Page 24 of A Baby Surprise For My Billionaire Boss

“Well… you seem so at home in this life.” Maddie looked rather apologetic. “I didn’t mean to imply anything — to offend you.”

“You didn’t offend me. You didn’t say anything wrong.”

“Still, I shouldn’t have made the assumption that just because your life looks the way it does right now, it’s always been the same. It sounds like you overcame a lot.”

“Itwashard growing up like that,” Eli said. It was tough to admit it. He hadn’t spoken like this to anyone in such a long time that it almost felt impossible that he was saying these things right now. It felt like something he would have daydreamed about saying, but not something he would ever have actually said.

And yet, it was happening, and he knew why. It was because of Maddie. She brought it out in him. She made him feel secure and confident enough that it was suddenly easy to open up about things that had happened a long time ago. Things that he had done his best to make himself forget.

Maddie was watching him, as though she intuited that he had more he wanted to say. And, Eli realized, he did. It had been so long since he had spoken about any of this, and he didn’t want to waste the moment now that it was here.

“The truth is,” he said, “it wasn’t always that bad. My mom and I were very close. I could feel, every day, how hard she was working for both of us. I grew up with such an appreciation for all her hard work. She’s always been my hero. But I also knew just how exhausting it was for her to be in that position. I can remember waking up in the morning on days when she hadn’t made it home from work yet. I would pour myself a bowl of cereal and she’d come in while I was eating it. She’d be dead on her feet. I have such a vivid memory of her collapsing intoa kitchen chair at the end of her work day. I would get up and pour her a bowl of cereal, and even though I can imagine that’s probably the last thing she wanted after a whole day of work, she would always sit and eat it and talk to me. She’d tell me stories about her customers, and she would ask me what I was looking forward to from the day ahead. I’m sure all she wanted was to collapse into bed, but she always made sure to take that time with me.”

“She sounds like a very special woman.”

“I don’t think one woman in a thousand could equal her,” Eli said.

“Are you still close?”

“She died a few years ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Thank you. I’m most sad about it when I think about the fact that she won’t get to see Charlie grow up. She loved him so much, and he won’t have many memories of her — though we have lots of pictures, of course.” He sighed. “Charlie has had a lot of loss in his life.”

“It always makes me so sad to see that he’s without his mother,” Maddie agreed. “He’s such a sweet kid. That must have been a very difficult thing for him to adjust to.”

“It’s been hard,” Eli agreed. “And it’s something else I feel bad about when I look at him. It’s hard that he’s away from me so much of the time, of course, but it’s also hard to see that he’s lost his mother. I just want to make sure that my son has everything in the world. And I know that, no matter how much I do — no matter how hard I work — he won’t have that.”

“I see,” Maddie murmured.

“You do?” What did she see?

“I just mean… this makes so much sense of the way you work so hard,” she explained. “With the way you grew up, of course you would do that. And especially with Charlie having suffered so many losses so early in life. I understand now. You want to make sure you provide him the best life possible — that you give him everything. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right,” Eli agreed, happy that she had seen it — that she truly did seem to understand. She knew that he wasn’t working so hard out of selfishness or carelessness. It was all from a desire to provide Charlie with the sort of life and opportunities that he himself had never been given.

He would always remember what it had been like to go to bed hungry when his mother’s tips at the restaurant hadn’t been good. He would always remember the duty he had felt to pretend he didn’t need anything to eat so that his mother wouldn’t feel too bad about the fact that she hadn’t been able to buy groceries. He’d had friends at school who had felt bad about the meager lunches he used to bring and had given him an apple or a bag of chips from their own lunchbox. He had never wanted to allow his mother to know that was happening, because he had known how sad and ashamed she would feel about it, and he hated to think of the look that would appear on her face if she heard.

And when he had gotten older, he had vowed to himself that his own family would never go through the things he had.

It was the reason he’d worked so hard. He’d put in effort all through high school to make sure he would have the kind of grades that would enable him to earn a scholarship to a goodcollege, knowing that his mother would never be able to afford to send him. He had spent months applying for scholarships and financial aid, and when he had gotten to school, he had thrown himself into his studies, all to make sure that he would be able to walk away with a great career. His plan had been that he would be able to care for a wife and children someday, but things hadn’t happened that way — his son had come along before he’d found a woman he had any romantic interest in. Still, it had been good to know that his hard work would pay off, and that Charlie would never want for anything.

“I can hardly blame you,” Maddie said.

“You thought it was something other than that,” Eli deduced.

“Well, yes, if you want to know. I sort of thought you were just a workaholic, or in love with your job or something. I thought you cared more about your job than you do about Charlie. But I get it now. You work as hard as you dobecauseyou care about Charlie.”

“I don’t want him to go through the things I went through,” Eli said. “I wouldn’t want it for anyone, but especially not my kid. I want to protect him from all the difficult and painful things in life. He should only ever experience good things.”

“You know that isn’t going to happen. Bad things happen to everyone. Charlie isn’t going to be exempt from that.”

“I know that,” Eli said. “I know I can’t protect him from everything. But I’m his father. It’s my job to protect him from as many things as I possibly can. And if that means I’m going to have to work all day every day for the rest of my life… well, I guess that’s just what I’m going to have to do. I care aboutCharlie more than anything in the world, and I’ll do whatever I need to do to make sure he has the best life possible.”

CHAPTER 10

MADDIE

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