A/N: Hi!... I am very excited to present to you guys the new P and P fic I am going to try my hand at.

It is a modern adaptation of the classic JA book, I will try to keep most of it the same, just changing details to fit the timeline and the modern age. As I am sure everyone knows by now, I have this thing for these three pairs - E/D, J/C and R/G. So, this fic is also gonna feature these three pairs. That is all the info you guys're gonna get now... the rest of it, you can find out by reading this...

Hope y'all like it and support it as much as you seem to have the other P and P fic I have written.

Oh and before I forget, 'The Season of Love' is almost complete, it just needs it's epilogue, which I will upload sometime during next week...

Without further ado, here's

Chapter 01

Thomas Bennet was an intelligent man... a genius in fact. But his fabled intelligence had been almost no help when it came to the dictates of his heart. At 24, he had met and promptly fallen in love with the most entrancing creature he had ever seen. She had been a 20 year old nurse then, inexperienced but ebullient, beautiful but so innocent of her own appeal that she had blown every brain cell inside Thomas Bennet's head. That was the only explanation that made sense, for he had found himself married to Francesca Gardiner at the end of a whirlwind courtship of all of three weeks. It had however, taken him less than twenty four hours into their marriage to determine that they were wholly unsuited for each other. Other than her beauty and charm, Fran had nothing else to contribute to their relationship and Tom, being the golden boy of the surgical interns as he was, found that he couldn't have chosen worse had he just blindly picked a woman off the streets to be his life partner.

But the passion and haste brought about by the inexperience of youth had led him to make a decision that he could spend the rest of his life regretting... if not for one little fact. Thomas Bennet was determined to spend the rest of his life head over heels in love with his beautiful but empty headed wife.

For her part, Fran Bennet might have gotten her hands on better looking boys, or someone more fun... someone who had money, connections and the ability to give her everything she wanted... which was a lot of things. There had been a lot of guys who had caught her eye, who fulfilled a lot of her criteria. But of all of them, the man she ultimately fell for, had almost none of this. Thomas Bennet had been a med student when she had met him at a party thrown by one of his friends and had promptly fallen in love with the dark good looks, the piercing green eyes that looked as if they could see into her soul and the knowing grin that seemed to say that he knew every thought that ran across her mind. The only thing that distinguished him from the others had been the fact that he had treated her like a princess... like she was something precious, something to be cherished.

What had begun as childish attraction for her had solidified into ardent love in the course of the three weeks and at the end of it, she had known that if there was a man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, it would be Tom Bennet. She knew that his intelligence could have gotten him any girl he wanted, he could easily have gotten bored with her. In fact she had half expected Tom to do so... So when he had proposed one fine day at the end of the three weeks, it had taken Fran no time before she jumped into his arms and screamed her assent.

It was the unlikely but extremely strong and lasting love between the two that kept their relationship and marriage going from strength to strength for almost thirty years now. They had seen good times and bad, weathered the bad ones together and shared the joy of the good ones. Their union gave five daughters as a result... Fran's only unfulfilled wish during the entirety of their marriage... her inability to give birth to a son. There were two sets of twins, separated by a single girl child.

Jane and Elizabeth Bennet had been honeymoon babies, born less than a year after the wedding of their parents. Jane was a happy and generous child, very soft mannered and forgiving. She had the looks of her mother and the gentle disposition suited to one so very pretty. Her sister Elizabeth however, was probably the most curious and daring child the world.. or at least this corner of it, had seen. Dark haired and green eyed like her father, Elizabeth got her curiosity and intelligence from the same parent that gave her her good looks. While Jane had grown up to be their mother's most favored daughter, because of her beautiful looks and gentle nature, Elizabeth had matured into the role of her father's favorite. The two sisters, though very different in personalities however, had the strongest bond imaginable between themselves, often knowing the other's emotions just by looking at them.

Jane, being the generous, gentle soul she was, decided that her station in life was that of helping others as much as she could. In keeping with that, Jane Bennet became an occupational Physiotherapist, while she volunteered at more charities than she could afford time for, in her free time. Elizabeth followed in her father's footsteps, till she overtook even him in brilliance in her chosen field. At 27, Elizabeth Bennet had been the most sought after Cardiothoracic surgeon in the United States. She had, by then, spent nearly two years running from one operating theater to another, saving most and losing some of her patients, but most importantly, making a difference wherever she could. Her hectic life, with literally no time to breathe between surgeries and consultations, had left little time for her personal life and it had been well and good till she had received news one evening when she came out of yet another open heart surgery, that her father had suffered a cardiac arrest.

