Billionaire Romance Boxed Set 1(109)

He reshuffled the papers together into one pile. How to begin logically? Of course. He began to sift through the papers, setting aside any obviously male names. That should narrow the pile down by half or so. More, even. The math department always slanted heavily male.

Minutes passed quickly as he went though the papers, the wind whistling outside of the window. It seemed that ambiguous names had come back into fashion, to his utmost irritation. Cayden, Laurie, Jax. He caught himself putting a Sam into the male pile and then reconsidered—what if it were a nickname? Slowly, carefully, he winnowed down the papers and was about to start in on selecting by handwriting type.

The lights went out. Instantly the emergency lighting system turned on, the red glow of the exit lights pointing a way toward the stairs of the library. Eliot tensed, clutching a pile of papers in one hand. He didn’t have time for this distraction.

Electric candles flickered over the tabletops of the library, and Eliot gathered a few of them to put in a circle around his papers. It would have to do. Sitting back down to his work, he began to sort through the pile again, this time separating by handwriting that slanted to the left and handwriting that slanted to the right. His eyes blurred from lack of sleep and the poor lighting, but his mind was sharply focused on the task at hand.

The pile in front of him grew smaller and smaller as he worked, and finally only one paper remained. Eliot checked and rechecked it twice, but it had to be this student. The slanting letters, the wide curves of the vowels, the slight flourishes, and the numbering he recognized from her work on the screen that morning. There was even a small circle over the i in her name. He held it up in front of him, the candles flickering light onto the pages.

Brynn Tomlin.

Eliot gathered the papers up quickly and raced down the steps of the library, almost tripping on the carpet in the darkness. He ran across the lawn and pulled open the door of the math department. The hallways here, too, glowed eerily with the emergency lighting system. Breathing heavily, he got to Patterson’s door and tried the handle before he saw the note taped to the department chair’s placard.

“Eliot,” the note read, “Electricity went off. Going home, will notify the Joseph boy about the Prize.”

Eliot slammed his hand against the door, the homework papers falling out of his grip and tumbling to the floor. Anger poured through him, a blind frustration that all of his efforts had been in vain. Shocked at the intensity of his emotion, he leaned his head against the door and willed himself to breathe slowly until the ferocity pumping through his blood ebbed.

Peace, Eliot. He folded Brynn’s paper and tucked it into his pocket along with her note. He needed sleep. The best solutions always came to him after a night of rest. This would be no exception. He knew there was a solution. He simply had to find it.





I ran all the way home and slammed the apartment door behind me, breathing hard. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve anything. I was a liar, nothing more.

“Brynn? You okay?”

Shannon peeked her head around the hallway from the couch where she had sprawled out. Tendrils of her red hair curled limply down her neck, escaping from the pins that tried valiantly to hold the mass of hair up. She had two more pins between her lips, and she took them out to speak more clearly.

“Hon, you look like you just saw a ghost! What’s wrong?”

I burst into tears, and Shannon immediately got up from the couch and came down the hall to put her arms around me.

“Brynn, hon, oh honey. What is it?” She led me to the couch where I collapsed, my head in my hands. “Was it that test?”

I shook my head, unable to speak.

“It must be bad,” she said, her warm hand rubbing my back as tears ran down my cheeks. “You never cry. Hey, hey. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

After going through almost an entire box of tissues I managed to tell her the story in between sobs.

“Oh, Brynn.” Shannon sighed. “You’re sure he helped you out on the test?”

“I don’t know what else it could have been,” I said, sniffling behind the tissue. “I didn’t know like half of the problems.”

“Then he’s an asshole.”

“Yeah.” I blew my nose and added the tissue to the growing mountain in the waste basket. “I just didn’t think he would do something like that, you know?”

“All guys are assholes. You remember that guitar player I told you about? Never called.”

“No!” I frowned in sympathy. Shannon had been so excited when she came home from that concert. “What a jerk!”

“That’s what I’m saying. The whole lot of them are just jerks and assholes. You want to watch a movie and forget about boys for a while?”