Chapter 25

On the way to the parking garage, Bella found herself standing outside the little church near her dorm again, staring at the giant black sheet of glass, wondering. She was dying to know what that stained-glass window looked like from inside the building.

From the outside, it was impressive mainly in size, dwarfing the east end of the church. The building was constructed of unassuming tan brick, its focal point clearly the stained-glass window she assumed was centered over the altar. Her parents weren’t particularly religious, so she had been in only a few churches before. Most of them were silent, gloomy affairs, filled with dark wood and high stained glass that filtered in little light.

But this window was enormous, and relatively close to the ground compared to the others she’d seen. She imagined that it let in a lot of light. She had the feeling it was beautiful, even though she couldn’t see any of the colors from the outside. She could only see the dark reflection of the glass between the leading. A huge likeness of Christ was superimposed over a thick, stylized cross, but he wasn’t hanging upon it like the figures she’d seen on crucifixes. He was simply standing, fully dressed in robes, arms outstretched in a welcoming gesture. Instead of thorns, a halo surrounded his head. Its roundness was echoed in a secondary circle around the cross, itself dotted with small globes containing symbols she couldn’t read.

From an artistic standpoint, she found it quite interesting. She would be taking an art history class this semester, and she knew cathedrals and religious artwork would be a big part of the course. She was curious to know how old this stained-glass window was, and what it looked like from the inside the church.

A glance at her watch told her she had a little time to kill before she had to be at work. The church parking lot was relatively empty, so she figured the Sunday service wouldn’t start for awhile yet. Next thing she knew, she found herself slowly ascending the stairs to the heavy wooden front door. She took a breath, wrapped her hand around the iron handle and pulled up the latch. The door opened in well-oiled silence, and her heart picked up its pace as she stepped into the foreign entryway.

She looked around, but saw no one. She tiptoed in on sneakered feet, silently climbing another short set of stairs that led to the back of the church. She was surprised to see that the interior was light and airy. The room was painted white, carpeted in deep crimson, and decorated with comfortable-looking sofas and chairs. She crept along the carpet, looking around in cautious awe at her surroundings.

She soon reached a set of doors that had been propped open in welcome. She peered around the corner and down the long, carpeted aisle into the sanctuary. When her eyes met the stained glass window at the end, she let out a gasp.

It was beautiful. Breathtakingly, stunningly beautiful.

She found herself slowly walking down the center aisle of the sanctuary, barely cognizant of the warm maple pews passing her on either side. Her eyes were transfixed upon the enormous image over the altar, its colors resplendent as the morning sun shone through them with uncanny brilliance.

The entire background was comprised of vibrant royal blue glass in slightly varying shades, a perfect backdrop for the golden cross upon it. The figure of Christ was robed in shades of white, green and rich scarlet; the circle around him was scarlet as well, overlaid with white globes containing symbols she still didn’t recognize. She wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe they represented his disciples. She’d heard the Christmas and Easter stories, of course; Mom had always managed to get her to a church for such occasions.

But here, looking at this amazing piece of art, she felt a reverence she’d never felt before in church. She wasn’t sure if it was the deep, glowing colors, or the serene, all-knowing look the artist had captured to represent the features of Jesus. All she knew was that for the first time, she actually felt like she might be in the presence of something greater than herself.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

She literally jumped at the sound of the voice behind her. She’d been so lost in her studies of the window that she’d failed to hear the soft pad of feet approaching on the thick carpeting. She whirled around and found herself face to face with a rather short, bespectacled man wearing a huge grin and a white cassock.

“It’s amazing,” she finally uttered after her heart stopped knocking against her ribs.

“Sorry if I scared you,” the pastor said, still smiling, not looking particularly sorry at all. “I figured Daisy and I made enough ruckus just breathing, let alone walking, to give you some warning.”

Bella flashed him a confused look before she realized what she was seeing. All at once, she took in the obvious: his amiable eyes were crinkled into unfocused slits behind their lenses of thick, myopic glass; and in his left hand he grasped a leather-wrapped bridle securing a large, liver-colored Chesapeake Bay retriever at his side.

