The Billionaire Player (In Too Deep)

If I wanted him to love the designs, I needed to focus on what he wanted from this place, not on what I thought it could be. Sure, he’d said he wanted the option to turn it into that family home I was envisioning, but it wasn’t what he wanted right now and it certainly didn’t mean that whoever he ended up sharing it with one day would like the ideas I had now.

Then again, at least maybe she’d actually have ideas. Unlike her future husband. I was still frustrated with him. Even though I now knew much more about what he liked and how he lived, he still hadn’t been great about giving any input.

He didn’t seem to be indecisive in general, but it was almost like he didn’t quite believe this place was his. Like his relative newness to the world of second properties was holding him back because he didn’t really know what to do with it.

All of which could be true, I suppose.Hell, if I suddenly found myself in a position where I could afford a place like this and money was no object in the renovation, I didn’t know if I’d have the first clue what to do with it either. From the outside, coming into a windfall like he had sounded like nothing short of a miracle, but maybe if I was living it, I’d be in a bit of a weird place as well.

It was one thing dreaming about having more money than you could spend in a lifetime, but my guess was that if you suddenly got it, it had to be disorienting. A blessing for sure, but in some ways, it could also easily become a curse.

Or maybe I’m just giving him too much credit.Maybe the truth was that he just didn’t care how much he ended up spending on this place because he had so much now that even being wasteful wasn’t an issue. I didn’t see that being true about him, but the thought of it made me uncomfortable.

Either way, I was hoping that talking to his other friends later this week would help. They weren’t able to get together before then, but we were going to meet up at a bar in a few days. I was looking forward to it.

Tanner was a hard man to get a feel for. A study in contradictions that made it really difficult to get a read on what he wanted. I could do this place up exactly like his apartment. God knew, I had a ton of ideas for it as that, but at the same time, I kind of got the feeling that he wanted this house to be more. I didn’t know what more but more.

And if I couldn’t get that right, he wouldn’t be happy with the job I’d done. Ultimately, that was my end goal—to make him happy. As a client, of course. I’d never let anyone down who had paid me for a job, and I sure as heck didn’t plan on starting now.