A Billionaire for Christmas

“When you said yes, I was going to tell you to open the door, and I was going to be kneeling there with the ring.”

She pointed. “That ring?”

“Yes.”

“And you kept it?”

He bit his lip. “I kept hoping.”

“You did?”

“I know that I don’t say it enough, but I love you. I’ve loved you for so long. It’s a New England thing, and it’s hard for me to say it.”

“Didn’t your parents tell you they loved you when you were growing up?” Raji asked.

“God, no. How gauche.”

She snorted a laugh. “That explains a lot.”

He said, “I’ll sign anything you want in a prenup. We’ll write in a clause that, if we’re married for over a year and we divorce, I will write you a check for five million dollars in addition to any other monies you’re entitled to, and there might be a lot more.”

Five million dollars? She could pay off her student loan debt ten times over. “Why?”

“Because if you live with me for a year, you’ll fall in love with me and never want to leave.”

Peyton’s confidence and humor scattered light over the dark thoughts in her head. “You are so full of yourself, you with the hot tattoos and shredded abs and impossibly sea-green eyes. And I don’t want a damn prenup unless you want to safeguard your family’s money. I understand that. And I’ve already fallen in love with you, so your money doesn’t matter.”

“And I’ve fallen in love with you, there with your funny little lizard brain and your silky hair and your luminous eyes,” His hands roamed her back, stroking her, soothing her, “and you with our child in your body. I shouldn’t have left. I should have battered down your door and made you listen to me.”

“I told you that I wouldn’t marry you,” she said, leaning her forehead against his strong shoulder. “I didn’t know what else to do. It seemed the right thing to do at the time. God, I’ve missed you so much.”

Peyton stopped breathing, and his hand flexed on her stomach. “I felt something.”

She chuckled. “Yeah, it kicks, a lot.”

He knelt in front of her, his hands gently roving over her belly. When he sat back on his heels, his head only came up to her chest, which was so weird.

He asked, “Will it happen again?”

“Yeah.” She took his hand and pressed next to her hip. “There’s the head, which means the feet are up here, and that’s why my ribs are bruised.”

Peyton inhaled sharply. “I felt it again.”

She smiled at him.

When he looked up at her, his sea-green eyes were shining. From where Peyton was on his knees in front of her, he held out the open ring box again. “Marry me, right now. Please, Raji, for the love of my God and all of yours, be my wife for all our lives, and give this baby the family that they were always meant to have. Stay with me. Be with me. Let me be with you.”

Fear crept up in her—fear that he would walk out one day and she would be left as alone and bereft as her mother had been, like Raji had been when her father had walked out on them both when she had been only ten years old—except th