Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (39 page)

Marta
drove a sleek sports car, bright orange and convertible, but when I asked her
what kind it was, she just shrugged.

“Lamborghini,” she said. “I
don’t know what kind. I think it is too slow on curves. Otto gave it to me last
month to try.”

We took off with a roar, and
despite her misgivings, I thought the car sped nicely along the roads. I
couldn’t imagine having a husband who would buy me flashy, expensive cars just
to try out for size, but Marta took it all in stride.

“We shall have to go to the
opera sometime when you are here. I adore the opera, don’t you?”

“I’ve never been,” I said.

“Oh, you will love it!” Marta
went on, gushing about all of the things in Budapest that I would admire. I
believed her, but our mission today was only to find clothes, and I was
disappointed that we would have to shop instead of seeing all of the
magnificent culture that Marta went on and on about. Marta’s face lit up,
though, when we pulled up directly in front of a crowded street of shopgoers.
She parked the car on the side of the street in front of a chic boutique and
jumped out.

“Are we…uh…should we park here?”
I asked. The curb was painted red, and nobody else had parked anywhere near.

“Government plates, darling,”
Marta said. “Don’t worry, I’ve never gotten a ticket.”

I felt strange leaving the car
parked in an obviously illegal spot, but Marta didn’t care so I tried to ignore
it. I hated breaking rules, but I was just a guest here, after all. A
cold
guest. The chill pierced me as soon as I got out of the car, so I hurried
inside the door of the shop behind Marta.

Marta strode into the boutique
and immediately began picking out clothes. One of the shopgirls seemed to
recognize her and trotted eagerly behind, letting Marta pile her arms up with
pretty things. I walked around the edge of the store, looking carefully at the
winter coats they had hanging up. The prices seemed outrageous, and I did some
mental calculations in my head just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy with the
currency conversion. Some of the coats cost four figures in American dollars! I
didn’t even want to touch the fabric, for fear of damaging it.

Marta waved me over to the back,
where the shopgirl had a mountain of clothes heaped over her arms. At first I
thought they were meant for Marta, but she ushered me into a dressing room and
hooked all of the hangers on the rod inside.

“I…I just need a coat,” I stammered
to Marta. She had picked out dress after dress, blouses and skirts that seemed
lovely but not at all meant for cold weather.

“First we need to dress you
properly,” Marta said. “Then we can worry about coats to match.”

Her tone was so commanding that
I couldn’t disobey. I began trying on clothes, one by one. After I came out to
model the first dress that fit, Marta conversed with the shopgirl in Hungarian.
The girl listened, nodded, and sped out the door as quick as could be. Marta
asked the other girl to find me dresses in different sizes if they didn’t fit,
and together they admired me in the mirror, pinching the fabric up one way or
the other and chattering in Hungarian rapidly. I felt like a zoo exhibit. A
pampered, classy zoo exhibit.

The first shopgirl came back
with a bag that turned out to be filled with bras and panties. Marta laughed at
my red face when the shopgirl brought out the underwear.

“Don’t worry, I will come with
you to try these on privately,” Marta said. I thought her definition of private
was a little off, but I tried to refuse and she just clucked at me. “To be
beautiful outside, you must be beautiful inside,” she said. “And that includes
underwear.”

I had to admit, once we found a
bra that fit me comfortably, every dress I put on looked better. Marta gushed
over some outfits and pooh-poohed others, without any rhyme or reason that I
could tell. All of the clothes seemed beautiful and well-made. We tried on
shoes, dresses, skirts, and every time Marta wanted something that the store
did not have, the shopgirl ran out to the street and came back with it.

One dress in particular stuck
out to me as lovely, a light violet satin that flowed over my curves,
accentuating my hips. I thought it was a little low-cut, but when I came out
with it on, Marta’s eyes shone in delight.

“You are beautiful,” she said.
“Magnificent! Don’t you think so?”

The shopgirls nodded in brisk
agreement as I turned in the mirror. I smiled as the delicate fabric swished
around my ankles.

