Twelve
Maybe they should move in together.
Brittany lay in bed beside Corbin, knowing she needed to get up, go home, shower, head to the office.
But she was still sleepy, languid, warm under the comforter. And Corbin had just returned to bed for the day, and he was already asleep, his breathing steady, mouth slightly open. She liked being next to him and didn’t want to leave. It had been very nice to be waking up, dozing in and out as he had stripped down to his boxer shorts, climbed under the sheets, and given her a soft kiss. Just like it had felt comforting, safe, to go to sleep knowing he was working in the next room.
It felt right.
Maybe they could modify his marriage idea to cohabitation. It would be good to have several months together in that kind of intimate relationship before the baby arrived. Brittany was willing to take the plunge. She’d even give up her apartment, go halfsies with him on a house, or a condo, because if they moved in together, she would put her heart, her energy, her resources into making it work. That was the way she was, and she liked the picture of her and Corbin sitting on their patio, watching their baby play in the sandbox.
The one thing she couldn’t see herself doing was marrying him. That scared her and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because she was afraid to fail. Maybe it was because marriage had never brought her mother happiness. Maybe it was because in twenty years she’d be sagging and Corbin would still be gorgeous.
Or maybe it was because she was an idiot.
All were credible possibilities.
And the bottom line was if she had doubts, she shouldn’t marry him. Living together, though, that was different. That could work.
Trying not to disturb him, Brittany rolled to her left and shimmied out from under the sheet. It felt like her stomach had grown just since the night before, and the baby was making that fluttery ticklish sensation beneath her belly button. “Good morning,” she whispered to Coco Renee, or whoever she would wind up being, pressing her hand over the movement.
Brittany wandered into the other room, yawning. First thing they would have to fix when they moved in together was the food situation.
“Jesus.” She blanched when she opened the fridge, hoping for OJ to miraculously appear, and instead found herself face to face with bags of blood. She should have known better. She never went in Alex’s refrigerator anymore.
“Note to self: Get two fridges for new house.” And what the hell was that noise?
Brittany heard a chirping beep over and over, coming from Corbin’s lab room. She glanced toward the door, curious in spite of herself. But strolling into a room full of viral test tubes didn’t seem like a hot idea. On the other hand… maybe she could just poke her head around the corner. If anything were toxic, Corbin wouldn’t leave the door open.
A quick glance inside showed a room very normal in appearance. It looked like an office, with cabinets and laminate countertops running around three walls. There were test tubes and a refrigerator—she so did not want to know what was in there—but everything else seemed to be tucked away into the cabinets. Corbin was neat in his work space. It was one of the three computers that was making the noise. It seemed to be some kind of alarm alert, like Brittany’s reminder chime that went off the morning she had a doctor’s appointment.
What did Corbin have on his night’s schedule? Sample collection at eleven? She remembered how she had seen him using pleasure to daze a woman while he withdrew her blood, and she hoped like hell he’d stopped using that particular method. Science be damned, she wasn’t going to tolerate his lips on anyone else if they were going to make this work.
What exactly did Corbin do all night?
The question rolled around in her head, set her imagination racing. She doubted his research would make any sense to her, but then again she’d gotten a bachelor’s degree in biology, and had gone to dental school. She knew her anatomy and physiology, and had a rudimentary knowledge of pharmaceuticals in general, and a vast knowledge of analgesics. What exactly was involved in Corbin’s vaccine?
Glancing back toward the bedroom, she couldn’t see him because of the angle of the door, but Corbin wasn’t making any sound.
This was nosy and wrong. What if he had porn on his computer screen? What if he had financial data listed? What if he got e-mails from obsessive women who wanted him to bite them again?
But if it was any of the above, wasn’t she entitled to know?
Brittany chewed her bottom lip. Alex would have poked through his entire hard drive in the time she’d been standing there debating. She moved forward, tugging her sleep shirt down.
It wasn’t porn. A reassuring beginning.
The screen showed a row of numbers, and the beeping seemed to indicate Corbin needed to do something to continue on with whatever analysis or program he was running. Nothing particularly interesting. But it was what was sitting next to the computer that suddenly caught her attention. A plastic bag marked BALDIZZI, BRITTANY with a bar code underneath. And inside that bag was one of her dark hairs, still long from before she’d cut it.
What the frick was that? Why did he have her hair and when had he taken it? The thought that he’d picked a hair off her pillow after they’d made love sat wrong. And if he was running tests on her for something, drugs, DNA, whatever, he could have mentioned it to her first. The bar code was labeled BB1977. Which she realized was the same damn code sitting right on Corbin’s computer screen. He was running her DNA through some kind of software. It wasn’t a spreadsheet she was seeing, it was a search.
