How does my MMC prove himself to the FMC?

So. Let me set this up:

It's a sci-fi romance. The MMC is the cloned, memory-imprinted double of a wealthy guy. The guy is old, and when he dies, there's a succession: the clone who is the closest match, based on a brain scan, legally becomes the wealthy guy -- inheriting the wealth, power, etc.

Now, it's going to turn out that one of this guy's other doubles is the one who killed him, and rigged the scan so he'd be the successor. Between this and some other stuff, the conclusion is pretty clear: this guy (and his doubles) are kind of assholes. The problem, of course, is that my MMC is one of them... and he's the FMC's love interest.

So, I figure once she meets his other selves, and gets entangled in this little murder mystery, she's going to be backing away from this guy. Meanwhile, he's got to somehow prove that he _isn't_ like the others -- that he has, essentially, learned how to _not_ be an asshole.

My main idea, at this point, is that he frees her from her contract (she's essentially his indentured servant) and pays for her citizenship -- but my friend and in-house plot doctor says that's too pat, too easy. And I'm inclined to agree.

So I need a situation where this guy has a difficult choice, between being an asshole, and being a decent guy... and he does the right thing, at some cost to himself. Some cost that isn't measured in money, obviously. Thus impressing the FMC enough that she decides to give him another chance.

Thoughts?

How about having something really bad happen to her or someone she cares about and he comes to the rescue?

it could be little things, like over the course of the story she can see him fighting the urge to say or do something that the wealthy guy always did, maybe the guy always interrupted people to turn conversations towards him and the clone could start out doing it too only to realize how rude it is and then he actually has to force himself to stop. Or he could just treat servants like human beings and say 'please' and 'thank you' when telling them to do things while the original and the clones wouldn't even bother.

Some times the easy "pat" answer is the best, only add a twist to it. If she needs citizenship and is an indentured servant, find a way to make it so keeping her from becoming a citizen AND keeping her as a servant it better for her until the end where she can discover he was somehow put at a disadvantage by protecting her and not doing the normal free her thing.

Your name was my "cool word of the day" that I included in my novel (decided upon because my brain was trying to tell me that Sirocco was the word I was looking for, and obviously, my brain is an idiot), and so I feel compelled to help.

It's really hard to prove a negative; so, to prove that he's not an asshole, there have to be situations where he *could* be an asshole, but he isn't. Show some kind of character development of him, deliberately going away from the asshole route. As roruna suggests above, situations where he may start out one way, then starts to realize how this makes him look (see, he's not really a bad guy; just clueless and ignorant. So when he learns better, he changes) then he stops. It doesn't seem like a big deal to him, and maybe it isn't at all, but it's a little piece of the puzzle. Include a few big scenes early, and then a couple more as the novel goes along to document the change.

I also agree that there should be a "big" scene, too. If the situation specifically requires that money isn't involved, that narrows things a bit. I mean, finding out that one of the companies under his control has been dumping toxic sludge into the drinking water of the local orphanage is a problem that could only be solved by money, in addition to other things.

Hmm. I'm also thinking that doing something directly for her is out, because it may then seem like he's doing it for ulterior motives, so it won't be something like helping her brother or anything.

Options! He has a friend, who is a generally good person, who does something stupid that could land him in jail or worse; MMC takes the fall, since his lawyers can keep him out of prison. Probably. MMC's plans of becoming a political leader are forever gone. FMC is initially horrified, but later finds out that he was lying to protect his friend. (Eh. This idea is weak, but whatever.)

Instead of killing the space pirates when they attempt to hijack his space yacht, he lets them all live and doesn't report the incident after finding out that they were only doing it because there's not enough food on their planet. He later helps to arrange behind-the-scenes support for space-food to be sent to the planet to help alleviate the suffering.

MMC gives up on a dream of his because in order to achieve it, he'd have to become the kind of man she hates (yay! so specific!)

Sorry, not sure that was any help at all. Good luck!

What if one of the other clones realises he loves FMC and threatens to kill her - or destroy something very important to her if that's overdramatic - unless he does something for this other clone, e.g. provides a false alibi so that nobody knows said clone was actually sleeping with someone else's wife at the time of the murder (or something else assholey). If he does this, it'll seriously get him in trouble if it's discovered that he's lied, obviously he might be a murder suspect etc. But, for the sake of FMC he does it.

Not sure that was any help either. More good luck!