Billionaire Romance Boxed Set 1(108)

“She must have given the wrong name.”

“Then she must not want the prize. Pick another winner.”

“There isn’t another.” Even as he said this, Eliot knew the student he would pick if Valentina failed to materialize. Patterson sighed, crossing his arms and leaning back onto his desk.

Damn her! Why did she force him to chase after her? He felt ridiculous. He felt—

He felt as he had when he spoke to Clare for the first time, when she told him that her boyfriend was on his way to pick her up. He had persisted despite his mind telling him that he would surely fail, and eventually he won her over. Now, he felt the same stirrings of desire, the same desperate, ridiculous pangs of longing that made him rush headlong into foolishness.

“We can choose another for you, then. The Joseph kid. You mentioned him, and it would be beneficial for your status at the university…”

“Let me find her.” Eliot’s mouth set in a hard line. “Email the student list—”

“Dr. Herceg!” Patterson sounded incredulous. “Do you expect me to send out a missing persons alert for the winner of the most prestigious prize in the department?”

“Why not?”

“If you knew the kind of outrage that this would provoke—”

“Please!” Eliot knew he had reached the thin edge of Patterson’s tolerance, but he could not stop a last brutal effort. “Let me find her.”

“Then find her,” Patterson said. “Today. If I have not received an answer from you in the next two hours, I’m naming Mark Joseph the winner.”#p#分页标题#e#

“This is my internship—”

“Then stop acting like a fool! Eliot, I’ve tried to keep you here despite everything, but this is too much. I promise that the department will re-evaluate your fellowship.”

Eliot cast his eyes around the room. Truly, he must sound like a madman. Although every cell in Eliot’s body rejected it, he knew that Patterson had a point. Still, he needed to do everything he possibly could to find Valentina.

“Just one email—”

“No!” Patterson snapped down on the word as though cutting it off with his teeth. “You have until I leave campus tonight. I’ll be awaiting your reply.”

Eliot left the office, his shoulders slumped. Valentina—whatever her name actually was— had left him nothing with which to pursue her. She might well be a ghost. He had nothing of hers but her note—

Yes. Her note. He dug into his pocket and brought out the crumpled paper, running his fingertips over the lines. He stopped in his tracks and turned around, his eyes lifting back up to Patterson’s door. The department chair had stepped out into the hall and walked down the other corridor, away from Eliot.

Eliot stole a quick glance down the hallway, pretending to study the student research posters on the walls. When Patterson turned the far corner, he snuck back to the office and slipped into the doorway, crossing over to where Patterson had been sitting. He picked up the pile of homework sitting on the corner of the desk marked “juniors.”

He would find Valentina in here, if she existed.





Eliot hurried up the stairs of the library, looking for a corner to sit in peace. There was not enough time to go home from campus, and he hated driving in inclement weather anyway. He had to get this done before Patterson declared a winner. The department chair might have been bluffing, but Eliot didn’t want to chance it.

Outside the wind whipped tree branches against the large windows, the leaves slapping the glass panes as though trying to get inside from the cold. He found a long oak table to sit at and spread the papers out in front of him. Valentina’s note he took from his pocket and smoothed before putting it aside for reference.

Where to start? His first inclination was simply to dig through the pages as quickly as possible, but after turning through a few dozen assignments he realized that he was going too fast, possibly missing the right paper. And if he missed it the first time, he would have to go back through all of the pages. He sat back in his chair, his heart beating fast. There were hundreds and hundreds of papers in the pile, and most of the writing was numeric. The task seemed impossible.

No, he thought. Not impossible.

He took a deep breath and slowed himself down. He picked up Valentina’s note and studied the lettering. A slight slant to the right, a flourish on the letter y. The period and the dot over the i were not actually dots but tiny circles instead, as though she were trying to spite the mathematical description of a point. He ran his fingers across the paper.

Why am I doing this? Even as he asked himself the question, he felt the curl of desire rise in him. Quickly he tamped it down, ignoring the voice inside that screamed to him that she was a danger, that she had already edged into his heart. She was a capable mathematician. That was all he needed to know.