Next to her number was another code—RD1021 and an explanatory paragraph that spouted a whole bunch of words and numbers, the end result of which was the claim that, given all points of comparison, the specimen matched to within a 0.4 percent margin of error, establishing a positive paternity.
Oh. My. God. Corbin had found her biological father. RD1021 was her father, whoever the hell he was.
“What do you mean? Who’s Roberto?” Alexis asked stupidly, her hands wrapped in Gwenna’s tiny ones.
“How could Donatelli know about the baby?” Ethan asked, looming behind her, his voice tight and angry.
“Donatelli?” Oh, crap. The last man in the world Alexis wanted to catch wind of her sister’s situation. That pig would sell his mother for a quick buck. That is, if she hadn’t died about a thousand years earlier and Donatelli wasn’t a vampire.
“Yes, he knows. And he’s here, in Las Vegas, to investigate. I don’t think he knows your sister is the mother, but he knows there is a baby, the Frenchman’s child, and that he will be a special opportunity for bargaining with Atelier.”
“Bastard.” Alexis squeezed Gwenna’s hands, anger flaring. “I’ll kill him before he touches my niece or nephew.”
“How do you know Donatelli knows?”
Uh-oh. Big brother was suspicious. Alexis knew that tone from Ethan and it wasn’t a happy one. She let go of Gwenna and put her hand on his arm, feeling the taut, tense muscles.
Gwenna’s cheeks went pink and she looked at the floor. “I can still read Roberto’s thoughts if I try. He is open to me even if he doesn’t realize it. Normally nothing tempts me to listen, but two days ago, I felt sudden, intense anger from him—directed at me.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, her long, lithe fingers fluttering a little.
She reminded Alexis of a delicate bird, a white crane, or a tiny hummingbird. As they stared at her, she shifted uncomfortably, her movements self-conscious.
“I haven’t done anything to invoke his ire—not in several hundred years. I was surprised to feel that kind of anger. I thought we were past that, so I listened. It seems he had someone tell him that I was having, well, a love affair with the Frenchman. Which is ridiculous, of course,” she added in a rush. “And I think he knows that, but it still made him jealous. While I was gleaning this from him, I heard that he knows Atelier has impregnated an Impure, that there will be a three-quarter vampire child. As I said, he’s here to see how that information can serve him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you can still hear his thoughts?” Ethan asked through gritted teeth.
That’s what he took from that extraordinary revelation? Alexis almost rolled her eyes. “Who cares? The point is, she can, and what she heard sucks. That impregnated Impure happens to be my sister.”
“Who told him?” Ethan put his hand in his hair and closed his eyes, like he was gathering his thoughts or his patience, maybe both.
The answer came to Alexis out of nowhere. “Ringo. Ringo and Kelsey. They left right after we found out Brittany was pregnant. And Ringo was there, in the apartment, with them when Brittany told Corbin. He must have overheard.” Even as she spoke, she became more and more convinced that was what had happened. Who else could have known?
“But how did Ringo contact Donatelli? He’s in New York. Or was.”
“Maybe they went to New York. They’ve been gone for two months. You should have sent someone to find him.” Like she had told him. Alexis didn’t think it was cool that Ringo had tried to kill her husband, got punished, then walked away and no one bothered to haul his butt back to Vegas. That kind of leniency rubbed her nerves raw as a prosecutor.
“It didn’t seem like a big deal to just let him go. I figured Kelsey would slow him down, peck at his conscience.”
“You’re too nice. Someone breaks the law, lock them up and throw away the key. Otherwise, there’s no point in even having the laws in the first place.”
“She a lawyer,” Ethan told Gwenna. “Don’t let her scare you.”
Alexis smacked him. “I’m serious. You need to reevaluate this with your cabinet after the reelection is behind you. This is the first step to lawlessness, if vampire crime isn’t cracked down on.”
Ethan studied her. “Maybe you’d like a job?”
“Are you serious?” Alexis thought that through.
“Yes, I’m serious. I have no experience with that, and the Nation has a criminal tribunal, but perhaps we need to clean house.”
“Sweet. I’d love to do that.” It was the only way she liked to clean—firing useless bureaucrats sounded much better than dusting. “But what do we do now about Donatelli and my sister?”
“He won’t hurt your sister,” Gwenna said. “I’m sure of it.”