“I’m Pastor Tim,” the man said, holding out his hand in her direction. She took it and he instantly grasped her hand tightly, giving it a warm shake.

“I’m Bella,” she managed to say.

“Nice to meet you, Bella,” the pastor boomed. “Are you going to stay for the service today? I promise, Daisy and I don’t bite. Well, she doesn’t, anyway,” he added with a mischievous grin.

Bella let out a weak laugh and knelt down to scratch the placid guide dog behind her ears.

“She’s beautiful,” Bella said.

“So I’m told,” Pastor Tim replied. “She’s my eyes, though, so I’m a little biased.”

“I’m sorry,” Bella told him, not knowing what else to say.

“Don’t be. I’m blessed to have such a beautiful pair of eyes, don’t you think?”

She couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if he’d just given her a wink.

“Daisy is a blessing,” Bella agreed. The pastor was so uncannily open that she decided to take a chance and ask him the foremost question on her mind. “So, have you seen this stained-glass window? I mean, before. . .”

“Before I went blind?” the pastor was kind enough to finish for her.

“Yeah.” Her voice was sheepish.

“No, I’ve been blind since I was a young man. Diabetes,” he explained. “Took part of my leg, too. Couldn’t take my spirit, though. The Lord made sure that stayed intact.”

“Wow.” Bella’s reply was barely audible, but she had the feeling Pastor Tim heard her.

“My parishioners have described the window to me in detail, and it’s all the more beautiful when I see it through their eyes. I’m lucky to still have my mind’s eye, too. And the imagination can be a powerful thing - more powerful than reality, sometimes.”

Bella was a little stunned by the profundity of his simple statements. “You’re right,” she agreed softly.

“Well, I just wanted to welcome a newcomer to the church. I hope you’ll stay and hear the message today. It’s a good one, if I do say so myself.” He gave her that same infectious grin, and she found herself wishing she could stay and hear more of his words.

“I’m afraid I have to work,” she told him. “I just wanted to steal a look at that window from the inside. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

He tutted and waved a dismissive hand. “You can never intrude in the house of the Lord. It’s your house. It’s everyone’s house, if they only let it be.”

Bella nodded, thanked Pastor Tim again, and hurried out of the sanctuary. She knew he meant his words of welcome, but she was beginning to feel like she had overstepped; like she didn’t belong in this place, no matter how warm and inviting it felt.

She pushed the front door open and barreled out onto the concrete landing - straight into a parishioner who was just arriving. The woman’s wide-brimmed hat was knocked from her head as Bella whizzed by, and the wind picked up strands of her neat silver bob, blowing them into the air.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry!” Bella apologized, bending down to retrieve the woman’s gauzy summer hat. The breeze lifted and carried it away before she could grab it, and she stumbled after it, her sneakers scraping the pavement.

“Oh my!” The woman exclaimed, watching the young girl scramble. “Don’t trouble yourself, I’ll get it.”

But Bella had already seized the brim. “Got it!” she pronounced, waving it in the air as she stood upright. The woman was laughing and smoothing her sleek bob with one hand when Bella handed her the hat.

“Thank you, dear,” she said with a benevolent smile. Bella smiled herself, at the woman’s elegant demeanor and English accent. She was the type of woman Bella thought she might like to be when she was older - smart, stylish, almost regal.

“You’re welcome,” Bella told her, then turned to leave.

“Aren’t you going to stay for the service?” the woman asked as she reached for the now-closed door.

“No, I have to work,” she begged off.

“Oh, that’s a shame. You should come back some time when you can. Pastor Tim is a delightful man. I was dead chuffed when I discovered him. He’s not all stuffy and holier-than-thou like so many other reverends. He speaks straight to the heart without even trying.”

“I’m sure he does,” Bella agreed.

“I hope to see you again, then.”

Bella looked into the kind-hearted eyes of the British woman and thought that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to come back here sometime. She watched as the woman waved her hat good-bye and opened the door of the church.

“Pastor Tim,” she called in greeting, stepping into the entry.

