Erin McCarthy - Vegas Vampires 03, page 9
“Will you burp him for me?” Beth said.
Corbin glanced over at her in surprise. She couldn’t possibly be speaking to him, the two-hundred-year-old French vampire whose experience with children was limited to walking past issues of Parents on the magazine rack. Yet she was. She was smiling, her round cheeks pink, her hair back in a ponytail, the soft pale flesh of her breast still partially exposed. The baby was bobbing in an upright position and she was holding him out toward Corbin.
“I do not think zat is a good idea,” he said, shaking his head. “I know nothing about babies.”
One-handed, she held her child, and dexterously tucked her breast away with the other, for which he was exceedingly grateful. “This is your chance to practice.”
“Perhaps one of the others,” he said, sitting up straight in alarm when she shoved the baby at him. “No, no, I don’t think… ”
Left with no choice but to take the baby or leave little Austin dangling in midair, Corbin settled his hands around the baby’s waist and swallowed vast quantities of saliva. “What do I do?” he asked in total panic, gingerly resting the baby’s flopping feet onto his knee. The infant felt warm and soft, a bubble forming on his pink lips. His chubby legs couldn’t hold him, though, and essentially collapsed, tangling the infant all up in his own appendages. Appalled, Corbin quickly used a free hand to move both limbs to either side of his own leg so the baby was sitting down on his pant leg like he was astride a horse.
They looked at each other.
The baby swung his plump arms up and down rapidly and made a humming sound, the bubble on his lip oozing down his chin, followed by a trail of milky saliva. The sour smell made Corbin’s stomach flip, but it was encouraging to see Austin wasn’t afraid of him. He was bouncing and smiling, showing off his slippery gums and two bottom teeth, rising up through the drool.
“So to burp him, you just need to pat him on the upper back firmly. You can do it the way he is, but it would be easier if you rested him against your chest and shoulder.” Beth demonstrated with her empty hands.
Corbin gingerly lifted Austin and rested him against his shirt, grateful he’d worn a casual cotton three-button shirt, navy blue besides. He had a feeling bad things could be about to happen when he encouraged air to evacuate Austin’s stomach. The baby felt intriguing, heavy and soft, fragile, yet strong enough to keep catapulting himself backward. His wispy hair smelled like shampoo, and Corbin rather liked the constant random sounds that came out of his mouth.
“You’ve never held a baby before?”
“No.” Corbin paused and amended his answer. “Except for my little brother, who was born when I was an adolescent. But I was away at school most of the time.” And Edgar had died of consumption before he had reached his tenth birthday, sending his mother into a fatal decline.
He patted cautiously on Austin’s back.
“Harder,” Beth said. “He won’t break. You need a firm pat so he can get that air up and out.”
Corbin cleared his throat and gave it a little more effort, but still exercising extreme caution. He had vampire strength and he didn’t want to collapse the child’s lungs or anything.
“Firm. Matter of fact. Close to him,” Beth ordered, putting her hand on Austin’s arm and demonstrating, tucking a cloth of some kind onto Corbin’s shoulder.
Sucking in a deep breath, Corbin copied her movement, a firm but gentle pat, and was rewarded with a loud, lengthy, wet belch that came from the depths of Austin’s baby belly and rattled past Corbin’s ear. A little shocked, he pulled the baby back and checked him for any injuries an eruption of that magnitude might have produced. Austin just smiled at him.
“Good, yes?” Corbin asked him, charmed by that smile. Austin gave a squeal.
“Now that he’s fed, I’m going to scoot on out of here,” Beth said. “Let you men talk about manly things and practice diapering Austin. You did great,” she told him with a smile.
“You’re taking him back, yes?” Corbin asked, panicked all over again, lifting the baby toward her.
“No, no, you keep him. Sam is going to help you change his diaper.”
With that she turned to go speak to her husband and Corbin was left holding the bag. Baby.
He looked around for assistance, resting the infant back on his shoulder. Travis was still next to him. “Would you like to hold him?” Corbin asked. “Since your wife is due first.”
