The Billionaire Player (In Too Deep)

CHAPTER44

LARISA

After lunch, we drove out to the house with me following behind Tanner’s car. Our burgers had once again been good, but I’d been so preoccupied with his offer that I could barely remember what I’d ordered.

In principle, I loved what he’d come up with to do with his money and his future. I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I thought it was admirable. The man could do literally anything he wanted, and he’d chosen something that could make a real difference. It had come as a bit of a surprise that he’d chosen something like that.

When he’d said before that he wanted to do something meaningful that would still give him back his sense of purpose, I’d thought he would end up volunteering somewhere while tying his money up in investments or playing the stock market. I really hadn’t expected him to come up with a venture like this, and I definitely hadn’t thought he’d plan on getting so involved that he’d be fixing whatever he could himself instead of just getting other people to do it for him.

Once again, he’d surprised the heck out of me with that one. I didn’t even know if he knew the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me that he did.

By all accounts, he’d had a normal upbringing. Contrary to what I’d thought at first, he hadn’t grown up with tons of money. It stood to reason then that his parents would’ve done the maintenance on their house themselves instead of always getting contractors to do it for them and, as such, that he’d know his way around the basics.

Even so, while I didn’t know many billionaires, I couldn’t quite picture any others offering to do hard physical work by themselves when they could just pay someone for it. I didn’t even know enough about Jeremiah to know what he would do, but somehow, I couldn’t quite envision him replacing gutters or picking up a paintbrush.

From a money point of view, it made much better sense for Tanner to do it himself, though. If he really wanted to try to save on costs in order to rent the places out at a decent, low price, he’d have to avoid getting more people involved who would need to be paid for their work.

I was just still surprised that he was actually willing to do it. Of course, there was the very real possibility that once the work started and he realized how hard it was, he’d end up hiring contractors despite his best intentions now.

The fact was that even if he did, he would still be doing good and not looking to exploit anyone, which made all the difference. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he wanted me involved in such a huge way, I’d have been ecstatic for him.

He’d really found something truly worthwhile to invest his time and money in, and I knew it was a giant leap forward that he’d been trying to make for months. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure if he’d really thought it all through.

For someone like him, starting a real estate business wasn’t such a huge risk. One of his best friends was the biggest darn player in the industry. He would have the best advice and guidance around and, therefore, the best shot at actually breaking into the market and doing it right at the same time.

On the other hand, if it went bad for whatever reason, the only thing he stood to lose was a few million dollars at most. It was a bucketload of money to me, but it would barely make a dent in his finances.

If I went all in on this and it failed or things went bad between us, I could lose everything. My business was all I had. It put the food on my table and kept the roofs over mine and my mom’s heads. While I trusted that he wouldn’t put pressure on me to give up my own projects in favor of his, practically, I knew the pressure would be there anyway.

There were only so many hours in a day and so many days in a week. I could work round the clock if there was enough work to go around, which there would be, and still not be able to get everything done on time.

Once I started missing deadlines on my own projects, I could lose my clients and my reputation could start crumbling to pieces. That being said, if I missed deadlines on his projects, I would have to live with the knowledge that a family’s move into the kind of home they deserved would be delayed. Neither of those scenarios were acceptable to me, but with that amount of work, I already knew it would be tough to stick to the timeframes I made for myself.

Logistically, it would be difficult to keep all the balls in the air without dropping one, but I was up for the challenge. Or at least to give it a try. If we did it on a project-by-project basis instead of me becoming a full-fledged partner from the very beginning, I could always find someone to take my place on any project I couldn’t take on at that moment or, if it really didn’t work out, find someone to take my place completely.

I was pretty confident that Tanner would be willing to start us off on a project-by-project basis, but that brought me to my next problem. It wasn’t just the business end of things that was worrying me.

For the last few weeks, I’d been trying to put some space between me and Tanner for a reason. I already had feelings for the guy and that complicated things because I already knew he didn’t feel the same way or want the same things I did.

As it was, I was dangerously close to getting my heart broken. Spending even more time with him would just make it worse when it inevitably happened.

So while I would need to work things out to be able to make the venture with him work in my professional capacity, I also wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle it personally. At the moment, he seemed to like me well enough too, but eventually, probably not long from now, he’d really move on to the next girl.

Even if I could find it in myself to go for a friendship-with-great-sex kind of relationship with him now, what would happen down the line when he got bored of me? I’d be stuck working with someone I genuinely cared about and I’d be forced to watch him with other girls or hear him flirt and make dates with them over the phone.

I honestly didn’t know if I’d be able to keep working with him if that happened. It would tear me to pieces and I was willing to bet it would affect the quality of my work. Which then, again, could cause my reputation to start falling to pieces.

All of which didn’t make it a win-win situation for me. It was far more likely to be lose-lose. Whichever way I thought about it, the very real risk of damage to my career existed. Between that and the heartbreak aspect, I was ninety percent sure that it wasn’t a good idea to even consider it.

But that hadn’t stopped me from telling him I would. It might’ve been a mistake to have promised him I’d think about it, but he’d just been so very excited and convincing that I hadn’t been able to turn him down outright.

Plus, it really was an opportunity for me to do more good than I’d otherwise be able to with my limited resources and time. If I wanted to put my money where my mouth was and not be a hypocrite, then I needed to give this some serious thought. I couldn’t always be going on about wanting to help and expecting others to go above and beyond when I wouldn’t even consider it when something like this came across my path.

The bottom line in that respect was that I’d always wanted to help. I’d always wanted to do good and to find a way to support causes I believed in even when I didn’t have millions of dollars at my disposal. This opportunity had landed in my lap, and now I felt a little like a dog who’d caught the car it’d been chasing. I chased it, but now that I caught it, what the hell do I do with it?

By the time we pulled up to the house, I still wasn’t any closer to making a decision. Sighing as I parked and turned off my car, I resolved to think more about it later. For now, I had to see if his offer even still stood once he’d seen his new place.

While I was optimistic, I really had no way of knowing for sure if he’d like it. As we climbed out of our cars, his eyes were alive with excitement and he rubbed his hands together in front of his chest.