I trudged back to the parlor, laden with bags of baby crap and, of course, the baby.

Alonzo looked mildly surprised. "I thought I smelled an infant," he said, which was creepy in nine ways.

Tina looked away, nibbling her lower lips. Sinclair looked resigned.

"I'm, uh, going to be babysitting tonight. Starting right now. Which does not get you off the hook," I added. "But we'll have to finish this up later."

"You have a baby?" Alonzo asked, looking befuddled.

"It's notmy baby. It's… ugh. You know what? Never mind. Our discussion is over. Go apologize to Sophie, if you think that'll make things right. Just… do it and mind your own business."

BabyJon, perhaps in agreement, barfed all over me.

Chapter 8

"I had other plans for us tonight," Sinclair said, looking nudely aggrieved.

I had just plunked BabyJon into the port-a-crib in our room, none too happy about current events. I was trying not to drool at my fiancé, who was standing, hands on hips, beside our bed. His dark hair was mussed from where he'd pulled his undershirt over his head (vampires layered), which was the only indication that he was annoyed. With his broad shoulders, long muscled legs, and big, uh, nipples, he could have been a lumberjack slumming in the state capital. All he needed was the axe. And possibly the blue ox.

"This wasn't exactly how I pictured spending the evening, either." "Must he sleep in here with us?" Sinclair continued.

"He's not exactly sleeping," I mumbled, as BabyJon cooed and chortled in the port-a-crib.

"Why not put him down in another room?"

"Why do that when I can put him down here?" I looked at the baby. "You're fat and you don't know how to use toilet paper."

"I am quite serious, Elizabeth. Put him down somewhere else."

"Eric! Be sensible. What if something happened to him? This is an eighty-room mansion. What if he chokes? I'd never forgive myself if I couldn't get to him in time because I couldn't remember what door I put him behind."

"You have super speed and super hearing." Eric sighed.

"It's just one night. We're supposed to be together for a thousand years, you can't ditch sex for one night?"

"It is the third night," he retorted, "this week. At this rate, in a thousand years we'll have missed sex one hundred fifty-six thousand—"

"Jeez, okay, I get your point, so what? I should put him on the doorstep from now on?"

"You could try telling your stepmother no."

"It all happened so fast," I said weakly. "And you want him to have to spend more time with his mother? Unfeeling bastard! Besides, the baby brings the family, uh, closer together."

"Which I would understand, if you had the slightest desire to be closer to

Mrs. Taylor."

"It's one night," I said again. Okay, three—in addition to the surprise she'd dumped on me tonight, we'd actually planned for the baby to stay tomorrow night and Monday. I decided not to bring this up just now. "Come on, babe.

He's the only little brother I've got. Maybe he's our heir!"

BabyJon farted.

"Our heir," Sinclair observed, "is a hairless, incontinent monkey. With frog legs."

"That's not true! He looks like a real baby now." About the incontinence, I couldn't argue. But BabyJon had plumped up beautifully, and wasn't so yellow and scrawny anymore. He had a mohawk of black hair and bright blue eyes. He didn't look like my dad or my stepmother. But who could tell with babies? They usually didn't look like anybody.

"You only like him because he prefers you to all others," Sinclair pointed out.

"Well, sure. Duh. Come on, it's a little flattering that I'm the only one he can stand. I mean, how often does a girl find someone like that?"

"Iprefer you above all others."

I melted.Goosh , right into a little puddle on the carpet. At least, that's what it felt like. "Oh, Eric." I went to him and hugged him. He was stiff in my arms for a moment (not in a good way), then hugged me back.

"You have to admit," I said, nuzzling his chest with my nose, "it's brought us together."

"Us being you and Mrs. Taylor."

"Yeah. I mean, my whole life—since I was a kid—we've basically stayed out of each other's way, when we weren't torturing each other. Now we're almost…" I was stumped. "What's the word?"

"Civil."

"That's it."

He was stroking my back with his big hands and I leaned further into him.

He dipped his head, kissed me, sucked my lip into his mouth, plunged his fingers into my hair, and I responded eagerly, hungrily, touching him wherever I could reach as we—

"Arrrrggggh," BabyJon said, and an unmistakable, mood-killing odor filled the air.

Sinclair pulled away. "Perhaps he should see a doctor. Certainly there must be specialists for this sort of thing."

"Eric, you're just not used to babies. Stinking up the room is what babies do. And changing them," I said, stepping toward the diaper bag, "is what I do, apparently."

"I'm going to take a shower," he sighed, and trudged into the bathroom.

"Thanks for nothing," I told my brother, who stuck his tongue out.