Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (33 page)

“Yes?”

His eyes lowered, unwilling to
meet mine, and his fingertips ran along the ivory keys slowly, tentatively.

“You play beautifully.”

He reached into his pocket and
pulled out a small brass key. He handed it to me, turning his head up, and my
lips parted when he pressed his palm on top of mine. His eyes were fierce,
demanding, as though he had made up his mind about something.

“What’s this?”

“The key to this room. So you
can become great a bit more quickly.” He smiled, his hand still on top of mine.
“I’ll let the music professor know you’re allowed to play.”

“I—I don’t know what to
say.” It was the most fabulous gift I’d ever received. I thought of how
all the music majors would gape as I walked by them to the midnight piano room.
How I would sit down at the keys, the deep, rich tones of the Bosendorfer
flowing from my fingertips. Mine!

“Say you’ll practice this piece.
I’ll leave it for you. You have a talent for the melody.”

“Thank you.” My voice was a
whisper as I turned the key in my hand. I could not understand why he treated
me so kindly. He brought one finger up under my chin, tilting my head up to
meet his gaze. His touch weakened every muscle in my body.

“Promise me you’ll keep
playing.”

“Of course.” At that moment, I
would have done anything he asked. I wondered why I trusted him. Perhaps it was
because he trusted me. Even though I had lied to him. In that instant, I wanted
to take it back, to tell him my real name, but I did not know how.

“It’s easy for mathematicians to
lose touch with the world around them. Too easy.” He smiled, but there was a
sadness in his eyes.

“I’ll practice a lot. I love the
Gymnopedies,” I said. And now I had an excuse to learn them.

Eliot reached over and closed my
hand around the key, his long fingers covering mine. My heart beat fast as he
brought both of our hands up to his bent head. His lips pressed against my
knuckles and I felt the heat radiate from my fingers through my entire being as
he kissed my hand. An emotion I could not let myself feel pooled inside of me,
and I ached with it. Stranger still, I felt his desire through his hot lips on
my fingers, even as he released them.

“The Gymnopedies—they’re not
hard to get right, just hard to get beautiful. The spaces in between the
notes…”

He meant something more than the
music, I could tell. I clasped the key in my hand tightly.

“May I take you out for a
coffee?” he asked. “Let me repay your generosity.”

“Now?” I wanted to go with him,
would have gone with him, but it was so late, and the test for the internship
prize loomed in my mind.

He shrugged. “Whenever you
wish.”

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Maybe some
other time. It’s just that I have a test tomorrow.”

“On a Sunday?” He raised his
eyebrows.

“It’s a special thing, for some
internship.” I saw a strange look pass over his eyes, but it was gone before I
could name it. He rested his hands on his lap and looked back at the sheet
music.

“Good night, then,” he said,
nodding slightly in my direction. The room felt colder, his voice flat, and I
wondered if he had changed his mind about me. Maybe he thought I was lying
about the test. I paused before turning to leave.

“Good night.” I left him there,
sitting alone at the piano. As I walked through the music hall, I could hear
the Satie floating through the air at my back, the ghostly notes finding their
way to me in the darkness.

The
next day I met Mark in front of the auditorium, the events of the previous
night still playing through my mind like a vivid dream. I fingered the small
brass key in my pocket. Maye it would bring me good luck on the test. Above us
in the sky, gray clouds gathered menacingly, and the wind whipped through the
campus, tossing the treetops from one side to the other. With my red hoodie
pulled tight over my dark hair, I took the steps two at a time on my way up.

“Ready?” Mark stood on the steps
under the awning, waiting for me.

“I’m never ready for these
things.” Even after years of being at the top of my class, my stomach still
turned over at the thought of being tested. Of being judged, and found wanting.
Right now every nerve in my body stood on high alert.

“Don’t worry, you’ll do fine.”

“Where’s Quentin?” A few
students filed into the auditorium, but Quentin was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s already inside. Wanted to
get there early and sit in front. His roommate said the guy who won last year
sat in front.”

“So he’s trying to set up the
perfect initial conditions.” I rolled my eyes and Mark laughed.

I pushed my hood back from my
head as we entered the building. Inside, a hundred students milled around the
auditorium. Quentin waved to us from the front of the auditorium, and we walked
toward him. Nobody else wanted to sit in the very front, it seemed, and Mark
and I slid into the row right behind Quentin. Every other seat had the desk
extended with a tablet resting on it.

“Check it out,” Quentin said.
“Tablets like in the major hall lectures. Think they’re going to be watching us
while we do the problems on these? My roommate didn’t say anything about
working on a screen.” The tablets alternated on every other desk, so Mark sat
down two seats over from me. He poked at the tablet, but the screen was locked.

“Wow,” I said, scanning the
room. “I didn’t know we had this many math majors in our class.” I didn’t
recognize half of the people there.