Travis shook his head, lip curling back. “No way. He’s spewing.”
“What?” Corbin twisted his head to try and see Austin. “What do you mean?” he asked with a sense of dread. But truthfully he already knew what Travis meant. His shoulder felt wet. Warm. Austin had missed most of the cloth.
“Sick,” Travis said. “That smells curdled, man.”
Corbin suddenly felt much closer to Austin and Beth Adams than he ever cared to be. “Take him from me.”
“No way.” Travis scooted his chair back.
Grabbing at his shoulder, Corbin took the partially damp cloth and wiped at Austin’s dribbly mouth, holding him precariously with his free hand. “Is he ill?” He studied Austin and saw no evidence of fever.
“Nah, I think babies just do that. Spew. When they eat.”
“Wonderful.” Corbin swiped at his own shoulder.
“I’ll take him,” Dave said, holding his hands out with a rapt expression on his face.
Corbin turned him over gratefully. “I’ll go try and wash my shirt off.”
“Hurry up.” Dave lifted Austin up and down, making the baby laugh. “We’re talking about sex next and you don’t want to miss the bad news.”
“Can’t wait,” Corbin said under his breath, pushed his chair back, and got the hell out of there.
Brittany was concentrating on the video showing a woman giving birth. Was it really necessary for the woman to be naked? She was no prude, but come on. A robe or gown would be nice. But this woman just had all her stuff flopping around as she grunted and heaved and shook her hair like a horse after a hard run. It wasn’t a pretty picture.
It was giving Brittany rather uncomfortable feelings about the birth and her ability to push a baby out of her body while Corbin Atelier and a team of hospital staff stared at her crotch. What if it altered Corbin’s perception of her permanently? They had enough to sort out without him seeing her looking so mammalian.
They were supposed to be taking notes, but Brittany didn’t know what to write beyond HELP, so she just sat with her pen lying on her notepad.
“I think someone is trying to get your attention,” the woman next to her said, pointing to the door.
Brittany turned and saw Corbin peering through the glass in the doorway, looking pained. He held up his watch and pointed to it. She shrugged. The class had just started.
She turned back around, but sighed when she heard the door open. Resolutely, she kept facing the front and the video, trying not to wince as the on-camera mother to be gave another guttural groan.
Corbin squatted down between her chair and the woman’s next to her. “Please forgive ze intrusion,” he said to the other woman, accent turned up high, charm dripping off him. “I just need a moment.”
Brittany rolled her eyes when the woman smiled and said, “Sure, no problem.”
“What’s the matter?” Brittany asked in a whisper.
But Corbin had caught sight of the video and was staring, a look of horror on his face. “Mon Dieu… ”
“Don’t look!” she hissed, grabbing his chin and turning his head toward her. This was not the image she wanted him taking into the labor and delivery room. “This video is dated, very eighties, totally earth mother weird.” She hoped. “Now what did you need?”
He shook his head and refocused on her. “The baby vomited on me. I’m going home to change and I’ll be back to pick you up.”
“They have a baby in there?”
“Yes, the instructor’s child. And he… ” Corbin gestured to his shoulder, which had a baseball-size damp spot on it.
“Just dry it off with the hand dryer in the restroom.” If he left, he’d never go back, she was sure of it. She wanted him comfortable with the idea of a baby, not fleeing in terror at the first opportunity.
“Brittany.” He gave her a look of total exasperation. “I smell.”
Her lip twitched. “That has nothing to do with the baby, honey.”
It took him a second. “Very amusing. Can you not see me laughing?” he asked, face deadpan.
She giggled and gave him a reassuring pat. “No one cares. I can’t smell anything. Just go back and enjoy the rest of the class.”
“But—”
“Go!” She lost her patience and pointed to the door. “It won’t kill you, you know.” How true was that?
He shot her a dark look, the masculine equivalent of a pout. “Fine.”
“Fine.” She smiled at him. “See you in an hour or so.”
Muttering in French, he slipped back out of the room.
“Sorry,” Brittany whispered to the woman next to her, who had turned to watch Corbin’s retreat.
