Page 53 of A Baby Surprise For My Billionaire Boss

And yet — she perceived him as a bad father, and she probably wasn’t even wrong about that.

Was there even a hope that he could convince her?

Eli rubbed his hands across his face.

He had allowed his family to fall apart.

He would do whatever it took to put it back together.

CHAPTER 20

MADDIE

“Oh, hell,” Maddie murmured.

Tess looked up from her breakfast. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

“Kind of. I have a text from Eli.”

“Oh, whoa. What does he want?” Tess leaned over as if intending to read the text right off of Maddie’s phone, and Maddie found herself reminded of how few boundaries her friend had had when they’d lived together. It was something she had adjusted to living without since she’d been at Eli’s — there had been more privacy there. It was good to be back in the familiar space she had shared with her best friend for so long, but she also missed having privacy.

She would have it again when she moved out.

But moving out would mean allowing herself to begin depending on Eli’s money. That was something that was going to have to happen eventually, of course, but Maddie found herself trying to put it off. It felt like she would be accepting his dismissal of her, and she didn’t want to do that. If she’d had her way — if therewas any practical way to do it — she would have refused his money. But it would have been foolish and irresponsible to do that, given that there was a baby to care for. Maddie didn’t even have a job. She needed all the help she could get, even if taking it made her feel terrible.

“He wants us to meet for lunch,” Maddie said, reading the text. “Later today. He has a restaurant in mind, and he wants me to come and meet him there.”

“What for?”

“I’m guessing he has the account set up for me,” Maddie said. “He told me he would be in touch about it. He probably wants to give me the documents, or maybe he needs me to sign something.”

“That’s a little quick, isn’t it?”

“Oh, not particularly. Knowing him, he wanted to do it all as hastily as possible,” Maddie said dryly. “Eli cares a lot about things like efficiency and making sure his business is handled. I’m sure he got to work on this the moment I was out of his house. He’d never drag his feet about something like this. It’s only when it comes to taking care of members of his family that he isn’t very responsible.”

“Well, great,” Tess said encouragingly. “You’ll have the account. That’s a good thing, right?”

“I don’t know. I guess it is.” Maddie had mixed feelings about it, for reasons she struggled to fully understand.

“Once you’ve got it, you and I can go shopping,” Tess said eagerly. “We can visit the high-end mall. Go to all the stores wecan’t afford to so much as set foot inside most of the time. It’ll be great.”

Maddie laughed. “This account isn’t for us to buy ourselves things,” she told her friend. “We shouldn’t take advantage.”

“I don’t see why not! He should be providing forallof your needs, shouldn’t he?”

“He’s taking care of the baby, not me,” Maddie said. “That was the agreement.”

“The agreement was that he was going to give you an account to use as you saw fit. I don’t see any moral issue with using it for a little retail therapy, especially given the mental and emotional pain and suffering he’s caused you. To me, that seems pretty fitting.”

“Well, it doesn’t feel right to me. And I don’t want him buying me things, anyway,” Maddie added. “I don’t want anything he might have to give me. He can take care of the baby — he should be doing that. But if I bought myself stuff using his account, it would feel like accepting gifts from him. I’ll use this money for the baby, but I am not taking a single dime that I don’t absolutely need to take. I’m doing as much as I can on my own, without any help from him.”

“You and I are very different sometimes,” Tess said. “But fine. If he has the account ready, we’ll go buy a bunch of baby things. We can dothat, right?”

“Okay, okay,” Maddie agreed. “That would be all right.” She smiled. “That might be kind of fun, actually. A bunch of cute baby clothes might be just the thing to put me in a better mood.”

“I knew I would convince you. I’ll start making a shopping list while you go and meet with him.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I actually want to meet with him,” Maddie said.

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