Author disclaims: It just aint mine.

Author says: This one is to those of you that've taken the time to review, even with just a sentence or two. You have no idea how much it means to me to see reader response. It makes the writing worthwhile every time, so thank you all, big time.

Special thanks to RaeCullen, who pimped me out like the piece of whore I am. You should all go read her story 'Angel Eyes'. That shit is good.

"The doctor had everything. He had a wife and good friends, and a thriving medical practice. The doctor had everything. He should have been happy."

-Edward Masen; "The Insipid Doctor"

Chapter the Third – You Better Run

"Ms. Swan, I have to emphasize my disapproval of this decision."

"I understand, Ms. Clearwater, but my decision is final."

My attorney drummed her blood red claws against the desk, looking at me with impotent fury. "Ms. Swan, as I understand it you've only been married a few weeks."

"Yes."

"Do you have any idea what you're worth?" I sighed, leaning back in my chair and recrossing my legs. "Fifty-eight million dollars. Fifty-eight! A divorce settlement alone could ruin you, but this-"

"Ms. Clearwater, it's final!" I snapped, planting my hands firmly on the desk. She swallowed, seeming taken aback by my violent outburst. "My estate and my liquid assets all go to Edward Cullen. That's it. It is my will and that's what I want it to say."

She sighed, slumping in defeat before shuffling the paperwork and shaking her head. "Very well, Ms. Swan."

"Leah," I said gently, and she looked up at me, her eyes concerned and confused. "Who else would I leave it to? I have no one left in the world but him."

###

August 15

For five days I went through assistants faster than Shatner went through toupees, and for five days I was taunted by the silence of Edward Cullen. By day two I had to switch agencies because they stopped sending me temps. I called Alice in a near panic by day three, asking her when on earth she was coming back, and what on earth she was thinking. Her voicemail was very understanding. By day five, Rosalie Hale called and asked if it was true.

"Are you shnupping Edward Masen?"

I was torn between mortification and offense. "We don't all make a habit of 'shnupping' the industry, Rosalie."

She barked a laugh that sounded perfectly lovely. "Oh Bella, you never have any fun. It would be good for you to just get laid already." I rolled my eyes though she couldn't see me. "Come on, you have to admit it's a little strange. Your favorite author of all time waltzes into your life, and nothing happens? I heard he was gorgeous. You can tell me anything, Bella, I can keep a secret. Don't play coy with me, I invented coy."

"Excuse me for working with important people that I don't sexually pursue, Rose."

Rosalie laughed again, and the sound was melodious. I heard the distinct clink of what must have been expensive gold jewelry and knew she was admiring her spoils. "How do you know that's what I'm doing? I may very well love Royce."

No one could love Royce, not even his mother. Of course, it wasn't my place to say that to Rosalie, so I made a noncommittal sound instead.

"Will you come out for drinks tomorrow night? I haven't seen you in ages."

I thought about Edward. Did we have plans? He had never cemented anything. "I have some inventory to finish up tomorrow night. Let's take a rain check." Playing it safe had always proved to be the right choice in the past. Better leave my Saturday night free.

She chattered at me some more, about her plans for vacationing in Athens and how much she hoped Royce would get her that new BMW. I only pretended to listen, but it had always been enough for Rosalie to feign interest. I was 'oohing' and 'ahhing' over her description of the new boat when a knock at my door alerted me to a visitor. I glanced at the time. It was almost nine. While visitors at this time of night were not exactly common they weren't unheard of either.

I covered the mouthpiece with my hand and called out for whoever it was to enter. And Edward Masen strolled in like he owned the place. I gaped. What was he doing here?

"Bella? Bella are you listening to me?"

"I'll have to call you back." I hung up quickly and rose from my chair, smoothing my dress in a nervous habit I recognized from my early days, pitching proposals to banks so they'd loan me the money to open the store. "Mr. Cullen. Was I supposed to be expecting you?"

He knew I wasn't, but I had hoped the subtle hint would give him pause. Instead he looked at me incredulously. "We had a date, remember?"

I clenched my jaw. "You never specified this evening."

He shrugged. "Wasn't it implied?"

I looked at the grandfather clock again. "It's past eight."

He looked puzzled and glanced at the clock. "And?"

I sighed with what I thought was infinite patience. "You said you'd pick me up by seven and have me home by eleven."

He rolled his eyes. "Are you always so particular?"

"I just think if you expect a person to comply with your wishes you should give them notice and be punctual."

He looked like he was fighting laughter. "Let's go, Ms. Swan. I wouldn't want you to miss curfew."

I was about to say something to put him in his place when he gestured meaningfully to his coat pocket. I looked at it, then looked at my display. To have it be complete…

I shut down my computer and packed my things, slinging my Armani blazer over my arm. It was getting cooler in the evenings, and the last thing I wanted was this man's messy worn coat on me under the pretext that I needed it there.

