“And I’ve fallen in love with you, there with your funny little lizard brain and your silky hair and your luminous eyes,” His hands roamed her back, stroking her, soothing her, “and you with our child in your body. I shouldn’t have left. I should have battered down your door and made you listen to me.”
“I told you that I wouldn’t marry you,” she said, leaning her forehead against his strong shoulder. “I didn’t know what else to do. It seemed the right thing to do at the time. God, I’ve missed you so much.”
Peyton stopped breathing, and his hand flexed on her stomach. “I felt something.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, it kicks, a lot.”
He knelt in front of her, his hands gently roving over her belly. When he sat back on his heels, his head only came up to her chest, which was so weird.
He asked, “Will it happen again?”
“Yeah.” She took his hand and pressed next to her hip. “There’s the head, which means the feet are up here, and that’s why my ribs are bruised.”
Peyton inhaled sharply. “I felt it again.”
She smiled at him.
When he looked up at her, his sea-green eyes were shining. From where Peyton was on his knees in front of her, he held out the open ring box again. “Marry me, right now. Please, Raji, for the love of my God and all of yours, be my wife for all our lives, and give this baby the family that they were always meant to have. Stay with me. Be with me. Let me be with you.”
Fear crept up in her—fear that he would walk out one day and she would be left as alone and bereft as her mother had been, like Raji had been when her father had walked out on them both when she had been only ten years old—except that Peyton had her back.
Her mother had begged her father not to go, not to leave them.
When Raji had told Peyton to go, he had listened, and he had respected her enough to believe her.
The ring threw brilliant sparkles over the whole room, magic shards of light.
Maybe, just maybe, she should believe him.
Raji drew as deep a breath as she could. “Yes.”
Hope lit his eyes. “Really?”
“Yes. Let’s get married. I’ll marry you.”
Peyton fit the ring onto her finger. It was just a little roomy, which was perfect. He stood, drawing her against him. “Now?”
“Yeah, sure. My mother thinks we already are married.”
“Evidently. Why did you tell her that?”
“Because otherwise, she would have hated you for abandoning me while I was pregnant, probably forever. Now, she hates me for denying her a big Indian wedding, but she’ll get over that.”
“I’m surprised she believed it so readily.”
“Well, you showed her the wedding ring and said it was mine.”
Peyton’s eyebrows rose. “When?”
“This ring.” She waggled her finger at him. “It’s probably good that I’m wearing it. Fewer questions. Amma is big on questions. And ranting.”
He blinked several times. “But, I haven’t given you a wedding ring.”
Raji held up her hand again. The ring reflected glitter over the walls and ceiling of her bedroom. “Isn’t this a wedding ring?”
Peyton smiled. “No. It’s an engagement ring.”
“Jeez, Louise. So the wedding ring is going to be even bigger than that honkin’ rock?” She would never be able to get even exam gloves over even this one.
“Beg your pardon?” Peyton asked.
“I thought the engagement ring was a little gold band, and the wedding ring is bigger and has diamonds and everything on it.”
Peyton laughed. “That’s backward. The engagement ring is the one with diamonds on it. The wedding ring is usually a gold band that slips underneath it or has smaller diamonds.”
Raji threw her hands in the air. “How does that make any sense at all? The wedding is the big thing, the legal and religious thing, yet it gets the smaller ring?
He laughed again. “Maybe it symbolizes that men make big promises with the good ring and then under-deliver once the women are locked down for the rest of their lives.”
Raji’s jaw dropped. “That’s awful! You are so bad!”
“Hey, I didn’t start the tradition. Isn’t that how it works in Indian weddings?”
“No. First of all, it’s a necklace, not a ring. The bride’s family gives all the wedding jewelry because the bride symbolizes the goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of beauty, prosperity, and good fortune.”
Peyton bonked himself on the forehead. “Then you should have given me a necklace? The Cabots didn’t keep their wealth by giving away jewelry when it’s not expected.”
“Don’t get all excited, Peyton Cabot of the Connecticut Old Money Cabots. First of all, boys don’t get necklaces. More importantly, I’m a cardiothoracic surgeon. I am the gold and jewels.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “I think you must be the goddess of good fortune because I am the luckiest man in the world.”
A slice of pain lanced across her stomach. “Ow.”
“Are you all right? Is everything all right?”
“Baby kicked my liver or something.” More pain, longer, harder. “Ow!”
“Raji?” Peyton was holding her and scanning her face. “Are you all right?”
“Braxton-Hicks contractions, probably, from stress. Or dehydration. Or something.”
“You’re the doctor. You should know.” He hadn’t stopped watching her, though.
She lay down on the bed on her left side, panting, while Peyton held her hand.
Nothing for twenty minutes. The baby kangaroo she was growing in there stopped kicking the shit out of her.
Raji eased herself up. “Okay, I’m better now.”
“Let’s get a marriage license.”
She held her hand over her aching stomach. “Now?”
