A Billionaire for Christmas

Plus, his sunny personality seemed to find the good humor in everything, even how stupid she was being about writing a toast for Cadell and Andy.

Raji held a pen poised over the paper. “I don’t know what to say.”

It was true. She couldn’t think of words at all. Her estrogen-fogged brain kept gibbering fuck me, fuck me hard, fuck me like a rock star.

“Say what’s in your heart,” Peyton-Cabot said. “Say what you feel in your heart.”

“I don’t feel anything. I’m a surgeon. Your first surgery is to rip out your own heart and throw it away so that you can cut other people open and do what needs to be done to make them well.”

“Really?” Peyton asked. “You’re a surgeon like Andy?”

“Not like Andy. She’s gastro. I’m in cardiothoracic surgery and transplantation. I rip hearts out of warm, dead bodies and sew them into warm, live ones, and then I electrocute them to jump-start everything again.”

“Sounds brutal,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know. I have no feelings. That’s why I can’t write this.”

“Come on, now. Let’s get this toast done. How did you meet Andy?”

“We were two Indian girls in a private school. Us couple of pindis hung out together.”

“Okay. That’s not exciting. What do you admire about her?”

Raji could run with that one. “I admire the hell out of the way she married Cadell instead of that other guy.” Man, the cultural ramifications for Andy were going to be harsh. Raji wasn’t sure she could have done it.

“Good,” Peyton said. “We’ll start with that.”

She fretted, “Andy is going to remember this toast for the rest of her life. This is her wedding, and I’m going to fuck it up if I say something stupid. I mean, if I say the wrong thing, I could fuck up her whole marriage.” The chance of Raji saying something stupid increased exponentially because she was excruciatingly aware of Peyton-Cabot’s rock-hard arms and the deep chasm of his spine between the thick muscles on his back that she had felt when she had had wrapped her arms around him, dancing.

Damn, Peyton-Cabot was a smokin’ hot rock star.

Peyton-Cabot’s long, strong fingers closed over her skinny brown ones, holding her hand. “We’ll make sure it’s good. Write what you just said to begin with.”

Raji sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. I can do this.”

“That’s the spirit,” he said. “You cut people open all day. This is just a few sentences to string together. You’ll be fine.”

“I’d rather crack a chest and sew veins on a heart that’s flipping around like a trout than stand up in front of everyone and say something stupid.”

He squeezed her hand. “We’ll work on it. You’ll be fine.”

His low, strong voice soothed Raji, and she wrote her first line on the scrap of paper.Chapter ThreeRaji and AndyAndy asked Raji, “So how are you liking California, yeah?”

The two women were sitting in a corner of the deck, huddled together because the warmth from the heating towers and bonfires didn’t quite reach that corner. They were both giggly and getting more drunk as the night went on.

As Peyton walked by, he handed Raji another red plastic cup filled with the dry white wine that she liked and winked at her.

Raji nearly flippin’ melted. Damn.

She said to Andy, “California is fine. It seems like everyone is getting married but me, though. I’ve had to fly back here three times this year for weddings. Not that I want to get married. I’m not cut out for that.” For the heartbreak. For the desperate pleading and sobbing that came at the end. “But everyone else is dropping like flies.”

Andy asked, “How’s Aarthi doing?”

Raji flinched. Her cousin, Aarthi, had chosen to let her parents arrange her marriage to a stranger rather than run away with the white guy who was the love of her life and get cut off. “She’s been getting along fine with the boy’s family, but now she says they’re having trouble having a baby.”

Andy’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. That’s too bad. What is her mother-in-law saying?”

“You know how those traditional families are. Her mother-in-law is talking about buyer’s remorse.”

“It’s ridiculous that we’re even having this conversation. Is she going to divorce him? Or are they going to force her out?”

Divorce. Even the word made Raji nauseated. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen. It’s a good thing you dodged the arranged-marriage bullet, huh?”

“Well, if I ever have fertility problems, at least I’ve got a sister to have a baby for me. Aarthi doesn’t have any sisters, does she? I don’t remember.”

Aarthi had been a year ahead of them in high school in New Jersey but had gone to B-school instead of becoming a doctor or a lawyer. “Nope. She has one brother.”

“This is where having one of those big Indian families would be a good thing, lots of sisters to choose from when you’re selecting a uterus to borrow. What is she going to do?”