A Billionaire for Christmas

Raji said, “You’re too soft-hearted to be a transplant surgeon. Don’t get me wrong. You can cut with the best of them, but you need a specialty with a higher survival rate than seventy-five percent to transplant and then seventy-eight at five years. I know you, pindi. We’ve been over this.”

Andy frowned at her. “The survival rate for heart transplants is almost exactly the same. You do fine.”

“I’m a cold-blooded lizard person,” Raji said. “The failures don’t bother me except as a failure and that it brings down my stats. I cut to cure, and sometimes the odds aren’t in your favor.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Andy said, settling herself closer to her husband.

This might be the only opportunity that Raji would ever have to talk sense into Andy and free her from her parents’ expectations for a career that she really, really wasn’t suited for.

Raji said, “I don’t cry in the on-call room pretty much every day.”

“I don’t do that,” Andy said, yawning.

Press on. Press harder. “I know you, Andal. Don’t lie to me. I can rip a guy’s chest open, cut out his heart, and sew new pieces back in him just fine. You have to be a little bit of a psychopath to do this job. Or a lot of one.”

Peyton was frowning and watching Raji through slitted eyes.

Time for the pièce de résistance and to drive the dagger home in both of them at once, to kill two heart-soft wusses with one merciful stone. Peyton had been asking for stuff like going back to his hotel with him, and Raji didn’t roll like that. Stone-cold lizard people did not get involved in cross-species relationships with warm, emotional humans.

Raji said, “You aren’t a psycho like me. You should get out, now, before this job rips you to shreds.”

Georgie opened her eyes and said, “So, you can hang around New Jersey and watch a bunch more kids die, or you can come on tour with us, see the world, hang out with royalty and celebrities, boss everybody around, and keep your new husband off of fucking heroin.”

Nice. Raji approved.

Under her cheek, Peyton shifted.

Yes, let him run away from her. Raji was not girlfriend material. She was a warrior who sliced and diced her opponent, cardiac failure, to save people from him.

And she never, ever wanted to indulge in that most fatal of deviant behaviors: marriage.

But Peyton settled down and didn’t leave.

Sleep drifted over Raji’s limbs, pinning her to the floor and Peyton.Chapter SevenAirport RideRaji awoke on the cold beige carpeting with her arms and legs wrapped around Peyton. Warmth rolled off his flesh and thick muscles, the only warm thing near her. She huddled closer to him, but her back and legs were so cold that she was shivering. He was still breathing the deep, slow breaths of the sleeping or the heavily anesthetized.

Considering the vodka shots they had both been doing last night before collapsing on the living room floor, maybe both.

The other members of Killer Valentine spilled limply over the couches and chairs, snoring.

The television was silently playing some morning news show, and sunlight beams shot flat from the window and drew long shadows of the furniture on the beige carpet.

Wait, sunbeams?

Oh, shit. It was morning.

And the sun was up.

Raji grabbed her phone out of her jeans’ hip pocket.

The screen read 6:19 AM. The battery icon was a thin, red line.

“Fuck!” She pushed off of Peyton and leaped to her feet.

The other guys stirred. Xan Valentine rolled to sitting and shoved Georgie down on the couch behind him. From behind Xan, Raji heard Georgie holler, “Hey! What the hell are you doing?”

Panic shot up Raji’s back and pushed alcoholic sweat out of her skin. “Oh, my God. My plane leaves in an hour and a half, and my stuff is all at my hotel. Shit. I’ll never make it in time. I’m calling a ride right now. I have to go.” She tapped the ride-calling icon on the phone screen, and her phone instantly died. “Fuck!”

Peyton stumbled to his feet. “My car’s outside. I can drive you. It’s faster.”

“I’ll never make it. Shit. I have rounds at the hospital tonight.”

“Let’s go.” Peyton was already walking toward the car.

“I can’t. My teeth. My breath. I need a toothbrush.”

Peyton already had the front door open. “Cadell, open the front gate for us. Raji, I have gum in the car. Come on.”

Raji grabbed her purse that had been lying on the table and sprinted after him.

He had his key fob out and was thumbing it as they stumbled down the inclined lawn toward the driveway packed with cars. The dark gray sedan parked in the last slot flashed its lights as he reached it. Peyton jerked open the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel.

Raji noted the car as she ran around the hood: a newish top-of-the-line Mercedes S-Class, a six-figure car.