“It’s almost noon. We just have to go down to a county clerk’s office and pick it up. Let’s go, right now. We can find someone to marry us today.” His hand spread over her stomach. “I know it’s old-fashioned. I know it’s probably chauvinistic or not progressive or indicative of my privilege, but I want you to be my wife when this baby is born.”
“We can’t tell my mother where we’re going,” Raji said. “She thinks we’re already married.”
Peyton kissed her, a slow, gentle kiss. “Whatever it takes.”
“Are we really doing this?” she asked.
“Getting married and having a baby?” He stroked her stomach. “I would say it looks like we’re doing that sooner rather than later.”
“Yeah,” Raji said. She had daydreamed about making a life with Peyton and this little half-lizard baby so often that it felt like she had stepped out of a nightmare and back into real life. “First, I have a phone call to make and an airplane flight to cancel.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Two Phone Calls
* * *
Raji canceled her plane reservation first because that was easy.
Then she opened up the video calling app on her computer and called India.
Aarthi answered the video call, her face huge on the screen until she moved back from the webcam. “Raji! Are you leaving for the airport? I am so excited to be seeing you here!”
Raji had propped her tablet up on a bunch of pillows so that the webcam could see just her face. “Aarthi, honey, we need to talk. I’m so sorry.”
Aarthi’s eyes expanded, and Raji heard her gasp. “Are you all right? Is the baby okay?”
“Everybody’s okay. I’m fine, and the baby is fine, too.”
Cardiothoracic surgeons get a lot of practice in breaking bad news to people. Raji fell back on her bedside manner guidelines. Her inner lizard shut off her emotions so that she could speak.
Raji said, “I’m sorry, but there’s been a development.”
Bedside manner guidelines state that doctors should strive to be kind, compassionate, and honest, but they should also be direct, succinct, and with
out room for bargaining or negotiation.
Rip that bandage right off, even while you’re commiserating that the bandage had to be ripped.
“I’m not going to be able to place the baby for adoption at all,” Raji said, keeping her voice calm. “The father has returned to the picture, and we’re going to be married. We’re going to raise the child as our own. I’m very, very sorry that I got your hopes up, and I know that you’ll make a wonderful mother someday to some other child.”
Aarthi cried but said that she understood.
Luckily, Raji’s aunt Lalitha went over to Aarthi’s house right away to help her through it because that’s what big Indian families do.
Chapter Forty-Six
Stress Contractions
* * *
Peyton drove Raji’s pale silver Honda sedan out of the underground parking garage. When they had left her apartment, he had put that silly Santa hat back on his head.
Raji clung to the door handle as Peyton drove the car up the ramp far too fast. They blew past the reporters and photographers lurking outside her building.
Flashes brighter than the sun splayed across her vision, blinding her even through her sunglasses.
Filling out the paperwork and paying for a marriage license at the county clerk’s office took an hour. The clerk eyed Raji’s burgeoning belly the whole time, her eyes wide.
On the way back to Raji’s apartment, Peyton stopped the car by a jeweler and bought two thick, gold wedding rings to symbolize, he said, his under-delivery on every promise from there on out.
Raji laughed at him.
When they got back to the car, her body squeezed, and her stomach turned hard.
Raji told Peyton, “Must be stress contractions.”
“Is that a thing?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re the doctor.”
“You say that like you don’t believe it,” she said. Peyton pressed the button to start the engine and flipped the air conditioning on full blast. Blessed cool air washed over Raji’s face and arms.
Peyton said, “I’ve seen three women have babies in the last couple of years, and two of them were in the last few months. Elfie had her baby just last week. Tryp finally got a son and named him Neil.”
“Neil? A rock star named his baby Neil?”
“Pretty sure it was after Neil Peart, the drummer for Rush. You look like Georgie and Elfie did just before they went to the hospital. Maybe right before they went.”
“Which is? And you need to consider how you phrase this very carefully.”
“Glowing?” he ventured, his eyebrows raised. “Don’t hurt me.”
“So, sweaty. I’ve been dripping sweat for the last two months even though it’s supposedly winter here in Los Angeles. That’s nothing new.”
He sighed. “It’s the way you’re moving, the way you’re walking.”
“Waddling? Again, I’ve been doing that for months.” Her stomach clenched again, and she sucked air afterward.
“And there’s that other thing,” he said, “the contractions. You’re at about five minutes apart. I think we should progress calmly to the hospital.”
“But it’s not time yet. I just had a doctor’s appointment this morning, and they said I’m not effaced at all, less than ten percent. I shouldn’t go into labor for at least a week.” Panic lifted her chin and her voice. “I’ve got at least a week left.”
“I don’t think you have that long,” Peyton said.
A vise grabbed Raji around her stomach, and she panted through it.
When she looked up, Peyton reached over and took her hand. “Raji-lee, it’s time to go to the hospital.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
New Plan
* * *
Raji was calm, of course. She was a doctor and a surgeon at that, not to mention a cold-blooded lizard person.
Parturition at the end of pregnancy was just another biological process.
It was just a lot easier to keep calm about biological processes when they were happening to other people.
