“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 naïve.”
Brittany bristled. She was not a child, she was
having
a child, and she wasn’t naïve, 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.”