A Billionaire for Christmas

“Oh. Okay.” Peyton shrugged. He didn’t see why this was any sort of a revelation.

“That’s okay with you?”

“Why, were you going to change it if I wasn’t?”

She chuckled. “Okay, good point. So, back to your career and life plan. Your dad must have been a classical musician,” Raji said, her voice lingering over the words like she was trying to restart the conversation.

“No. He’s a lawyer.” Peyton settled back on his pillow.

“So, shouldn’t you have become a lawyer, then?”

“God forbid.”

She was grinning again. “Oh, did you break your daddy’s heart by becoming a musician?”

“My father was devastated for at least fifteen minutes when I told him that I wanted to be a concert pianist and would not be attending Yale Law. Four buildings at Yale bear the Cabot name, mostly because several of my underachieving ancestors needed to grease Yale’s gears to be admitted. But New Englanders don’t express such undignified emotions longer than is absolutely necessary—”

Raji said, “They sound like my kind of lizard people.”

“—so that was the end of it. But that’s not what I meant. My father is not a real lawyer who takes cases for money. I meant he’s rich. We’re rich.”

Raji laughed. “Must be nice.”

“I’m not complaining about it. I can do anything I want in life, or nothing, and not worry about money.”

“So this life plan is a waste of time. You can just float around on your family’s money. Don’t you want to have your own money, though?”

“My grandfather left me millions in a trust fund. A lot of millions. More than millions.”

She frowned. “But your grandfather should have left his money to your father, right?”

“Oh, no. Inheritance in wealthy families skips generations. My grandfather left me his money, and then my father will leave his money to my theoretical kids someday. That way, the family trust pays half the inheritance taxes instead of paying them every generation, plus everybody gets the bulk of their money earlier in their lives.”

Raji’s jaw dropped. “That’s shady.”

“Of course. We’re wealthy. Everything we do is shady.”

The look in her dark, sultry eyes was nothing short of aghast. “Dude, you are getting less and less sympathetic by the second.”

Peyton worked hard not to laugh. Damn, she was cute. “Really? Most of the time, when I mention that I’m a rock star and I’m loaded, women seem to like it.”

“Fuck you. I’m a fucking cardiothoracic surgeon.” She grinned. “If I do one surgery per week, I’ll make buttloads more money than you earn off the interest on your millions, and I’ll do way more than one surgery a week. But you’re cute when you’re full of yourself, there with your eight-pack of abs and big, strong biceps and shockingly green eyes.”

Peyton laughed and propped himself up on his elbow to look down at her. The sheet rose where she was still breathing hard. He said, “I like you better and better, the more we talk.”

She smirked. “You didn’t like me before? Could have fooled me.”

“I liked you a lot before, and now I like you better and better,” he clarified. He traced the curve of her shoulder with one finger. “You, there, with your pretty, little face and your huge, dark eyes and your fascinating tattoos on your skin that I want to lick every time I look at them.”

Every brain cell in his head screamed out at Peyton to stop talking, that he might say too much and get caught up in an unwise relationship. His father never screwed a woman unless a non-disclosure agreement and settlement document had already been signed.

But sometimes, the truth is unwise, and sometimes, you have to leap.

If anyone in Killer Valentine had cared about Peyton’s music, that might have made a good song.

It was true, though. All during the night, through the dancing and writing the toast and fucking her, Peyton had liked Raji more and more.

A cute little crease appeared between Raji’s slim eyebrows again. “Well, you shouldn’t like me at all. I’m going to be a heart surgeon because I don’t have a heart. It takes a stone cold bitch to literally rip a person’s beating heart out of their body and let them die.”

“Is it still beating when you rip it out?” he asked, grinning at her. “Sounds like it would be tough to grab onto, flopping around like that.”

“Well, no,” she admitted. “We stop both the hearts, and we use a bypass machine on the recipient.”

He laughed.

“But I still rip it out! And, you know, donors don’t need a bypass machine. They die on the table.”

“Of course.” Peyton gathered her under one arm. “Come back to my hotel with me tonight.”

“Oh, hell, no. I have an early flight back to California tomorrow.”

“Then let me grab my phone to get your number. It’s in my pants on the floor. I could call you sometime.”