He held no doors open for me anywhere, not the office door nor the elevator door or even the door to the building. He walked around a silver Volvo, and I eyed it with disbelief. "This is what you drive?"

"Everywhere." He grinned and got in, and I opened the door on my side and did the same, hesitant, unsure and less comfortable than I'd been in an automobile since Charlie's cruiser. It smelled like fast food, and the floor beneath my feet was sticky. I felt a plastic container touch my ankle and flinched before trying to shove it under my seat without getting any of the sticky icky on my Gucci stilettos.

"Where are we going?"

He tapped the steering wheel with his fingers as he browsed through some CDs he had tossed under the armrest. "There's a great place next to my apartment that serves the best pizza in Chicago."

I looked at him in disbelief. "Pizza?"

"Don't tell me," he scoffed as he inserted a CD into the car stereo. "Ms. Swan doesn't eat pizza. Such peasant foodstuffs are beneath her."

I bit back another sharp retort. At this rate I would run out of patience with him very quickly.

The music started to play and I looked at him incredulously. "Did Alice tell you to play this?"

He looked at me strangely. "Why would she ask me to play you Herbie Hancock?"

I bit my lip. "No reason." Except that I loved classic jazz. And he couldn't possibly. Could he?

He pulled up to the ridiculous establishment and pulled up near the entrance.

"What now?"

He chuckled. "Ms. Swan, I beg of you, relax. Geez, are you always this uptight?"

I opened and closed my mouth like a fish. "I am not uptight."

He laughed outright, stepping out of the car and flashing me his crooked grin. "I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere." He winked at me, and I blushed reflexively, causing him to chuckle, the sound of velvet over silk electrifying in the small space of his filthy car. I bit my lip as I watched him walk up to the counter, greeting the employees as though he knew them all. They responded as though they knew him, and he looked so natural, so at home. I watched him, strangely fascinated, and he turned around to look at me and smile. I smiled back hesitantly. I could do this. I could enjoy myself on a date with this man, couldn't I? He was clever, quite brilliant actually if his writing was anything to go by, and Rosalie was right. He was gorgeous, even if he did look like he'd just rolled out of bed. And he liked Herbie Hancock. That said a lot about a man.

I hazarded a peek into the backseat of his car. A pair of running shoes. A box of wide ruled notebooks. Two textbooks, and a novel. Hesitantly, I reached into the back and picked it up. Byron. Smiling to myself, I flipped it open. The pages were worn, the margins filled with notations, the back cover all but falling off. A teacher's book. With a sigh I put it back where I found it, pinching the bridge of my nose. What did I know about this man?

Nothing.

But I wanted to learn, if for no other reason than to help me understand the man behind the book. My thoughts were interrupted by his return. He tossed the order unceremoniously into my lap and shot me a smirk. "Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long."

"The Insipid Doctor is so intimate. It goes over and over the doctor's passion for order, planning and precision. It doesn't seem like you would write about things like that."

I gestured to his car, and Edward's face seemed to sag. "I suppose we're having this conversation now."

I bit my lip. "Excuse me, that was out of line. You don't have to talk about it."

"That book was about my father," he stated simply. "My father was a very controlled, proper man. He liked his world in order. If the book hadn't communicated that, then the character was not adequately presented."

"Your father?"

"When did you first read it?" He sounded only politely curious, but I knew better.

"High school. I must have been about sixteen, I think."

He smirked. "Your young impressionable mind was enraptured."

I shrugged and feigned indifference. "My best friend told me to read it. She knew I wasn't interested in contemporary fiction but she kept bugging me about it, so I read it. I thought it was a beautiful story but… pretentious."

He raised his eyebrows. "Pretentious? That's a first. I was always told it was quite eloquent."

"I didn't read past the first two or three chapters, and I kind of forgot about the book for a while. But I picked it back up again when I was a little older and it seemed less pretentious then. I found out later that the author was young, so I had mixed feelings about that. What do children really know about grown up things? I don't know. Every time I read it I felt something new, thought something new. Something about knowing that it hadn't been written by some middle-aged desperate man made it presumptuous yet excusable."

He rolled his eyes, but I saw the amusement in every line of his face. "So when did the book begin to mean something to you?"

I felt myself tense. It had been Charlie that had unwittingly done it. He'd bought me the book as a birthday present, the last gift he ever gave me. After what happened, the book kept me going, an escape I went to over and over where I felt connected to Charlie. The truth was, it had been easy to love, and I had been captivated by the doctor who seemed so much like my own father sometimes. But I couldn't tell him that. He didn't know me at all. "I admired your doctor," I said instead, and it wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the truth either.

He nodded, seeming to sense as much. "My father was an admirable man."

I bit my lip, hesitating. "He must have been very proud of you."

He smiled at me with gentle eyes. "He killed himself."

"Oh." I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat. "I'm sorry."

"It's ok."

I stared out the window with unseeing eyes. For some reason this news disturbed me. I felt overwhelmingly saddened by it, and I had no idea why, but I knew that the good doctor had been important to me.

