Billionaire Romance Boxed Set (9 Book Bundle) (47 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

He had abandoned me, and I would
do what I normally did when I felt lost and alone and abandoned.

I ran.

It was cold, but I did not want
my coat. I wanted to feel the aching chill inside of me, the way I had when I
first arrived in Hungary. Before the weeks of anticipation and disappointment,
before I had turned into someone different. Before emotion strummed my heart
and left me vibrating in unreciprocated desire. All anybody wanted was to be
understood, and Eliot didn’t understand me. I thought he had, I thought that
maybe he could see past the surface and into the deepest cracks, the hidden and
imperfect parts of me. Now I fled his gaze. I couldn’t replace the perfect
memory of his dead wife.

I stumbled across the field, my
feet leaving darkened tracks behind me in the light dusting of snow. Low
branches brushed my face, and the wind whistled high above in the trees,
promising a storm. My feet brought me closer to the place Eliot had showed me
before, the rocks by the stream.

I did not see the doe until I
was upon her. Her hind legs kicked as she jumped over the copse and then
stopped in her tracks. We had both been running from something and now we stood
facing each other across the small clearing. It was only a split second that we
stood there, but every interval of time contains within it infinities, and now
I felt the world slow down as the doe’s black eyes locked on mine.

The snow was beginning to
fall, or had it been falling already? Her tail flickered out and brushed off a
dusting of snowflakes from her pelt, the crystals hovering for a moment in the
air as though they were weightless.

A high ringing tone pierced my
ears, and before I could recognize the sound the arrow shot through the
clearing and into the neck of the doe. The shot was true, piercing her pelt
cleanly. She took one step forward and stumbled on the next, falling forward on
to one knee as though kneeling before me. The sound that escaped her mouth into
my ears resembled nothing so closely as a baby’s cry. She stumbled and fell,
shock in her eyes.

Blood pooled underneath the
deer, the snow melting into a bright red pool. Her chest still rose and fell,
but her breathing was shallow. Her hind leg kicked in a short spasm.

I stood, frozen in place. Steam
rose from the hot pool of blood in the cold air. A chill ran down my spine. I
heard the hunter’s footsteps before I could see him, and then he tramped into
the clearing, his bow held to one side. His figure loomed large before me, his
dark features hidden behind bushy eyebrows and a beard, but it was his eyes
that made my blood run cold. For when his gaze fell upon me, it was full of a
hard, mean want that I had never seen before. A realization that I was there,
and alone, and there was no one around to protect me. It was a hunter’s gaze,
and he had his sights on new prey.

I did not stop to think. If I
had I might have been lost. But there was something in this man’s eyes that
drove me back as surely as Eliot’s kindness had drawn me toward him. I turned
and ran, my feet sliding on the slick carpet of snow just covering the grass.

I heard him behind me, and for
one horrible second I thought that he might nock another arrow to his bow and
shoot me down like he had the deer. I had desperation on my side, and was
gaining ground, but my foot slipped just as I was crossing the small stream and
a sharp pain shot up from my ankle, tearing through my entire leg and thigh
muscles. I let out a shout and fell, my hands bracing my impact onto the snowy
bank. My hands slipped on the icy rock and I tumbled into the shallow stream.
My dress soaked through instantly with icy water and I cried out in shock as
much as in pain. The chill pierced me through my skin and muscle and my lungs
seized up with cold. Blood ran from several cuts on my hands as I tried to
scramble up the other side of the riverbank.

He was upon me before I could
scream, and as I drew a breath to do so he flipped me face up and cupped one
hand roughly over my mouth, his body shoving mine down into the cold earth. I
beat at his chest with my fists, and tried to claw his face with my fingers,
but with his free hand he blocked my attempts easily. Blood ran down my palms
and wrists and I slipped with slick red fingers as I tried to push him away.

My screams were muffled by his
palm. He was suffocating me, his weight pressing on my chest. His free hand
moved to unbuckle his belt, leaning forward. I reached out to get at his eyes
but he grabbed my wrists and wrenched them above my head, pinning them brutally
against the snow. He leaned forward, his eyes like black coals flecked with
burning white embers at the edges. I closed my eyes to hide myself from his
expression: he was smiling.

