14. Eli
CHAPTER 14
ELI
A s 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 and himself 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 that something was 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.
Charlie turned to him. “Dad, can I have some candy?”
“Henry and his mom are going to be picking you up for your sleepover night soon, remember? You can have it tomorrow,” Eli said. “I’m sure it will keep just fine.”
“I’ll put it in the cupboard, Charlie,” Maddie said. “Maybe tomorrow we can watch that movie I was telling you about yesterday, the one where the dog gets a job on a sailboat, and we can make our movie snacks. Would that be fun?”
“Ooh, yes. Do you have to work tomorrow, Dad?”
“I do, unfortunately.”
Charlie took that in stride. “Maybe you can watch a movie with us another time.”
“We’ll make sure to set aside an evening for that.” The remarkable thing was that Eli could make a promise like that to his son and know that it was the truth. He could trust in his own ability to carve out time away from work to devote to family. That had never been true before. And in spite of the fact that his burgeoning feelings for Maddie complicated the issue, he knew that he did owe her a debt of gratitude for making that possible. “Do you want to show Maddie our surprise?”
“Oh yeah!” Charlie forgot all about the candy. His eyes lit up with excitement. “Maddie, Dad and I have a surprise for you.”
“Do you?”
“Come upstairs!”
Charlie led the way up to the conservatory, running the whole way. They had to walk quickly to keep up with him. He paused outside the door. “Ready?”
Maddie frowned. “I’ve never even been into this room before.”
“We were using it as storage,” Eli explained. “But now… well, I thought of a better use for it.”
Charlie flung the door open.
Maddie gasped.
Eli could see at once, by the look on her face, that he had gotten it right. The sense of satisfaction he felt was powerful. He hadn’t realized until this very moment how concerned he had been that she would walk into the room and not understand what he had been trying to create — that he would have missed the mark badly enough that she wouldn’t recognize it.
But she did, of course — he shouldn’t have worried. “It’s a ballet studio,” she breathed. “You have a ballet studio?”
“We built it today!” Charlie enthused.
“A team of contractors did,” Eli amended, not wanting to take too much credit. “I hope it suits you.”
“It’s gorgeous.” Maddie turned a slow circle, taking it all in. She walked out into the middle of the room, rose up on one toe, and did a tidy pirouette. “The mirrors — they were there before?”
“I had them installed.”
“Eli, this is too much. You shouldn’t have done all this.”
“It’s not too much at all,” he said. “I wasn’t using this room for anything, and you’re welcome to it. It should be put to some kind of use.”
“But…” she hesitated. “We don’t know how long I’m going to be here. You shouldn’t have invested in a project like this.”
“Do you think you won’t use it?”
“I’ll definitely use it. I’ll use it every day.”
“In that case, it’s worth having,” Eli said. “And if we redecorate again in a few years, that’s no problem — but for now, it will be put to good use. Much better use than this room was being put to, I’d say.”
They were interrupted by the sound of the doorbell ringing.
“That’s Henry,” Charlie said. “They’re here to pick me up for the sleepover.”
“I’ll take you down.” Eli turned to Maddie. “Wait for me here?”
She nodded wordlessly.
Eli took Charlie down to the front door and handed him off to Henry’s mother, giving him a quick hug goodbye and promising that he would be home the following day when Charlie returned. The whole time, his thoughts remained upstairs with Maddie.
When he returned to her, she was at the barre, going through a series of exercises. Eli stood in the doorway and watched her for a moment, noting how different it was from the way she’d danced in the living room. She was able to truly focus on her technique now, watching herself in the mirror, checking each of her moves and repeating them if they didn’t meet with her satisfaction.
She caught sight of him in the mirror. “This is wonderful,” she told him.
“You really like it?”
“I love it — but I can’t believe you did it,” she said. “It’s such an extravagant gift.”
“It really isn’t as big a deal as you think it is. I wasn’t using the space.”
“It is a big deal,” she countered. “You thought of something I would want, and it’s the perfect thing. No one could have come up with a better gift for me, Eli.” She left the barre and turned to face him, meeting his gaze. “Thank you,” she said earnestly. “This means everything to me.”
“I wanted to do something to repay you,” he explained.
“Repay me? You don’t have anything to repay me for.”
“Everything you’ve done for me and Charlie.”
“I’ve only done my job.”
“No,” he said. “You’ve done far more than that. I know how challenging it must be to speak up to me the way you have. I have hundreds of people who work for me, and they never seem to manage it. But you did. And I know why you did. It was because you saw that Charlie’s life could be better, and you were willing to take a risk to help my son. I couldn’t ask anything more from anybody.
“I care about him,” Maddie said quietly.
“I know you do. I’m grateful for that. I can’t tell you…” He trailed off. These were dangerous waters, and yet he wanted to say what was on his mind. Did he dare?
“What can’t you tell me?” she pressed.
He shook his head. “Maybe I should leave you alone.”
“No.”
To his surprise, she stepped closer to him. Her fingertips brushed his. Eli’s whole body felt electrified, and he sensed the precipice they were quickly approaching. If this didn’t stop now, he wouldn’t be able to stop it at all.
He didn’t want to stop it.
“I can’t tell you how much of a difference you’ve made to my life,” he said softly. “You’ll always be so important to me. It’s because of you that I’ve been able to fix my relationship with my son. There’s nothing on earth that would be too much for me to give to you as thanks for that.”
“Eli…” She breathed in, and he was deeply aware of every movement of her body. “This is just the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
He curled his fingers around hers without thinking about it, without taking the time to process what he was doing. He couldn’t hold back anymore and was tired of trying.
And when he pulled her close, she didn’t try to resist.
The moment before he finally kissed her seemed to stretch out forever. Eli had time to wonder whether he was going to go through with it and to question how he had ended up here. He had time to ponder whether this had always been his intention in creating a ballet studio for her.
But he didn’t have the strength to stop himself.
The sensation of release the moment their lips met was so powerful that Eli knew he was lost. There was no coming back from it. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, feeling nothing but gratitude that the wall between them had finally come down. Regret might come later, and in some small part of his mind, he was aware of it. But right now, all that mattered was that the two of them were finally together.
She broke the kiss and looked up at him, her eyes full of desire.
“Bedroom?” he whispered, and when she nodded, Eli felt as if an explosion of pleasure had been set off inside his chest. He took her by the hand and led her out of the conservatory without looking back.