The pile of clothes Marta had
approved was quickly rung up, folded, and placed into golden paper shopping
bags. Marta insisted that I buy six sets of the underwear that had fit me, “in
different colors, just in case,” as well as two beautiful wool coats in red and
black. I began to protest the cost, but Marta pulled out a card from her small
purse and charged it without a second thought. I thanked her profusely, but she
waved it away with her hand.

“Of course,” she said. “Anything
for Eliot. A few clothes is far less than his proper due.”

“Due?”

“Otto and I owe him a great
debt. But that’s another story for another day.”

Anxious though I was to hear any
scrap of information about Eliot, I let the subject go and happily suited up in
wool stockings and a dress under the demure black coat. The wool stockings kept
my legs surprisingly warm, and the black leather heeled boots made every step
comfortable, despite the heels being higher than what I normally wore. Marta
looked me over once, her fingers brushing my hair down, before hooking her arm
through mine to leave the shop.

“Perfect,” she said. “And just
in time for lunch!”

If the
clothes cost more than I had spent in my lifetime, the lunch was just as
extravagant. Marta took me to a charming bistro at the heart of the city, again
leaving her car double parked on the road. Marta saw my embarrassed look back
at the car, and laughed at me as we entered the cafe and sat at one of the
front tables.

“You are just as proper about
cars as Eliot,” she said.

I struck upon the opportunity. I
wanted to know more about Eliot, and his brother’s sister seemed to know
everything.

“Why is he proper about cars?” I
asked.

“Well, you know…” she said, the
smile fading from her face into a look of pity. “His wife.”

My heart sank in my chest, and I
tried to hide my expression of disbelief. The world around me seemed to dim and
blur, and I could hear my blood pounding in my veins. Sweat beaded under the
collar of my coat. I couldn’t breathe.

“He— he has a wife?”

“Oh, he didn’t tell you about
her?” Marta sipped a lemon water, her focus drifting over to the waiter. A
shock of tears rose up behind my eyes and I looked away, out toward the street,
where dozens of people passed by, completely unaware that my heart was
breaking. I berated myself for wanting, for hoping. Of course everyone would
have thought I was his mistress. And I might have become one, unwittingly. My
being went numb with terror at the thought.

“No,” I managed to choke out.
Marta turned back to me and leaned forward.

“Terribly sad. Do you want to
know something?” Her voice was a conspiratorial hush. I didn’t want to know
anything more, in fact, only wanted to jump out of my seat and run, but Marta
kept talking like nothing had happened. “When he lost her, he blamed himself
for it.”

“L—lost her?”

“In the car accident. He was
driving, but of course it was a bad road, icy. They never do maintain those
back roads too well. Not enough salt to keep the ice away, even if the
paparazzi hadn’t been chasing them around it would have ended the way it did. Just
a bad patch of ice, anyone would have hit it.” Marta didn’t notice my exhale,
my fingers wiping away the unshed tears from my eyes.

A rush of conflicting feelings
jostled for place in my heart. Relief, that Eliot didn’t have a
wife—guilt, for feeling relief. A newfound hope that I crushed down
inside myself with caution, for I knew I couldn’t get too close to him. And an
overwhelming sense of sorrow, not just for Eliot’s loss, but for the burden on
himself that such a loss must have created.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” I
managed to stammer out words, even if I didn’t know what I was saying.

“Of course you didn’t, poor
thing, he doesn’t talk about it with anyone. Too proud, too distant. Otto is
the same, in many ways. Keeps to himself.” Marta sipped at her water and
snapped her fingers above her head. “Waiters aren’t worth a damn here. Are you
alright?” She had just now noticed the expression of shock on my face.

“I’m fine.” I wasn’t, but that
wasn’t Marta’s fault. I couldn’t help but think of how guilty Eliot must feel.
Marta reached across the table and took my hand in hers,pressing her palm down
sympathetically.

“Well, I’m so glad he’s found
himself someone to keep company with.”

I extricated my fingers from her
grasp and took a sip of the water in front of me. It tasted faintly bitter and
I swallowed, my eyes downcast.

“I’m just here for the
internship,” I said. In my heart, though, I hoped against hope that I could be
more to Eliot than a student.