Above us in the trees, the wind
howled. I thrashed underneath him, my legs sweeping the snow, but I was no
match for his size. His breath was hot, the steam filling the air white above
my face. It smelled sour, like old coffee, and my heart raced.

I felt something then, something
I have never been able to fully explain. The sense that Eliot was watching me
came over me. It felt like the sun’s rays bursting through the snowy branches
in the morning, the warmth of the day now starting to creep into my chilled
skin. I knew he could tell that I was in danger, and I knew he would be there
to save me.

This strange feeling of trust
that flooded my body made me relax, and the man above me pulled my wrists up
tighter, but I did not feel the pain. Drawn back into myself, drawn further
away from agony, I felt at peace, like I was hovering above myself, watching a
terrible scene unfold that involved some other person. Watching terrible things
happen to some character from a legend, and not me at all.

Eliot
flew over me in a blur. The heavy shock of his impact made a resounding thud as
it knocked the hunter off, and when the two men crashed into the tree next to
me snow tumbled down from the shaken branches. I pushed myself sideways, out of
the man
’s reach. One of my shoes had been knocked off and the toes
were white with cold.

Fists flew, and I saw the hunter
reach back with one large hairy fist. Before I could scream, Eliot had butted his
head into the man
’s chin with a sharp crack that might have been
tooth or bone or both. I felt dizzy at the sound, faint. It was as though my
entire body had been drained of blood.

A large stone, a bit bigger than
my fist, lay near me on the stream bank. I reached for it as a weapon. My hand
pulled on the stone, loosening it from the frozen earth. When I tried to grab
hold of it, though, my fingers were too slick with blood to grab on. The cold
was too much. My fingers tensed, hard and clumsy, unable to lock around the
stone, and my teeth chattered like machine gun rapid fire. My hand slipped on
the surface and I tried again to get purchase, but it fell from my grip once
more.

Come on, Brynn.
I
reached again for the stone and grasped it in both of my hands, lifting it up
carefully. A shadow fell on me from behind and I twisted around, holding the
stone up in defense. My eyes blurred with snow and tears, and for a second I
did not know who stood before me. Then I blinked away the fog and saw that it
was Eliot.

“My god, Brynn, you’re soaked,”
he said, kneeling down. I clutched the stone to my chest and sobbed as he
balanced me with his arms.

“It’s alright,” I heard him say
as though from a distance. “It’s going to be alright.” The hunter lay a few
meters away, not moving. I let the stone tumble from my hand and back into the
icy water. A ringing in my ears made his words unintelligible. As his hands
moved over me to check for injuries, I let myself lean into his strong body,
looking down at the ground to keep my balance steady. I saw something strange,
and my addled mind seized onto it as my body began to shut itself down.

“Eliot,” I said. “You’re not
wearing any shoes.”

Those were the last words I said
before passing into darkness.

I saw the world going back to
the house in slow, distinct flashes. The white of the snow on the branches
above me, the scarlet drops on the snow—blood? From the deer?—and
the tightness of Eliot’s arms around me, carrying me as though I were the most
precious thing in the world. My dress was hard, frozen to my skin, and I heard
the ice crack in the seams as Eliot clutched me closer. I lay my head against
his chest. A terrible thunder made my eyes rise to the sky to look for clouds,
but it was Eliot’s heart I heard, the heavy beating as he stumbled through the
trail toward the house.

“Brynn,” I heard him say.
“Brynn, my Brynn.”

Dark again, and I woke to
blankets surrounding me. My body felt heavy, numbed. Eliot stood not far from
the couch where I lay, his ear pressed to his phone.

“Yes,” he said in Hungarian, and
then his words lost themselves, floating upward in the air and out of my
hearing.

Dark again. Complete darkness
and complete peace. I heard singing, the soft notes of Satie’s Gymnopedies, and
then Eliot’s voice in my ear.