“Good morning, Charlotte,” was the last thing Bella heard as the heavy door swung shut behind her.

　

# # # # # # # # # # #

　

“Remind me again why I do this.”

Emmett glanced over at Edward, but the latter was still staring morosely off the terrace, his eyes unfocused in the direction of the Sound.

“What, relax at home with a beer on a Sunday afternoon?” Emmett countered, taking a swig from his Heineken. “Because it’s the law.”

That one nearly cracked Edward’s face with a grin, but not quite.

“No, why I fuck women for money,” he clarified bluntly.

“Ah,” Emmett replied, as if he didn’t already know the cause of Edward’s ill humor. “You just said it yourself - you need the money. And you don’t fuck them. Not all of them. You merely entertain them, however they desire. You provide the much-needed and appreciated service of companionship - nothing more, nothing less.”

Edward did grin this time. “I like how you toe the company line. Rose would be proud.” He glanced over and gave Emmett a suspicious look. “Does she have a recording device jammed in your shoe?”

“Possibly,” he answered with a grin. His smile faded and he gave Edward a questioning look. “You wanna tell me what this is about?”

Edward frowned and took a hefty swig of his own beer. “I just need you to remind me why I started doing this. Tell me everything I said to you in the bar that night, when you talked me into following in your footsteps.”

“Hey, I didn’t have to talk very long,” Emmett protested. “At the time, you were ready to sell all your bodily fluids and probably your first born for money.”

“Exactly. Remind me why.”

Emmett sighed before taking a deep breath and launching into the list. It had been awhile since he’d had to do this, but apparently Edward needed to hear it one more time.

“Well, you’re looking at one of the main reasons. This view. This house. Your mother’s house; your grandmother’s house. La Casa Cullen - the only physical thing that remains of your family’s history. It’s not a mansion, but it’s all you have, and in this location, the property taxes alone could bleed a man dry.”

Edward nodded. “Go on.”

“You didn’t have a clue what was really going on with your grandmother when you were away at school,” Emmett continued with another sigh. “She even managed to hide it from Alice for awhile. Then the two of them hid it from you - how much she was forgetting. How Alice had started paying the bills when Emily forgot. But even she didn’t know just how bad it was until Emily wandered off and left the stove on after lunch one day. She nearly burned the whole Goddamned house down. If Alice hadn’t come home from school when she did, both Emily and this place would have been gone.”

Edward took another mouthful of beer and swished it around in his mouth, enjoying its mild bite. “Continue.”

Emmett shook his head, wondering why Edward made him do this. Why he did it to himself. But for some reason, he needed it, so Emmett droned on.

“Well, as I recall, you were just graduating from Juilliard at the time and had planned to audition for a position with a traveling symphony. Instead, you came home to find the house, and everything else, in shambles. The Alzheimer’s had done more damage to Emily than you or Alice ever guessed. Your grandmother had neglected to keep up the insurance premiums on this property, and on herself. Unbeknownst to you, she’d taken a second mortgage out on the house to cover the college tuition and expenses your scholarships didn’t. And then there was the first mortgage that she’d taken just to pay for the expenses of raising you and Alice for the past fourteen years.”

“And why did she do that?” Edward interrupted, gazing morosely out over the water.

“Christ, Edward,” Emmett mumbled. Why was he forcing him to bring up such painful shit? He swallowed another mouthful of beer before he spit the words out. “Because, after your parents and your aunt and uncle died together in that car crash, there was nothing left. Emily sold the building they’d constructed for their new medical practice, which paid off the loans they’d taken out to build it, and not much more. And then, when she started forgetting things at work, she was let go from the law office where she’d been a clerk most of her life.”

Edward was still gazing out over the Sound, his eyes and thoughts far away. He was only half-listening to Emmett’s narration of his family’s painful past. For some reason, he kept thinking about his third piano recital at the age of eight, when he played last on the roster because he was already better than the older students under his instructor’s tutelage. His parents had been bursting with pride. Dad never even mentioned him going into medicine like he had. Instead he started calling Edward, Junior “my future concert pianist.”

