A Billionaire for Christmas

He stepped forward, careful not to scare her nor assume too much. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do this. I told Xan and the rest of them that you would never do something like this. I quit Killer Valentine because they wouldn’t back off.”

“You did?” She looked up at him, tears standing in her huge, dark eyes. “You quit the band?”

“Yeah.” He sucked in a deep, fortifying breath. “Does it bother you that I’m not a ‘rock star’ anymore?”

“No, no! It doesn’t matter what I think, anyway. Did you want to quit?”

“I couldn’t hang around there any longer, not after that. I told them the source for the story couldn’t be you. I trust you. I know you wouldn’t ever lash out like this.”

Her pretty little face crumpled, and she drove her head into his chest. “I didn’t know what you would think. I thought that you would think that I had done this and you would hate me!”

By the end, she was wailing.

Peyton closed his arms around her, feeling the curves of her body in his arms, stroking her flesh through the thin silk of her clothes, her form that was rounded and heavy with his child. Her clean hair smelled like the citrus shampoo that she used, and her skin was softer than the silk of her clothes. His fingers crept into her hair, and he cradled her against his body. “I always trusted you,” he said. “I never thought you would tell them all that.”

“But it is my fault.”

“No, it’s not. You didn’t talk to a reporter, so it’s not your fault. If I ever meet this Beth woman, I’ll have words with her, but you are innocent.”

Knocking rattled the door behind him.

In his arms, Raji said, “Oh my God. You’re kidding me, right?”

“Who is it?”

“Beth is on her way over to take me to the airport.”

“Then I’ll give her a piece of my mind right now.”

“Peyton, no!”

He reached behind himself and twisted the doorknob.

The woman who stood there was older than they were, thin and whip-like, and she wore another kind of Indian clothes, the kind with a long skirt and a cape down the back. Her complexion held the same honey tones as Raji’s, but gray painted her black hair that was twisted up in a bun on the back of her head. She was shorter than Raji by several inches.

Raji stepped back from Peyton’s arms, and he fought himself not to grab her back again. She asked, “Amma?”

The woman asked something in another language, her eyes darting between the two of them with suspicion. Her deep frown and lowered eyebrows meant the same thing in every country on Earth.

Raji answered back in the same rapid language, her voice rising. Peyton heard his name, and Raji flapped her hand at him.

Peyton asked her, “Everything all right? Is this Beth?”

“No,” Raji said to him. “This isn’t Beth. This is my mother. Evidently, she was going to surprise me by flying all the way to Los Angeles so she could travel with me to India.”

Peyton fell back on his prep school training in politeness and manners. He knew how to be polite in most cultures.

He whipped the Santa hat off of his head. Instead of sticking out his hand to shake, he pressed his palms together as if praying and bowed. “Namaste. A pleasure to meet you,” he wasn’t sure what her last name was, “ma’am.”

Raji’s mother glared at him, her already-large eyes even wider with anger. “So you’re Peyton Cabot.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He smiled slightly, not sure whether he was about to be dismissed by the tiny, infuriated mother or physically attacked.

She sneered, “You are the man who has dishonored my daughter.”

“Amma!” Raji spoke rapidly, angrily, and there was a lot of pointing.

Peyton wanted to defend Raji and her honor and anything else that needed defending, but he was not sure whether to get in the middle of that. One of them might be arguing to kill him, and he wasn’t sure which one.

Raji’s mother turned to him. “Why you are here, then? Why you even show up here at all?”

Peyton dug fast into his pocket, finding the jewelry box. He popped open the velvet-covered cube, showing them the diamonds and platinum setting that had cost more than his car, his brand-new Mercedes. “I had Raji’s ring.”

Raji’s mother’s eyes widened further, and she looked back and forth between the two of them a few times, her suspicion turning to anger and grief. “That is wedding ring! You are married! You have eloped her!”

“No, no, no!” Peyton said, waving his hands, not wanting to corner Raji that way.

Raji slipped her arm around Peyton’s waist. “Yes, Amma. That’s exactly what happened. We eloped a year ago, and we didn’t tell anyone because I knew that you would have just this kind of reaction.”