15. Eli
CHAPTER 15
ELI
“ H ow do you feel?” Eli whispered.
The sun was beginning to come up. The two of them had been up all night. Eli had believed, at first, that they were only going to satisfy their desire for one another quickly, and that they would move on, like finally scratching an itch after resisting for a long time. But it had turned into a very long night, a night during which neither of them had slept a wink. Eli already knew that he was going to have to reach out to his office and let them know not to expect him in today. Thank goodness he had begun to set the expectation that such a thing would happen from time to time — even a few weeks ago, he knew, he wouldn’t have been able to manage it.
“I feel amazing,” Maddie said. She was lying on her back and staring at the ceiling, where the fan spun in lazy circles. “I can’t believe this happened.”
“I’ve thought about it for a long time,” Eli admitted.
“So have I.”
“Have you really?”
She looked over at him, a small smile on her face. “Did you think this only happened because you made me a ballet studio?” she asked. “I love the studio, but I wouldn’t have gone this far for it.”
“I had no idea you felt the same way I did.”
“I’ve been feeling things for a long time,” Maddie said, looking over at him. “I thought you knew. I thought you must be able to tell.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I hid it better than I thought I did.” She sighed. “I told myself I had to. That nothing could ever happen between us.”
“I know. I’ve been telling myself the same thing.”
“So what changed?”
“I couldn’t hold back anymore. I got tired of trying. I think we must be restraining ourselves for the same reasons, right? Trying to protect Charlie?”
Maddie nodded. “I’d never want to do anything to put his feelings at risk.”
“No. I wouldn’t either. But you’ve been such an undeniable force for good in his life that it’s hard for me to believe anything bad could come of this,” Eli said. “Maybe I’m being too permissive with myself, but… I’m ready to take the risk.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing you say this.” Maddie shook her head. “Tess is never going to believe any of this.”
Eli couldn’t keep a smile off his face. “You’ve talked to Tess about me?”
“We talk about you every time we get together,” she confessed.
“What do you say?”
“Well, she told me that if I had any sense, I would keep away from you,” Maddie said. “And I told her — over and over — that there was nothing to worry about. That nothing would ever happen between the two of us.”
“I guess Tess saw the situation more clearly than either of us did.”
“She usually does,” Maddie agreed. “When I tell her that this happened, she’s going to be full of I told you so .”
“And then what? Do you think she’ll disapprove?”
“She’ll want to know what happened between us next. How we followed it up in the aftermath.”
“What will you tell her?”
“I don’t know, do I? That part hasn’t happened yet.”
“Well, I’d better work on making the best impression I can.” Eli got out of bed and pulled on his flannel pajama pants.
“Where are you going?” Maddie asked him.
“To get you breakfast. When you tell this story to Tess later, I want to make sure I come off looking really good.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” Maddie said. Then she blushed. Imagining what she must be thinking, Eli couldn’t help but laugh — he sort of wanted to ask her exactly what details she would share with Tess, but he decided to leave that between the two of them.
“Just tell me one thing,” he said.
“All right?”
“I just want to know whether you have any regrets. Whether you’re wishing that we hadn’t done it.”
She swallowed. “No,” she said softly. “No regrets at all, Eli. I don’t know where we go from here, and I don’t know if we were wise in what we did, but I do know that I can’t possibly take it back now. It was exactly what I’ve been wanting this whole time, and I’m happy that it happened.”
“Good,” he murmured. “That’s good.”
“Do you feel the same way?”
“We can get into how I feel when I get back with your breakfast.” He flashed her a grin. “Why don’t you just relax? Enjoy the sunrise.”
She nodded and settled back into the pillows.
Eli grabbed his phone from the charger and headed into the kitchen. He started the coffee and then pulled up his email, thinking that he would fire off a quick message to his assistant to let everyone know that he wouldn’t be coming in today.
He froze.
There were dozens of unread messages in his inbox.
It didn’t make sense. He had cleared it out last night before leaving work. It wasn’t yet seven in the morning. What could all these messages possibly be about — unless something had gone seriously wrong overnight?
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he clicked one of them open.
It was from his contact at Harrison Duncan, a law firm that was one of his biggest clients. Eli skimmed the email with mounting horror. Harrison Duncan was canceling all their contracts with his company. The tone of the email was one of deep dissatisfaction bordering on outrage, and Eli had no idea what to think. Everything had been fine yesterday…
He looked at the clock. Was it too early for a phone call?
He knew the answer to that, really, but something had to be done to mitigate this situation. He couldn’t just lose such an important client. This was terrible for the business. They would survive the hit, but it was a huge setback.
No, he had to call. He had to at least leave a message, to show that he was taking this seriously.
Jack Harrison answered the phone on the first ring. “It’s about damn time,” he snapped. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all night, Sinclair.”
“I’m glad I didn’t wake you,” Eli managed, though in truth this was worse. Apparently whatever had happened was so serious that Jack Harrison hadn’t been to sleep yet, and that was worrisome in the extreme. “I just received all your emails.”
