Page 42 of A Baby Surprise For My Billionaire Boss

MADDIE

“Is Dad coming home for dinner tonight?” Charlie asked.

He posed the question without much hope in his voice, and Maddie couldn’t fault him for that. It had been a week since Eli had eaten dinner with them — and more to the point, in her mind, almost a week since the night the two of them had slept together. Since then, Eli had been staying at the office late every single night. It was as if he had forgotten everything he’d said to Maddie on the day he’d presented her with the ballet studio — as if he had forgotten the gratitude he supposedly felt toward her for showing him how important it was to be around for Charlie’s childhood.

“I don’t think we’d better wait for him,” she told Charlie. “I think we should go ahead and have our dinner without him.”

“Are you sure? Because if he’s coming, I don’t want him to be sad that we ate without him. I don’t mind waiting.”

Maddie wished she could make a recording of that and play it for Eli. Let him see what his actions were doing.

“I think he would have told us if we could expect him,” she said.

“He doesn’t really come to dinner very much anymore. Maybe he got tired of it.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Maddie said gently, even though in fact she thought Charlie was probably right. “He has a hard job. We know that. I think he just needs to focus on his work. We should give him the space to do that, and I’m sure he’ll come back and eat with us again eventually.” He had to do thateventually, didn’t he?

“I was hoping we could do another beach day this weekend,” Charlie said. “But I guess he’s probably going to be working, huh?”

“Yeah, I think he probably will be,” Maddie agreed. “You know he does all that for your sake, Charlie, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want you to think your dad is always at the office because he doesn’t like being at home with you. That isn’t what it is. He loves being with you. But he wants you to have everything you want in life. He wants to send you to great schools, and he always wants to be able to buy you everything you want. That’s why he works so hard — to get the money it takes to give you what you need.”

“Maybe,” Charlie said.

“You don’t think that’s right?”

“I think he probably thinks that’s right. But what if what I want is to go to the beach with my dad? We can’t do that if he’s at work all the time. And that doesn’t cost money. He could work less and we could still have a good time. If it was about what would make me happy, that is what we would do.”

“You should tell him that,” Maddie said.

Charlie shook his head. “It wouldn’t matter.”

The tragic thing was that he was probably right. It wasn’t as if Eli didn’t realize how much it meant to Charlie to be able to spend time with him. He knew. Anybody could see it, and Eli was no fool. He had chosen to prioritize something else, that was all.

Charlie probably didn’t want to talk to his father about it because he feared the idea of rejection. Maddie couldn’t blame him for that either.

The truth was, she was living in fear herself these days. The thing she hadn’t yet reckoned with was that this change in Eli’s behavior had happened right after they had slept together. In fact, it had happened the moment he had left the bed. He had stepped out of the room for a moment and had come back transformed.

She had believed him, that day, when he had told her that he had a work emergency that had required his presence in the office. But now she was starting to wonder. Had that been the truth, or was it possible that he had been making an excuse to get away from her — that he had found himself regretting what had happened between them as soon as he’d left her side and had needed to get some space?

Maybe that was why he was at work all the time. Maybe it was because ofher.

And if that was true, she didn’t think she could stand it. The one thing she had wanted in all of this was for her feelings about Eli not to affect Charlie. But if Eli was returning to his old habit of working long hours and ignoring his son — if he was doing that as part of an attempt to avoid Maddie — then she had been anegative force in Charlie’s life, and she ought to leave this family alone before she did them any further harm.

It was a terrible thought. She’d come to care so much about both of them. Could leaving really be the thing she had to do to make all this right?

She waited for Eli in the foyer that night, sitting on the bottom step. It was after midnight when he came home.

He startled a little when he saw her. “I didn’t think you’d still be up.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know you stay out all day and night because you’re avoiding me, Eli.”

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