Visions in Death (In Death #19)(42)

"Tell me! I'm like an oinker every five minutes. Oooh, that's the salmon thingy with the stuff! This is just mag."

She popped it into her mouth. "I just love eating."

"You sit down now, honeypot." Leonardo walked over, rubbed her shoulder. "I'm going to fix you a plate."

"Cuddle bear," she cooed. "He totally spoils me. This pregs business is the top deal of the day. You gotta look."

Even as Mavis reached for the hem of her shirt, Eve was curling into herself and wincing. "Oh, Mavis, I don't... oh well."

There was the belly, in all its glory and accented by an interlinking trio of belly-button rings.

"Now check this." Still holding the shirt up, Mavis turned to the side. "See? It's poking. I know I said it was poking before. You know like five seconds after I found out I was knocked up, but now it completely is."

Eve tilted her head, pursed her lips. There was a little bit of a slope in that area. "Are you pushing it out?"

"No. Feel."

Eve wasn't quite quick enough to whip her hand behind her back. "I don't wanna. Don't make me touch it again."

"You can't hurt it." She pressed Eve's hand to her belly. "Solid baby."

"That's good, Mavis." Her palm was going to go damp any second. "Really good. You're feeling okay?"

"At the summit. Everything is totally uptown."

"You look beautiful," Roarke told her. "And cliché or not, you glow."

"I feel like I'm sending off waves." She laughed and bounced to a chair. "I still get the weepies sometimes, but they're happy weepies mostly. Like Leonardo and I were talking a couple days ago about how Peabody and McNab are moving into the building soon, and we're going to be neighbors, at least until we get a bigger place, and I just flooded."

She took the plate Leonardo brought her and cuddled up with him on the padded love seat. "So what do you think they want for, like, a housewarming?"

"Don't they have regulation temp control?"

"Jeez, Dallas." With a giggle, Mavis popped something else in her mouth. "Housewarming. You know, where people move into a new place and you get them a gift."

"Hold on. You have to give them a gift for moving?"

"Uh-huh. Plus they're shacking, so it should be a couple thing." She ate another canapé, fed one to Leonardo.

"Why does there have to be a gift for every damn thing?" Eve complained.

"Retail conspiracy." Roarke patted her knee.

"I bet it is," Eve said darkly. "I just bet it is."

"Anyway." Mavis waved it all away. "We really came by—and we're all pumped that you're both here—because we wanted to talk to you about the baby."

"Mavis, since you got pregnant, when haven't you wanted to talk about the baby?" Eve leaned over, took a canapé from her plate. "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

"Yeah, but this is a specific thing, that involves you."

"Me?" Eve licked her thumb and decided to steal another loaded cracker from Mavis's plate.

"Uh-huh. We want you to be my backup coach."

"You're taking up baseball?" Eve bit into the salmon thingy with the stuff, and decided it wasn't half bad. "Shouldn't you wait until you get the kid out of there?"

"No. Labor and delivery coach. You'd back up Leonardo when I have the baby."

Eve choked on the canapé and turned white.

"Take a drink, darling," Roarke said with a laugh in his voice. "Put your head between your knees if you feel dizzy."

"Shut up. Are you talking about... like, being there? In the actual place at the actual time? In the same room as... it."

"You can't coach me through it if you're in Queens, Dallas. You gotta have a backup coach, somebody who takes the class, learns about the breathing and the positions and the... stuff. Daddy Bear's first string, but you have to have one on the bench."

"Can I just stay on the bench? Outside?"

"I need you there." Tears swam into her eyes until they shimmered brighter than her boots. "You're my best friend in the whole universe. I need you with me."

"Oh man. Okay, okay. Don't flood. I'll do it."

"We feel," Leonardo said, and offered Mavis a green cloth to dab at her eyes, "that first for friendship there's no one who we want to share this miracle with more. Added to that, you're the most steady and solid people we know. In a crisis, you'd keep your heads."

"Our heads?" Eve repeated.

"We want Roarke there, too." Mavis sniffed into her cloth.

"Me? There?"

Eve turned her head, and saw—with pleasure—the rare sight of utter panic on his face. "Not so damn funny now, is it, ace?"

"We're permitted, even encouraged, to have family present," Leonardo explained. "You're our family."

"Ah, I'm not sure it's quite proper for me to be... to see Mavis in that condition. Under those... circumstances."

"Get out." Sniffles forgotten, Mavis giggled and tapped Roarke playfully on the arm. "Anybody with a vid player's seen me mostly naked. And this isn't about the proper. It's about family. We know we can count on you. Both of you."