“Brynn, wake up,” he said. “Wake
up.” My eyes opened to his worried face. He pulled off my blankets and picked
me up as though I weighed nothing, walking down the hall to a stairway I had
never seen. It led downward, lit dimly by a soft orange glow that reminded me
of candles.

“Where are we going?” I
murmured. My head lolled against his arm.

“We have to get you in warm
water,” he said, stepping down carefully to avoid knocking my head against the
wall. “We have to get you into the baths.”

“I’m not cold,” I said, and I
wasn’t.

“You’re nearly frozen,” he said.
“Don’t worry, we’re almost there.”

As he said the word, we stepped
out of the stairwell and down onto a platform. My breath caught in my throat,
and the air, hot and wet, burned my lungs. I gasped at the sensation, and at
the sight before me.

The room was huge, five times as
large as the bedroom I had stayed in on my first night here. The walls
shimmered gold, and at first I thought they were made out of gold itself. The
dimmed lanterns hanging over the room reflected golden light, and marble
columns and statues lined the walls, leading the way down to the center of the
room, where the floor seemed to be made entirely out of mirrors.

Eliot walked down the stairs,
still holding me. When he stepped down I realized that what I had thought were
mirrors was actually water, and his steps sent ripples across the entire golden
floor. He stepped down the submerged stairs until his pants were soaked, and
then lowered his arms slowly until my body touched the water. I cried out in
pain and clutched at Eliot’s arms. My feet and arms felt as though they were
being stabbed with sharp needles, the pain wrenching my body. Eliot let me grip
him but stepped down further so that my whole body was under water, and only my
head above.

The pain sent tears to my eyes
even as I began to shiver in Eliot’s arms. My dress loosened and flowed in the
hot water, and steam rose from the glassy surface. My lungs struggled to
breathe in the humid air and everything hurt all at once. My toes and fingers
burned with the heat.
Molten
, I thought, with the golden light bouncing
off of shined surfaces all around me.
Molten like the sun. Too close to the
sun.
My head spun.

“Brynn,” Eliot said. His hand
held my neck above the surface, his other arm encircling my waist. My hand
reached out as if of its own accord and touched his cheek, traced his scar.

“I love you.” I heard myself
say, the words mere whispers floating over the steam of the water. My eyes were
closing, the fuzziness in my mind threatening to take over.

“I love you too,” Eliot said.
His fingers slid through my hair, but I could barely feel their touch.
He
loved me.

“Brynn?”
He loved me.
He
loved me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and let
myself fall back into darkness.

I
remember the way my mother washed my hair in the tub when I was little, rinsing
the soap out with tepid water as I wrapped my arms around my knees and tried
not to shiver. She sat behind me, and I remember most of all the large rust
crack that ran down the side of the tub from the top, marring the old white
porcelain with an ugly streak of red. Sometimes I scraped at the rust with my
thumbnail to try to get it off, but it always came back worse. Some cracks can
’t
be fixed easily, I guess.

Evil things happen, and good
things happen, and in neither physics nor religion is there an explanation that
makes any kind of sense. When the world decides to hurt, there
’s
no way around it, no magical words that will save the day or turn back time and
bring the dead to life. There’s no such thing as fate, or wickedness, or girls
who can be princesses and girls who can’t. There’s only people, and we all do
the best we can.

CHAPTER TWENTY

She
’ll be
okay. She’ll be okay. She has to be okay.

Eliot fielded questions from the
policemen while his private doctor examined Brynn in the other room. Her
breathing had returned to normal, but she slipped in and out of consciousness,
whispering words that he could not understand. Once she cried out for her
mother, and then fell into a sleep. He trusted the family doctor with his own
life, but he couldn’t help but glance over nervously through the doorway as the
police asked him for the hundredth time to explain the order of events. The
hunter he had knocked out was not dead but close to it; Eliot frowned upon
hearing the news. The policemen were suspicious, but Eliot’s surname and his
family’s reputation were enough to grant him some amount of protection from
overly enthusiastic officials. Once the police left Eliot hurried back to
Brynn’s bedside. Her lips were a pale, pale pink and she was breathing
shallowly.

“How is she?”

