Five
“You care about your brother-in-law, yes?”
“Ethan? Of course. Alexis loves him and he’s a good guy.” Brittany snuggled up against Corbin, not really sure what place her brother-in-law had in the room when she was naked and postorgasmic. “Why?”
“I was just thinking that your pregnancy could have very negative repercussions on Carrick’s reelection.”
Brittany stopped playing with Corbin’s chest hairs and looked up at him. What a mood kill. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that Carrick has campaigned on the side of population control. I am conducting very controversial research, not to mention that I have not completely served out my sentence. For you to be having my child, again a breach in vampire rules, will reflect very badly on Carrick. After the incident with Seamus Fox turning Cara, it could well prevent him from being reelected president.”
“I thought his opponent stepped down. And I don’t understand why the election was pushed back. It seems like he should have just won automatically.”
“It is meant to give the others time to replace Donatelli as an opposing candidate. And Carrick must still receive at least fifty percent of the popular vote within his own party to even remain on the ballot. It’s democracy, doing its job.”
Brittany was trying to get a grasp on vampire politics, but she had to admit she hadn’t made a study out of it. She wasn’t the vampire here. She was just a dentist, a normal day dweller. Until she had gotten knocked up by Corbin. Now she wasn’t sure what she was, but it had honestly never occurred to her that her pregnancy could affect Ethan’s career. “I don’t want to mess things up for Ethan. But we can’t change the facts. I am pregnant.”
Corbin smiled at her, his hair still rumpled. “And delightfully so.” He ran his fingertips over her arm, kissed her forehead. “But no one knows that I am the father of your child. No one even knows we are acquainted. Perhaps it would be best to keep our relationship a secret for a few weeks until the primary election is over. If any vampire discovered you were pregnant, they would assume the father to be a mortal. That would not be any cause for alarm.”
“But this… ” Brittany stroked Corbin’s penis, loving the way his body immediately hardened at her touch. “Is cause for alarm? We’re not supposed to be together? Does anyone really give a shit, Corbin? I think maybe you’re overreacting.”
He closed his eyes, his breathing heavier as she stroked him. Then to her disappointment, he reached down and held her hand still. “Zis es the reality, Brittany. I am a criminal. I am responsible for the death of a woman, however unintentional. I am on the verge of being able to offer a combination of medications, a vaccine essentially, that will inhibit the vampire virus, causing vampires to revert to a mortal physiology. There are vampires who hate me, who would like to see me dead. There are those who would like to steal my research, either to destroy it or to mutate it to their own purposes. Your brother-in-law is fighting with everything in his political power to ensure radical vampire politics don’t overthrow the current government. Our one moment of weakness should not jeopardize the entire future of my race.”
Well, he certainly had a way of sucking the romance out of the moment.
“Okay, God, when you put it that way. I can keep my mouth shut for a few weeks. But honestly, I had no idea things were as dire as you make them sound.” Brittany felt a small bit freaked out. “We’re having a baby, Corbin. Are you telling me rogue vampires are going to be after you all the time? I don’t think bloodsuckers randomly dropping over to kill you is the best environment to be raising a child in.” She was thinking bonnets and bottles, not draining blood and decapitation.
“Of course not. Once the election is over, and I present my findings to the UMA, then I intend to retire. We’ll get married, move to a house, and we will be soccer mom and dad, yes?”
With his hand on her butt, and her breasts pressed against his chest, she could almost believe him that it would all work out, even if she had a hell of a time picturing Corbin sitting on the sidelines cheering from the bleachers. At night games. “So you’re still going to court me? Try to convince me I should marry you?” she asked flirtatiously. She couldn’t wait to see what his wooing entailed. It sounded fun and full of gifts. With any luck, it would also involve lots of sex and nights out on the town.
“Absolutely. But we will be discreet until the election is over.”
“A secret courtship? Wow, we’ll be like Romeo and Juliet. How sexy is that?” Brittany closed her eyes and yawned into his chest. A sharp stinging from the top of her head made her jerk back. “Ouch! Did you just pull one of my hairs out?”
“Sorry, it got caught on my watch.” Corbin massaged her scalp and encouraged her to lie back down.
Not wanting to remind him of what his watch represented—his punishment—Brittany kissed his chest and teased, “But I haven’t agreed to marry you, sweetie.”
