Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (31 page)

The
inanity of it all! A dull fury burned in the embers of Eliot
’s
heart. To be forced back into a game of prestige and reputation! And then for
Patterson to threaten his fellowship—

A bluff
. The
same game lay at the heart of all organizations, academia most of all. Eliot
strode past the reception area, pushing his way out the door and past a group
of tittering students. They still believed in the purity of academics, in the
chase of knowledge above all else. He hoped that they wouldn’t learn the truth
until much later, until they had already done something significant.

Dr. Patterson was more right
than even he knew. Eliot’s work had stalled. True, his initial forays into the
experimental field of projective groups had broken new ground. When he was only
a kid of twenty, he had published paper after paper on projective algorithms
without breaking a sweat, and if he never published again he would still be
remembered as having made significant contributions to the field of mathematics.
Now, though, stuck on a monumental problem, Eliot felt himself losing hope.

The snow fell, and he had
forgotten his gloves. He sat down on the bench in front of the library.
It was cold outside, colder than he had ever known it to be in California. The
soft, drifting snowflakes reminded him of his home, of Hungary. Of walking by
the Danube in the springtime as the surface of the water crystallized at the
edges, the delicate floes of ice breaking off from the riverbank and floating
down slowly in the current.

He had come to America to
escape, but there was no escaping his memories. As his eyes glazed over, the
sounds of the Budapest streets filled his ears. He clasped his hands between
his legs and felt her hand in his as they walked alongside the river. And as
the snowflakes tumbled one by one at his feet, he heard her laughing next to
him.

Clare, my Clare
.

His heart rewound the years and
played them back. Every memory ached with painful longing alongside the beauty.
The summer picnics, the winters by the fireplace, all tinted red and dark and
lonely.

A snowflake landed on his nose,
and he was back on his estate with her, playing in the bright cold morning. She
had made him a snow angel, and the back of her coat was dusted white with snow,
her hair tinged with the drops of it that had already melted. He heard her
voice ringing from far away.

“Eliot! Come make angels
with me!”

He turned to see her falling
backwards, her arms spread out to either side, her face beaming, reflecting the
sunshine. She fell into the snowdrift, her arms and legs already sweeping the
ground into the winged shape. He walked over and she smiled up at him from the
ground.

“You try now,” she said.

He turned and closed his eyes,
letting himself fall backwards, but as he fell he felt his stomach rise in his
throat, and a cloud moved over the sun. His breath emptied from his chest as he
hit the ground, and for a moment he felt as though he would die from
suffocation—there was no air in the world.

“Eliot!” He heard the cry again,
the piercing echo of her voice turned frightened. He opened his eyes and turned
to reach out to her, but she was gone. The only trace of her left was the thin
marking of the angel she had made, already filling with soft drifts of snow.

Eliot shook his head and came
back to the present. This was California. A chill ran down his spine, but it
was not due to the cold.

Ten years ago. Ten years to the
day.

Not for the first time, he
thought of what would happen if his life were to end right now. He had nothing
to show for the past decade but an endless muddle of pages of mathematical work
in the wastebasket. Useless, really. The ghost of his wife haunted him in
dreams and reality both. No matter where he looked, Clare was there. Hiding in
the crowds, in the face of the women he passed on the sidewalk. He shut himself
up and hid, because it was easier than seeing her face everywhere.

He felt numb. Always there had
been something to sustain him, a new problem in mathematics or the touch of his
lovely Clare’s hand. Now… he had shut himself up in his work and produced
nothing. He had closed off his heart and loved nothing. A veil had fallen over
his world, had crept over his vision slowly, until he could not see at all
except through a haze. Bit by bit, obligations had replaced his desires and he
had ceased, finally, to want anything. Air went in and out of his lungs, but he
did not breathe.

Eliot did not know how long he
had been sitting on that bench when he looked up and saw a woman standing in
front of him, a coffee in her outstretched hand.

Valentina
?
That wasn’t my name. Why had I lied? I rushed up the stairs to the second
floor, the magic of the past few minutes evaporating quickly in the warm
crowded air of the library. Everything felt too strange for words, and I
couldn’t get Eliot’s face out of my mind. That scar, and those eyes…

My study group sat at a long oak
table near the back side of the room, by the windows. I could spot Quentin
’s
bright red hair a mile away, and he gestured wildly all around him as he talked.
Mark sat across from him, the calm bespectacled geek. Together, we made up the
nerdiest group of math majors on campus, but Mark and I took solace that no
matter how bad it got, we could never outnerd Quentin. Outside, the snow fell
against the glass, the only indication that this night was anything but normal.

“Brynn!” Mark waved at me,
shaking his black hair out of his eyes. “You’re late!”

What’s up, Brynn?” Quentin gave
a half-nod my way.

