Page 35 of A Baby Surprise For My Billionaire Boss

“You call him Eli?”

“It’s the twenty-first century. Who doesn’t call their boss by their first name?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s standard for household staff,” Tess admitted. “I guess I thought there would be more…”

“More what?”

“Distance. He comes home to dinner with his son, but you saidwe. You eat with them?”

“I have to eat somewhere.”

“I mean, do his other employees also eat with you?”

“Well, no.” Now that she thought about it, it would have been odd for the cook or the groundskeeper to join them at the dinner table. And yet, it had become such a habit, such a common thing, for the three of them to dine together. Maddie couldn’t even imagine going back and telling Eli that she would take her meals up to her suite from now on. He would assume that it meant something was wrong. To be honest, he wouldn’t even be wrong to think so. It was nothing she would every choose on her own, unprompted by anyone else, and of course Eli would realize that. He would think he’d done something to make her want to pull away.

Worse yet, Charlie might thinkhehad done something to make her pull away.

Thinking about it in those terms made Maddie fully realize the seriousness of what she might have done. Of course it wouldhave been a mistake to get too close to Eli — if she had. But the bigger mistake would be crossing professional lines and allowing it to affect Charlie. He had started to trust her and to rely on her presence in his life. Maddie couldn’t let anything get in the way of that.

“What are you thinking?” Tess asked.

“I was just thinking about… about dinner tonight.” It was close enough to the truth.

Tess stared. “You’re not eating dinner with them tonight, surely?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Maddie, today is your day off, I thought. What are you doing? You’re going to go back to work?”

“It’s not reallywork. It’s only dinner.”

“And you’re telling me that’s what you choose to do with your downtime? You get one day off a week and you’re going to have dinner with your boss and his kid?”

“It’s not like that.”

“No, I’m getting that,” Tess said slowly. “I warned you when you took this job that you needed to be careful. I warned you not to get yourself in too deep with this guy.”

“And I told you that you didn’t have anything to worry about,” Maddie protested.

“But you’re wrong. You’re either lying to me or you’re lying to yourself. Anybody can see that you’re into him, Maddie. Having dinner with him every night — even on your night off? Why else would you do something like that? You have feelings for him.”

“Even if I do?—”

“I knew it!”

“I saidif, Tess. And what you didn’t let me say was that even if you’re right, it doesn’t matter. It’s not as if he has feelings for me, so what harm could a little crush really do?”

Maddie felt better as soon as she had said the words — but she also felt worse. Better because it meant there was a limit to the damage she could have done with her errant feelings, but worse because it hurt to acknowledge out loud that — whatever it was she was feeling — Eli would never feel it in return. He couldn’t.

She took a deep breath and re-centered herself. “Look, I appreciate you checking in about this, but it’s not something either one of us needs to worry about.”

“I don’t think you should go back and eat dinner with him tonight.”

“Yeah, well, I kind of have to. I promised Charlie,” Maddie said. “You wouldn’t seriously expect me to let down a little kid.”

“Well, no, of course I wouldn’t. I just don’t think you’re being mindful about where all this is heading.”

“I told you — nowhere. Eli has no interest in me like that.”

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