A/N: I hope you guys liked the first chapter! They're finally at Anguilla and all hell is close to breaking loose. Should be interesting =]
P.S. I've never been to Cap Juluca before, and although it looks gorgeous in pictures I don't do it nearly enough justice in my depiction of it. Therefore, for those of you that are reading, I am attempting to figure out how to make a link that goes directly to the specific pictures that I am describing in the story. However, like I said… it's in the works so if any of you know how to do that, feel free to let me know the trick. I'm rusty when it comes to html. haha There weren't pictures for all of the places I portrayed, so I had to improvise a few times. If you have any corrections to make, just let me know and I'll be happy to fix it for you!
I was shocked at how little time it took us to get to Anguilla. Our only layover was in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Including the layover, we arrived at the Anguilla airport about five and a half hours after leaving Orlando. I thought we'd made pretty good time. Too bad it was somewhere around one in the morning at this point, and we were both ready to hit the sack.
However, when the stewardess announced that we could now exit the aircraft, Alice and I perked back up and were the first off of the plane.
She had promised me somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean that as soon as the plane landed she would inform me of our final destination. Now that we were nearly there, I had to admit I was getting a little antsy with our whereabouts.
"Al, please? You promised you'd tell me where we were going when we got off of the plane."
Other than the runway lights on the landing strip it was pitch black outside, but I could still make out the huge grin growing on her face as she started jumping up and down excitedly. A few passengers exiting the plane gave her strange looks as they passed us by but she paid no attention to them.
"We're going to a resort called Cap Juluca. I know that doesn't help you much right now, but I promise… after you see this place the name will be burned into your brain forever." Wow, she was serious. This place had to be like heaven on earth. As upset as I was about everything that had happened less than 24 hours ago, I couldn't help but have butterflies in my stomach at the realization that we were really doing this.
"Come on, we should hurry," Alice chirped as she pulled me toward the crowd that had passed us. "We're going to get left on this landing strip and a plane might hit us due to the zero visibility factor."
Oh, Alice. She was a riot. I began to laugh as we ran to catch up with everyone. This really was going to be an adventure, and I honestly couldn't wait to see what this Cap Juluca place had in store for us.
__________
The moment we entered, I was in awe. Thank god my jaw was connected to my skull or I was sure that it would have fallen off with the amount of admiration I already had for this heaven like locale. Actually, heaven didn't even begin to cover how serene and consummate this place was guaranteed to be.
The entrance to Cap Juluca alone was enough to make you do a double take, even if it was around 2 AM. Hey, when you book a flight at the last minute, what time do you expect to reach the most beautiful place you'd ever laid your eyes on?
The first thing I saw was a beige concrete entrance sign that said Cap Juluca with a brown tribal-esque symbol surrounding the name. There was a hidden lamp below it that made sure to illuminate the name in just the right way.
On either side of the sign were two block shaped boulders with matching beige bowls that were spewing flames from them. It reminded me somewhat of the Olympic flame that was lit before each set of Olympic games.
Below the sign there were ferns and foliages of all shapes and colors surrounded by a short handmade brick wall at the entrance.
We were then driven down a long cobblestone driveway to the entrance. I was a little peeved off that I was unable to see all of the surroundings that we were passing. I was positive that they were breathtaking and I made a mental note to be sure and come back during the day time to see the scenery that I was currently missing.
When we got to what I assumed was the check in area, the driver pulled up to a curb and we graciously thanked him and paid him his fare.
Two concierges were at our side faster than I could blink and were insisting that they unload our luggage for us. I almost felt bad for the two men because of all of the suitcases we had packed, however I was grateful that we wouldn't have to lug everything to our villa all by our tiny selves.
The men led us to the check in counter and the receptionist was shockingly chipper for someone that had to be at work during the wee hours of the morning.
"Hello there, and welcome to Cap Juluca! May I have your last name to look up your reservation, please?" The woman was full of smiles, despite the tired expressions Alice and I had on our faces. Alice stepped ahead of me and said, "The reservation is under Cullen."
The woman typed something into her fancy schmancy computer before replying, "Ah, yes. Ms. Cullen. We have you booked in one of our three bedroom villas."
"That would be correct," Alice stated sleepily.
"And how will you be paying for your stay?"
"This should do the trick," she said as she pulled out a platinum gold card from her wallet. Ah, the perks of having a father who is a doctor.
The woman took it from Alice and with a swipe from the machine, we were paid for and ready to be taken to our humble abode.
The kind gentlemen that were in charge of carrying our luggage walked us down a brick pathway dimly lit with romantic style tiki-torches that lined the walkway area until we reached the villa. I could hear the waves washing up on the shoreline not far from where we stood. I couldn't wait to jump into the crystal clear water tomorrow.
