A Billionaire for Christmas

Raji tapped her phone with her thumb to hang up and fell back onto the pillow, trying to sleep for several more minutes before someone needed her to save their damn life or something.

There was no way she was going out to breakfast with him in a restaurant where anyone might see. The attending physicians, all of them, were her bosses. Dozens of them. They were all conservative to the point of worrying about whether their car was too dark or too light of a shade of gray.

She could never be seen in public with a rock star, not if she wanted to keep her residency.

She had to talk to Peyton about this. If they were going to see each other on the down-low, they had to make some rules.Chapter TwelveBreakfast and RulesPeyton leaned back in his chair, pulling grapes off of stems and eating the sweet fruits one by one. “I appreciate it, but you didn’t have to cook breakfast. I know of a great little cafe that’s even near the hospital.”

Raji said, “I don’t mind.”

She was sitting across the small kitchen table from him, leaning her head on her elbow. Peyton tucked his feet under his chair so he wouldn’t kick her under the cafe-sized table.

Her eyes, usually dark and yet luminous, were half-closed, and her cheek was sliding from her hand down her wrist. Dark circles smudged under her eyes, and she kept blinking those long, slow blinks where she appeared to fall asleep for a few seconds.

It was rude to tell somebody that they looked tired, so Peyton refrained.

He assumed that his sparkling repartee was putting Raji to sleep. He resolved to do better. “Look this is the twenty-first century. You don’t have to cook breakfast for a guy. If you are not on call, and if we make this a regular thing—”

Raji covered another yawn with her hand. “Yeah, about this becoming a regular thing, Peyton—”

He backpedaled. “Hey, I’m casual. Whatever else you’ve got going on, I’m fine with it. I would have been fine if we’d had breakfast and hung out over coffee, just friends. Although I’m not sorry about, you know.” He gestured toward the bedroom, where her rumpled bed probably still smelled like sex.

She said, “We need to talk about some rules.”

“Rules? I thought that was why you wanted to fuck a rock star to begin with, because there are no rules.” He grinned, trying to look rakish to distract her.

“The rock star thing is the problem, Peys.”

“I thought you liked that I’m a musician,” he said, confused.

“It’s not that I think it’s a problem. It’s what other people will think if they see me, a cardiac surgeon, hanging out with a rock star.”

“I don’t like that rock star thing. I’m a classically trained musician.”

“Peys, I can’t be seen with you. No pictures. No tabloids. No gossip websites. The attending physicians, who are my bosses, and all of them are my bosses, like a dozen of them, all of them would freak if they saw a picture of me on some website, hanging out with a guy in Killer Valentine. I mean, Killer Valentine, of all bands, the band that loses musicians to heroin and rehab and infighting and the gods only know what else. They would just assume that I was stealing controlled substances from the pharmacy stocks. Cardiac surgeons don’t date rock stars.”

Peyton frowned. “I would have assumed that cardiac surgeons didn’t have a lip piercing or the Chinese symbol for energy tattooed on one of their hands, but those seem to be working for you.”

“These make me look edgy and hip.”

“Dating a musician would do that.” Peyton gestured to his khaki pants and pressed, white shirt. “And it’s not like I’m a long-haired stoner slacker with a needle hanging out of my arm. I have a Master’s degree from Juilliard.”

“But everyone knows Killer Valentine has a drug culture problem. When Rade died and Grayson went to rehab, the news was all over the place. Half the band was suddenly missing, and everybody had an opinion on it. And then your backup singer walked off like there was a reason to get the hell out. Your reputation isn’t as bad as Nirvana or Motley Crue or anything, but you guys are not a squeaky-clean boy band.”

“But the band is squeaky clean now. Killer Valentine has a strict anti-substance-abuse policy written into the contracts. After all that drama, they almost had to cancel the European tour. That would have been disastrous, and it’s why I was hired within hours.”

“But it’s a rock band. There are always drug problems, right? How about the other guys?”

Peyton admitted, “Tryp used to use with Rade and Grayson, but then he got married. His wife would never put up with that. She’s a technician, and if she saw him with any blow, she would probably put a bomb in his drum kit and blow him sky-high, if you know what I mean.”