“Georgie? Is that what this is about? I’ve explained to you—”
“Two whole years of your life! You don’t have any sort of a life plan, and you don’t know what you want.”
“I know what I want. I want you,” he said.
“This isn’t a game to me. I am almost half a million dollars in debt for my undergrad and medical school.”
“I don’t think it’s a game, Raji. I’m not playing with you.”
“Actually, I take that back. It is a game. I’m playing Russian roulette. If I don’t become a surgeon, if I don’t get an extremely high-paying job, I can’t pay off this debt. I have gambled everything on this. If you distract me too much, I’m done. If I get sick while I’m pregnant, I’m done. There are so many ways that I could shoot myself in the head with this.”
“Raji-lee, I would never do that to you.”
“I can’t take a chance on that.”
“You mean you can’t take a chance on me.”
“I have to make this work. I have responsibilities. I’m not some trust-fund kid who can go mooning after his ex for two years because he was an ass in high school. There are people whom I need to help. You don’t know everything that’s going on with me.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t fuck up my life for this. I’m sorry, Peyton, but I just can’t. I’m going to just take care of it, and I’m going on with my life. I can’t do this.”
Peyton closed the ring box and stood. The glittering spangles disappeared from the corridor’s white walls. “If you need any help, whatever kind, any help at all, my offer stands. Anything, from financial help to taking care of you while you rest. I mean it.”
“I’m fine. I’ve got some girlfriends here who can take care of me. One of the OB/GYNs here takes care of this for staff and doesn’t record it anywhere, so it never gets billed, either. I don’t need money or help from you. I need some time, Peyton. I’m sorry. A lot has happened with us. Let’s take a break from it all for a while, okay?”
His throat burned inside. “I’ll do whatever you want, Raji.”
“Write some more songs for me, will you? You’re an amazing songwriter. The world needs you as a musician out there writing and performing, not cloistered as a glorified music teacher in some conservatory. I can’t do that to you, either. When I see you next, play me some new songs. I’d love that.”
“I will,” he said.
“Good. Good-bye, Peyton.”
“Good-bye, Raji-lee.”
Peyton considered knocking on her door and having it out with her in person, but Raji had made her decision. He was a progressive, modern man who respected women’s decisions about their lives, not a caveman who would beat down her door and demand that she marry him, trapping her with him forever, merely because a condom broke and—
—and she was carrying his child, a squirmy little bundle of humanity and the only heir to the Cabot fortune.
But she was right. If things didn’t work out between them, having a child always hurt the woman more career-wise, and he had always known that Raji was balanced on a knife’s edge of what she could handle. Her willingness to submit to anything he had wanted so that he would distract her from the stress had proven that to him repeatedly.
No, Peyton Cabot wouldn’t force a woman to abandon her dreams of being a—he sighed—cardiothoracic surgeon.
He walked out of Raji’s building and called for a ride back to the airport with the ring box weighing heavily in his pocket.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Scrubbing In
* * *
Raji and Beth were scrubbing in for surgery, running the soft bristles of their scrub brushes under their short nails and over their hands and arms. Water poured from the faucets above the long trench sink. The soap smelled more like chemical disinfectant than proper soap. No sandalwood or lilac at all.
On the other side of Beth, Joshua the anesthesiologist was also scrubbing in and going at his palms with the brush like he was trying to make sure that the cops wouldn’t find incriminating blood evidence. Man, he was scrubbing as if he were a real surgeon or something.
Beth glanced at Raji, her blue eyes narrowed.
Raji had been ducking Beth’s calls, and she knew that suspicious look meant Beth was going to interrogate her just as soon as Joshua left the room.
The susurration of scrubbing and rushing water filled the room because no one was saying a word.
Joshua dried and walked away, his hands held in front of him and above his waist, backing through the swinging door.
Beth said to Raji, “You haven’t done it yet, have you?”
“No.” Raji scrubbed her cuticles around her nails with the soft brush. The soap foamed between her fingers.
“So what’s your plan?”
Raji shrugged. “Same as it ever was.”
“Look, I don’t want to pressure you—”
“But you totally are.”
“—I just want what’s best for you.”
“I don’t know what’s best for me yet.”
“But I do know that if you don’t make a decision soon, you’re going to run out of options.”
“There’s kind of been a development.”
“A development? Like you don’t have to make the decision at all?” Beth asked.
“Like Peyton kind of isn’t in the picture anymore.”
“What?” Beth grabbed her hands, which meant they both had to start the scrubbing process all over, dammit.
Raji told her, “We aren’t together. I’m not seeing him anymore.”
“That son of a bitch dumped you because you’re pregnant? I will kill him.”
Yes, Beth was that loca friend whom Raji could call if she ever needed somebody whacked. “That’s not exactly how it went down.”
“Did you kill him? Pregnancy hormones can do terrible things. No jury of women will convict you.”
“No, Beth. I didn’t kill Peyton Cabot.”