“There’s some physics and
engineering people, looks like,” Mark said.

“Computer science too,” Quentin
said. “Doesn’t matter. All of the past winners have been math majors.”

“Guess everyone wants a shot,” I
said. My hopes withered. It seemed impossible that I could beat out all of
these people for the prize. Even if I wanted it the most out of anybody there.

“I wonder what the questions
will be.” Mark had given up on the tablet and leaned back in his chair. He
looked so relaxed, like he was laying out on the library lawn in the summertime
instead of waiting for the most important test of the year to start.

“Rick said that it was mostly
number theory and combinatorics last year,” Quentin said, his arm draped over
the back of his seat. “Starts easy, gets hard. Super hard. And the guy running
it is a hardass. Kicked one person out last year before the test even started
for asking if he could use a calculator.”

“No calculators?” I had mine in
my jacket pocket.

“I don’t think we’ll need them
anyway. The questions are mostly proof stuff. That’s what Rick said.” Quentin
kept talking, the nervous energy coming out in his voice. “Hey, it’s nine
already. Wonder where the proctor is? I wonder if he’s really that much of a
jerk.”

“Good luck,” Mark said to me. He
held out his hand toward me jokingly for a handshake over the empty seat
between us. I shook it, and noticed a curious expression on his face. Like he
wanted to beat me, but he also wanted me to win. He knew that for me, the
stakes were high.

“Good luck.”

I sat, tension plucking my nerves,
in the moment just before something good happens, where the promise of what
could be meets the worry of what might not. Like the day you go to a new
school, or the seconds backstage before you walk out and say the opening line
that you’ve been practicing for months and months. Like the moment when you
first open a book, uncertain of whether or not you’ll enjoy it. You decide to
read the first page, and word by word it draws you in until you’ve reached the
end of the first chapter without realizing it, then the second. Could the rest
of the story live up to the promise? You’d have to wait and see.

“Oh, there he is,” Quentin said.
“Wow, he does look like a hardass.” I turned to see the man walking into the
auditorium and my heart stopped.

CHAPTER FOUR

Eliot
. He
held a tablet loosely in his hand as he walked down the aisle to the front of
the auditorium. I sunk down in my seat, my throat suddenly seized up in terror.

“Don’t worry,” Mark whispered
over to me. He mistook my reaction for fear of a different kind. “You’ll do
fine.”

“Good morning,” Eliot said, his
voice booming through the auditorium. Most of my professors needed a microphone
to lecture in this hall, but his voice carried across all of the rows without
any problem. Standing in the front of the room, he seemed much taller than
before, more menacing. Everybody was instantly silent.

“My name is Dr. Herceg and I
will be administering the test for the internship prize. Welcome.”

As his gaze scanned the
audience, I bowed my head. Blood rushed to my face and I scrunched down even
more, trying to use Quentin to block myself from view. Eliot was still talking,
but his voice seemed to come from far away and there was a buzzing in my ears.
I couldn’t pay attention.

Him! Eliot! It was his
internship! The pieces clicked into place just like a mathematical identity. Of
course. Why hadn’t I realized earlier? His accent. The piano. But more
importantly,
what do I do now
?

I tuned back in. “You will be
given the problems one by one. If you finish a problem early, continue to solve
it in as many different ways as possible. I will be able to see all student
work from here, anonymously.” He tapped the tablet in front of him. Quentin
glanced back at Mark and raised his eyebrow.

“If I do not like what I see,
you will be dismissed.” He held up his tablet, a red box reading
DISMISSED
on the top of the screen. His shirt was rumpled, his eyes red, and I wondered
how late he had stayed at the piano. Echoes of the Satie lilted through my mind
as he spoke. “If you are incorrect, I will dismiss you. If you are slow, I will
dismiss you. If you are sloppy, unorganized, or uncreative in your work, I will
dismiss you. Are there any questions?”

His eyes scanned the room, and
before I could duck behind Quentin again, he saw me. I swallowed hard. He
caught himself, doing a second take upon seeing me, then turned back to the
other students.

“No? Then we will begin.” He
moved back to the blackboard behind him and wrote the problem on the board,
then read it to us out loud, the problem appearing on the top of our tablet
screens. “Write all partitions of the number 13. Begin.”

My mind flashed back to my first
discrete math class. I had always been good at math, but it was discrete that
made me realize I loved it more than anything. And partitions were easy—just
different ways of writing numbers as sums. Thirteen could be written as 10+3,
or 5+6+2, or thirteen ones all added together.

I took a deep breath. The
students around me scribbled furiously on their tablets, and I was worried about
going too slow, but I was also worried about being sloppy and missing a
partition. And to top it all off, I was worried about Eliot figuring out who I
really was. I thought we would have to register at the beginning of the test,
but he’d said it was anonymous—would he ask for our names at the end? Did he
already know the student list somehow? Did he already know I had lied to him?
Take
it easy, Brynn. Step by step.