Emmett drained his bottle and looked sideways at Edward. “Is that enough?”

Edward shook his head. “All of it.”

Emmett huffed a sigh before continuing. “What more is there? You came home to a very ill grandmother, a dependent teenaged cousin and a fucking mountain of debt. You told me you met with a financial wizard who started throwing around ideas like Welfare and state-funded hospitals and foster care for Alice until she was eighteen, or could be declared an emancipated minor. When he told you that the bank was about to foreclose on the house if you didn’t come up with the past few months' back payments, you nearly hauled off and the slugged the guy.”

A wan smile flitted over Edward’s face. “I couldn’t let them take this house,” he said quietly.

“Right. You couldn’t. So you did what you had to do to save it,” Emmett told him emphatically, giving him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder before reaching into the cooler between them and extracting another beer. He popped off the top and took a draft. “You got your grandmother the specialized care she needs, in a nice place, with a staff who knows what they’re doing. You saved the family home so Alice could stay here with you and finish school, instead of being carted off to those distant relatives of hers in the Midwest who don’t have two nickels to rub together. You paid off your own student loans and even managed to pay part of Alice’s tuition so she won’t be in such massive debt when she graduates.”

Emmett paused and stared at his friend until he turned weary eyes his way.

“You manned up, Edward. You took care of your family and yourself. Maybe it wasn’t the perfect way, but you were desperate. I presented you an opportunity, and you took it. Don’t beat yourself up over this anymore. You can still do other things with your life when your escort days are through, you know.”

Edward nodded slowly, his face still tainted with bitterness. “Don’t get me wrong, Emmett - I’m grateful for your help. I don’t know what I would have done to keep my head above water back then. I was drowning. You threw me a lifesaver.” He paused and sipped more beer. “Problem is, the lifesaver is starting to strangle me.”

Emmett nodded, trying to understand. He, himself, had enjoyed his escort days immensely, for the most part. But when he considered that none of the women who hired him ever made him feel like a man the way Rosalie did, he realized why the business was getting to Edward.

“So, who is she?”

Edward was as startled by the question now as he had been last night, when his client demanded to know the same thing.

“What makes you think it’s a she?”

“Sorry, I wasn’t aware you were batting for the other team,” Emmett replied with a twinkle in his eye. “Damn, why is it always the gay ones who make the best escorts?”

“Shut up,” Edward retorted with a roll of his eyes. “Although you’re right, Laurent is our number one requested guy, and he’s more ‘bi’ than a bicycle.”

Emmett suddenly shot up in his lounge chair, a light bulb seeming to go off in his head. “It’s that girl from last weekend, isn’t it? The little pale one with the big, dark eyes.”

Edward felt his face grow warm, but chalked it up to the beer and too much sun.

“Ha, I knew it! I know your type, man. Sweet and unassuming on the outside, take-no-prisoners on the inside. Am I right?”

Edward couldn’t help but smile. “You do know me well. And her, considering you met her for all of ninety seconds.”

“Yeah, but she had that look in her eyes, like she already owned you and she knew it. And you were so clearly whipped. I should have known. Shit. Don’t get whipped by a client, man! That’s the number one rule, you know that. You let one of them in, and the next thing you know, you’re the one getting screwed.”

Edward only grinned some more, then shrugged helplessly. “I like her. She’s different from anyone I’ve ever met. The minute I leave her, I want to see her again. Do you know how long it’s been since I met a girl I couldn’t wait to see again?”

Emmett shook his head sadly. “Yep. You’re screwed.”

“Never, that’s how long,” Edward continued, undaunted. “I can’t remember the last time anyone made me feel that way. At Juilliard, I was so focused on my career that I didn’t want to take the time to maintain an actual relationship. That’s why I kind of enjoyed the escort business at first. No-strings sex was something I’d tried like hell to have all through college, and finally I was not only getting it, I was getting paid for it. It was like winning the lottery twice.”