“That’s good. Keep denying it. They probably have cameras in here for insurance reasons.” Beth looked up at the ceiling. “Did you hear that? She said she didn’t kill him. Someone else must have done it. I was right here, too. You saw me. There’s video. That’s my alibi.”
“Beth! Peyton Cabot isn’t dead. He’s still very much alive, and he’s back with Killer Valentine. They’re taking the rest of the year off because Xan Valentine and his wife are going to have a baby. Evidently, they had a miscarriage some time earlier, and she took it pretty hard, so she’s freaked out about this one. Their schedule doesn’t matter to me, though. Peyton and I broke up.”
Beth set her fists on her hips. “I will kill his ass. I will kill his ass and then burn his ass to ashes.”
“It got kind of complicated.”
“Complicated, how?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. We’re just not together anymore.”
“If you’re going to go through with it, shouldn’t you inform him that he has a kid somewhere in the world? Just so he doesn’t get blindsided someday.”
“He said it was all up to me,” Raji said, “that he would do whatever I wanted him to, and that I could do whatever I wanted. I’m taking his option. I want to give this baby to my cousin, who desperately needs a child to complete her family and get her in-laws off her back, and I want to do it without dealing with a bunch of crazy emotional stuff. If I can be a cold-blooded lizard person, then I can do it. If things get all sloppy and emotional, this will break me.”
“I swear to God,” Beth said. “I will make that asshole curse the day he was born. I will obliterate him.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Cold
* * *
Peyton lay in the chilly sheets of a cold hotel room somewhere in Brazil.
Killer Valentine’s first tour of South America was progressing splendidly, each venue overflowing with new fans.
That night’s show had dragged on longer than normal. Xan had added songs into the s
econd set until his voice nearly gave out.
Exhaustion weighed on Peyton’s arms and legs, pinning him to the cold mattress.
No, he wasn’t going to do it tonight.
It was a stupid form of self-torture, and he wasn’t going to do it anymore.
His future started now. It started tonight.
It started in the same way as his past: alone, with the woman he loved somewhere else.
His eyes closed.
Just as he drifted off, his flesh warming the bed around him, the image of Raji lying with her head on the other pillow came to him. Her dark eyes shone in the dim light leaking in the window, and her soft hand stole over the sheets and twined in his fingers.
God, he missed her.
When he awoke the next morning, her absence sliced through him again.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Daydreaming
* * *
Lizard people don’t daydream about impossible things.
Raji was standing in front of her locker, touching her teal-blue scrubs that she was going to change into and thinking about Peyton’s eyes.
His sea-green eyes were only a little greener than her surgeon’s scrubs, but they shined from within with humor and earnestness and definitely when he smiled.
One time after they’d had sex in some hotel bed, somewhere, she had been trailing her fingers over the ink newly tattooed under his skin. Nordic knotwork marked with Viking runes formed both armbands and most of a dark breastplate covering his pectorals and shoulders. A chain ran between the ridges of his abs.
His hair had been growing out, and he hadn’t shaved that day.
Raji said, “You should grow a beard, too, a short and scruffy one. Then you’d really look like a Viking.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Peyton said. “I thought you didn’t like beards.”
She scratched his chin. “I like beards. They look all rough and scary, like you’re in a motorcycle gang or something.”
He laughed and twisted his head to look at where she was lying against his shoulder. “Must have been someone else. Okay, I’ll grow a beard.”
She snuggled down in his arm. “It’ll look so manly.”
“Just not sure how to take that.”
She laughed and drifted off to sleep.
That had been last year.
It had been four months since she had last seen Peyton.
Maybe he had gotten more tattoos in the months since she’d seen him. Maybe he’d done that back piece they’d talked about, and maybe his beard had grown out to a golden brown scruff. It had grown out a little by the time they went to the hospital’s masquerade ball, and it had looked great on him. If anything, his eyes had been more striking.
Raji drifted back to that halcyon morning when Peyton had played his songs for her, when she had lain on the couch and listened until she’d had to leave to catch her plane. If only there were videos of those songs somewhere, she might have been able to hear his voice, but she hadn’t ever found any. Those songs were gone.
No new Killer Valentine videos had surfaced lately. They really had taken a sabbatical somewhere in France.
Maybe Peyton was writing some more songs during his time off.
Behind her, a woman’s voice said, “Hey, Raji!”
She looked up, so tired she could barely move her head.
Beth tossed a tennis shoe at her. “This fell out of your locker when you weren’t looking.”
Raji bent to retrieve the shoe. Her stomach jutted out from her body, her swelling pregnancy becoming more evident every day. “Thanks.”
Four more months of this, and then she could resume her normal life as an ambitious lizard person.
She crossed her arms over her belly like ropes.
Her life, just like before, just work and surgeries, and her cousin Aarthi would have a child.
She would have all the time in the world for work and becoming the best cardiothoracic surgeon on the face of the planet. She and her mother wouldn’t have to ever worry about saving ramen noodles for the other one to eat ever again.
