Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (32 page)

CHAPTER THREE

“The pleasure we obtain from
music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but
unconscious arithmetic.” - Liebniz

I woke up in darkness. The clock
at the side of the bed glowed green: 11:41. I rolled out of bed, pulled on some
warm clothes sleepily, and tiptoed down the hall.

Four times already this week I’d
woken like this in the middle of the night, not being able to go back to sleep
until I’d taken a long walk. I’d read once about how humans used to wake up all
the time, just like this, before the industrial age. Benjamin Franklin had
written about it—the odd hours between first and second sleep where people
would wake up and read, pray, or make love.

Me? I took walks. Most of the
time I would walk to campus, just a few blocks from our apartment. At night the
sidewalks were empty and the buildings loomed like ghosts over my head.
Everything seemed older then, bigger. I would walk, think about math, and then
I would be back in my bed, ready to slumber at two or three in the morning.

I tugged on my boots and slid my
keys into my pocket, closing the door behind me as quietly as I could. Shannon
had agreed to cover for me, and I didn’t want to wake her up the night before
she worked my shift. Hurrying down the stairs, I greeted the night as a friend,
not even minding the rush of cold air and the soft sprinkling of snow. Perhaps
it was my sleepiness, but I didn’t feel as cold during my night walks as I did
during the day, even though the temperature dropped ten degrees or so.

Passing briskly through the
stone archways onto the campus, I let my mind wander to the internship
test I would be taking tomorrow. Tomorrow, or today? I didn’t know the
time. Six hours of the hardest math problems, or so I’d heard. I wondered if I
would be up to the task.

From somewhere in the distance I
heard a bell ring out, and my mind jolted back to the present. I halted in my
tracks, not sure where on campus my feet had taken me. The snow had stopped
falling, and everything seemed unnaturally hushed. No whisper of cars on the
neighboring streets, no rustle of night birds in the eaves of the buildings.
Silence wrapped the world in a cradling hold.

I blinked hard and looked up to
see the music building in front of me. My body had brought me here
unconsciously and now something urged me to go inside, to get out of the night.
I looked around, my heart beating quickly as though expecting some predator to
jump out of the shadows toward me, but nothing moved. I climbed the stone steps
of the building slowly, careful not to slip on the icy granite.

Security always locked the doors
for the night, but as I reached for the brass handle I knew that this one would
be open. Indeed, the oak door swung outward, a gust of warm air escaping like
smoke into the chilly night. I turned back to survey the deserted campus, and
again felt a thrill of fear, as though some monster watched me as I moved. A
wolf, maybe, though I knew there were no wolves here. Still, I pulled the door
closed behind me and locked the bolt myself, shutting out the night.

One of the oldest on campus, the
music building boasted an ornate interior, deep carvings in every square inch
of the oak walls and thick red carpet lining the floors. My boots sank into the
newly-vacuumed carpeting, leaving dark prints behind. The yellow lights above
shone dimly through the hallway as I walked on, pushing through a high swinging
oak door into the practice halls. Here the lights were dimmed, almost entirely
off, and I moved through the darkness, letting one hand trail along the wall to
guide me forward.

Then I heard something that
stopped me in my steps. Soft music drifted down the hall, muted by the carpet.
A piano.

For a moment, I thought someone
might just be practicing late at night, an overzealous music major anxious to
impress or a chemistry student embarrassed by her amateur playing. But as I
moved tentatively down the hall, I could tell that it wasn’t an amateur at the
keys. All of the normal practice rooms stood open, their doorways black and
empty. The only closed door lay at the very back of the practice hall, and
light shone brightly from the insulated glass panel above the door. The piano
behind that door was the Bosendorfer.

The midnight piano.

Moving closer, I could hear the
notes more distinctly. I recognized the song as a piece by Erik Satie, one of
the Gymnopedies. The melody tiptoed along the higher register, a lonely, slow
song full of simple repetition. The quarter notes came hesitantly, carefully,
building louder as the song continued, but still restrained. The walls,
designed to muffle the sound of studious beauty, made the music sound as
distant as though it came from another country, far, far away.

Was someone playing a prank on
me? Perhaps it was a recording. I pressed my ear to the door and listened.

The music eased into the final
chords, the pause between them lingering a moment too long, and then only
silence remained. I still had my ear pressed to the door when it opened,
sending me tumbling forward into the arms of the midnight piano ghost.

I shrieked as I fell forward.
But the arms that caught me were strong and altogether more corporeal than any
spectre. I looked up into piercing blue eyes, and gasped as I saw who had been
playing the Bosendorfer.

“Valentina. What a pleasant
surprise.” Eliot smiled as he helped me find my balance again. His hands
supported me easily, and I didn’t want him to let go.

“You’re not a ghost.” I said the
first thing I could think of, but I guess Eliot wasn’t familiar with the
legend.

“A ghost?” His smile touched his
eyes with sincerity. “Not quite.”

“Sorry. I, um, I just— I
heard you playing— I didn’t mean—”

“You were eavesdropping,” he
said.

I blushed. “Yeah, I guess I
was.”

“I was thinking that I might
enjoy some company just now,” Eliot said. “How lucky for you to be on the other
side of the door.” He motioned me into the room, apparently unfazed by my
eavesdropping. He seemed taller than before, over six feet easily, but he moved
with a grace that belied his massive stature.

Eliot slid onto the piano bench
and patted the wood next to him, inviting me closer.

“Come, sit. You can tell me what
I’m doing wrong,” he said. He began to play the first part of the piece again.
I had played the song before—a classic, easy enough to learn but not easy to
play well. Satie had written notes to sound dissonant before resolving into
harmony, and I had always struggled to get the phrasing correct.