Dr. Toth took off the warm cloth
from her forehead. His old hands still were steadier than Eliot’s, and Eliot
waited in rapt attention for his verdict.

“She’ll be fine with proper rest.
We’ll pay close attention to her extremities to make sure nothing is
permanently damaged. It looks like you got her into a warm bath in time.”

“But she’s unconscious.” Eliot
bent down to Brynn, watching her chest rise and fall under the covers.

“Not unconscious, just sleeping.
She’s had a hard time and when she wakes up she’ll probably need to speak with
another doctor.”

“What doctor?”

“A therapist, Dr. Herceg.” The
old physician looked up at him over his spectacles. “The girl’s been through a
hard time. She should talk to someone about it.”

“Of course.” Eliot hadn’t even
thought about it, so worried was he about her physical health. Brynn would get
everything she needed to recover. He would see to it.

“I have a friend who specializes
in trauma recovery. I’ll leave you her card.”

“Thank you.”

The old doctor rose and snapped
the buckles of his bag shut.

“Wait,” Eliot said. “Are you
leaving?”

“She’s stable and sleeping,”
Doctor Toth said, a kind smile on his face. “She’ll be fine without me.”

“When will you come back to
check on her?”

“It really isn’t necessary,” the
doctor said, but he saw the worry in Eliot’s eyes. “I’ll check in tomorrow
morning just to be safe.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Make sure she gets plenty of
rest. That’s all she needs now. Rest and care.”

“Thank you, doctor, I will.”
You’ve
no idea how much I care.
Eliot walked the doctor to the door, then returned
to Brynn’s side. The kitten, Lucky, found them and jumped up on Brynn’s bed,
nestling down into the covers between her ankles. No harm in that, Eliot
thought, and let the little gray ball of fur remain purring at her feet.

She woke in the middle of the
night, twisting in the bed under the sheets as though she was fighting someone
off. She woke Eliot with her thrashing. Lucky had already abandoned the warm
covers in favor of a bed that didn’t move.

Eliot pulled the sheets back
over her body, averting his eyes in the dim light. After the hot bath, he’d had
to undress her, stripping off her wet clothes. Remembering the way her body looked,
naked and beautiful, made him ache with desire as well as shame. He should not
have seen her, but he had. The curved lines of her hips, the pinkness of her
skin… Eliot shifted his weight on his feet, uncomfortable with the longing,
entirely too familiar, that strafed his heart whenever he saw Brynn. It was
some time before he could fall back asleep at her side.

Brynn woke up the next morning
after the family doctor had already left. Eliot was dozing in the chair beside
her bed, a book in his lap. He heard her stirring and leaned forward to see her
eyelids flutter and open slightly.

“Eliot?” She coughed slightly.

“Brynn.” Eliot placed his book
on the end table.

“Where is he?” She looked
around, as though expecting someone to jump out of the shadows. “The hunter.
What happened?”

“He’s gone. The police took him
away. How do you feel?”

Brynn coughed. “Awful.” She
coughed again, clearing her throat, and looked down, then quickly pulled the
covers up to her neck.

“Eliot, I don’t have any clothes
on!” Her voice sounded shocked with indignation.

“I’m sorry, I had to… you were
entirely soaked…” Eliot stammered. He hadn’t expected her to react like this.

“Well, get me something to put
on!” Brynn had the covers up to her chin, and was flushing bright red.

Eliot brought her the underwear
that had already been through the dryer, and a robe.

“I don’t have anything too
suitable for you,” he said. “But I’ll call the apartments.” He kicked himself
mentally for not already having done so.

“Have you told them? The other students?”
Brynn seemed mortified.

“No. Well, I told them that you
had fallen on my property and were being looked after by my doctor,” Eliot
said. “Not quite the truth.”

“Not quite a lie,” Brynn said.
Her fingers clutched the robe above the blankets. “Can you look away?”

Eliot averted his face. When
Brynn gave the okay, he turned to find her bundled in the robe, standing at the
bedside.

“The doctor said you should
rest,” Eliot said.

“I’m fine,” Brynn said, but her
stance was unsteady.

