3. Eli
CHAPTER 3
ELI
“ I want to go to the beach,” Charlie whined.
“I have to work, Charlie,” Eli said. “You know that.”
He hadn’t been able to go in to the office thanks to the fact that Katie had quit, leaving him with no childcare to speak of. But work still had to get done. Unfortunately, neither Eli nor Charlie were used to this configuration. Eli had a home office, but he rarely used it, and he had never bothered to establish rules about it for Charlie. As a result, Charlie seemed to feel that it was fine to come into the office at any time and to interrupt his father’s work with requests to go to the beach.
“Katie was going to take me to the beach today,” Charlie said. “She promised.”
“When did she promise that? I know she didn’t say anything about the beach to you yesterday.” There was no way Katie would have done that while she was in the process of quitting. It had been inconsiderate of her to leave so quickly the way she had, but she wasn’t that inconsiderate. She wouldn’t have made Charlie a promise she couldn’t keep.
“She said we could always go on Saturdays,” Charlie explained. “And we always did. Today was supposed to be beach day.”
“I didn’t know you knew it was Saturday. When did you learn the days of the week?”
“I’m six, Dad,” Charlie said. “And there’s a calendar in my room. Plus, it says the day of the week on my tablet.”
“Okay, okay.” It was moments like this that left Eli feeling a little ashamed of himself. He should be more aware of what his son knew and didn’t know. These were the things you missed out on when you were away from home as much as he was.
But it couldn’t be helped. Work was important. It wasn’t just that Eli loved his job. He did love it, of course. He took pride in the tech security software he had developed and knew that it was the best on the market. He also knew that having the job he did meant that his son would never want for anything in his life. Charlie had lost his mother at such a young age that Eli wanted to make sure he had everything else he could possibly want or need.
The trouble was, right now what Charlie wanted was to spend the day at the beach.
It was a perfectly reasonable thing for a child to want, and Eli knew it. Of course Charlie didn’t want to sit around the house in front of the TV while his father worked all day. Of course he wanted to do something fun.
It wouldn’t be able to be like this every day. But maybe Eli could take him to the beach for a few hours. It wasn’t as if he would have to unplug completely to do it. He could bring his phone along with him and try to get some emails answered.
“All right,” he said. “Go change into your swimsuit and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
“Aren’t you going to change?” Charlie pressed.
“Yeah, I am.” Eli was wearing nice pants and a collared shirt, and even though he had no intention of going in the water, that was no attire for the beach.
He went up to his room and changed into track shorts and a tank top. By the time he came downstairs. Charlie was ready to go and had been trying to spray himself with sunscreen. It was clear that he had missed his skin more often than he’d hit it — there was going to be a cleanup job to do later. The house cleaners only came every other day, and someone would slip on that sunscreen if it was allowed to sit there.
But right now, Charlie was bouncing on his toes and was clearly beyond eager to get going. Eli grabbed a couple of towels from the linen closet and tossed one to his son. “All right,” he said. “Just a few hours, okay? And when I say it’s time to come back, no arguing — it’s time to come back.”
“Okay, Dad.”
The public beach was only a few blocks away, so they were able to walk there. Eli didn’t enjoy the walk. He was deeply conscious of his phone in his pocket and the amount of time he had spent without looking at it. So many emails might have come in during that time, and what if one of them had been urgent? What if he had a client waiting to talk to him, wondering why they couldn’t get hold of him? Eli prided himself on his ability to respond quickly to his clients, and he knew they valued the fact that he didn’t keep them waiting when they needed something. If he had to go through very many days like today, that reputation might be damaged, or even lost.
By the time they reached the beach, he felt like he was coming out of his skin. “I’m going to check a few emails,” he told Charlie.
“You’re not going to play with me?”
“I will, but give me a few minutes to get caught up here.”
“I want to go in the water,” Charlie said.
“That’s fine, but stay right on the edge,” Eli said. “Stay where you can sit down and it doesn’t go over your head, okay? And right in front of me, so I’ll be able to see you.”
“I want to go out deeper than that, Dad.”
“No. Absolutely not. If you go past where I’m telling you, we’re going to turn around and go back home.”
Charlie scowled. “Katie would have gone into the water with me.”
“Katie isn’t here. Look, just stay on the shore. It’s not safe for you to go into the water by yourself.”
Charlie scowled, turned, and stormed off down the beach.
Eli sighed. Even though he had gone out of his way to try to do something special for his son, it already seemed to be backfiring on him. Now he was going to struggle to get his work done, and he wouldn’t even get the benefit of Charlie being happy with him for it. It was deeply frustrating.
This is why I need to have a nanny . He was going to have to hire someone as soon as possible, and he knew it. But he didn’t want to cut corners and hire someone subpar because he was in a hurry. He had to make sure that whoever he found was competent to take care of Charlie. Eli knew that he wasn’t the most involved parent in the world, but that didn’t mean he neglected his responsibility to his son. Charlie would always have the best.
He opened his email inbox, and it was as he’d feared — emails from clients had come pouring in, just in the few minutes he’d been distracted. Most of the emails were things that could wait, but one of his clients was angry that her copy of the software wasn’t working properly and was threatening to cancel and demanding refunds. Eli wished he was in the office so that he could have called the client from a nice quiet environment. He couldn’t do it here, he knew. Waves were crashing, children were shouting — it would be completely unprofessional.