"All right, ladies. This is it! Is there anything else we can do for you?" the taller man with a slightly foreign accent asked.
"No thank you," I replied. "We can take it from here."
"Well we certainly hope you can enjoy your stay here at Cap Juluca. If you need anything at all, don't hesitate to ask for me. My name is Michael."
"Thank you, Michael," Alice responded. "And thank you for helping us with our belongings," she said as she slipped him a twenty dollar bill in his shirt pocket. He gave her a big grin and shook our hands before he and his fellow concierge walked back down the brick walkway and left us to our home sweet home.
I couldn't get that great a look at the place, but I could tell that it was extraordinary. It was two stories tall, and the architecture was one of a kind. The villa appeared to be white, from what I could make out in the darkness.
"Al, this is beyond amazing. I don't know what to say."
"Just have a great fucking time with me, woman! That's all I ask. Well, that and to help me carry in all of this luggage. But first, let's check out the place! I need to refresh my memory on what it looks like!" I nodded eagerly, and she opened the door with the key we'd been given.
I'd be lying if I told you I didn't gasp when I walked inside. It had to be the most luxurious place I'd laid my eyes on in years - and I had only seen the hall so far.
First, in order to get inside you had to walk down a small flight of individually hand tiled stairs, which led to a short hallway. It was consumed with gorgeous original paintings filled with the most beautiful array of colors.
The walls were stuccoed which gave the place an elegant touch and had been painted a tan color on top of that. I'd like to call it toasted coconut. Sounded fitting enough, right?
I wasn't exactly sure why we could see all of this, though. I assumed all of the lights in the house would be turned off at this point. Clearly I was wrong however, because there was a faint glow coming from whatever room was a few feet away from us.
Alice was still admiring the paintings as I continued my trek to see the rest of the house. As I entered the new room, again I gasped. There were two reasons as to why I did this.
Reason number one; what kind of architect makes an entrance to a house that leads directly to someone's bedroom? Oh well. The bedroom was gorgeous regardless.
Unfortunately, that was not the other reason I had gasped only seconds prior. Cause number two for the gasp was because there were random pieces of clothing sprawled throughout the room. Holy shit, were there already people living here?
"Alice, Get your ass in here!" I must have startled her because she came in with wide and anxious eyes. "Why in the hell are there clothes all over the place?" I asked.
My tone was a mix of pissed off and nervous which made the sentence come out in a awkward squeak. That was not what I was going for.
I cleared my throat and waited for Alice to give me her opinion on the situation. "I'm not sure why there are clothes everywhere. Let's look around?" When I heard form her last sentence into a question, I wished that I'd come up with a plan A before she did but it was too late for that.
I hushed my voice to a whisper in case anyone was nearby and could potentially hear us. "Look around?! Are you kidding me? There are clearly people already staying in this villa. We need to go clear things up with the receptionist. I'm sure there was just a mix up of some sorts." She was having none of that. She shook her head in disagreement.
"Bella, I just paid a hefty sum of money to stay in this specific villa for ten days. We can solve this problem ourselves. Now be quiet and listen for a second." We both went silent for a few moments and listened to our surroundings. I could hear some kind of muffled noise coming from somewhere nearby.
"See? There are people here. Let's just go upstairs and talk this over with them," she said calmly. How in the world was she going acting cool as a cucumber right now? I clearly wasn't comfortable being in the same house with a group of strangers and I sure as hell wasn't about to talk to them about the current situation.
I walked out of the bedroom in an attempt to exit the house. But being the directionally uncoordinated person I am, I walked the wrong direction down the end of the hallway and opened a door to another bedroom. This time, I didn't let out a gasp. It was much worse. This definitely called for a petrified scream.
I screamed at the top of my lungs and turned my head away in disgusted horror. "What the FUCK?" I yelled.
By this time, Alice was by my side. She felt along the side of the wall for the light switch and flicked it on. Suddenly the room got bright as day and I saw everything on God's green earth that I had every intention of staying away from – my brother fooling around with some random chick.
"Jazz, what in the hell are you doing here?" I yelled. He looked like a deer caught in headlights. His normally perfect curly locks looked like hard core sex hair, and he appeared to be naked. Gross.
He stared at us both blankly, clearly drunk. His eyes were glazed over and he was trying to figure out why in the world we were here. Well, buddy, I was attempting to figure out the same thing.
The girl quickly buried her face in her hands, clearly embarrassed that she was caught and Jazz reached for his boxers on the floor. He put them on under the covers quicker than I could spell Mississippi and was by my side in an instant.
