get drafted at all, and if he did he was going to be like the last pick. Why would somebody from the National Football League care about the last draft pick? That don’t make no sense.”

“If he was going to get drafted,” Robert said, “I was going to draft him.”

“What you the recruiter?” the grandfather asked.

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