Edward’s grin faded. “But it didn’t take long to realize what a hollow victory it was. When the novelty wore off, so did the satisfaction. Before I got in this business, I never imagined the day would come when sex would just be routine, like brushing my teeth every morning. But that’s exactly where I was when I met Bella. I was at a point where I expected nothing. Wanted nothing. She couldn’t have caught me more off guard.”

Emmett was still shaking his head. “You poor bastard,” he said with a sigh. “You’re so fucked.”

Edward nodded in futility. “Fucked.”

“You’re not doing anything stupid, are you?” Emmett asked in a warning tone. “Like trying to see her on the side?”

Edward’s eyes flickered briefly to Emmett’s, then back out over the water. “I don’t know. I might be.”

Emmett’s groan was loud and foreboding. “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that. And if Rose asks me anything about why you’re acting screwy lately, I will plead total ignorance.”

“Am I acting screwy?”

“A little. Maybe no one else notices.”

“My date last night noticed.”

Emmett’s look was one of mild horror. “Don’t tell me. . .”

“Okay, I won’t tell you that I almost couldn’t get it up. I was so fucking tired, and I couldn’t get Bella out of my head, especially one week to the day after I was with her. . .”

“I am not hearing this.”

“Bella was a virgin. Did I tell you that? She was a fucking virgin and actually paid my sorry ass to be her first. How fucked up is that? It’s, like, inconceivable to me. And yet that’s what she wanted. I was who she wanted. And she still wants me. She still sees something in me. . .”

Emmett groaned in defeat. His friend was far more gone than he ever suspected.

“How old is she, anyway? She looked young.”

“She’ll be twenty in a couple of weeks,” Edward admitted, feeling a little sheepish.

Emmett groaned more loudly. “She’s still in college? That is trouble, my friend. With a capital ‘T.’ She’s too young.”

“She’s not that young -”

“She’s too young,” he reiterated sharply. “Forget about it. Call her up in a couple of years after she graduates and see if there’s still something there. Maybe by then you’ll have your finances in order enough to quit the business. But you’re crazy if you’re considering trying to keep something going with this girl right now.”

Emmett could see his friend’s reluctance to follow his advice. He turned sideways in his chair, leaning in to look Edward straight in the eyes. “I’m serious, man. You need to let this one go.”

Edward’s face had an expression Emmett had never seen before, a strange combination of desperation and determination.

“That’s the thing,” he said, his voice pulled tight as a drum. “I don’t think I can.”



# # # # # # # # # #

　

Alice Cullen stared at the book store queues in utter dismay.

"Disgust" was more like it. She couldn’t even see the ends of the lines at first. They snaked through the store like dancing Chinese dragons on a congested parade route through Chinatown. She thought she’d found the end of one until a large, pasty-faced girl glared at her and barked, “Get to the back of the line! No cuts.”

Alice hoisted her basketful of books higher on her hip and followed the string of people like a trail of breadcrumbs until she was almost out the front door.

“Shit,” she muttered to herself, settling in for the long haul to reach a register. Edward was right - she shouldn’t have procrastinated.

Edward was always right, much to her annoyance. Well, about most things. She would never agree with his decision to be an escort, even though the mountain of debt their grandmother had accrued looked insurmountable back then. She always thought there had to be a better way, especially with the talent he possessed. Even when Edward pointed out to her that he was making five times more money as an escort than he would have as a symphony pianist, and received a car and wardrobe allowance to boot, she kept trying to come up with a better idea. But she was only a teenager in high school, working as many part-time hours as she could manage in order to pitch in. She didn’t have any easy answers.

But Edward thought he did. He even tried to tell her it was his dream job - it was every man’s dream job. Alice knew better. She might have believed him if he’d been some womanizing man-whore all his life, but he was always quiet and even a little shy, never quite realizing just how attractive he was to the opposite sex. He was so absorbed in his musical ambitions that everything else, including girls, came second. That’s why it killed her to watch him cut himself off from his lifelong dream just to take care of her and their grandmother, and to save that stupid old house. He’d treated his budding music career as if it were a limb he’d had to sever to get out of a trap, leaving it behind without so much as a single look back.

