Bled Dry (Vegas Vampires #3)(27)
Author: Erin McCarthy

People thought she was stupid, a brunette airhead, and sometimes she was. Mostly she was just strange, and she knew that. But both perceptions led people to continually underestimate her.

“I’m thirsty,” she said in a random, whiny voice. She bent down and pulled one of the cups out of the cardboard carrier at Donatelli’s feet.

“Be my guest,” he said dryly. “But one of those three cups has a little extra something added to it. I don’t think I remember which one.”

Having being a drug user herself in the late sixties, Kelsey had no intention of ever going that route again and wanted to ensure Ringo didn’t relapse either. She would be forever grateful to Mr. Carrick for getting her the help she had needed when she’d hit rock bottom, and didn’t intend to see her husband slide backward. But she wasn’t going to drink any of Donatelli’s blood cups anyway.

She just shrugged and stood back up. “I’ll sniff it.” Prying the lid off, she delicately lifted it to her nose. “You do know that when Ringo gets desperate, he is capable of almost anything.”

“Aren’t we all.” Donatelli had dark eyes, and they narrowed, as he clearly tried to guess what game she was playing.

“Not everyone. Like, I don’t know, Gwenna, for instance. She’s not capable of evil, is she?”

That got the reaction she was hoping for. “What the f**k does Gwenna have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know.” Kelsey blinked. “But she’s in Vegas again.”

Donatelli opened his mouth then snapped it shut. He gave a deliberate shrug. “Why do I care if my ex-wife is visiting her brother?”

“I don’t know. But I thought it was weird that she was hanging out with the French guy that no one likes. The one who helped Ringo. She seems so quiet. But I guess they make a good couple.”

Kelsey was lying through her teeth. She doubted Gwenna even knew Atelier, but her objective was simply to get Donatelli back to Vegas, so by default she could get Ringo back to Vegas, back where there were other vampires to run interference. Back where she could keep her husband away from the drug blood.

“A couple? That’s ridiculous.”

But he looked unconvinced and angry, grip tightening on his coffee cup. Kelsey just gave a noncommittal shrug. “Maybe they’re not a couple. I guess they could just be having sex.”

Donatelli’s eyes flared with hatred, the cup in his hand collapsing, blood spilling all over his really pretty light brown coat. Kelsey jumped back, a red splash landing on her arm.

“Damn it,” he said, dropping the crushed cup right as a woman to their left started screaming.

Kelsey turned, saw her pointing at them, at all the blood on Donatelli’s chest, while she shrieked in terror. There was movement, people coming toward them. Reacting instinctively, Kelsey backed up, right into Donatelli, intending to run. But before she even realized he was doing it, he had his arms around her.

Then she was up and over the railing, free-falling down onto the ice rink. She heard the shouts, saw scrambling movement as skaters dashed out of the way.

When she landed, on her shoulder and back, with a crunch of nausea-inducing pain, she looked up at the railing.

Donatelli was gone.

And she hoped like hell he was headed back to Vegas.

That was worth breaking half the bones in her body.

Eight

Corbin gave a quick apology to Sam and the class, grabbed Brittany’s cell phone off the floor, and headed out after her. He deleted the picture she had taken, glancing briefly at the disturbing image of Austin in the air with nothing holding him. The lack of a reflective image for a vampire was something he had never been able to fully explain with science.

Brittany was sitting on a bench wiping at her eyes.

“Hello,” he said, sitting down next to her.

“Hi.” She sniffled, her voice wobbly, mouth turned down.

“I am sorry.” Corbin turned her cell phone around and around in his hands.

She sighed. “It’s not your fault. I just wasn’t expecting that. And I don’t feel good. My stomach is upset. That’s why I came in the room in the first place.”

“Shall I take you home then?” He put his hand on her knee, not knowing how to fix this. He didn’t even understand fully what he felt for Brittany, and he had no comprehension of how to handle their relationship. Didn’t know what was expected of him, or what he was entitled to.

“Actually, I think I’ll call my sister to come and get me. I want you to finish the class.” She stared out the window in front of them at the dark parking lot.

There was a distance in her voice and he didn’t like it. “I am trying to be normal,” he said, frustrated.

“I know.” She turned to him and gave him a wan smile. “And I’m trying to pretend I can be a soccer mom. I never thought I was trying to defy my childhood, but I think in some ways all I’ve ever wanted as an adult was to just be normal. I mean, I became a dentist. Can you get any more suburban than that? But the thing is, Corbin, we can try, but we can’t change the core of who we are. You’re a vampire, and in my heart, I’m still a wild child, happy-go-lucky daughter of a stripper. We can’t change that, and I guess, ultimately, I don’t want to. But I’m not sure being parents meshes with who we are.”

Corbin squeezed her knee, his heart searing at her words. He had failed her by the simple fact that he was not the man she had expected to meet and marry. He was not the man who could give her that completely innocuous bourgeois existence. Regardless of her feelings toward him, he would always represent the loss of that dream. That made him very sad, very sorry.

But he also disagreed with her.

“The ideal parent is not based on where you live, or what you can provide your child with. A good parent is simply one who loves his child and teaches them values and boundaries in a nurturing environment.” He hadn’t been watching Supernanny religiously for two months without learning a thing or two. Or how to articulate what he suspected he had known instinctually.

He turned to her, touched her chin, brought her gaze around to his. “We have that, ma chйrie . If we were bad parents, we would not worry this much. But we worry, because we care. And ultimately, that is the most important thing our child needs. Two parents who would do anything for him or her.”

Big fat tears spilled out of her eyes. “You’re a good man, Corbin Jean Michel Atelier,” she whispered.