Not Eliot. His fingers glided
across the keys effortlessly, and his hair hung forward, dark curls resting on
his forehead, the scar running down the side of his cheek more visible now in
the light. I sat beside him on the edge of the piano bench, afraid to let
myself get too close. Afraid of my own desires. Without his wool coat and hat
he looked like a different man than the one I had met sitting on the bench. His
white buttoned shirt and crisp pants gave him an air of authority, and as he
played I let my gaze drift over his profile. He stopped on a difficult passage
in the second coda and turned to me, catching my eyes resting on his scar.

“It’s from a car accident,” he
said, a note of bitterness in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I
just—”

“It’s alright,” he said, although
he sounded more defensive, on edge. His fingers reached out to the sheet music,
marking the notes as he spoke. “The accident was my fault. It’s a good
reminder.”

“A reminder?”

“To be careful,” he said, with a
finality that ended that part of the conversation. He turned back to the music.

“This sounds wrong,” he said,
his fingers running across the keys again in irritation. “What is wrong? I am
no musician.”

“The right hand is too heavy,” I
said before I could stop myself. But he gave me his full attention.

“Too heavy?”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t criticize. I
can’t even play it as well as you.” But I knew the song, and I knew that the
melody should be lighter there.

“Try,” he said. “I’ll do the
left, you do the right.”

I had played it that way before.
He couldn’t know, but that was how I had learned the Gymnopedies, all of them.
I couldn’t protest against his commanding tone, so I scooted over on the bench,
and tentatively put my right hand on the keys.

“From the beginning, yes?” He
breathed in expressively, his chest rising, and we fell down into the first
notes together.

At first my fingers hesitated
too much, then pressed down too sharply. The Bosendorfer startled me with the
bright action of its keys, so unlike the practice pianos I was familiar with.
The melody burst forth, too loud by a factor of ten. I started at the sound.
Easy to have a heavy hand on this piano.

Eliot smiled gently over at me,
but continued to play. I quickly collected myself and rejoined him, relaxing my
finger muscles and applying a lighter touch to the melody. He moved from chord
to chord and I moved with him, learning his rhythm as he learned mine.

By the last measure of the first
page we played in tight synchrony, and I lost myself in the song. I wasn’t in
the midnight piano room any longer. I was young, seven years old, and I could
hear my mother humming the melody in my ear as she played the bottom chords,
the extended octaves too much of a reach for my small hands.

I joined him in the last chord
softly, the sound trailing off into the muffled walls of the room.

“Who taught you to play?”

“My mother.”

“Is she a musician?
Professionally, I mean? You have a talent for it.”

“She’s— she was a
musician. She traveled around and played for special events. Weddings,
conferences.” My eyes watered at the thought of her saying goodbye to me before
leaving.

“She is gone now?”

“Yes,” I said. “She died in
Hungary when I was young.” A pang of sorrow shot through my heart as it always
did when I spoke of her, but nothing else.

At these words Eliot raised his
eyebrows.

“I’m sorry.” He put his hand on
mine, and again I felt the inescapable thrill of desire run through me. When he
withdrew his hand, I had to stop myself from reaching out. He looked back at
the music sheets on the piano. He put his hand out and began to play the Satie
again, with a lighter touch. The first chords struck at my heart now that I
heard them clearly: so simple, so elegant.

“Hungary is my homeland,” he
said, his voice distant.

“I thought so,” I nodded. “You
sound kind of like my grandmother. Your accent.”

“I have an accent?” He raised
his eyebrows in mock surprise, his fingers continuing into the first slow
crescendo. “Have you been to Hungary?”

“No,” I said. “I’d like to. Her
whole family was from there. She always told me it was beautiful.”

“And your father?” The first low
dissonant notes came in from the bottom.

“He’s in Hollywood with his new
wife. They’re very famous.” I couldn’t help but frown, tensing as I thought
about the other side of my family, and for a few moments Eliot was silent,
letting the music flow from his hands. The softness of the notes relaxed me.

“Fame is not always nice,” he
said finally, launching into the second part of the melody.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said,
although it did. “I live with my grandmother. I’m nobody to him. Or to anyone.”
The bitterness in my voice surprised even me.

Eliot stopped playing in the
middle of a measure, and silence spilled across the distance between us. He
took a deep breath before speaking, his words tracing a slow tempo in the air.

“You are a mathematician,” he
said. “And a musician.”

“I’m not anything,” I said. “I’m
just—”
I’m just Brynn.
I cut the words off quickly, frightened
suddenly that I might slip and give away my real name. “I’m normal. Not really
great at music or math.”

Eliot laughed softly and began
to play again. The chords sounded lighter this time around.

“You have years to become
great,” he said, letting the space draw out between notes. “No need to rush.
See how badly I play? And I’m even worse at math.” A sparkle of teasing
glimmered in his eye, but I could not tell if he was teasing me or himself.

“Most people are bad at math,” I
said.

“True. So perhaps we have a long
way to go before we are satisfied. We have plenty of time.” His eyes caught
mine, and the second meaning behind his words made my breath catch in my
throat. I coughed and looked up at the piano score, pretending to follow along
with the notes. He played the second coda perfectly, hitting the exact right
balance between lightness and emotion. I closed my eyes for the final two
chords, letting my heart swell as they resolved upward and faded into the air.

“Valentina.”

The brief pause before my look
of recognition must have given me away, but he seemed not to notice. He was
lost in himself.