“What was wrong?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing major.” Brittany waved her hand in the air. “But he’s French,” she added, like that explained everything.
“Oh. Right.” The woman nodded in understanding. Then she turned back to the video and made a face. “Oh, yikes, the baby is crowning.”
Indeed it was. Brittany suddenly knew how Corbin felt. She wanted to go home and pretend their child could hatch, already ten years old.
Seven
When Austin urinated on him, Corbin figured his night was complete.
“You need to keep a boy covered up at all times,” Sam said with a grin.
It would have been nice to know that ahead of time. Corbin sighed and wiped his arm by rolling it back and forth on the cloth Sam had laid on the changing pad.
“Dude, you’re not having any luck at all tonight,” Travis said, scratching the devil tattoo on his forearm.
“Maybe zat is because I am actually touching the baby,” Corbin told him, holding the clean diaper out in Travis’s direction. “Care to try?”
“No way, man, I’m just trying to, you know, sit back and take it all in. Observing. Learning from watching you.”
Either that or Travis was lily-livered. Austin kicked Corbin with his heel, regaining his attention. He undid the diaper the way Sam had shown him and, after a mere two tries, had it centered under the baby’s bottom. Rather proud of himself, he started to fold the front up and between the legs, when Austin took a roll to the left and flipped himself right onto his round belly and off the diaper. “What the… ?”
“That’s why you never leave a baby alone on the changing table,” Sam said sternly. “And why we did this on the floor. Babies roll. You can’t leave them alone for even two seconds.”
Clearly. Corbin gently hauled Austin back and laid him on his back again, realizing at the last second his head was going to smack on the floor, and shoving his palm under to cradle Austin’s skull until it rested on the pad.
“Good instincts,” Sam nodded.
Corbin had to admit, he was impressing even himself. This was foreign to him, but it really required just some basic training and common sense. He grabbed the diaper again.
Austin did a repeat roll onto his belly, bare bottom facing up. It struck Corbin then how completely amusing and bizarre human infants were, both in appearance and behavior. As he lifted Austin yet again, his plump warm flesh wiggling in Corbin’s grip as he struggled to get free, Corbin couldn’t help but smile.
“You’ll be still, yes?” he said, as he laid the baby back down, and drew his finger across the softness of Austin’s round cheek, wanting to touch that pure skin. He came too close to the baby’s mouth, and Austin turned his head and engulfed Corbin’s finger with his slippery lips. Drool crawled down Corbin’s skin, but the gnawing seemed to preoccupy Austin and he stopped moving around. With his own fat baby hands, he grabbed onto Corbin’s wrist and chewed his finger industriously.
Seizing the opportunity, Corbin got the diaper on one-handed, using his elbow to hold it in place and seal the tabs. The thing was on crooked and didn’t look pretty, but it was snug and should hold. Damnation, this business was exhausting. He was going to have to stop for a pint on the way home. But it was also… illuminating. He thought maybe he was starting to understand the devotion infants inspired in their parents. Austin was adorable and amusing and charming, and required so much care, it was no wonder parents were so vehement about their children. They had a great deal of time and emotion invested in them.
Corbin finished the job, extracted his slimy finger, and lifted Austin up. Some strange instinct compelled him to kiss the baby on the cheek, with lots of noise and eating motions, causing Austin to squeal in delight, a chuckle rising up from deep in his round belly.
If he didn’t think about that horrific video he’d witnessed when he’d walked into Brittany’s class, he actually felt a large sense of contentment. He could do this. Be a father. And a vampire. All at once.
Brittany felt ill. She had an aversion to needles, and when they’d gone straight from the birthing video to the tests and screening video, showing a giant needle going right into a woman’s belly for an amniocentesis, she had gone hot with spots in front of her eyes.
There was no way. No way. She would have to be knocked out first if a doctor wanted to do that to her. Her stomach was churning, face hot, skin clammy, and she had excused herself for a drink of water.
But once in the hallway, she decided she just wanted to leave. She would read the manual at home. These videos were not instructional for her, they were panic inducing.