“How can you have just received them? Is your company’s technology so terrible that it takes eight hours for an email to go through?”
“What I mean is that I just checked my messages,” Eli said, striving for patience.
“That’s not what was promised when I signed my contract with you. Round-the-clock customer care, that’s what I was told I would receive.”
“I’m sure there have been members of my staff available,” Eli said. “I always have staff on hand to deal with anything that might come up, at all hours. Didn’t anyone respond to you?”
“Of course they did, but I didn’t want to speak to whatever random associate you left manning the desk. When something of this severity happens, I need you , Sinclair. Where were you?”
Eli wasn’t about to be interrogated as to his whereabouts post work hours. “What happened?” he asked. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll be able to set it right.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t count on that. The firm suffered a serious data breach yesterday,” Jack Harrison said. “We’re facing lawsuits from a number of our clients because their data was leaked, and we’re probably going to have to settle with all of them, because they’re completely in the right. I thought your software was supposed to protect against this sort of thing! What went wrong?”
“I have no idea, but I’m more than happy to dispatch a tech support team,” Eli said. “We can manage this.”
“It’s too late for that. I’ve been dealing with your tech support staff all night. At least they answer their phones.” Harrison paused. “Do you know why I contracted with your company? You’re not the only security software out there. I had options. I chose your company because of how dedicated you seemed. You told me that you would always be available if I had any issues. Not some minimum-wage desk jockey. You .”
No one in Eli’s company was earning minimum wage, but it didn’t seem like the time to split hairs. “Tell me what I can do to make this right.”
“There’s nothing you can do. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll be taking my business elsewhere. I’m not going to risk putting my firm through this kind of thing again just because you wanted a second chance,” Harrison said. “This is over, Sinclair.”
“Don’t cancel the contract because of one bad experience. Give us the chance to correct it.”
“I’m not going to continue this phone call,” Harrison said. “There’s nothing more to say. If you had been available when the crisis first happened, we might have been able to set things right, but we’ve been dealing with this for hours. I already have meetings scheduled with two different security software companies to see what they can offer me. You’ll be hearing from my legal team about the data breach. Have a good day.”
The line went dead.
Eli stood frozen in the kitchen, staring at the phone in his hand. The sound of the coffee dripping into the cup he had set up felt almost hypnotic.
He couldn’t believe this was happening. This couldn’t be happening.
Except, of course, that it could be. Because it was. And if he was perfectly honest with himself, he should have seen it coming.
What had he thought would happen? That he could go on neglecting work in favor of spending time at home, and that there would be no consequences? Of course it had caught up with him in the end. And how ironic that it had happened on an evening when he hadn’t been taking care of Charlie at all. Charlie hadn’t even been in the house. There was no good reason he shouldn’t have turned his attention back to work. There was no excuse for his having missed those emails.
It was negligence, and now his company was going to pay the price.
The coffee was done, but Eli had no time to sit around and drink it — no time for the blissful morning he had hoped just fifteen minutes ago that he and Maddie might be about to spend together. The thought of it seemed hopelessly naive now. How could he ever have believed that was an acceptable use of his time?
He went back to the bedroom.
Maddie was sitting up in bed. She’d put on a T-shirt, but it was thin and he could make out the shape of her body through the fabric. He forced himself to look away. Looking at her would do him no good.
“I’ve got to go into the office,” he told her.
She frowned. “What about Charlie?”
“You’re going to have to handle that. He’s going to be dropped off in a couple of hours.”
“Eli—”
“It won’t be a problem, will it?”
“No, of course it’s not a problem,” she said. “That’s my job. But I thought we were going to have breakfast together. What’s changed?”
“Something came up with a client of mine.” An ex -client, he thought with a bitter pang. It was going to be a big deal, trying to cope with the loss of Harrison Duncan. They had been one of his biggest clients, representing millions of dollars in profit for the company. “We’re going to need all hands on deck.”
“I suppose you’d better go, then,” Maddie agreed, and Eli could tell that she was trying to be accommodating. “Will you be back for dinner tonight?”
“I wouldn’t count on that, no.”
“All right. Don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure everything is taken care of, and I suppose I’ll just… see you late tonight?”
Eli nodded.
It killed him not to be able to offer her anything more than that, especially after the night the two of them had just spent together. She deserved something more. But he had always known that to get too deeply involved here would be a mistake. He’d allowed himself to forget that to his own cost. Until he was able to right the ship professionally, he was going to have to pull way back on the indulging he had been doing in his personal life.
Whatever this thing was with Maddie — whatever potential it might have had — it was just going to have to end now. There was nothing more to be said about it.
He dressed quickly and left the room, his thoughts already returning to Harrison Duncan, trying to figure out if there was anything he could do to save the contract. Jack Harrison had seemed determined to go. If he really was going to lose them, he would have to think of some way to recoup the losses. The one thing he knew he couldn’t do was to allow the people who worked for him to suffer financially because he had taken his eye off the ball.
That was the reason all of this was happening, after all.
If he hadn’t let his head be turned by Maddie Foster, everything would still be fine.