Raji’s arms tightened over her belly.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Killer Valentine’s Yoko
* * *
Peyton was wiping stage make-up onto his face with a cosmetic sponge in a tiny dressing room backstage at a French nightclub. Xan’s wardrobe guy, Boris, had taught him how to do his own stage make-up because Peyton didn’t like being fussed over.
Plastic holly wreaths had been stapled to the wall around the mirror in some lazy attempt at holiday cheer. A Santa hat sat on the make-up counter beside Peyton’s elbow. He had every intention of wearing it on stage that night.
Working the day before Christmas Eve, what the fuck? He’d had to reschedule his flight home to Connecticut.
He scrubbed base onto his forehead with the spongey wedge. The sticky liquid smelled like talc and clung to his skin.
Since he had grown in his blond, scruffy beard, the make-up process had become faster, just a base coat on his forehead, cheekbones, and nose, and some subtle darker powder above his eyelids and to hollow out his cheeks. A little brown eyeliner around his eyes and brown mascara.
Not too much. Peyton wasn’t the frontman and didn’t want to be.
Not for a rock band, anyway. He wasn’t cut out to gyrate at the front of the stage like that.
Okay, make-up done. Now, hair.
Boris still inspected Peyton before the show to make sure he hadn’t fucked it up.
His blond hair had grown out over his shoulders. Most of the time, he just used his fingers to comb the thick mass into a bun-thing on the back of his head. He was starting to look like a proper vagabond rock star.
Raji might have been pleased, but he hadn’t seen her in a long time.
Months. Too many months.
He set down the hair brush, suddenly tired. His heart still ached when he thought about her.
Peyton didn’t need much make-up or hair work that night, anyway. The “concert” was just a club gig in France, hastily booked because Xan couldn’t handle staying off of a stage for the entire six months they had planned for the sabbatical. Evidently, Georgie had called the band manager, Jonas, last week and told him to book them a gig somewhere, anywhere, before she strangled Xan.
And so, even though they had a month left on their supposed sabbatical, Killer Valentine had a club date on the day before Christmas Eve.
No matter what Xan said, Peyton was wearing his damn Santa hat on stage.
The dressing room door blasted open, smashing against the wall behind it.
Peyton leaped up, fists raised.
Xan charged in, shaking a magazine so hard that the paper rattled. “What the fuck is this?”
Peyton dropped his fists. Even though it had been years since they had rescued Georgie from the Russian mafia, he still got a little riled up when anyone came at him. That had been a rough night. “What’s going on, Xan?”
“What the fuck do you think is going on? Who did you tell?”
Peyton crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“This fucking article!” Xan slapped the magazine on the make-up table. The glossy paper hit a make-up brush. Powder flew into the air, dusting Peyton’s arm.
The magazine cover was a photoshopped picture of Xan and Peyton standing on either side of Georgie, looking quite a bit like, ahem, a three-ple. Peyton’s arm appeared to be around Georgie’s shoulders, while Xan’s was around her waist.
Peyton said, “Obviously, that’s altered. Look, you can see my hand from the original picture by my leg. It looks like I have three arms.”
“That article could ruin us!” Xan yelled, his dark eyes wild. He pulled his dark blond hair back from his face. “And it’s come out while we’re not touring, so we don’t have the platform to rebut it.”
Peyton picked up the magazine and thumbed through it. “You don’t need a stage. You have your so
cial media. One tweet or post will knock this shit down.”
“Who the fuck is Raji?”
Peyton’s hands chilled, and he almost dropped the magazine. “It says something about Raji?”
“She’s the source for the article.”
Peyton stumbled backward and managed to find his chair before he landed on his ass. “She wouldn’t. She would never.”
“Xan!” a woman’s voice shrilled down the hallway. “Alexandre! Don’t you do anything! Don’t you touch him!”
Georgie skidded around the doorframe, her brown eyes wide. Her stage make-up was flawless, and her long, brown hair had been twisted into a complicated up-do. Her body was still soft and curvy from having the baby five months before, and Boris had dressed her in flowing scarves reminiscent of Stevie Nicks.
She asked Peyton, “Are you okay?”
Peyton was still holding the magazine. “Where does it say that Raji is the source?”
Xan slapped the magazine with the back of his hand, and it flapped in Peyton’s fingers. “Her name is all over the article. That magazine isn’t a rag that makes things up and speculates. They don’t get sued the way the others do. There’s an interview with her.”
Peyton scanned the article, looking for sources and citations. “I don’t believe it.”
“It says she’s pregnant and going to have your child this month.”
Panic blasted through him. “She said that she was going to take care of it.”
“And you trusted her? Did you get an NDA?”
“No,” Peyton said. “No Non-Disclosure Agreement. No Settlement Agreement, either.”
“Then you’re fucked,” Xan said, his French accent thicker than Peyton had ever heard it, slurring his words. “Then we’re all fucked. We can’t even sue her for defamation. Maybe for the other stuff unless she has proof. Does she have fucking proof?”
“Raji wouldn’t give an interview like this,” he said, muttering more to himself than anyone else.
A Billionaire for Christmas Page 17