He drafted a quick email offering to come in and personally take a look at the software. He knew he was going to have to bring Charlie with him, most likely, but that was something that could be dealt with. And maybe if he gave himself a few days to prepare, he might be able to find a babysitter. It was possible.
He read the email over, decided it was as good as it was going to get, and hit send. He watched his phone for a moment, wondering if he was going to get a reply, but he knew how unlikely an instant response was. It would make him feel better to hear something back right away, but that didn’t mean he could expect it.
Maybe he ought to walk down to the water and spend a little time with Charlie. It seemed like the least he could do. He tucked his phone into his pocket and got to his feet?—
And frowned.
Charlie wasn’t in front of him. He was nowhere to be seen.
Panic leapt up into Eli’s throat, and he tried his best to control it. He shouldn’t overreact. Charlie was around here somewhere. He wouldn’t have gone far. He knew better than to go out into the water. He had probably wandered down the beach, that was all.
But he had been talking about wanting to go out into deeper water…
No. No, he wouldn’t have .
Eli started jogging down the beach, turning this way and that as he went, aware that he might be running in the wrong direction and moving farther away from his son. “Charlie!” he yelled.
Several people looked at him, but there was no sign of Charlie.
Starting to panic in earnest now, Eli ran to a lifeguard tower. The guard wasn’t there, so he started to climb it, hoping to get a better look at the beach. Maybe he would catch sight of Charlie that way.
“Um, excuse me,” a voice called. “You can’t be up there.”
He looked down, prepared to shout at whoever was daring to interrupt his search for his son, and his knees went weak with relief.
The voice belonged to a sun-bronzed lifeguard with strawberry blond hair that fell in waves down her back. She was looking up at him with a stern expression on her face — but he couldn’t focus on that, because she was also holding Charlie by the hand.
Eli jumped down at once and fell to his knees in the sand. “Charlie, where the hell were you?”
“Swear jar, Dad.”
“I told you to stay right in front of me! Where did you go?”
“I was looking for sand dollars!” Charlie held up his hand so his father could observe the one he had found. “Look, it’s perfect. Not even chipped.”
“You were supposed to stay right in front of me. What were you thinking, wandering off like that?”
The lifeguard cleared her throat. “Sir, I don’t mean to interrupt, but we do require that kids of his age be supervised by a parent or guardian if they’re going to be on the beach.”
“I know,” Eli said. “I only took my eyes off him for a second. He knows better than to wander off like that.” He looked Charlie up and down. “Did you go in the water?”
“No. Obviously. My swimsuit isn’t wet.”
“Don’t catch an attitude with me. You broke the rules. I told you we would be going home if this happened.”
“Dad!”
“Don’t Dad me.” He looked up at the lifeguard. “Thank you for finding him,” he said. “Honestly, anything could have happened.”
She nodded. “Don’t worry. These things happen to the best of us. You’re just lucky it wasn’t any worse.”
“I know I was.” He knew all too well. He had read horror stories in the news about what happened when little kids got caught in riptides.
Eli took a breath. Now that he was feeling slightly less panicked, he was beginning to really appreciate what this woman had done for him. “I owe you one,” he told her. “You might have saved my son’s life today.”
“I wasn’t drowning, Dad, I was digging up a sand dollar.”
Eli wasn’t about to alarm his son with stories of freak waves or kidnappers. He kept his attention on the pretty lifeguard instead.
There were definitely worse things to be looking at. The wind had caught her hair, making it blow around her face. She didn’t seem at all self-conscious about the fact that she was standing in front of him in nothing but a one-piece swimsuit while he was fully dressed. Of course, she was probably used to standing in front of people in her swimsuit since it was a part of her job, and Eli was used to pretty girls in their suits at the beach. Usually they were even less covered up than she was, in string bikinis instead of one-piece lifeguard suits.
But that didn’t seem to make a difference. The fact of the matter was that she had his attention in a way no woman had in a very long time.
He and Fiona had not been in a relationship. Charlie had been the result of a one-night stand, a pregnancy they had mutually decided to keep because they had both wanted a child and had liked each other as friends enough to give coparenting a try. Eli had continued to date after his son’s birth.
But he hadn’t dated since Fiona’s death. It had changed everything for him. There had been no more nights when Charlie was with his mother, so bringing girls home had become completely impractical, as had staying at their places for the night. He had resigned himself to the idea that he would have to take a few years off from dating — and with that idea in his mind, he realized now, he had stopped noticing women.
But he was definitely noticing the one standing in front of him now. She made his heart beat faster and his blood rush. He had forgotten what those sensations felt like.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Maddie,” she said. “Maddie Foster.”
“Maddie, I’m Eli Sinclair.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Listen, would you like to come out for ice cream with me and Charlie?” The idea came to him on a whim. “My way of saying thank you for this.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” she said quickly. “I was only doing my job.”
“It really would be my pleasure. And our treat.”
“Come with!” Charlie urged. “I want ice cream.”
Maddie chuckled. “That’s hard to say no to.”
“Are you off work soon?”
“Now, actually. I was about to go punch out for the day.”
“Let us get you some ice cream. There’s a great place around the corner from here — Sprinkle Time?”
“I know it.”
“What do you say?”
“Okay,” Maddie agreed. “You’ve convinced me. Let me go punch my time card and I’ll meet you back here, and then we can go.”