There were so many partitions.
Start with the basic ones. 13. 12+1. 11+2. 11+1+1. I settled into an easy
rhythm, breaking up the numbers in order and writing them down in separate
columns. Not so bad, once I got everything organized. 10+3. 10+2+1. 10+1+1+1. I
heard a chair behind me creak as a student got up. Dismissed already? Well, the
physics majors probably didn’t even know what a partition was. I felt better,
more certain, and I kept on working steadily. 9+4. 9+3+1. I had gotten down to
the line of fives when a voice broke my concentration.

“Next question.” Eliot’s voice
startled me. He erased the question from the blackboard and began to write
another. My tablet screen blanked out the question as well as all of my work,
and the second question appeared.

“What if we aren’t finished
yet?” a student from a few rows back called out.

“You’re still here, aren’t you?”
Eliot said. “Then you’re finished. Next question.” He drew a circle on the
board and began to sketch out chords between the points on the circle. “Let M
be the midpoint of the chord PQ…”

I knew this proof. The butterfly
theorem. The chords sketched out drew the shape of a butterfly in the circle. I
quickly wrote out the proof, adding in the missing perpendiculars. I finished
in only a few minutes and looked around the auditorium, surprised at what I
saw. Already a third of the room had been eliminated. I leaned back in my chair
but then remembered what he had said. We were being tested on creativity, and
my proof was the most straightforward version. I panicked and went back to the
problem. There must be another way to do it. I scrambled to think of another
proof, maybe one based on angles. Maybe projecting the circle, or maybe
thinking of it as a conic section…

Math was wonderful for me. It
was an escape from the world which was messy and full of vague ambiguities a
frightening muddle, into a new world of perfection. A world of lines which had
no end, and points which were infinitely small, of curves that reached out
always further and further into the plane, functions that repeated themselves
in undulating waves which had no beginning and no end.

It was only in this clean,
perfect space that I felt comfortable playing. In my imagination I could drift
off into daydreams, and in math I could construct the realities that I wanted
to live in. I worked for twenty more minutes until Eliot called time, but
couldn’t finish a second proof.

“Next question.” I sighed as my
tablet blanked out again. I must be doing okay, but this test stressed me out
more than any other I’d ever taken.

The next question was even
harder, involving some partial differential equations that I had just learned.
I worked on it without success for a half hour, but when time was called I
wasn’t even close to an answer. I gulped, waiting for the red
DISMISSED
bar to appear on my screen, but it never did. Eliot wrote the next problem on
the board and we continued working on our tablets. Students left the auditorium
throughout, a stream of dismissals at the beginning of every problem that
trickled down as time went on.

Eliot sat quietly at the large
desk in the front of the room, watching us through his tablet. Watching
me
.
I stole quick glances up at him every so often, convinced that his eyes were on
my
screen. He wiped at his eyes with the sleeves of his rumpled shirt,
occasionally frowning. With so many other students in the room, it was
impossible to tell whose work he was following, but my imagination made me feel
like I could tell. Some hidden sense inside of me activated and I
knew
that he was watching over me.

The problems became more and
more impossible and I became more and more desperate, writing down any
solutions I could think of, regardless of whether or not they were elegant or
creative or hell, even right. I fell into the work with the kind of
determination a marathon runner uses in the last mile of the race, throwing my
all into a last desperate effort not to be eliminated.

“Stop.” Eliot’s voice broke my
focus and I leaned back into my chair and closed my eyes, sighing deeply.

“Congratulations,” he said. He
looked straight at me and I felt my skin burn red. Turning away, I saw that
only three other students remained in the auditorium: Quentin, Mark, and one
guy I thought I remembered from a combinatorics class. Quentin turned around to
glance back at Mark and me, his eyes wide with pleasure.
Hell yeah!

Eliot said something about
interviews, and called Mark first. Mark crossed by me and gave my shoulder a
squeeze, his face beaming with pleasure. We had done it! I smiled back at him
and gave him a quick thumbs up. Eliot led him out to the interview and the rest
of us waited.

“Hey, how did you do that last
one?” Quentin said, turning around eagerly.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
“I tried to get it into a graphable form, but it wasn’t working.”

“Oh,” Quentin said. “So you
didn’t finish it? That’s weird.”

“What, you finished all of
them?”

“Mostly, or at least a partial
answer.” Quentin continued talking about the last question, but a root of worry
had dug itself into my chest and wouldn’t come loose.

What if Eliot knew which
tablet was mine? What if he had rigged the test?
I had been
terrified of having to confront Eliot and tell him my real name, but worse than
that was the possibility that I didn’t deserve the prize at all. Surely it
wasn’t a coincidence that I still sat here in the auditorium. My palms gripped
the armrests of the seat.