Alexis was not reassured. “Maybe not until the baby is born, but what about afterward?”
Gwenna smoothed her hands down the front of her jeans. It amazed Alexis how thin and petite Gwenna was. That khaki blazer had to have come from BabyGap.
“Roberto is out for money and power. He won’t kill anyone.”
Um, someone needed to give up the delusions. “He broke my arm the last time I saw him. He had a knife in Kelsey’s chest. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, Gwenna.”
“You’re still protecting him,” Ethan accused.
Face turning a mottled pink, Gwenna frowned at him. “I am not! I just know him. And he is capable of a lot, but hurting a pregnant woman or a baby is not his style.” She turned to Alexis. “You have to believe me, Alexis. I have my eyes open wide when it comes to Roberto, but I think we should discuss this with him. Pay him off. Money talks with him, and if he already knows the truth, it’s better to go on the offensive than the defensive. He can be reasonable.”
Alexis had spent too many years in criminal justice to think that someone capable of one crime wasn’t capable of an even bigger one. It wasn’t as big of a leap for a morally bankrupt person as most people thought. “If you trust him, why did you hide your daughter from him?”
Gwenna gasped, all color leeching from her cheeks.
Way to foster a relationship with the in-laws. But Alexis thought it was a legitimate question.
Ethan’s cell phone rang and he dug it out of his pocket. “It’s Seamus. Let me grab this.”
As he moved across the room, Alexis sighed. “Look, that didn’t sound right… ”
“It’s a legitimate question. And the truth is that I was young and foolish, and did whatever my brother thought was the right action to take because I had never made any decisions on my own. I was heartbroken and convinced Roberto had seduced and abandoned me, that I was nothing but a momentary diversion to him. I didn’t even know how to get in touch with him at the time the babe was born, and Ethan assured me he was missing. My daughter only lived twenty-five years, during which time I never saw Roberto. When I met him again hundreds of years later, he remembered me, professed love for me. And he did, in his way. I married him, but I never told him about our daughter, because it hurt to speak of her, and there are some things you don’t say to Roberto, do you understand? He would never have forgiven me, so I kept quiet. It was fear, yes, but not the fear you imagine.”
“I’m sorry.” Alexis didn’t know what else to say. Her social skills basically sucked. Brittany would know how to be comforting, but Alexis was better at kicking ass. “You don’t have to say anything else; it’s none of my business.”
Gwenna smiled. “It’s not for you to be sorry. I want to be honest, and I want you to understand. I left him because I know that he is lacking in morals, that he has flaws that cannot be ignored, that he can be cruel and violent. I don’t kid myself. But he does have lines he will not cross, and trust me, he won’t hurt the baby.”
“We have a spot of trouble,” Ethan said, returning his phone to his pocket, expression grim.
“Wonderful. What now?”
“The opposition has just announced their candidate for president. It is Gregor Chechikov.”
“Gregor?” Gwenna started. “I thought he never left Russia anymore.”
“So did I. But he is here in Vegas, and ready to hit the campaign trail. With his new mortal wife.”
“What’s so special about this guy?” Alexis asked, annoyed that everyone else had about a millennium of knowledge she didn’t possess. She needed to sit down and read the CliffsNotes on vampire history.
“Let’s just say he’s not a nice guy. I’ve never had the misfortune to run across him personally, since he has stayed out of politics for the last several hundred years, but he is something of a vampire legend. A cult figure for vampire arrogance and population growth.”
Alexis didn’t like the sound of that. “So people will actually vote for him?”
Ethan nodded, lips pressed tight together, shoulders taut. “And he has a very real chance of winning. Which means I will have no governmental power to protect Brittany and the baby. Or even Atelier’s research, for that matter.”
The blood she’d had for dinner soured in her stomach. “That’s it. We’re putting her in a vampire witness protection program. We’ll change her identity and move her to Alaska. Christ, Ethan. How hard would it have been for him to use a condom?”
Mothers had probably been asking that about their daughter’s defilers since the Egyptians.
But Brittany was a big girl who had made her own choices and Alexis hated it.
It took Brittany all of three seconds to decide to go wake Corbin up. He could sleep later, she needed answers now.
Leaning over him, she touched his arm, intending to gently shake him awake. But the minute she made contact, Corbin’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm in a steely grip and twisted it up and away from him.
“Ow, Corbin!”
His eyes had sprung open, and the second he saw it was her, he let go. “I am sorry. Are you all right? It is a reflex, instinctive, from my days as a soldier. And perhaps it is a vampire trait.”