“Sorry,” I said, dumping my
backpack onto the table. Pages of notebook paper scattered across the hard
polished surface and one of them fluttered against the candle in the middle of
the table. I grabbed the paper quickly before remembering that the flicker of
light was electric. Silly me. “I… um, I was practicing down at the music hall.”

Again a lie. I never lied. But
something in me wanted to keep the handsome man in the black coat a secret.
Something special. Just for me.

“Oh cool, I didn’t see you
there,” Mark said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Did you hear they might
open up the midnight piano room on Sunday?”

“Really?” I asked.

“The what?” Quentin sounded
annoyed. “Pianos? Really, people? Can we please get back to these
proofs?” He had three pages of scrawled notes in front of him and looked as
though he wanted to set the whole thing on fire.

“You’d like this,” Mark said,
ignoring his protests. “It’s a ghost story.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,”
Quentin said dryly. “Unless it’s the ghost of Euclid haunting this problem
set.”

“That bad?” I said, not looking
forward to the work.

“It’s the hardest problem set
we’ve done all year.”

“No, but really. There’s a ghost
in the practice hall,” Mark insisted, his eyes bright behind his glasses.
“You’ve heard the story, right Brynn?”

“Sure,” I said. My eyes quickly scanned
the problem set, which did indeed look menacing. “The midnight piano ghost.”

“See? Everybody who plays has
heard of it.”

“The music department has a
ghost? No fucking way.” Quentin’s voice was tinged with curiosity. “Tell me.”

Mark pulled the candle across
the table and bent down so that the electric flame illuminated him from under
his chin, reflecting in his dark eyes. When he spoke, he tried to sound eerie,
but his somewhat-nasal voice spoiled the effect.

“There’s a room in the back of
the practice hall that’s always been locked. Inside is a really old Bosendorfer
piano.”

“Not just any Bosendorfer. A
Grand Imperial Bosendorfer. Eight octaves,” I added.

“Thanks for the lesson, music
nerd,” Quentin said. “What about the ghost?”

“Nobody’s ever seen it,” Mark
said, his voice lowering. “But late at night, really late at night…”

“Midnight, if you want to be
exact,” I interjected.

“Just when the clock strikes
midnight,” Mark continued, “if you listen, you can hear the ghost playing in
that locked room.”

Quentin’s eyes widened.

“No fucking way.”

“Way,” Mark said.

“So which problem are you guys
working on?” I said. I’d heard this tale too many times to be impressed.
Quentin shoved the book my way, his finger pressed to the second practice
section.

“Why won’t they open the ghost
room up?” Quentin asked, still riveted by Mark’s story. Of course, it
was
just a story, no matter how many times the music majors repeated it in hushed
tones. Nobody believed that there was actually a ghost in the old locked room. Some
prankster with a remote control playing a radio through the air ducts, more
like.

“Some rich philanthropist guy
gifted the piano to the school,” Mark said, shoving the candle back to the
center of the table. “I guess they don’t want anyone messing it up, so they
don’t let anyone use it.”

“Makes sense,” Quentin said,
rolling his eyes. “Music people.”

“But Dr. Stetson said they might
be opening it up Sunday for a special showing to music majors,” Mark said.

“So much for us second-class
citizens.” I lifted my eyes away from my textbook and joined Mark in an
exaggerated shrug. The music majors always looked down their nose at the math
and science kids who came to the practice halls to play just for fun.

“You couldn’t go anyway,
dummies,” Quentin said. “We have that thing on Sunday.”

“What thing?” Mark said.

“The internship Budapest thing.
The one with all the tests and shit.”

“That’s Sunday?”

“I’ve only reminded you every
day for the past week,” Quentin said.

“Oh, shit,” I said. With all the
panic over upcoming exams, I had forgotten what day it was. “Sunday?” My job
had me scheduled all afternoon.

“Look at this,” Quentin said,
leaning back in his chair and balancing on only two legs while he spread his
arms out, gesturing toward me and Mark. “The creme de la fucking creme, and
they forget the most basic of shit. This is the test of the year, assholes.”

“I didn’t forget,” Mark said. “I
just forgot the day.”

“You there, Brynn?” Quentin
snapped his finger in front of my nose.

My attention returned to the
table.

“Yeah,” I said. “I have to get
someone to cover my shift.”

“Get Shannon to do it.” Mark
shrugged. “She’ll do it if you tell her what it’s for.”

“Sure, get Shannon to do it.”
Quentin said, flipping a textbook page. “Can we get on with this problem set
already?”

“Sure, how did you get that
number nine was an equivalence relation?”

Quentin let his chair fall
forward to the ground with a loud crack. Two students at the other end of the
library perked their heads up like meerkats at the sound, but Mark and Quentin
were already bent over, hot in debate about whether or not the relation in
number nine had the symmetric property.

After we had finished a couple
of problems, Mark turned to me and spoke softly. “You better ask your roommate
soon if you want her to cover your shift. This is important to you, right?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed the lump in
my throat. I didn’t want to talk about it here. Not in front of Quentin. Mark
only knew my secret because of an accidental slip of the tongue, and I wasn’t
about to let Quentin see my pain, too.