“You will marry me,” he said. “That is what the courting is for… to show you how it will be between us, how we belong together.”
Brittany shivered in delight. There was something really flattering and pleasing about his determination to be with her. “Court me hard, baby.”
Apparently a certain nineteenth-century French vampire’s idea of how to court a woman was different from Brittany’s, and as far as she was concerned, his way sucked.
Eight weeks. Eight freaking weeks, and she had not seen Corbin. Not once.
Every week she got a bouquet of fresh flowers sent to her with a computer-generated note that said, “Thinking of you. Corbin.”
Thinking of her? Big whoop. That was the equivalent of telling someone you thought about getting her a gift for her birthday, but didn’t. The thought did not count in Brittany’s book.
So Corbin had said they needed to be discreet until the election. She had heard him, known he meant it, but she didn’t think that meant he was going to disappear into the frickin’ night, never to return. She had thought he meant stealth sex, sneaking into her apartment at odd hours and whisking her away for romantic walks in the desert. Or something fun like that. Geez. Instead, she just felt like an abandoned pregnant woman stupidly waiting for a scrap of attention. Waiting for Corbin to get a clue.
“Brit, honey, just sit down. You’re making me dizzy.” Alexis squeezed her hand and tried to lead her to a patio chair, but Brittany shook her off.
“I don’t want to sit, I’m fine.” She leaned over the edge of the balcony to Alexis and Ethan’s suite and stared out into the night like there were answers in the neon lights of Vegas’s skyline. It all felt so ridiculous. She was bad poetry brought to life. She was like some forlorn chick in a vampire movie, desperate for the mysterious man of the night to return and bite her again.
She indulged in the moment, taking a good long wallow in self-pity. Where was the man who had made love to her with such feeling, such intensity, who had sworn they were going to be together? He was off doing who knew what and she was acting like a desperate loser.
Screw that. Brittany turned around and met the gazes of her sister and Cara Fox, Seamus’s wife, and pulled her shoulders up. “I really am fine. Corbin said we should be discreet, and he’s doing that. I respect and admire that.” Even though it made her want to throw herself down on the carpet and scream. “But I thought tonight, since Ethan won the primary all over again, and we’re having a party to celebrate, I just thought maybe he’d show up.” Even as she said it, she realized she was veering right smack into pitiful again. And it was completely lame that they were out on the balcony when nearly fifty people were crammed into the apartment raising their glasses to Ethan’s success.
Alexis should be in there, by her husband, but Brittany had felt hot and sick to her stomach in there, and she had wandered the room over and over, trying to catch a glimpse of Corbin. Finally she had needed to get out of the stifling crowd, away from the curious looks, and away from her own disappointment that Corbin hadn’t shown up.
Fortunately, neither Cara or Alexis commented on how pathetic she and her hopes were.
“He can’t come to this kind of stuff, Brit, you know that. He’s a pariah.”
“A pariah?” Brittany winced. Somehow she had thought Corbin was exaggerating when he always said he was banished from vampire society. And after hearing his story, she was further convinced he hadn’t done anything wrong. “That’s horrible!”
Cara uncrossed her legs and leaned forward in her chair. She was wearing a red cocktail dress, and her silky black hair was pulled up in a twist. Shooting a frown at Alexis, she said, “Maybe that’s not the right word for it. But he is still serving punishment for what happened, and for the research he does. He doesn’t get invitations to parties. It’s just the way it is.”
“Corbin isn’t a bad man.” Brittany was certain of that. She’d stake her life—okay, bad choice of words—on it. That was why she’d gone and indulged in sleeping with him a second time. “In fact, he only wants to help. He wants vampires to determine their own destiny, not have it decided for them.”
“He’s a weirdo,” Alex said.
Trust her sister to say exactly what she was thinking. Alex didn’t believe in white lies to make people happy, not even if she insulted the father of her sister’s child.
“He’s not a weirdo! He’s just a little… out of the loop.” Brittany sighed. He was actually very sweet. From the very first night she’d met him, when he had been drawing blood from a woman with a syringe, her face a mask of blissful pleasure, his lips on her neck, Brittany had been drawn to him.
