Page 220 of The Billionaires

“Oh, I wasn’t worried about being bothered. I just can’t even fathom how much it would cost to book a place with a reputation for having the most expensive food in Manhattan.”

Crap. Was that an example of being what Mom called “prickly?”

Miss Miller considers that rebuke justified, even if talking about money is poor etiquette under normal circumstances.

“If it helps, I didn’t book the place for your sake,” Adrian says. “What I want to discuss with you is a private matter, and I do not spare any expense when it comes to said matter.”

Miss Miller suspects this gentleman—a term used loosely—is going to make a dishonorable proposal.

“What did you want to talk about?” I feel a coldness in the pit of my stomach and have no idea why.

Adrian opens his mouth, but in that moment, an older gentleman comes over to our table, holding a cutting board that looks like an abstractionist painting made from the gifts of the sea.

“No soy sauce, please,” he says with a heavy Japanese accent.

To my surprise, Adrian replies in Japanese, and they go back and forth amiably, until the chef—I assume—walks away, leaving us with his masterpiece.

“You know Japanese?” I ask.

Adrian shakes his head. “I only speak it. The hard part is mastering the kanji, which I haven’t done yet.”

“Sure, that’s the hard part,” I say with a grin. “Do you ‘only speak’ any other languages?”

He shrugs. “I’m fluent in Mandarin, thanks to Nanny Hua. I can get by in Hindi, thanks to a long trip to India. Same with Arabic and Russian. Apart from those, I can read but not speak Italian and have a working?—”

“I don’t believe any of that,” I blurt.

He arches an eyebrow, then says something in each of the languages he’s just mentioned—or so I assume.

With a huff, I take out my phone and pull up gazzetta.it. Nonna—a.k.a. my grandma—taught me a tiny bit of Italian, which is enough to navigate that news site and find an article without any pictures. I thrust the phone into Adrian’s face. “If you can read Italian, what does that say?”

He glances at the page. “It’s about a sex scandal their president got embroiled in.”

Hmm. Since I don’t trust my own meager Italian, I use Google Translate to check—and dang it, he’s right. “Do languages come effortlessly to you, or did you have to study, like us regular mortals?”

He shrugs. “When I was a kid, my parents had me learn perfect pitch using the Eguchi Method—which was my first exposure to the Japanese language. But more importantly, perfect pitch helps you learn languages, especially the tonal ones.”

“Wow.” The closest I got to any musical training as a child was when Mom got me a whistle to blow in case of stranger danger. “Does perfect pitch mean you can tell what notes are in a song after hearing it?”

He nods. “A pretty helpful ability for a musician.”

“Wait, you’re a musician too?”

He grins. “I’m many, many things.”

Cocky much? “Like what?” I take the chopsticks and grab a morsel from the glorious plate—but don’t put it in my mouth just yet.

He grabs a piece of sushi of his own. “How much time do you have?”

“That many?” I ask, fighting the urge to be prickly. “How about you tell me the highlights. Say, talents you’ve utilized today?”

Grinning, he tells me about his day, and the more he talks, the more impressed I get.

“I didn’t get a chance to paint today,” he says at the end. “But I usually do that every day.”

“You’re a real Renaissance Man,” I say, not joking in the slightest. I have to admit, this makes him even hotter. I pull myself together before I start drooling. “Do you have any examples of your art?”

“Here.” He pulls out his phone and shows me a painting of the sushi chef we saw earlier—only here, the older man looks deeply immersed in thought, probably pondering how to make the best sushi in the world.

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