“Hey, did you see the
weather for tomorrow?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

“We heard on the radio that it
might snow for another three days,” Quentin said. “Do you know what that
idiot newscaster said about it snowing today? ‘
What are the chances?
’
she said. ‘
What are the chances
?’ I hate it when non-math people talk
about probability. “

“What are the chances of it
snowing today?” Mark said.

“The chances are one
hundred percent,” Quentin said. “Do you know how I know?”

“Because you know
everything
,”
I said, placing my chin on top of my folded hands.

“Because it
is
snowing,” Quentin said. “That’s how I know.”

“But… it could’ve not
snowed,” I said.

“Wrong.” Quentin
wasn’t one to mince words.

“Wait. Is this that thing
with the destiny and the quantum physics you’ve been going on about all
week?” Mark said. He waved one hand in front of his face. “Wait.
Brynn. Don’t get him started.”

“Every particle in the
universe has led us up to this point,” Quentin said. “Every quark of every
atom of every molecule has led us here.”

“Great. Now you got him
started.”

“Every single snowflake
falling outside of this window was created due to the interaction of millions
and millions of particles over billions and billions of years. Because it is
falling, it was meant to fall. There was no other way for it to happen.”

Mark leaned back in his chair
and put his hands on top of his head. “Thanks, philosopher king. See what
I told you, Brynn? This is worse than that one month he decided to go
vegetarian.”

“I
did
go vegetarian, you
idiot. I’m
still
vegetarian.”

“So there’s no such thing
as probability?” I asked. “Like, if everything has to happen in a
particular way, then everything that happens has one hundred percent
probability.”

“Exactly,” Quentin
said. “Well, no. If you have perfect initial conditions, then you can
theoretically figure out what will happen in the next step of the
universe.”

“Perfect initial conditions.”

“So everything has to
happen in a certain way,” Mark said. “Isn’t that predetermination?
Like, God?”

“There is no God.”
Quentin said. “It’s just physics.”

I let my head fall forward onto
the table in mock relief. “Whew! Glad that’s settled. Guess we can do some
of this homework now.”

“What do you think, Brynn?” Mark
asked, not letting the subject drop. “God or physics? Or free will?”

“Or ghosts,” Quentin said.
“Don’t forget ghosts.”

“I am one hundred percent
indifferent to matters of fate,” I said, picking up my pen. “Sorry to bring it
up. Let’s do these homework problems.”

“I bet you think it’s fate,”
Quentin said, but turned to the next question along with me.

If fate was guiding my life,
it was doing a piss poor job of it
, I thought. And although on
the surface I agreed with Quentin, I had to think that there was something else
to the way the universe worked. I couldn’t accept the fact that my mother’s
death had sentenced me to such a horrible fate just by chance. If randomness
had broken my life, how could I hope to put together the pieces myself? I had
to believe in some kind of free will, or at least a rational destiny, that
would give some meaning to the darkness that had crept into my world.

Three hours later, we had
untangled most of the thorniest questions in the homework set. Question nine
hung between us unanswered, with Mark and Quentin still arguing over symmetry
on a subtle point in the relation’s definition. The caffeine had long since
disappeared from my system, and I covered my mouth in a deep yawn.

“Ok, guys,” Quentin said,
closing his book with a decisive thud. “See you all tomorrow at the auditorium,
where I will beat every single one of you motherfuckers out for that
internship.”

Mark guffawed. “You wish,” he
said.

“See you guys later.” I waved to
Quentin who just held his hand up in farewell as he hurried down the stairs.

“Want me to walk you back to
your apartment?” Mark said. I was tempted—it was late, after all—but he had
already packed up and all of my papers still lay spread out in front of me.
Also, I felt like being alone for a while.

“Nah,” I said. “Gotta check out
a book before I go. See you later!”

“Okay,” Mark said, a half-smile
dimpling his face. “See you!”

I stood up and stretched,
looking through the windows overlooking the lawn below. I half-expected to see
the man standing there below, staring up at me. Eliot.

He wasn’t there. A few drunken
undergraduates stumbled across the snow-crusted grass, clothed in overly skimpy
miniskirts and Ugg boots. Nobody in California knew how to dress for the cold.
My eyes focused on the snowflakes stuck to the window pane. It was cold. I
should go home. The internship thing was Sunday, and I had been running on a
sleep deficit for far too long.

This is important to you,
right?

Mark’s words came back to me as
I stared out the window, and the snowflakes blurred into a cottony white as
tears filled my eyes. All of the junior-level math majors vied for the
internship each year, but for me this prize was more personal. Sure, the free
travel was tempting, and the semester abroad at the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences would brighten my resume with prestige. But that wasn’t the main
reason I wanted to win the internship prize, not by far.