CHAPTER TEN

Eliot passed the time in
his study, working on his projective algorithm problem. He knew that he was on
the cusp of something, but he couldn
’t figure out exactly how to
make it work. Each avenue he tried got cut off at the crucial pass, and then he
would have to start over again with a new guess.

Brynn came back from the lunch
later in the afternoon. He opened the door to her knock, only to see her
carrying a half dozen shopping bags in each hand. He waved to Marta in her car
as she sped off down the driveway. A tension inside of him released when he saw
Brynn again, safe and whole. He leaned forward to take her bags from her and
was surprised when she kissed him on one cheek, then the other. His heart
stirred at the pressure of her soft lips against his skin, and he wished he had
taken the opportunity to shave while she was gone.

“I’m sorry,” he said, hefting
her shopping bags in one arm and looking at her new outfit. “I’m hosting an
ill-dressed American girl here in my home. Do you know where she might have
gone?”

“I was
not
ill-dressed,
only ill-dressed for Budapest,” Brynn said, a frown crinkling her nose in mock
anger. She strode past him and knelt down to pet the kitten who already seemed
to know her step and who had come out of the recesses of the castle’s rooms to
greet her.

“So glad to see you’ve adjusted
to the climate.”

“It’s adjusting to me…the sun is
so nice outside, I’d swear I was in California if there wasn’t so much snow on
the ground.”

“You bring the sunshine with
you,” Eliot said, the words escaping his lips before he could stop them. He
knew he shouldn’t be saying sweet things, shouldn’t be leading her toward
anything unprofessional, but he could not help the swelling in his heart when
he looked at her bright face.

“Can we go exploring?” Brynn
looked up from petting the kitten, and her eyes sparkled.

“Yes, of course,” Eliot said.
“Just let me put on some boots. I was working on the projection proof.”

“Oh, well, I don’t want to keep
you from your work. I can go by myself.”

“No, let’s go together!” Eliot
felt a rise of enthusiasm in him, and he did not know from where it came. “I
could use some time to clear my head. And I don’t want you out there alone.”

“Right, right. Can Lucky come?”

Eliot looked at the small kitten
and tilted his head in consideration.

“I wouldn’t chance it. There are
owls out there.”

“Ah, you wouldn’t like the snow
anyway, Lucky.” She placed the small kitten on the couch, but he promptly
jumped off and skittered away into the corridor.

“He’s been doing a lot of
exploring inside,” Eliot said.

“He hasn’t been bothering you,
has he?” Brynn said.

Eliot shook his head, thinking
of the kitten clawing his ankles while he tried to work on his math, then
meowing for more food as soon as he had finished eating the leftover bits of
turkey Eliot had given him.

“Not at all,” he said.

They walked out through the
gardens in the back of the estate. Eliot had been through the paths so many
times before that he could have walked through them blindly, but Brynn stopped
every few feet to examine the different plants that had frosted over in
the winter. She found a spider’s web sagging with the weight of frozen
dewdrops, the spider nowhere to be found. With every turn of the path came a
new treasure for Brynn to muse over, and Eliot soon found himself engrossed in
the minutiae of the walk, seeing the trail in a way he hadn’t seen it in a
long, long time. With someone else to see Budapest for him, he was beginning
again to fall in love with his homeland.

“Come,” he told Brynn, once they
reached a fork in the path where the snowdrifts rose before them. “I want to
show you something.” He clambered up the side of one snowdrift, feeling utterly
awkward and ill-equipped for such exertions. But when he got over the snowbank
and squeezed through the rock passage, he found the spot just as he had left
it. A bed of rocks overlooked the pool of a small stream, now frozen over. The
pine branches overhead drooped with a thousand tiny icicles off of its needles.
Moss partially covered the rocks, creeping green and alive even under the
frost, and he brushed the snow aside to sit down.

“This is beautiful,” Brynn said.
She stood beside him, looking down into the frozen pool. Under the glassy
surface, dark waters still roiled, fed by an underground river. Eliot felt his
heart swell with the love of a place that can only come about through a long
and intimate familiarity. He knew this bank better than he knew his bedroom.

“I used to come here all the
time when I was a child.”

“You grew up here? In a
castle
?”

Eliot paused. He didn’t know how
much to tell.

“It’s my family’s.”