Sitting up, he rubbed at her arm, kissing it, looking sleep warm and tousled. “What is wrong? Did you need me for something, ma chйrie ?”
Brittany allowed herself half a second to enjoy the way his tongue felt traipsing across the inside of her palm, then she gently extracted her hand. “Your computer was beeping, making all kinds of a racket. I didn’t want it to wake you up, so I went to see if I could stop it.” Okay, that was kind of a lie, but her nosiness wasn’t the issue at the moment.
“You didn’t touch anything, did you?” he asked, pushing the sheet completely off him.
“No.” Maybe she had touched the plastic bag, but geez, she wasn’t stupid enough to start clicking buttons on his computer. Okay, she had just said that’s what she’d gone to do. Which she hadn’t. She’d gone to be nosy and see what was in there. Not that she needed to explain herself. He needed to explain himself.
“Good.” He sighed in obvious relief.
“Why is there one of my hairs on your desk? And is that my DNA on your screen?”
Yeah, that was guilt. He looked down at his feet, hands on his bare knees. “I have run your DNA, yes, to isolate the vampire gene. It is just better to have some rudimentary knowledge of your sequence before the baby is born.”
That sounded like half an answer. “Why? And didn’t it occur to you that you could have asked for my cooperation? Discussed this with me?”
“No, that did not occur to me.” Corbin stood up, bare-chested and gorgeous, damn him.
His boxer shorts clung high on his hips, bunched up, before dropping down to cover his thighs. “Brittany, I have made every decision for the last two hundred years entirely on my own, with no thought to anyone else’s opinion. I am not used to discussing what I view as inconsequential. You will have to forgive me, and I will have to try to adjust.” He brushed a kiss on her lips, his hands on her shoulders. “We will have to remember that it will take time to learn how to be together. Especially for me.”
That was all fine and good, but the weightier question had yet to be asked. “Who is RD1021?”
“What?”
Brittany felt her panic rising like a balloon in her chest. Did she really want to know who her father was? And why the hell was it any of Corbin’s business, or his decision to uncover that truth? “In your database. It’s bad enough that you were analyzing my DNA without telling me, but you had no right to conduct a search for my biological father without asking me how I felt about it.”
“Brittany… ”
He reached for her, but she pulled away, putting her arms over her chest. “Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe it’s irrelevant to me, and I’ve been fine without a father. And now you’ve taken that decisiosn away from me. RD1021 is my father, and now I feel like I have to know who that is.” It had been easy to walk around not caring who her father was when there was no possibility of ever learning his identity, but now she had to know his name, and that scared her. The reality was he could be a jerk, dead, insane, creepy—and that DNA was in her, and in her child.
“There was a match?” Corbin said.
About to answer, she suddenly realized she was standing in the room by herself. “Corbin? Where the hell are you?” And could he piss her off any more?
“Sorry,” he called from the other room. “I’m in the lab. I cannot believe there was a match so quickly. This is fantastic.”
Said he. Brittany fast-walked into the other room in her sleep shirt, glancing at her watch. She was going to be late to the office in about another twenty minutes, but she needed answers. Like who her father was and why Corbin looked like he could turn a vampire cartwheel. He was grinning.
“This is good, very good.”
“Why?” Brittany went up to where he was leaning over the computer, using the mouse to click on something. She touched his shoulder, squeezing hard. He didn’t seem to understand she was annoyed. “Can you please tell me what is going on? Why do you care who my father is?”
He didn’t answer, just kept clicking and scrolling and scanning with his eyes, at one point his finger running down the screen.
Brittany went from annoyed to dangerous female. She inserted herself between the computer and him, knocking his leg out of the way and bending over to face off with him. “I want answers, Atelier, and I want them now. Why did you do this search? Why does it matter who my father is?”
Corbin looked startled. “For the child, of course. Because your father may be politically powerful or he may be inconsequential. That matters in regard to what he can do for our child.”
Brittany leaned back, not sure what to make of that. “I don’t care about getting our baby into a paranormal Princeton. I’m not going to make contact with a man I’ve never met just so he can grease wheels for our kid.”
His fingers drummed on the armrest of his office chair, and he stared to the right, not looking at her.
It hit her that he was lying. Just flat-out lying to her. She knew him well enough now to see it in the subtle shifting of his mouth, his lips flat together, the way he wouldn’t meet her eye. The stiffness of his shoulders. She shook her head, rubbing her temples. “Why else does it matter? You’d better come clean with me right this minute or I’m walking out this door and not coming back.”