His compassion, his desire to create a cure for vampirism, his obvious loneliness, all touched her heart, had made her seek him out several times, and when he had asked for her blood, she had given it to him despite her fear of needles. And even though he had run out on her both times they’d had sex, there were very legitimate reasons for that. The first time, she’d told him to go. This second time, Corbin had stayed away for Ethan’s sake, which only further proved he was a good guy. Who couldn’t be bothered to even call her, damn him.
Alexis stood up and tucked her blond hair behind her ears, fiddling with the diamond necklace she was wearing with her navy satin dress. “Look, I know he floats your boat, though I have no clue why. But Corbin Atelier is bad news. If you’re going to get involved with a vampire, at least let me set you up with someone better.”
That hurt Brittany’s feelings. Alexis never trusted her to make important decisions for herself. “I’m already involved with a vampire! I’m pregnant .” Though she seemed to be the only one who had a real grasp on that fact. Corbin hadn’t even mentioned the baby once in any of his cursory, lame, click this box on the website for a greeting, floral offerings. “I’m not interested in dating random vampires, thank you very much.”
Alexis gave her a sheepish look. “Okay, I’m sorry, that didn’t sound right. I know you’re pregnant, and I know you’re worried about Corbin. But I’m worried about you, and your baby. I think maybe it’s just time to concentrate on you. Maybe it’s a good thing that he’s keeping his distance and not dragging you into further complications.”
Brittany felt tears in her eyes, which embarrassed her. She was not a weepy person. But she had been fooling herself. She had convinced herself that she was in charge, that she was merely going to explore a possible relationship with Corbin, but that she was perfectly rational.
Lie. That was a total lie. She hadn’t been rational at all.
While she wasn’t a person who cried, she was an impulsive person. She saw the best in most people, and gave her love easily. Alexis didn’t understand that, but Brittany didn’t see that as a flaw in herself. She had given herself to Corbin, and maybe that hadn’t been the smartest thing to do, but she didn’t regret it.
He had given her a baby, for which she was truly grateful.
If he did decide to pop back up out of nowhere, she would be more guarded this time, not so easily coaxed into anything. Like bed. And in the meantime, she had to buy some maternity clothes, since her pants were pinching, keep swallowing those horse-sized vitamins, and register at Babies “R” Us. That ought to keep her busy.
“I guess it’s a moot point anyway, isn’t it? He’s not here, nor is he beating down my door. So I just need to get over that.” Brittany touched her hair. She still couldn’t believe how strange it felt. In a moment of impulse—big surprise—she’d gone and had it all hacked off. It now came only to her chin in a modified shag. It was meant to be easier to take care of when the baby was born, and she had to admit, while it was different, she liked it. It made her feel more grown up, edgier.
“Has anyone heard from Kelsey?” she asked. That was another mystery. Kelsey had vanished. Again. And no one had heard from her in close to two months.
“No,” Alexis said. “And I’m sure she’s with Ringo, so I doubt she’ll be coming back. He knows he is basically on the run since he was under house arrest for shooting Ethan.”
Cara frowned. “What I don’t understand is why he took off. I mean, I know he’s not the kind of guy to enjoy imprisonment, but you think if he was looking to escape, he’d go it alone.”
“Yeah, but he needed Kelsey to get him past the guard. You know he’s not above using her like that.” Now Alexis was the one pacing. “What I can’t figure out is why she hasn’t resurfaced. I would have thought Ringo would ditch her the first chance he got after they left.”
“Maybe he really likes her,” Brittany said, hoping that was the case. For Kelsey, and for herself. When she had first heard that Ringo and Kelsey were missing, she had remembered the look he’d given her, the fact that he knew she was having Corbin’s baby. She’d been worried about Ringo telling someone and had wanted to discuss it with Corbin, but had no way to actually get ahold of him. Cell phones were not in his vocabulary, and when she had tried to mentally call him, he hadn’t answered. No advice there. But it didn’t seem like anyone in the vampire world knew Corbin was the father of her baby, and with this first step in the election over and done with, she had enough things to worry about without caring that Ringo knew the truth.
Eventually everyone was going to know she and Corbin had procreated anyway.
Alexis rolled her eyes. “He’s using her.”
