A Billionaire for Christmas

Chapter Forty-OneHigh Above the Rocky MountainsOn a plane high above the crumpled Rocky Mountains, Peyton Cabot rummaged around in his backpack, trying to find a notebook or something to write on. His laptop and tablet were in there, but he just wanted a pen and paper.

Dark air filled his backpack like fog, and he searched with his fingertips because he couldn’t see anything in the darkened plane. The Santa hat’s soft fur flopped as he tried to feel past it, so he yanked it out and dropped it on his head. His laptop and tablet clicked against each other as he slipped his hands past them.

His impulsive exit yesterday meant he was out of Killer Valentine. Georgie had sent him a quick text to tell him to lie low for a while, while Cadell’s text read, Jesus, Peys. What did you do?

When Peyton thought of not going back to Killer Valentine—not living on the road, not having to wedge time in between gigs to see Raji, not playing someone else’s music and furtively scribbling his songs in the dark while wrung out from performing concerts—his heart lifted.

He might not be able to go back to the classical world. Breaking that contract with the L.A. Phil three years ago had been a grievous act, but it hadn’t been an error or a miscalculation.

He had needed to reinvent himself these few years, personally and in his music.

He wasn’t running after Georgie anymore.

He wasn’t following the path that Juilliard had demanded of him.

He wanted to find a new way.

His hands itched for a keyboard, whether to play his own music or something classical, he couldn’t tell. He’d know when he put his hands down on the keys.

His fingers closed over a hard cube in the bottom of the sack, under his change of clothes and other stuff that he always kept in his rucksack.

He pulled out the ring box.

When he opened it, the dawn sunlight hit the brilliant center diamond and threw spangles over the interior of the airplane.

His heart clenched, looking at it.

Whatever his new path was, he needed Raji to walk it with him.

Peyton should have knocked on Raji’s door that night when he had proposed the second time. Pride had kept him from doing it, stupid wounded pride at pursuing her after she had rejected him.

He should have pounded on the door, rattled it in its frame, until she let him in.

He should have beaten it down.

He should have told her that he loved her and begged her to have him, to stay with him.

Now, it was all fucked up.

The plane jiggled around him, a touch of turbulence.

Xan’s counter-offensive would begin soon, Peyton knew, and it would be thorough. He had to get to her before the reporters did. They would be brutal, demanding to know why she had lied like that. Any dirt in her own life was going to be flung around in an attempt to distract the press.

He’d tried to call Raji, first from the small French airport and then during his plane changes in Paris and Boston, but she wouldn’t answer her phone.

Maybe she had turned her phone off because the reporters were already bothering her.

Maybe she had changed her cell phone number sometime in these last few months, and he had been flinging desperate texts into an empty hole.

Peyton finally asked the steward for a pen and scribbled lines on his unfolded napkin, something confused and mostly incoherent about his heart and his life’s blood and that love wouldn’t keep them apart.

When the plane began to descend, he was clutching the ring box and shredded napkin in his fists, praying that he wasn’t too late.Chapter Forty-TwoPacking for IndiaRaji swung the bulk of her pregnant belly around as she rolled up a few salwar kameezes, which were Indian tunic and leggings sets, and wedged them into her overstuffed suitcase that was lying open on her bed. These last few months, she had been glad that her family had been sending her salwar kameez as gifts for many years. With the drawstring waists and roomy tops, they had worked perfectly as maternity clothes under her new, XXL-sized white doctor’s coat.

Boxes and zipper bags filled the rest of her luggage. Friends and cousins had dropped packages by or mailed them to her so she could to take them in her luggage to their families in India. No one trusted the international mail.

Breaking up with Peyton had left Raji with lots of free time. She had picked up other people’s shifts at the hospital and had gotten ahead to the point where she could take three whole weeks off to have the baby and recover.

One of Raji’s Indian aunties had been thrilled to volunteer to take Raji in afterward and had sent lists detailing just how she was going to mother Raji after the birth with sweets and savory snacks, all the time, any time she wanted, as inadequate thanks for Raji giving Aarthi this most beautiful and blessed of gifts.