But she saw that phantom limb haunting him still, the ghost of it lingering in his wistful eyes. The pain of his sacrifice made her angry sometimes - made her wish horrible, irrational things. She often found herself hoping her grandmother would die soon, and then hated herself immediately afterward. But the truth was, so much of the woman she loved had disappeared already that the shell remaining seemed to exist primarily as a cruel joke on all of them. If Edward weren’t paying for Emily’s nursing home care, he might be able to handle the mortgages with a regular job instead of the quasi-illegal one to which he’d resorted. She knew why he was so attached to the house, and everything in it. It was all that remained of the family they’d both lost too soon.

Alice finally set her heavy shopping basket on the floor with a thud and an irritated sigh. She heard a soft chuckle in the queue to her left. She looked across a couple racks of U-Dub apparel to see a cute blond-haired boy giving her a lopsided grin. He nodded down at the floor where his own overflowing basket of books lay, then gave it a kick as his line inched forward.

“I decided I’d save my weight-lifting for the gym,” he drawled in explanation. His accent earmarked him as a recent Seattle import from the south.

Alice giggled. “I’m saving my weight-lifting for. . . never,” she replied.

He let out a short, deep laugh at that. “At least you’re honest about it.”

She shrugged and gave her own basket a kick after the person ahead of her moved up. “If we ever decide to take up soccer, though, we ought to be pros by the time we get to the register.”

The blond boy’s grin deepened. “I like how you think.”

“I like how you talk. Where are you from?”

“Texas. Houston, originally,” he added.

“Really? Cool. Are you a freshman?” she asked hopefully.

“No, a junior. But I just transferred here from Texas Tech, so I kind of feel like one.”

“Well, I’m new to U-Dub, but not to Seattle. Maybe I can show you around sometime.” Alice never believed in beating around the bush, and she already liked this Texas transplant, with his easy manner and easier smile.

“I’d like that,” he said, his cheeks coloring slightly. He looked a little bashful, and it nearly drove her mad with attraction.

“I’m Alice, by the way,” she called over the clothes racks, leaning through the t-shirts and offering her hand. “Alice Cullen.”

“Jasper Whitlock,” he replied, reaching through some sweatpants to grasp her hot little fingers in his. “It’s a pleasure.”

She squeezed his strong hand for a moment before letting go. “It most certainly is,” she said under her breath.

“Come again?”

“Oh, I hope to,” she answered with a grin.

Twenty feet ahead, Bella Swan’s ears had perked up. Amidst the babble surrounding her station, she was sure she had heard the name “Cullen.” Absolutely positive, in fact. She craned her neck and looked down the line, and the line of the register across from hers, vainly hoping to see Edward in the throng. But she realized quickly enough that she would have recognized that gravity-defying hair of his, sticking up above the mops of tamer, shorter heads around him. Her brief surge of excitement quickly died and she continued to scan books with the bored precision of a robot.

Alice and Jasper each reached their registers at approximately the same time and gave each other knowing grins across the aisle before lifting their baskets in unison.

“The finish line!” she exclaimed, which made Jasper emit one of those deep chuckles that already made a little zing of excitement shoot through her veins.

She slammed the heavy shopping basket atop the counter and gave the cashier a triumphant look. The girl’s brown eyes widened for a moment, and then she let out a laugh as she looked into Alice’s exultant face.

“Hey, reaching this cash register has been the ultimate triumph, like completing the Boston marathon. It’s practically the pinnacle of my weekend,” she said. “Which doesn’t say much about my weekend, does it?”

She let out a rueful laugh, and the cashier joined her. When she began to lift her books from the basket, Alice quickly dove in to help her.

“Oh, you don’t need to do that,” the brown-eyed girl said, shooing her hand away.

“Are you kidding? You’re the one standing here doing heavy lifting all day. Let me get them. Besides, I’d better get used to hauling them around campus, right?”

“Right,” the cashier agreed. She let Alice retrieve the books and hand them to her one by one so she could scan them.

“Teamwork,” Alice told her with a grin.

