Bled Dry (20 page)

She smiled, gesturing to her cigarette. Ringo stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out his lighter. He lit her cigarette, smelling the thick floral perfume she wore when her head bent to inhale. Turning slightly, she blew the smoke over his shoulder. If he was expecting a thank-you, he didn’t get one. Nor did she move away.

“Are you alone?” he asked, thinking that a woman who looked like her couldn’t be, nor should she be. Vegas was always awake, people usually everywhere at all times, and it was well lit, but that didn’t mean it was smart to wander around alone at four in the morning.

Her nose wrinkled up and she said something in another language. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a thick envelope, pressing it into his hands.

He accepted it automatically, a realization dawning on him. “Chechikov?” he said. It made sense. She looked Russian, a hint of Mongolian around her eyes, and that could have been Russian she’d spoken. But why was a mortal hanging out with an eccentric vampire?

“Da.”
She nodded, not smiling, not frowning. Just serious now, solemn. She took his other hand, wrapped it around the envelope, squeezing. Then she pulled her hands back and said something quickly, words that sounded urgent.

Before he could react, say something, anything, she was gone, each foot moving so far in front of the other that she swayed, her hips moving like the sprawling concrete was a catwalk. Her hand came up, and she took a drag on her cigarette as she walked away, the click of her boots loud in the quiet night.

Ringo waited until she had disappeared around the fountain and headed into the lobby of the hotel, doors swallowing her, while he wondered who the hell she was and why she hadn’t asked about Atelier’s girlfriend.

Then he crossed the street to his wife with a boner, an envelope, and a hefty dose of suspicion.

Brittany patted her last patient of the day, Louise Zanderman, on the shoulder as she peeled off her gloves. “That wasn’t so awful, was it? You can rinse and we’ll have you out of here. Nothing hard or crunchy to eat for the rest of the day. We’ll see you in five months for your next checkup and hopefully no cavities next time.”

Louise, a pleasant woman in her fifties, spat aggressively. “I don’t understand how I have any space left to even get cavities. My teeth are nothing but fillings. And the next time I’m here for my checkup, I imagine you’ll be out on maternity leave.”

Startled, Brittany touched her stomach. “You can tell I’m pregnant?”

Louise smiled at her. “Of course I can tell. You’ve always been thin. That little bubble popping out is not a big pasta dinner. It’s a baby, about five months along, at best guess.”

A happy flush filled her cheeks. “That’s about right. But I didn’t realize people could tell... it’s only been in the last two weeks or so that I’ve really popped.”

Louise ripped off her paper dental bib. “Congratulations. Pregnancy seems to agree with you—you’re glowing. Do you know what you’re having?”

“No.” At her last ultrasound, the technician had asked if she wanted to know, but it had seemed like a decision she shouldn’t make without Corbin. Of course, he had been MIA at the time, with only weekly floral arrangements to prove he still existed, but she still hadn’t been able to do it. She had wanted to believe they were in this pregnancy thing together. Still did. “I said I didn’t want to know. I’m happy with either a boy or a girl.”

“What does your husband think?” Louise sat up. “A lot of men want a boy that first time around.”

“Oh, I don’t think he cares about the sex.” Brittany figured Corbin just wanted their child to be born without fangs. They weren’t going to be picky about a penis.

Her dental hygienist, Sandra, came into the room and made notations in Louise’s chart as she said, “Yeah, but now we don’t know what to give you, Dr. B. You don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, and you haven’t even registered at the Baby Superstore.”

“The baby isn’t due for four months. There’s plenty of time.” To drag Corbin to the store and subject him to a baby registry. Brittany threw away her gloves and washed her hands as she pondered Corbin’s reaction to a breast pump. Maybe she shouldn’t take him after all.

Louise stood up and pulled her purse off the hook. “Yeah, but you need to have the shower, see what you’ve gotten for gifts, then still have time to fill in the gaps yourself. And what if the baby comes early? You should be having the shower in your sixth month.”

“See?” Sandra looked up at her in triumph. “Told you. You need to go register.”

“I’m not even having a shower.” Her only family was Alexis and her mother’s sister, who contacted them only once in a blue moon. Her friends had scattered around the country, and her coworkers were wonderful, and she considered them friends, but she didn’t want to put anyone out. Brittany smoothed her shirt down over her stomach. If anything, she needed to get maternity clothes. The two outfits she’d grabbed a few weeks earlier were not going to cut it. And her regular pants were now out of the question.

Sandra recoiled in horror. “No shower? That’s... that’s like blasphemy! You have to have one.
We’re
having one. The office staff. So go register. Now.”

The hygienist quivered with indignation as she poked her finger toward Brittany.

Louise told her, “I think you’d better go register.”

Brittany laughed, touched by Sandra’s vehemence. “Okay, yeesh. That’s sweet of you all to do this for me.”

She walked Louise out and came back to get her purse. Sandra was cleaning the room as she said, “Get your calendar out so we can pick a day. Maybe we’ll go to Don Juan’s across the street to have it after work one day. They have good food and a party room. And you
have
to bring the baby’s father.”

Oh, Lord. “I don’t know... he’s French. He doesn’t always know what’s going on when a lot of people are talking at the same time.” Okay, that was a lie. But the visual of Corbin surrounded by females cooing over packs of pastel onesies was discomfiting. That might be blurring gender and class lines too much for her traditional vampire.

