But he still found me right away.
I was sitting at a table near the window, my hands folded tightly around a paper cup of coffee.
He sat across from me.
No entourage. No assistant. No dramatic billionaire entrance.
Just him.
“Thank you for coming,” he said.
“I’m still not sure why I’m here.”
“My mother has Parkinson’s disease,” he said. “Advanced enough to make ordinary things humiliating. Eating. Buttoning a blouse. Signing her own name. She used to be one of the proudest women in Texas.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She refuses full-time help because she thinks it makes her look weak. But yesterday, she let you help her.”
“She didn’t let me,” I said gently. “I just asked the right way.”
His eyes lifted to mine.
That answer seemed to hit him harder than I expected.
“I want to hire you,” he said.
I blinked. “Hire me?”
“As my mother’s personal companion during meals and public outings. Not medical care. Not nursing. Just dignity. Conversation. Patience. The things money apparently failed to buy in my house.”
My first instinct was to say yes.
My rent was late. My motorcycle needed new tires. My feet hurt so badly I sometimes cried in the shower where Tanya couldn’t hear me.
But then I thought of being watched, judged, maybe mocked in some billionaire mansion by people who would see me as a waitress who got lucky.