“Did you ever have to defend the
castle from marauding hordes?” Brynn grinned, and Eliot breathed a sigh of
relief that she had not not pushed further back.

“Of course,” he said. “We just
poured boiling hot oil on their heads, though.”

“No archers from the roof? Or a
moat?”

“This is the only moat on the
property,” Eliot said, nodding to the small stream.

“Aw,” Brynn said. “What
about a torture chamber in the basement?”

“No torture devices in our
basement, at least none that I knew about. We do have the baths, though.”

“Baths?”

Eliot pressed his lips together.
He should not have mentioned them.

“They’re just bathing rooms, fed
by hot springs that run underground.”

“No way! Like a hot tub?”

“Yes, like that.”

“How neat! I’d love to see them!”
Brynn caught his eye and blushed, her skin turning a sweet pink color even in
the cold. He thanked heaven inwardly that she had been the one to commit the
fatal blunder and not him, but it was his fault for bringing the idea of the
baths up in the first place. He turned away mercifully to stare at a branch
heavy with the weight of snow.

“And there is an oubliette,”
Eliot said, trying hastily to change the subject. “I suppose that can be called
torture.”

“An oubliette?”

“It’s a hatch in the floor that opens
up into a room underneath,” Eliot said. “Where you would keep prisoners, if you
had any.”

“Like a dungeon?”

“Yep.”

“Then why don’t they just call
it a dungeon?”

Brynn’s nose shone with a
speckling of snowflake and Eliot had to restrain himself from wiping it off
with his thumb.

“It’s from the French
oublier
—to
forget. It’s a place you put people to forget about them. An oubliette doesn’t
have any other doors or windows except for the one hatch.”

“So you could only get out
if someone lowered a rope or ladder or something?”

“Only if you’re lucky; if
someone remembered you.”

Brynn shivered and stood up. A
jackrabbit, startled by the motion, jumped out of the low bank on the other
side of the stream and darted over the snowdrift. They watched the snowflakes
that had been kicked up from the jackrabbit fall slowly to the ground.

“Ready to go?” Eliot asked.

“No—what’s that?” Brynn
clambered over to where the jackrabbit had kicked up loose snow.

“What’s what?” Eliot followed
just behind Brynn, aware that his body had gone alert and ready, his hands
clenched into loose open fists. He bent his legs slightly at the knee,
anticipating an impact that didn’t come.

“It’s a deer, it’s—oh!”
Brynn started backward, her arms outspread in flight, into the steady embrace
of Eliot, who caught her around the waist.

“It’s alright,” Eliot said,
helping her find her balance. His eyes had taken in the dead fawn, the eye
sockets writhing with maggots. The top half of the fawn was not yet frozen; the
flesh torn ragged, tattered remnants of sinew and muscle iced over like the
darkest of rubies. A rind of fat had been gnawed to gristled shreds and left to
the side of the carcass.

The fawn’s gnawed flesh reminded
him of one of the poems he had had to read for school, a poem by Dante. In one
of the last stanzas, a man gnaws on the nape of another man’s skull. Traitors,
maybe. They were in one of the lowest reaches of hell, of course. Traitors
against benefactors were the worst of the worst, the ones so bad that Satan
himself ripped their flesh from their bones in an eternal meal. For a wicked
deed is the one which most opposes love, and to do wrong a person who has done
you right is the wickedest of deeds, for theirs is the love most like God’s in
its purity.

This—this was a wicked act.
He reached out to examine the ragged flesh. Brynn grabbed the sleeve of
his jacket and jerked his arm back violently.

“Brynn—” he said. He did
not have anything to say after that; the familiarity of the gesture had
startled him.

“Don’t touch it,” she said. “I
don’t want to see it anymore.” She shut her eyes and turned away from the fawn,
her distaste for death so overwhelmingly apparent on her face that Eliot
thought she might burst into tears.

“It’s okay. It’s alright.” Eliot
hugged her as she nestled in the crook of his arm, her body pressed against his
hip for one moment before she realized her position and awkwardly shifted back.

“I saw his, his
fur
…” She
swallowed back a cough, and he could see her skin turn paler against the
backdrop of the snow.