“You don’t know that.” Brittany wasn’t sure why she was arguing. It wasn’t like she knew Ringo at all, and the one time she’d met him, he had given her the heebies. But it bothered her that Alexis always had to assume the worst. “You should give Kelsey more credit than that. She wouldn’t have gone with him if he was just using her.”
“Brittany Anne, I swear, you can’t really be this nice. Or this naпve.”
Brittany bristled. She was not a child, she was having a child, and she wasn’t naпve, she was optimistic. There was a big difference. One was dangerous, the other was zen. “Just because I don’t walk around looking for the worst in people doesn’t make me stupid.”
“I never called you stupid!”
“This sounds like my cue to head back in,” Cara said, standing up and adjusting the strap on her dress. “Seamus is probably wondering where I am.”
“Absolutely,” Brittany said, distracted from her sister’s patronizing behavior. “I’m sorry I kept you out here for so long. Here you are just back from Ireland, you probably want to visit with everyone.”
“Not me. I really don’t know anyone but you two since we left for Ireland so soon after I was turned, but I think Seamus is enjoying seeing everyone. He won’t admit it, but he misses the action of politics.”
Alexis winced. “And don’t tell him this either, because it will spoil the mutual disdain in our relationship, but I actually miss Seamus. Ethan can’t keep his head straight from his ass without him, and if he asks me to show him how to create a spreadsheet one more time, I’ll scream.”
“Maybe you should move back,” Brittany suggested. She wasn’t sure she could live in the Irish countryside either. Where would she go to buy sexy underwear and lattes? Growing up in Vegas meant she had access to everything she could ever want, all the time. If you could afford it.
Cara leaned forward and whispered, “I think I actually like Ireland more than Seamus does. The dogs have all this freedom and everyone has been very nice to me. But Seamus just broods and he’s now addicted to Free Cell on his laptop. It’s pitiful.”
“Speaking of pitiful.” Alexis rolled her eyes and tilted her head to the left. “Brittany, I think you have company.”
Brittany turned and looked past Cara, heart suddenly racing. There he was. Corbin. Lounging on the railing of the balcony next to them in a suit, feet dangling into open air, obviously not the least concerned that he could slip off and fall. The beauty of being undead—no need to exercise caution even when you were twenty stories high.
He looked crabby. Melancholy. His expression was black, eyebrows drawn toward each other, shoulders tense.
Brittany felt her compassion stir. She started toward him as Alex and Cara went in, wondering if Corbin even realized she was there. He didn’t seem to be looking at her.
“I am well aware zat you are here,” he said, his accent more pronounced than the last time she’d been with him. She noticed it seemed to thicken in direct relation to his level of irritation.
Now her own rose to match his, stomping on the concern she’d just been feeling. “Were you going to speak to me or should I just go back in and pretend like I never saw you?”
He turned and locked eyes with her. Without answering her question, he shook his head as he studied her, his expression horrified. “Mon Dieu , what the hell have you done to your hair?”
Given the look on Brittany’s face and the loud gasp she gave, perhaps that wasn’t the wisest thing to say. But Corbin had missed her most painfully, spent many, many sleepless days staring at the ceiling remembering the feel of her body beneath his, her thick long hair wrapped around his fingers, and he had broken his own vow to stay away from her by coming here tonight, just to catch a simple, secret glimpse. And he found her hair gone. Chopped. Shorn. She looked like his little brother Edgar after his nurse had given him a bath.
Her cheeks turned red. “I cut it, obviously. It will be easier to take care of this way after the baby is born.”
Corbin swung his legs over, wincing inwardly at the error he had just made. Her chin was raised defiantly, her eyes flashing. He hadn’t meant to give away his presence at all, or speak to her, but he had been unable to resist. He had been hovering on the rooftop so the other vampires wouldn’t sense his presence, contemplating the best strategy to get a glimpse of her. He had been intending to actually wait for her at her apartment, but had been in the hallway when he had heard her getting off the elevator.
So he had been hanging around outside like a rather pathetic lovelorn Lothario when he had heard the door open and Brittany step out with the others. He’d known it was her. He would recognize her scent anywhere, and while he hadn’t been able to understand her words, he knew that lilting compassionate voice well.
He had moved onto the balcony next to her to maybe steal a word or two, perhaps a kiss, but now he had ruined the moment.
