Bled Dry (Vegas Vampires #3)(11)
Author: Erin McCarthy

The very thought offended him. “This is not a habit for me. I do not normally succumb to passion and lose sight of all common sense. This was a first, and I have already apologized. Besides, I am only two hundred and ten years old.”

Brittany looked amused. “Is that all? I’m twenty-six. And in case you were wondering, this is the first time I’ve ever gotten knocked up. So we’ll just have to bumble through this first time for both of us together.” Then her smile disappeared. “Unless you don’t want to be involved. If you don’t, I understand. I’m not expecting anything. I just need you to be honest up front and tell me so that I know what I’m dealing with. And it won’t be fair to our child for you to pop in and out of her life whenever you feel like it, so I’m just going to be clear right here and now that I won’t tolerate that ‘I’ll be a father whenever I feel like it’ kind of mentality.”

Surely her opinion of him was quite low if she thought him capable of such irresponsible selfish behavior. It occurred to him that they had certainly done this backward. They knew nothing of each other and yet they were having a child. He no longer got headaches, but he could swear he felt one now, throbbing at his temples.

Yet this would work out. He was determined.

“I have no intention of popping in and out, as you say. My intention is to marry you as soon as possible.” After they were certain no one would suspect the truth. “We can live here if it pleases you, or we can live apart if you prefer. I will pay for the education and upbringing of the child. He can attend the same boarding school I did in France.”

Brittany was sure he had no idea how absurd he sounded. “You want to get married but live apart?” What the hell was the point in that? All that would do was screw up her taxes and prevent her from ever dating in the future.

“If that is your preference.”

Corbin was not making this easy. Brittany still had no real sense of how he felt about the situation. “What is your preference?”

“My preference is to ensure your happiness.”

That was an artful dodge of the question. “Have you ever been married before?”

“No.”

“And you’re not going to be now. I’m not marrying you, Corbin. Just forget it. I am perfectly willing to give you visitation with the baby, though that could be dicey with the whole sleeping during the day thing, but we can work it out so you have plenty of time with the baby. I would like child support and a dialogue with you regarding major decisions. But I am not marrying you.”

“You’re being unreasonable.”

And he was being ridiculous. “I am not being unreasonable. I just offered you shared custody. And sweetie, just to remind you, you are a vampire. How many women would be willing to leave their infant in the care of a bloodsucker? I think I’m being very reasonable under the circumstances.”

“That is insulting. And if you were being reasonable, you would agree to marriage and we would not need to have this argument.”

Brittany was trying really hard not to lose her patience. Normally, she almost never flew off the handle, and she was a real happy-go-lucky kind of woman. But she was tired, hungry, and nauseous, and he was pushing a bit hard against her patience. “So we should get married, live apart, each take recreational lovers whenever the mood strikes us, and send our child thousands of miles away to go to school. Why don’t we just hire a wet nurse while we’re at it.” And move into a nineteenth-century gothic novel.

Corbin tilted his head. “Can you still find such a service? We should consider that.”

The sad thing was, he was actually serious. “Sure, if we want our kid to be warped. You have no idea how children are raised in the twenty-first century, do you?”

He looked affronted. Corbin opened his mouth, snapped it shut, fell back into her couch cushions. “Perhaps not,” he conceded.

The misery and horror on his face made her feel bad. It wasn’t like she was an expert, either. “That’s okay. I mean, you probably haven’t been around kids much in the last two hundred years, have you? We just need to talk these things through, like we are now. See, we’re doing so good at this already. We’re communicating and working things out, which is so important when you’re raising a child together.”

“You do not know what in hell you’re doing either, do you?” he asked.

No, but she was optimistic she could learn. “Not really. My experience with kids is kind of limited to Nanny 911 episodes and the kids I see as patients in my dental practice.”

But she knew a boarding school in France wasn’t going to fly. And don’t even get her started on the whole marriage-of-convenience thing.

“Brittany, tell me about your childhood.”

“Oh, uh.” Maybe they shouldn’t go there. Brittany crossed her legs and cleared her throat. “Well, you know, I grew up here in Vegas.”

“And your mother was a stripper?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t ashamed of that, not in the least, but it probably didn’t mesh with Corbin’s image of Mother Material. “My mom died when I was thirteen.”

“I am sorry. How did she die?”

“She overdosed on painkillers.”

“You were very young to be without a mother.”

“I had Alex. She was eighteen and she took care of me, kept me on the straight and narrow, and put me through school. I’m normal and well adjusted, Corbin, I swear. My childhood wasn’t a walk in the park, but it wasn’t hell either. We had food and a roof over our heads, and our mom loved us in her way. We even had a stepfather for a few years who was fantastic and provided a positive male role model in our lives. I can be a soccer mom, I want to be a soccer mom, even if that’s not the way I was raised.”

“Soccer mom?” Corbin looked puzzled.

He really was out of the domestic loop. Too much night dwelling. “A suburban mother who drives a minivan full of her kids and their friends back and forth to soccer practice. It’s sort of a general term for a suburban mom who spends a lot of time ferrying kids around.”

“Ah,” he said, but it didn’t look like he was getting it.

“How were you raised?”

“My parents were very wealthy French landowners who escaped to England during the Terror. I was born in London, but was sent to boarding school in France when we returned to the Continent after the defeat of Napoleon. My early years were spent learning to fence, learning to ride, and tending to my education. I did not spend much time with my parents, as it would have been unseemly for them to attend to my daily care.”