Alice was nowhere to be seen at this point. I'm sure she was in tears somewhere in this mansion of a house. Although I was concerned with her whereabouts, I was more concerned with figuring out why my current ass of a brother was at my villa. Of all the fucking places on this earth, he was here. With me. What were the odds of that?
He pulled me by the arm out of the room and closed the door behind him so we were left standing in the hallway once again. "Bella, pardon my language, but what the fuck are you two doing here?"
"I think I'm entitled to ask a few questions myself. Question number one being who in the hell was that slut you were just sexing in there?!" You could hear the anger pouring like venom from my mouth.
"I wasn't 'sexing' her or whatever the hell you just called it. We were just messing around! And she's not a slut. She's one of my buddy's good friends. But you still haven't answered my question. Why are you here?"
I rolled my eyes at him. If his damn cell phone was turned on about seven hours prior, he would know the answer to this already. I would have really loved to avoid this topic all together. It was embarrassing enough telling him that I was the dumpee over the phone, but in person? God dammit.
"I'm here because Jake broke up with me, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? Al brought me here for the week to get my mind off of everything. She was trying to be a good friend and cheer me up.
"And look how I repay her – by letting her get a first hand peep show at my brother hooking up with another girl. What a great day this has turned out to be. And it's only three in the morning. I can't wait to see how the rest of the day pans out. Ughhhhh."
I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes yet again. This was the upteenth time I had cried in the last 24 hours. I was over it at this point. I turned away so that Jasper wouldn't think I was being just another overemotional girl.
No sooner than I had turned my back on him, he had me in a big bear hug and was trying to soothe me. "It's okay, baby sister. I'm so sorry. Shhhhh. It'll be okay."
I was starting to hyperventilate again, only this time it was because Jazz was calming me down. All of my problems melted away when he hugged me. A complete calm washed over me, and I felt safe in the arms of my brother.
"We'll figure this out, Bells. I promise. Let me just go um… tell Rosalie what's going on and I'll be back out here in just a second." I rubbed my watery eyes and nodded in consent while he kissed me on the forehead and left me in the hallway to tell that Rosalie girl what was up.
I'd tell her what was up myself, if I wasn't a ball of tears at the moment. I'd tell her to keep her groping hands off of my brother if she knew what was good for her. But that would have to wait, because right now there were slightly bigger problems at hand – like why we were all here.
Out of nowhere, I heard yelling coming from somewhere upstairs. What in God's name could that be? Jasper and what's her name were out of the room in no time and gave each other suspicious looks.
"Oh Lord, here they go," Jasper said sarcastically. His lady friend stood behind him wearing one of his button down dress shirts with her arms folded over her chest. She looked extremely uncomfortable. Welcome to the club, sister! I thought to myself.
"Here who goes? What's going on Jasper?"I asked angrily. My fuse was growing shorter by the second with all of the shit that was going down.
"We'd better get upstairs you two, before Edward and Alice bite each other's heads off. Even Emmett can't keep them from having a scream-off at one another."
Oh crap. Did he just mention Edward? Ugh… That meant I would have to put up with his bull shit. He was loud, obnoxious, and everything you expected a little rich kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth to be. He was breathtakingly good looking and he used that to his advantage. It was sickening.
Just because he was Alice's brother didn't mean I had to like him. I usually did my best to be civil when necessary, but that was about it. I never went out of my way to say hello or to pet his ego like every other girl on the planet did. Screw that.
As I was going through my personal mental crusade of Ass-ward, my brother led the three of us back up the stairs that Alice and I entered the house from. We squeezed our way past the luggage we'd left outside and from there he took us up another flight of stairs outside that became the second story floor of the house.
The upstairs was more perfect than the downstairs, if that was even possible – not that I got to see much of the ground floor to begin with.
There were two separate pools that glowed and glistened in the moonlight. They were divided by 4 gorgeous white pillars and a cobblestone walkway. It was like walking into an old Greek castle, as impossible as that was considering there was no such thing as Greek castles.
Too bad I had no time to laugh about my stupidity because all I could hear were Edward and Alice yelling at each other. Both wanted to attain the dominant voice in the conversation so each sentence that was shouted got one decibel louder than that last.
"I don't care, Edward. Dad gave me the approval to stay here so obviously you're going to have to find a new place to stay!"
"We were here first, Alice! This is absolutely ridiculous. Maybe you should have used your fucking brain and called me before you made this half assed plan to travel to a foreign country."
He was smirking at his sister and his facial expression seemed amused at best. I don't know how he found this situation amusing in the least. I found it aggravating and quite frankly, I was starting to get a migraine as the jest of the situation started to sink in.
"I'm sorry my oh so genius brother. You're right. I should have guessed you'd be at the exact same villa as myself. Yeah, because this is such a common place for two people to meet up at randomly, right?"