“Your haircut is stunning.” Literally. Corbin tried not to stare and failed. It wasn’t that it looked bad, it was just so different, so much starker than what he was used to. “You look very beautiful tonight.” That was true. But she was changing, changing without him, it seemed, growing bigger still in the chest, her belly swelling slightly in the black dress she wore, her lips painted a rich brown, her hair edgy and sophisticated. She wasn’t looking at him in the way he was accustomed to—with soft eyes and pouty open lips, shoulders relaxed.
Instead she was angry and it showed in the set of her jaw, the proud tilt of her hair, and the way she kept her hands still at her side. She had diamonds in her ears and they flashed as she turned her head a little. There was a wariness and a reserve about her that was new, unsettling.
“Thank you,” was all she said.
“I have missed you,” Corbin said, feeling a little hesitant, unsure of her reaction. It seemed as if she was angry about more than his reaction to her hair. “I could not stay away, even if it is not wise.”
Silent for a moment, she leaned on the railing and stared out at the city. “The primary election is over. Ethan won so there’s no reason to be secretive.”
How did he respond to that? As far as he was concerned, there very much was still a need to keep their relationship a secret. “But just the primary, not the presidency. It still wouldn’t be prudent to advertise who the father of your child is,” he said carefully, well aware how close they were to fifty conservative vampires.
Her lips pursed and she whipped her head around. “You’re trying to ditch out on me, aren’t you? You don’t want anyone to know the baby is yours… all that stuff you said about us being together, about you wanting to be the father, it was a crock, wasn’t it?”
Corbin was startled. He leaped from his balcony to hers and dropped next to her. She flinched when he touched her arm. “Brittany.”
She didn’t look at him, but stared out at the night again. “Just be honest.”
While she looked strong and steady, harder, with the new blunt hairstyle, her voice trembled a little. Corbin was baffled, uncertain. He tried to embrace her from behind, but she shrugged him off.
“I meant everything I said. Why would you suggest otherwise?”
“You never called or e-mailed me or tried to see me or anything. You never asked about the baby!”
Horrified at the wail she gave at the end of her sentence, Corbin tried to turn her to face him, but she moved out of his reach. “I was keeping my distance, like we agreed. I don’t have e-mail, and I knew if I came and saw you, I would want to make love to you. Then I wouldn’t want to leave you, so I stayed away. I sent flowers,” he added, because he did want credit for something. He had thought that would suffice as a gesture of his devotion, though perhaps he should have given it more thought.
Because truthfully, he had not attempted to court a woman since the 1830s. In recent centuries he had slaked his sexual needs with women of questionable moral character, but it had probably been twenty years since he’d even done that. He’d been working, not dating. He supposed things might have changed a bit in the interim.
“Whoop-de-doo,” she said.
Corbin felt his jaw drop. “What es zat supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. It means nothing,” she said, though clearly it meant all manner of things. “So what have you been doing for the past eight weeks?”
Did she really want an answer or not? Corbin hesitated, concerned he might say the wrong thing. Perhaps this distress from Brittany was the pregnancy hormones at work.
She glared at him. “Well?”
“I have been working nonstop.” In fact, he had been injecting himself with drugs, trying to find the correct combination to inhibit the vampire virus. Interestingly, his aversion to daylight had decreased, as had his ability to mind-read, but other than that, he had seen no alterations in his behavior. He still needed and hungered for the blood. But he was convinced he was right at the edge of the correct combination. One or two more trials, that was all.
“That’s it?”
“Yes, that’s it. I’ve been in my lab sixteen hours a night.” He moved closer to her, starting to sense a little jealousy. “My work is very important.” He smiled. “But protecting you and our child is more important. I had a terrible time resisting the urge to come over here and make love to you every night.”
She turned her face away from him, but she didn’t protest when he took her hand, when he ran his lips over her cheek and jaw. “And I do care about the baby. So much so that I have done the strangest thing.”
Her head whipped around. “What?”
He still couldn’t quite believe he’d done this, but he had spent many nights worrying about the baby, worrying about his lack of experience with children, pondering some of the questions about child-rearing Brittany had raised. “I signed up for a class.”
“What class?” she asked suspiciously.
Corbin cleared his throat and tried not to wince. “It es a class for first-time fathers. Baby Boot Camp.”