Page 45 of A Baby Surprise For My Billionaire Boss

“I didn’t know you liked eggs,” she told Charlie.

“Dad likes them.”

“You know he isn’t coming home tonight, right?” They went through this every day, and Maddie hated it.

“I mean, I know he said he wasn’t,” Charlie said. “But in case he does, he likes eggs.”

“He won’t be here, Charlie. We can make eggs if that’s what you want, but he isn’t going to be here.”

Charlie made a sour face. “I know,” he insisted.

Maddie sighed. “All right, I’ll look up some egg recipes. We’ll come up with something cool.” It felt as if the best thing she could do would be to get Charlie excited about the actual meal itself. Maybe then he would forget the daily disappointment of his father not showing up to eat with him.

He wouldn’t, though, of course. This was exactly what she had worried about, and exactly what she’d warned Eli about. It was good for him to change his ways, but only if he could commit to it. As it was, he had given Charlie a glimpse at a different kind of life and then snatched it away. Of course Charlie was moody and unhappy now. He must feel as if his father had abandoned him.

And Maddie needed to swallow down the feeling she had about that — the feeling that Eli had abandonedher— because the last thing she wanted was to make Charlie feel worse about his father. They were the two that needed to be united. Even though it felt like she and Charlie were on the same side of an injustice, she couldn’t let anything come between him and his father. Someday, she would be gone, and Charlie would need whatever could be salvaged of that bond.

He had returned to his coloring, and it was clear that — even though he was disappointed about the idea of Eli not coming home in time to spend time with him tonight — he wasn’t devastated. He seemed to be doing his best to take it in stride. To Maddie, that was as sad as anything else — that he could feel that disappointment and then process it so easily. Heshouldexpect better of his father, but it was clear that he didn’t.

She opened up an egg recipe on her phone, but the pictures made her feel queasy, and she clicked away from it. She was going to have to settle her stomach before the time to start cooking arrived. She went to the fridge and got out a ginger ale. “Want to watch a movie?” she asked Charlie, thinking longinglyof the plush recliners and cool, comfortable room that had the big screen TV.

“I thought we could go watch the skateboarders again,” Charlie said.

The thought of being out in the hot sun made Maddie’s head pound. “Let’s stay in today.”

Charlie frowned. “I don’t want to stay in.”

He was usually such an agreeable kid, but Maddie got it, of course — he was acting out because of what Eli was doing. “Just for today,” she told him firmly. “We can talk about going to the skate park tomorrow, maybe. It’s too hot out to fuss with that sort of thing today.”

Charlie sighed. “Fine,” he said. “But I get to pick the movie.”

“That’s fine.” Maddie didn’t care what they watched. She just wanted to be able to close her eyes and relax for a few hours.

They went into the movie room. Maddie handed Charlie the remote controls and he put on something animated with cats and dogs in it. It turned out to be a musical, and the tunes were pretty, and Maddie was able to spend the next few hours relaxing — but it didn’t seem to help the unpleasant physical symptoms she was experiencing.

“You don’t seem like you’ve been yourself lately,” Eli observed.

He had walked into the movie room late at night, hours after Charlie had gone to bed. To tell the truth, Maddie hadn’t heard him come in. She was watching an old black-and-white film withthe volume on low, so she probably should have noticed, but Eli was right — shehadn’tbeen herself.

Still, she resented him saying so. “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked him.

He shrugged. “I don’t mean anything by it.”

“You don’t know what I’m like,” she said. “Not really. You haven’t known me that long.”

“I only thought… you know, usually you’d spend nights dancing. Are you unhappy with the studio? I can have a change made if it isn’t meeting your expectations.”

“The studio’s great. Do I need to dance every night to show my gratitude?”

“No, of course you don’t. I just wondered if you were all right.” Eli shook his head. “Obviously, I shouldn’t have asked. Forget I said anything.”

Maddie wanted to say something to him — to let him know that he hadn’t really done anything wrong. She didn’t know if that was a true reflection of the way she felt or not, but she was so tired of the unpleasantness between the two of them that it was tempting to brush everything under the rug and simply allow that to be the truth — force it to be the truth, if that was what had to happen.

She wanted it to be the truth.

It would have been easier, and felt so much better, to forgive him for everything. To allow herself to be empathetic instead of angry about the fact that he had returned to his old habit of pouring all of his attention into work. After all, what he’d said about all the money the company had lostdidchange things.

She still thought he was making a mistake. She couldn’t agree with the way he was prioritizing business over everything else in his life. But at the very least, she could understand what had happened.

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