“What is there to know? You open gifts and pass them around. Hey, he got you pregnant. The least he can do is show up and haul everything out to the car.”

There was something to that. He had gotten her pregnant. He shouldn’t be exempt from all the details parenting involved. Like baby registries.

Corbin had left a message with Alexis the night before that he wanted to speak with her. Brittany had been planning to call him around nine o’clock or so, but she was starting to think she might just pop over to his place for an impromptu visit instead. She was curious to see where he lived. And some things might be better said in person.

Like a request that he appear at both her baby shower and her next doctor’s appointment. That could take some convincing, no matter how many hours he’d spent in Baby Boot Camp.

Corbin lived in an opium den.

That was Brittany’s astonished assessment when she walked into Corbin’s apartment. On the outside, it was nothing special, just a concrete building on the fringe of downtown, built in the seventies. But inside, it looked like an East Asia silk retailer had exploded gold and ivory fabric everywhere, with a dash of scarlet tossed in occasionally for good measure. The furniture was all carved wood, a thick solid walnut color, low slung, and filled with pillows. The art was French, gilded, portraits of somber-faced women and men, a dog thrown in here and there. Books were stacked everywhere, which admittedly didn’t match the opium den theory, but added to the jumbled eccentric feeling of the crowded room. Brittany could swear she smelled vanilla, as if Corbin had just baked a cake, but when she walked past his dining area, she saw six thick pillar candles burning in a multi-armed mosaic votive holder.

The man burned candles.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it wasn’t this. Not this homey, overstuffed intensity. Minimalism would have matched her image of him, but now that she saw his apartment, she realized how right it was for him, and how much it pleased her. Her own place was an abundance of florals and kitsch.

“Sorry it is so dark in here. I don’t open the draperies during the day and at night I have excellent vision.” Corbin cleared his throat and gestured to the sofa. “Would you like to have a seat?”

He had reverted to formality. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to pop in unannounced.

“Sure.” She sank onto a satin sofa, nearly slipping right off it onto the floor. “Slippery little sucker.” She gripped the armrest and laughed. “I like your apartment.”

“Thank you. It is convenient to have my lab right here. I connected this apartment with the one next door.” He gestured to an open door at the far end of the living room.

Brittany couldn’t see inside it, but she was curious if it would look like a hospital lab, sterile and computerized, or if it had a Dr. Frankenstein quality to it. “That does sound convenient.”

They both went silent.

Damn it, why were they doing this again? They took two steps forward, then six back. They had had sex. Twice. With lots of moaning involved. They were having a child together. And yet they sounded like two strangers forced to sit next to each other at a wedding reception.

“Alexis said you stopped by last night,” she prompted.

“I wanted to make sure you were feeling all right.”

“Yeah. I was just tired, I think. And that class was too much after a long day at work.” She didn’t mention the needle.

“I’m sorry.”

This was painful. Brittany drummed her fingers on her knee. The night before, it had felt like they were close, like they had an understanding. Now? Nothing. He was blinking at her like an owl, his eyes darting to his lab several times. Clearly she had interrupted his work.

“Well, I’m on my way to go shopping. I need to get some maternity clothes for work and I just thought I’d stop by since you said you wanted to talk to me.” Hint, hint. God, she wanted him to say something meaningful. Something real. Something that wasn’t polite bullshit.

“Oh, I won’t keep you then.” Corbin stood up and pulled out his wallet. “Here, use this for your expenses.” He tried to hand her a platinum Visa card.

For some reason, that both appalled and offended her. She shook her head and didn’t take it. “I don’t need your credit card. I’m perfectly capable of paying for my own clothes.” She and Alex were independent professional women. They didn’t need men taking care of them. And he couldn’t fob off his responsibilities by buying her maternity stretchy tops.

Even as her brain told her that wasn’t rational, he was just trying to help, her emotions were careening out of control. “If you really wanted to help, you could go with me. I need to register for baby gifts and it might be nice if you helped me pick out some of the choices. And we’ll probably need to get doubles of some things so you can keep them here at your apartment.” She glanced around, suddenly seeing the room with new, irritated eyes. It was hard to imagine a baby crawling alongside a hard-back of Dante’s
Inferno
, playing with Chinese porcelain. “And this place isn’t exactly childproofed.”

“Have I done something wrong?” Corbin asked in bewilderment, still holding his credit card. “Why are you angry with me?”

Because he wasn’t in love with her. Because they weren’t married. Because she couldn’t give her child the nuclear family she had craved so desperately when she was growing up.

“I’m not angry with you,” she snapped. “I just drove all the way over here from Summerlin in crappy traffic because I thought you wanted to talk to me, and you’re just staring at me. I hate this awkwardness. Either we are or we aren’t dating. It’s one or the other. Pick one now and forever hold your peace because I can’t do this, not when I need to have my head wrapped around parenting.”

Way to be rational. Brittany sucked in a breath and tried to stay still, confident, on the sofa. It was difficult to achieve when her ass kept sliding around on the satin, but she gripped the cushion and held on valiantly. She wanted to retain her dignity when he told her he had no intention of dating a lunatic like herself.