Sneaking into the back of Corbin’s classroom, she was glad to see they weren’t in a lecture-style class. The men were all gathered on the floor, bent over—she assumed with the baby Corbin had mentioned—so it wouldn’t be a big deal to interrupt.
Moving forward, she noticed it was Corbin who was actually diapering the baby. His brow was furrowed and he was concentrating, completely hunched over as he tried to undo the tabs one-handed.
He looked adorable, his hair falling forward into his eyes, his shirt pulling out of his pants. Despite her precarious stomach, she found herself smiling, and reaching into her purse for her cell phone. She was going to snap a picture of him.
Then he lifted the baby up in the air and Brittany nearly puddled onto the floor. He was playing with the baby. Kissing his cheek.
Everything in her inflated and swelled, and she felt breathless, entranced. A little bit in love. In love? Yes, insane as it was. In love, or something close there to it. With the man who was the father of her child.
Maybe this could actually work. This thing between them, and mutual parenting.
She felt a huge sense of relief and gratitude that Corbin Atelier was the kind of man who could see the charm in a baby. Holding her camera out, she snapped a picture.
Corbin saw the flash and glanced over, his smile disappearing, replaced by embarrassment. “Brittany.”
She laughed. “Busted. I caught you on camera so you can’t deny it.” Clicking “Review,” she waved it toward him. “You like babies and I have proof.”
“Brittany, don’t.” Corbin started to stand up, the baby against his chest.
“Too late.” Amused, she glanced back at the screen, hoping the shot had turned out.
What she saw made the blood drain from her face. Oh, God, she’d forgotten. She’d just forgotten.
In the picture, Austin dangled in the air, smiling and laughing. But nothing was holding him. Corbin wasn’t there.
She glanced over at him, horrified. He was a vampire.
No, she supposed she hadn’t forgotten, but she had been swept up in the normalcy of what they’d been doing… preparing for a baby.
But he was a vampire.
And quite possibly, so was her child.
Brittany fought the panic, but all the blood rushed to her face, and she dropped her phone.
“Brittany,” Corbin said, moving toward her, passing the baby to another man.
Eyes blurred by tears, she dragged herself back from the edge of a faint and said, “I’m fine. I’m fine. I just feel a little sick.”
And she whirled around and ran out of the room.
“Fancy meeting you here, Columbia.” Donatelli stood in front of Rockefeller Center and pulled on a pair of camel-colored leather gloves. “I was under the impression you were wearing an ankle bracelet back in Vegas.”
“Maybe I’ve been released for good behavior,” Ringo said, leaning over the railing and checking out the ice rink. A hefty teenage girl shrieked as she slipped and sat hard on her ass.
“Maybe. Or maybe you got your pretty little girlfriend to pick the key off your guard.”
“Maybe.” It wasn’t like it was a secret. Everyone back in Vegas had to have known he left with Kelsey, and he was sure the guard would have come clean about what had happened, though he might not have mentioned to the powers that be where Kelsey’s other hand had been when she lifted the key. Ringo lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.
“Your better half is quite resourceful. Though it’s not as if it’s difficult to get around these little inconveniences. Carrick runs a loose ship.” Donatelli lifted the leg of his black pants. Ringo saw the metal cuff that had matched his own. “I’m sure I could dispense with my own punishment, but I am biding my time. I don’t have any reason to leave Manhattan at the moment, nor do I want to raise ire. That is why I am not entirely pleased by you seeking me out.”
Donatelli was still an asshole. Ringo blew smoke in his face and made a show of looking around. Nothing but tourists lingering and office workers rushing home from work in the dark. “I don’t see anyone trailing you. No one gives a shit what you’re doing, as long as your ankle jewelry stays on and you stay put. So just fucking relax.”
Lifting a paper coffee cup from a four-cup carrying container on the ground, Donatelli drank through the hole in the lid. Ringo could smell it, knew it was blood. His stomach burned with hunger. He had skipped feeding last night in his hurry to find a motel and get to bed. Now he regretted it.
