Page 36 of A Baby Surprise For My Billionaire Boss

“Maybe he doesn’t. You would know better than I would about that,” Tess conceded. “But what I do know is that this is headingsomewhere. You’re in your feelings about this guy, Maddie. I’ve seen you get this way about enough men that I recognize the signs. And you can’t let it happen. This one is your boss.”

Maddie sighed, abandoning the pretense. “He’s so attractive.”

“I know. I’ve seen the pictures.”

Maddie had forgotten that Tess had been running internet searches. She vowed later to do some searches of her own and find out what her friend might have seen. But for now, it didn’t much matter. “No picture could do him justice,” she told Tess, thinking of the softness in Eli’s eyes when he spoke about Charlie and the way his whole face seemed to light up in those unguarded moments when they made him laugh. He was attractive when he was serious, but when the facade cracked there was simply nobody like him in the world.

“You should let me meet him,” Tess suggested.

Maddie couldn’t help laughing at that. “You want me to keep my distance from him and also bring my best friend home to meet him?”

“I guess you’re right… that would be difficult to pull off.”

“Tryimpossible.” But even as she said it, Maddie found herself wishing that it wasn’t impossible. It would be wonderful if she was able to combine these two parts of her life somehow — introduce her best friend to the man who had captured so much of her attention and interest. She and Tess had always talked about their romantic prospects, and it felt odd to have feelings for a man she couldn’t introduce to her friend.

But that’s for the best. Because nothing is going to come of these feelings. There isn’t any reason for him to get to know Tess. She’ll never be a part of his life. And as soon as he stops needing a nanny, so will I.

Not for the first time, she found herself wondering when that would be.

She had never intended to nanny for Eli forever. Moving on had always been the plan. But more and more lately, she foundherself dreading the day she would have to actually bite the bullet and do it.

She was beginning to fear that it would just be too hard to say goodbye.

CHAPTER 14

ELI

As the weeks went by, Eli found it increasingly difficult to get Maddie off his mind.

It began to get in the way of his day-to-day life. He sat in meetings and realized halfway through them that he hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on because he had been daydreaming about her instead. More and more, he relied on the notes his assistant took during those meetings, because he couldn’t seem to focus on anything.

Instead, his mind wandered to little interactions with her, and he relived them over and over. A time she had ducked her head to laugh at a joke he had told and her hair had fallen across her face. It had felt so good to make her laugh. He analyzed the joke, picking it apart, trying to isolate exactly what her sense of humor was and how he might make her laugh again, knowing perfectly well that something so calculated would never have the same impact as an off-the-cuff moment had.

He had always been a charismatic person. He was being ridiculous and he knew it. There was no need to plan every interaction like this. Things went well between Maddie andhimself when he didn’t worry about it and allowed their interactions to come naturally.

But if he was truly honest with himself, that wasn’t the reason he spent so much time thinking about her anyway. It wasn’t that he was worried about his ability to interact with her. It was just that daydreaming about Maddie felt nice. It had become one of the most potent and enjoyable parts of his day.

Which is fine. Totally fine. There’s no harm in daydreaming about an attractive woman. It doesn’t mean I would ever act on it.

Of course I wouldn’t.

And yet, day by day, the tension grew, and Eli felt an increasing sense thatsomethingwas going to have to happen. He couldn’t act on the feelings of affection that welled up in him every day, but he needed to do something to communicate to Maddie just how valued she was. He needed to let her see that she had changed his life, just by being a part of it.

And over and over, he returned to the same idea of how he could do that.

He took action on her day off. He hired a crew to come to the house and move everything that had been stored in the conservatory up into the attic. He had mirrors fixed to the wall along one side and a sound system installed. He even purchased a ballet barre — a free-standing thing that could be moved about the room. When he was finished, the space looked nothing like it had when he had started the day — it had been successfully converted into a ballet studio. Eli had to hand it to himself. He hadn’t realized he would be able to do this so well, but it really did look great.

Maddie arrived home late in the evening. Eli knew she was in the habit of going out to meet with her friend Tess on her days off, and on this occasion she’d indicated that the pair of them would be going to the movies. He and Charlie waited for her at the door, Charlie bouncing up and down on his toes, nearly overcome with the excitement of it all.

“She’s going to love it,” he said. “Right, Dad?”

“We hope so,” Eli said. He had to admit that he didn’t know for sure —the conservatory definitely looked good to him, but it wasn’t as if he was any sort of expert on what a ballet studio should be like. Hopefully Maddie would appreciate the effort, if nothing else.

She came in holding a few boxes of movie theater candy. “Hey, you’re still up,” she said, smiling at Charlie. “I brought you chocolate-covered peanuts. I know they’re your favorite.”

Eli felt the familiar twinge, a mix of jealousy and guilt, that he always felt when Maddie knew something about Charlie that he himself did not. It wasn’t as bad as it had once been, though. He recognized that he knew a lot more about his son than he had even a few weeks ago. What was more, Maddie was responsible for a lot of the new closeness between Eli and Charlie, and Eli was deeply grateful for that. The gratitude he felt served to mitigate his guilt and jealousy a great deal.

And it was a good thing to learn something new about Charlie. He hadn’t known his son loved chocolate-covered peanuts — well, now he did know. The fact that he knew it now was more important than the fact that he hadn’t known it before. He filed the information away to be used at a future date. Maybe he would bring Charlie home some candy himself sometime soon.

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