The girl bit her lip and grinned. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“De nada,” Alice replied, digging through her purse for her wallet. She handed her student I.D. to the cashier, who ran it through the sensor and then checked the signature on the back. Suddenly the girl’s dark eyes widened, and she stared up at Alice with a stunned expression.

“What - is it declined?” Surely not. Edward didn’t let things like exceeded credit limits happen.

“No, it’s fine,” the girl answered, staring at the card again, then Alice. “It’s just - you aren’t related to Edward Cullen, are you?”

Alice’s eyes narrowed. Edward only used the surname “Cullen” when he was escorting. He didn’t like to use his real name, though he never said why. Alice figured it was his way of removing himself slightly from what he was doing, though he’d often said that he should just change his name to “Cullen,” to match that of his only surviving relatives. Either way, if this girl knew him as Edward Cullen, then she knew him through Renaissance Escorts.

Alice gave her a quick once-over. She didn’t know what Edward’s clients were usually like, but she couldn’t imagine that this girl was typical. She was young and attractive, if a bit awkward. What would she be doing hiring a date?

“Edward is my brother,” she replied. She figured this was a good test. Anyone who really knew Edward would know he was an only child, though Alice always considered him her brother. She was barely five when their parents died. She had only a few faded memories of them, but she had tons of memories of ten-year-old Edward moving into Em’s house with her, being her playmate and later protector, just like a brother would.

“Brother?” The cashier’s forehead crinkled and her face fell. “Oh. I’m sorry. I think it must be a different Edward Cullen, then.”

Alice’s interest was piqued. “Maybe,” she said. “How do you know him?”

The girl’s eyes flashed with something that looked a little like embarrassment. “He’s a friend of mine, that’s all,” she said, averting her gaze as handed Alice her I.D.

“I’m meeting a friend.” Edward’s words from the other day echoed in Alice’s ears. She studied the cashier again with interest. She wasn’t even sure what Edward’s type was, but if he had one, this girl might be it. Pretty, but not fussy; hard-working, honest-looking.

“Did you meet him Friday morning for breakfast?” Alice asked point blank.

The girl’s eyes popped open again. “Yeah. Did he. . . mention me?”

Alice glanced surreptitiously at her nametag. “As a matter of fact, he did, Bella.”

The girl’s cheeks turned bubble-gum pink and her lips stretched into a bashful smile. Geez, what was with all these self-conscious, shy types? Alice was surrounded by them. She took a quick peek over her shoulder to make sure the other bashful one, Jasper, hadn’t escaped during her conversation. He seemed to be lingering at the end of the counter, checking his bag, doing a book count. Shit, she didn’t have much time - she didn’t want that one to get away.

She turned curious eyes back to Bella, wondering how she’d met Edward, and exactly what she meant to him. He obviously meant something to her. But Edward had that effect on most women without even realizing it, the oblivious fool.

“Listen. Edward isn’t really my brother, but he might as well be. I love him to death and I want nothing more than to see him happy. And the other morning, when he was leaving to meet you, he actually looked happy for the first time in a long time.”

Bella looked even more pleased, if a little flustered; and Alice realized that this girl was one-hundred-percent gone over her cousin.

The question was, how did he feel about Bella?

Alice whipped her neck to the side to make sure Jasper hadn’t left; he was ambling toward the door. She turned back to face Bella, then scrambled in her purse for a pen and some paper.

“This gum wrapper will have to do,” she muttered. “Give me your phone number, would you? I’d like to talk to you some time about Edward. If that’s okay,” she added hurriedly.

Bella’s eyes were round and fawn-like once more. “Sure,” she said, then rattled off the numbers. Alice scribbled furiously and jammed the paper and pen back in her purse.

“Thanks, Bella. It was great to meet you. I’ll call you soon!”

And with that she was sprinting for the door, not caring how forward that might look to the laid-back Jasper Whitlock.

Bella stood gaping after her, wondering what had just happened. The loud smack of another customer’s books hitting her countertop diverted her attention from the aftermath of Hurricane Alice. She had no choice but to return to the drudgery of her job and hope that particular storm would revisit her soon.