“For my sake, please, stay lying
down.”

“You have to go, don’t you?”
Brynn asked. “You’re leaving.”

“Brynn—”

Tears streamed down her cheeks
and she hugged her arms to her chest tightly.

“You said you loved me,” she
said. Eliot stepped over. At first he thought she would shy away from his
embrace, but she leaned into his chest. Her shoulders moved only slightly as
she sobbed. In his arms she felt so fragile, like a beautiful, ornate vase
already broken and repaired once, ready to shatter. He could not be the one to
shatter her.

“Oh, Brynn,” Eliot said. He
pressed his cheek down onto her hair, caressing her shoulders, her back. Her
sobs grew quiet, slow, and then stopped altogether. When she pulled away, he
dug into his pocket for a handkerchief to offer her.

“I’m ruining all of your
handkerchiefs,” Brynn said, a noise between a laugh and a sob escaping her
throat as she pressed the fabric to her face. He waited until she had wiped her
nose dry. She stood before him so sorrowful and proud that if he had not fallen
headlong for her already he would have done so again in an instant. Her eyes
shone brightly underneath a glaze of tears, her hair damp and wavy, stuck to
her cheeks in places. Eliot felt the last of his resolve melt away as he looked
at her.

“I’m not leaving, Brynn,” he said.
Inside his mind he heard the gates drop, letting himself open up. He took her
hand in his. “Please. The doctor said that you need rest.”

Brynn sat down on the edge of
the bed, her hand trembling under his.

“You won’t leave?”

“No.” Eliot sighed in relief as
Brynn tucked her legs up back under the blankets. She spent a few seconds
arranging the pillows behind her, then leaned back.

“Okay, see? I’m resting.”

“I don’t see your eyes closed.”

“Are you really staying here?”

“Yes. I’ll be right here.”

“Eliot?” The way she said his
name sent shivers through his arms, his hands. He longed to take her up
passionately and kiss every piece of her, every last beautiful part, every
crease and curve. Instead he sat down on the edge of the bed beside her and
clasped his hands on his lap.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry.” As Eliot looked up
toward her another flood of tears brimmed her eyes and spilled over. She had
the handkerchief to her face. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have gone off, you
said it was dangerous and I didn’t listen, I—” She choked on the last
word and wiped her nose again between sobs.

“No,” Eliot said, over and over
as she talked. “No, no, no. Brynn, no. This isn’t your fault, not ever.”

“But I—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.
Listen. You did nothing wrong.”

“If something had happened…”
Brynn’s voice trailed off into an awful silence during which Eliot felt the
adrenaline of anger rush through him.

“You’re going to be okay,” Eliot
said. “That’s all that matters.”

“Yes. Okay.” Brynn closed her
eyes, her brows furrowed, and Eliot couldn’t bring himself to imagine what
nightmares must be going through her mind.

Silence filled the bedroom, and
Eliot thought Brynn might have dozed off. But when he rose from the bed, her
eyes snapped open.

“Eliot? Can you bring me my math
stuff? So I can do the problem?”

“You really want to work on
math?” Eliot raised his eyebrows.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “It will
take my mind off of everything.”

“Then we can work together,” he
said. “I’ll bring your notebook.”

“Eliot?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you staying?”

He leaned over and caressed her
forehead, his hand pressing back her hair.

“So that I can keep working with
such a brilliant mathematician.”

“No. Really.”

Eliot considered the question.
He hadn’t thought about it, but the second he knew Brynn was in danger, it was
like a switch had flipped in his mind. Nothing else mattered. Nothing but her.
Any obstacle between them was only an illusion, something put there by the
world to make him lose sight of what he cared about. In the middle of the
night, he had known that he would not be able to leave her side until he was
sure she would be okay without him. And even then…

“Really?” he asked.

“Really.”

The gate was down, his past
worries forgotten. All that mattered was Brynn, right now. She looked up at him
expectantly.

“I’m staying because I love
you.”

Brynn’s mouth dropped open
slightly, her pink lips parted in disbelief.

“I’ll get you that notebook,”
Eliot said. He stood and left before she could say a word.