Raji’s guts knotted, twisting her with pain. She held her breath until it went away.
Peyton said, “We’re almost to the hospital.”
She gritted her teeth. “I know. I work there every day.”
Another contraction grabbed her. Raji groaned as she got through it.
When it was done, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“According to what I’ve seen, I’m the one who’s supposed to be apologizing about now.”
“You wanted to get married before we went to the hospital.”
“We’ll see what we can do, but the most important thing is that you’re all right, you and the baby.”
She leaned back in the passenger seat, breathing and trying not to think about the fact that another one of those contractions was coming in four minutes. “This must be a shock to you. One day you were a rock star on sabbatical, lying on the beach in Mallorca, and then next day you’re about to be a father and trying to find a priest to do a hurry-up, quickie wedding.”
“It’s not a shock. I thought about you every day, imagining what would have been happening to your body as our child grew, if you hadn’t taken care of it. I lived in a little dreamland for a few minutes every day, wondering what our lives would have been like if you’d said yes.”
“That’s kind of sweet.”
“Yes, it wasn’t creepy at all, looking back at it. Speaking of being a creepy creeper, you knew I was on Mallorca, huh?”
“Just happened to see those pictures of you suntanning at the hotel.”
“And the search terms you were using—”
Raji sighed. “Peyton Cabot Killer Valentine shirtless. You’d be surprised how many returns that gets. There are a lot of half-naked pictures of you out there.”
Peyton laughed. “People take pictures of the tattoos. There’s a pinterest board called ‘Peyton Cabot Tattoo Watch’ where they hunt to see if I’ve gotten any new ones.”
“You’ve been working out.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to go to the gym, what with being on sabbatical and all.”
Raji’s belly cramped again. She leaned forward, the seatbelt pulling back on her shoulder as Peyton whipped them through traffic.
He reached over and held her hand.
Fitting, really, that their relationship had begun at a wedding and during a wild car ride to the airport, and now it was ending with a wild ride to the hospital and, at some point, a wedding.
When they arrived at the hospital, Raji pointed Peyton around to the staff entrance. He screeched the brakes, stopping the car.
Raji was bent almost in half, hanging onto the car’s dashboard, and she whispered, “I’m having some trouble here. Would you mind maybe going inside and getting me a wheelchair?”
But Peyton had already run around to her side of the car, opened her door, and gathered her up in his arms. He carried her into the hospital, and the automatic doors jumped out of his way to let them inside. The Christmas wreaths hanging on the doors swung like ringing bells.
Raji clung to Peyton’s neck as he strode through the corridors, his long legs traveling quickly over the tile. He seemed to be following the signs to the maternity ward, so she just leaned her head against his shoulder and watched while the orderlies and nursing assistants dodged the Christmas trees, chasing them with a wheelchair.
At the maternity ward, a nurse whom Raji really should know but couldn’t quite concentrate enough to remember her name at the moment waved her over to a gurney.
Peyton laid her on it, saying, “Contractions are less than five minutes apart and strong.”
“Splendid. I need to speak to Ms. Kannan privately.”
“Doctor Kannan,” both Raji and Peyton said at the same time.
Yep, because Peyton had her back.
The nurse said, “Privately.”
“Okay. I’ll be out in the hallway. Yell if you want me.” Peyton wandered out into th
e hallway, looking at something on his phone.
The nurse shoved a clipboard in front of Raji’s face. The paper on it had one question: Are you afraid of the person who brought you here, are you in any danger, or should we call a domestic violence specialist?
Raji screamed at her, “I’m in active labor, you bleedin’ idiot! I’m having a baby!”
At Raji’s shout, Peyton started to walk over. He was still wearing that stupid Santa hat.
The nurse said, “Sir, this is a private consultation.”
Raji said, “Peyton, I need to tell off this nurse, and you should back up for a second or else I might shatter your impression of me as a delicate fucking flower!”
Peyton retreated, hands raised.
Raji turned back to the nurse. “No! Of course not! Now get that fucking clipboard out of my face before I shove it up—Ah!” Another contraction seized Raji and twisted her guts.
When Raji recovered, panting, the nurse told her, “It’s standard protocol. You of all people should know that, Dr. Kannan.”
“Fuck you and get Peyton over here!”
Peyton trotted back to her side, “Yes, my sweet, delicate flower?”
“Give me your goddamn belt!”
His sea-green eyes expanded a little. “Why?”
“So I can beat you with it for doing this to me. Why do you think? So I can bite on it, so I don’t shatter my damn teeth!”
Peyton whipped the belt out of the belt loops of his pants and offered it to her, gingerly.
Raji crammed the leather in her mouth and mumbled around it, “Tell Joshua Williams to quit being a lazy dick and get his pencil-necked ass down here!”
After an epidural and Peyton stroking her hand for a few minutes, Raji stopped threatening to assault people. She was still panting through contractions, but they didn’t feel like a giant was twisting her in half anymore.
Peyton checked his phone. “I’ll ask you one more time: will you marry me?”
A Billionaire for Christmas Page 20