Though just a mild one, Thomas Bennet had suffered a heart attack. It had been the one thing that could turn Elizabeth away from her lucrative and highly satisfying career.. and it was the one thing that did. She cleared all pending cases, shunted others that did not require her expertise, offloaded her case load and patient charts to her trusted and competent friends before she quit her position at the Boston General... the biggest specialty hospital in the entire USA. Her return to New Haven had resulted in her taking over for her father for the semester, for he was now the acclaimed Professor and Chair of the department of Surgery and one of the most popular professors at the Yale Medical School in New Haven Connecticut... Thomas had not wanted to leave his students hanging, simply because he couldn't stand up in class to lecture or perform any procedures for the next couple of months and asked Elizabeth to step in for him for a couple of months. She wasn't to know that what started as a couple of months would expand to take up pretty much the rest of her life in Connecticut.

She had known what she was getting into when she went back... both on the personal and professional fronts... but to Elizabeth, her father's life and well being counted for more. Back at New Haven, Elizabeth knew that she would not only be forced to take over for all her father's classes, she would also have to submit to being grilled relentlessly by her obsessive mother about her social life or the utter and complete lack of it. Though Elizabeth loved her mother, she had never been able to respect the woman like she did her other parent and while the questioning was borne with a lot of patience, she definitely never had the appetite for undergoing it... much like her second sister, Mary.

Mary Bennet was born about two years after the twins, a perfect mixture of her parents with dark hair and blue eyes. She was both studious in her outlook and dogged in her determination and it was decided by all that she formed the perfect mid point between both her sisters and her parents. Had her sisters been more cruel, they might have commented that Mary Bennet was born a fifty year old. Mary was an old soul, her likes and dislikes being far more mature than those of her peers... She had decided by the age of ten, that she wanted to own and run a bookstore by herself. She was sure of what she wanted in life and made whatever effort she could to work towards it.

Her determination had proved strong in the face of all the obstacles she faced and at 25, Mary Bennet might very well have been the youngest successful entrepreneur on the east coast. Her chain of specialty bookstores called BookNooks, was the current rage among the younger age groups, making it one of the trendiest hang out spots of the season. The fame and fortune that followed her successful business venture failed to bring any major changes to the middle Bennet child, much to the chagrin of her younger twin sisters and their mother.

Tom and Fran Bennet had been satisfied with the three daughters that God had seen fit to gift them and had finally settled into a sort of routine with the kids. Neither of them was looking to add to the family by then... However, the world it seemed, had other plans for the couple. Because almost nine years later, when Jane and Elizabeth were about 10 years old and Mary a very mature eight and a half, came the surprise twins... Catherine or Kitty as she preferred to be called, and Lydia, the babies of the family. These two were also very good blends of their parents, with Kitty being a blue eyed dark haired child while Lydia was a bright blonde green eyed sprite. Their temperaments however, seemed to favor that of their mother's, which though endearing them to both parents, made their work of parenting them that much harder. Kitty, though being the elder of the two, was much more easily led into following her younger and bolder sister's frequently daring and almost perpetually disastrous schemes.

From infancy itself, Lydia Bennet had displayed a profound dislike for rules and manners, preferring to get whatever she wanted by way of temper tantrums or shameless emotional blackmail. Had Kitty not been so easily led by her younger sister, she might have matured into a cheerful, well mannered young lady... but as it was, she was too secure in her position as Lydia's shadow, to even think of deserting her sister's influence and venturing out on her own. Having grown into their petulant and spoiled personalities, liberally fueled in their behavior by their indulgent mother and most of the time absent minded father, the two of them had decided that they would simply have to get into the acting and theater programs at NYU. Even though Kitty, with her better academic performance, had other, better options, that she chose to follow her less academically inclined sister to NYU for the theater program should have signaled to the Bennet family just how much hold the dreadfully spoiled youngest child had on her sister. whether they saw it and chose to ignore it or whether they completely missed it, is something to be discussed at another time. But none of them knew just how much that oversight was to affect their lives later.

A/N: So... how did you guys like it? Is it a good beginning to an even better story?

Next chapter will have the Darcy and Bingley families being introduced. I will try and move this into first gear without too much more procrastination... but just in case, please bear with me if I start to wax poetic about Dr. William Darcy's eyes. :)

Please don't forget to review your thoughts and ideas... I always welcome all sorts of feedback... even flames. At least that way I know what to change... :P

Keep reading and reviewing,

Lotsa luv and Coconut Cookies

MB