At this point, Emmett tried stepping in to help ease the argument. "Guys, come on. You sound like a bunch of fucking girls arguing over some damn lip gloss."
They both glared at him and simultaneously shouted, "SHUT UP, EMMETT!"
I looked in his direction and saw him mutter some curse words under his breath, but sure enough he didn't make another peep. I almost pitied him, what with the Cullen twins yelling at him at the same time. That had to be brutal.
"Look Alice, we're not leaving and that's the bottom line. Do what you will with that piece of information, but we're not damn well leaving. We just got here yesterday. We've already unpacked and stocked up on all of the food and booze, and that's that.
"But if it makes you feel any better, I'll call the receptionist for you and have her book you the first available flight home." He snickered at his last statement.
Alice, quiet as a mouse at this point, walked over to her brother in three swift movements and was inches from his face. She looked him square in the eye and spoke so softly that I had to focus solely on her words. "Bella and I aren't leaving, Edward. So you do what you want with that piece of information, because we're here for the next ten days."
In that moment, Edward glanced over at me with the most piercing green eyes I'd ever seen and simply said, "Fine," before walking off into another room of the house.
I'll be damned if I was going to share a villa with him. If no one else was going to solve this problem, I sure as hell would.
"Where is the phone in this place?" I asked suddenly. The tension in the room was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. Everyone turned and looked at me at the same time but no one volunteered to give me the information I had asked for.
"I asked one simple question, and I didn't even yell. So could one of you be so kind as to tell me where the phone is?"
Emmett pointed one long finger toward the house. He was clearly dumbfounded by how the night had panned out. "It's in the dining room," Jasper said. "Go straight inside those doors, and it's straight ahead on the wall." I nodded in his direction before taking off through the doors.
I didn't even give myself a chance to really look at the beauty of the place. The dining room was under a high domed ceiling. The dining room table and chairs were extremely expensive and from there you could see a clear view of the tennis court sized patio everyone was standing around and the pools. The entire back half of the room was surrounded by huge domed windows. The room was extremely open, having only two walls on either side of it.
I looked at each wall and spotted a black phone hanging from the left wall. I marched over to it, and dialed one to reach the front desk. I was directly connected to the receptionist we had talked to earlier.
"Can I help you?" she asked kindly.
"Yes," I said with a hint of agitation in my voice. "We had a reservation under Cullen and you seemed to have booked the same room for two different parties."
"Oh dear. Well let me just check the reservation book and see if we can fix this up for you." God, why did she have to be so damn perky?
"I don't see the mistake. We have your villa reserved under only one name – Cullen."
She still didn't understand, and I was running out of patience. "Yes, that's right. You booked the same room for two different people with the same last name. They're siblings."
"Oh dear! I must've gotten confused yesterday when I booked you the villa. A travel agent called me and said he was in a bind and needed villa number 14. He said to book it under the name Cullen. I saw the name already there and must've thought I booked you instead since you both appear to be checking out the same day. " She had the nerve to fucking chuckle after all of this. I'm sorry, but I didn't see the humor in any of it. She obviously wasn't the brightest bulb in the box.
"Is there any possible way you could book us another villa? Anything?" I was desperate.
"One moment, let me check the books." She fiddled around on the computer for a minute or two before giving me the answer I was dreading most.
"I'm sorry. All of the villas are taken currently. I checked for suites, as well. They're all full now, except for the ones undergoing routine yearly maintenance. Our next availability isn't for another two months. We book quickly. It looks like I made a minor mistake and now we're in a bind. It's a good thing you guys are family, then right?"
Edward Cullen was no kin of mine, and yet I was stuck with him and the rest of our motley crew. Me, my pixie best friend, my apparently horny brother, the lady friend/slut, the giant, and the ass hole.
No sooner than the thought crossed my mind, Edward strutted into the dining room.
"Hello, Isabella," he said with a voice smooth as silk. Yes, This was going to be an interesting vacation.
A/N: Yay! Everyone is finally together. Yes, the idea of how it happened is rather far-fetched, but it's a story and I did my best at making the pieces fall in place. Just go with it, will you? haha It will be worth it!
If you guys could be so kind as to leave me some feedback, I'd be very appreciative. Tell me what you would like to see happen, what you think might happen, and all of that. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I LOVE hearing what you guys think, and might use some of the ideas. But don't worry because I've got plenty of fun and drama planned for everyone. Oh, and I'm thinking that I'm going to have to switch the POV's pretty soon. There are six people in the house… How else are we going to get all the dirty details if I don't get inside of everyone's mind? It could get interesting. What do you think?? =] And, NO, Edward will not be Ass-ward for the entire storyline, duhhhh! He is Edward, after all.