Swinging his head back, he stared at her. “You cannot!”
“I can and I will.” Even with tears stinging the back of her eyes, she managed to keep the tremor out of her voice. “I deserve respect, Corbin. I’m not afraid of being alone. I never have been. I would rather be on my own than in a relationship that isn’t honest.”
She gave him a minute to decide. He tried to see around her to the screen, but she moved to block his view.
“Damn it,” he said, falling back against the chair. “Do not do this.”
There was no point in responding to that. Brittany just waited.
He gave a sigh of extreme irritation. “All right then, listen to me. You have to understand that I thought it was safer not to divulge all my concerns to you initially.”
Okay, so he’d chosen to lie to her. Not an auspicious beginning. “What concerns?”
Clearing his throat, he finally looked at her. His expression chilled her insides, a shiver rippling over her in a waterfall effect.
“If our child has the genetic conclusion I think he will, then he will be immortal, but will not need to feed.”
Immortal? Brittany tried to process that. But Corbin wasn’t finished.
“When the birth of our child becomes general knowledge, there will be those who want him. For research. To figure out how to reproduce such genetics again. Because a man who is immortal, with all of the strength of the vampire, and none of the vulnerabilities of needing blood and night dwelling, represents a new race, and ultimately power. Do you understand? That is why I stayed away from you. I did not want anyone to know that the child was mine. I thought I could enter your life publicly later in your pregnancy, letting everyone assume I was not the father, and I could marry you to protect our child. And who your father is could assist us in protecting our child, as well as give us clues to gauge exactly what the child’s abilities will be.”
Brittany shook her head, trying to process what he was saying. It was incomprehensible. The implication of what he had just presented to her… “Our child is in danger and you didn’t bother to tell me? Why didn’t you let me know what we’re dealing with here?” She jerked her hand through her hair, frustration and fear colliding. “My God, I feel like such an idiot. I’ve been worried about baby registries! I’ve been picturing moving into a little adobe house with a playset in the yard. How could you let me think everything was fine, was normal, when it’s not? God, I’m like Bubble Brittany! No clue what’s going on. How could I possibly protect our child if I had no idea what was going on?”
Pushing away from the desk, she let the tears go. She felt sick. If her child was in danger, she had no idea how to deal with that. “Does anyone else know what you just told me?”
“Carrick and your sister do.”
“Oh!” Betrayed by her own sister.
“And I imagine Carrick’s sister and Seamus Fox understand the implications.”
Great. Everyone knew what the hell was going on but her. “I’m leaving.” She needed to get away from him. She felt like a total fool, lying in bed that morning thinking all kinds of delicious thoughts about houses and making love to Corbin every day… falling in love. It was all an illusion and she was angry and scared.
He grabbed the hem of her T-shirt, pulling her back. “Hey. Do not leave like this. We need to talk.”
“About what? How you’re a jerk?” And to think, she’d actually thought he wanted to marry her because he had feelings for her. Instead he just wanted to act as bodyguard. Talk about delusional. Now she knew how her mother had found herself in so many lousy relationships. It was very easy to see what you wanted to when you cared about a man.
“Now be reasonable.”
When tugging didn’t get him to release her shirt, she smacked at his hand, feeling slightly hysterical. Where were Alexis’s karate chops when she needed them? “Kiss my pregnant ass. You’re a lying, bloodsucking bastard.”
His jaw dropped. “Brittany… I do not know what to say. You need to understand I did this for your protection. What was the point in you worrying about something you could not fix? I wanted your pregnancy to be free of stress.”
How thoughtful of him. She wasn’t buying it. “You didn’t tell me because you didn’t want me to say no to marrying you. You decided you were right, so in order to convince me to go along with your plans, you just didn’t tell me.”
Score. His eyes shifted and he let go of her shirt. Guilty as charged.
And damn it, that hurt. Eyes blurring, Brittany moved away from him. She needed her pants. And a ride. Shit.
“Brittany… ”
Not wanting to hang around for a load of crap, she brushed at her tears and started for the door. She was going to break down and she did not want to do it in front of him.
“Wait, Brittany, don’t go. Mon Dieu. I know who your father is.”
That stopped her. She turned around. He didn’t look so good, eyes locked on the computer screen. His face was ash white. That didn’t bode well. Heart hammering in her chest, she touched her stomach. “Can he… help us?”
Corbin shook his head slowly back and forth. “No, ma chйrie . He cannot help us.” He turned to her, expression grave, stunned. “Your father is Roberto Donatelli.”