A Billionaire for Christmas

If she hadn’t quite believed Peyton when he’d said he was loaded last night, she did now. Not only was the car expensive as all heck, something a cardiothoracic surgeon wouldn’t be able to buy until they’d practiced for at least a decade, but it was also refined and understated, a quietly ostentatious, Old Money car. New money bought BMWs and flashy sports cars. The hospital parking structure was full of them.

She grabbed the freezing door handle and yanked. As she tumbled into the seat, she told him the name of the hotel where she was staying.

“I know where that is,” Peyton said, cranking around in the seat to watch out the rear window.

Raji wrapped her seat belt around herself as the car reversed out of the parking spot, and then Peyton jammed the car into gear and took off down the long and winding driveway. “Gum in the glove compartment. Hand me a slice?”

She found it, gave him a stick, and crammed one piece into her own mouth, too. Spearmint filled her sinuses, much better than the burp-up of last night’s booze.

The gate at the end of the long driveway slid aside as they neared it.

“Cadell came through,” Peyton said. “Even though I grew up with gates like this, they give me the heebie-jeebies.”

“And why is that?” Raji hung on to the handle on the door and the soft leather of the seat as the car careened around a corner. The wan November sunrise filtered through gauzy clouds, turning them pale salmon and gold.

Peyton said, “Had some problems last summer.”

“What, stuck inside your Old Money compound and the foie gras delivery guy couldn’t get in?”

Peyton laughed. “No, some weird stuff went down.”

“Like what?” She was in that kind of mood.

“I shouldn’t say.”

“You brought it up, buddy.”

Peyton zipped the car around another tight corner. The turn’s force shoved Raji against the door.

He said, “That was the time when Xan and I rescued Georgie from the Russian Mafia who had taken her hostage.”

Raji laughed and held on more tightly as Peyton sped out into the city streets. “Fine, don’t tell me then.”

Peyton yanked the car steering wheel sideways and sped up the on-ramp to the Garden State Parkway. Even at that time in the early morning, other cars raced around them. “That’s pretty much what happened.”

“The Russian mafia.”

“Yep.”

If the Russian mafia didn’t like Peyton, maybe Raji shouldn’t hang around him anymore.

She wasn’t planning to hang around him anymore, anyway, but she asked, “Are you somehow involved with the Russian mafia?”

Peyton said, “Nope. Not at all. Not even a little bit.”

“So, Georgie seems okay now.”

“Yep, we saved her.”

“Is that why you and Xan Valentine have that alpha-male pissing-contest thing going on?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Raji laughed. “Every time you say something, Xan Valentine has to assert his dominant-male, bull-elephant status, like last night, when you said that you would hire Andy to be your doctor. Xan Valentine jumped in and announced that he was hiring Andy, that she was his.”

“Shingles hurt. If she could stop that from happening to me again, I’d gladly pay her salary.”

“But then he snagged her, and you didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, Raji. I come from a wealthy family. We didn’t keep our wealth for centuries by leaping to pay the bill when someone else is perfectly willing to do it. And really, she should be the doctor for the whole band, not my private physician on tour. It sounds like she’s going to give me a shot, slap me on the ass, and that’s it.”

Raji wasn’t sure how she felt about her friend Andy slapping Peyton’s ass.

She shook her head. Andy wouldn’t slap his ass, anyway. She was far too reserved.

And yet, Andy had eloped with a rock star. Raji would have to keep an eye on that little pindi.

She said to Peyton, “And you swell up but you don’t challenge him, even though I think you could.”

Peyton shrugged, a quick movement of his burly shoulder while he changed lanes to dodge a slower car. “It’s Xan’s band. He started the band with Cadell when they were at Juilliard, and he hunted down the other founding members and lured them away from college.”

Raji laughed and hung on for dear life as he rounded another corner. Peyton’s car might look like a sedate Old Money sedan, but some serious horses lurked under that hood. He was racing through traffic. “So why did you join Killer Valentine and become a rock star?”

“I’m not a rock star.”

“You keep saying that, but being in a rock band kind of means that you are. I’ve watched videos of you playing the demos in those clubs, you know. You’re hot.”

“You’ve watched videos of me playing on the demos? When did you do that?”

“When we met last night, I might have already known who you were. I might have watched that demo of ‘Breaking Out’ that you guys performed at the Travelers Bar a couple dozen times.” Or a couple hundred times. Or thousands. In only three weeks.