"My mother remarried very shortly afterwards, his best friend in fact. Carlisle has been like a father to me. That's why I took his name."

Ah. I had always thought Masen was just a penname he had utilized.

"Here we go."

I stared, my mouth open in shock. "Is this a drive-in?"

"Yep." He sounded overwhelmingly pleased with himself, and I ground my teeth.

"You're doing this to annoy me."

He turned innocent eyes at me. "Doing what?"

"Taking me on this ridiculous fifties teenage date! What next, split a shake at the local popshop?"

He threw his head back and laughed, a warm sound that tickled the soft hairs behind my ears and threw his arm across the back of my seat. "Isabella, you need to learn to relax and have a good time, just the good old fashioned way. I promise it won't hurt to try."

You told yourself you could do this.

He brushed my shoulder with his fingertips, leaving a sparking trail of charged skin in his wake. The movie had already started, but it was a slasher film and really, it didn't matter. Everyone but the pretty girl and her boyfriend got sliced. Edward laughed whenever someone got slaughtered. I cringed but refused to speak a word, though by the time the fourth victim was mutilated I couldn't eat any more pizza. It was a shame, because it was in fact very good pizza.

At one point near the end the masked murderer jumped out of some sofa cushions and I jerked and squealed in surprise. He chuckled, his voice rich in humor and fun. "Don't be scared, Isabella, I'm here."

I blushed, not sure whether to be angry with him or laugh along with him. "I'm not scared, I was just surprised."

The hand that had only been tickling my shoulder up that point suddenly swept through my hair. My body pulsed with the motion, and my breathing became shallow as electric currents came alive in my body. "Why are you so afraid of being human?" He murmured it, so softly I barely heard him. I didn't think I was meant to hear it at all. With a soft sigh, he leaned in, so close his nose was in my hair, and I smelled him again. Sandalwood. Cigarettes. Old Spice. "I should take you back," he mumbled, almost reluctantly, and just like that he disappeared from around me, my senses bereft of his proximity.

The whole drive back, neither of us spoke a word, and even Dave Brubeck sounded forced and unnatural.

He took me back to the parking lot of my office, pulling into the empty space beside my car. I was surprised when he followed me to the driver's door, hands in his pockets, crooked grin making my stomach behave in strange ways.

"Thank you for the evening, Mr. Cullen." It was the polite thing to say, and the only thing I knew how to say.

He shrugged. "You had a miserable time."

Every bone in my body wanted me to disagree, for propriety's sake, but I kept my mouth shut and avoided his eyes. You couldn't even do that much. You're a failure.

I was considering apologizing for my behavior when suddenly I was seized by a pair of powerful arms. His hands were strong and firm and large against my shoulders, and I was shocked into silence by his sudden closeness. I could smell him again, dizzying and undiluted, and the intensity of his gaze had me blushing. "Don't do that."

"Do what?" My voice was low and breathy and I didn't know why.

"Don't look away. If you're not looking at me I don't know what you're thinking. Why do you always hide what you're really thinking?"

I didn't know what to say.

And suddenly, abruptly, his lips were on mine, harsh and unkind and bruisingly needy, and I gasped. He took advantage and ran the tip of his tongue between my parted lips, emitting a low growl of approval that had me whimpering. He tasted like iced tea and pepperoni and testosterone on a hot summer day. I felt his hands tangle in my hair, and a part of me worried that he was ruining it while the other parts of me reeled in disbelief and ached for more. This isn't me.

With a cry of outrage I pushed against his chest, and he released my lips reluctantly, his hands slipping away and leaving me feeling cold and distant. Unthinkingly, I slapped him, catching his chin and his jaw, and hurting my palm so that it stung. His face was set in determination.

Before I said anything improper, before he did anything else indecent, I yanked open my car door and locked myself in, starting the engine and backing out of my space without looking at him. I drove away knowing that if I saw him, I might turn around and let him kiss me again.

Of course, I had no one I could talk to, not really. No one that would listen to me describe the strange aching sensation of loss that seemed to follow me home, no matter how fast I drove. And I drove a Panamera. I drove fast. Alice was away, but even if she hadn't been, I couldn't possibly discuss anything serious with the girl. She was Rosalie's cousin, and though we loosely considered ourselves friends we knew we had nothing in common except the name Charlie's Books printed on our business cards.

And there was Rosalie.

Rosalie and I had been roommates after I graduated high school. She'd attended classes, mostly cruising for wealthy brats while I sank my life savings and all of Charlie's insurance money into the store. She used her contacts to help me. When I bought a second outlet less than a year later, effectively turning Charlie's Books into a franchise, Rosalie had invited all her chic friends to the opening and made it a big deal. When I had made my first million she had gotten me in with a lawyer, an accountant and a personal fitness trainer, all of whom she trusted implicitly. When I had gone public, she had cajoled, threatened and sexed everyone that mattered into buying stock. She'd hired the designer for my five story flagship store. She'd almost singlehandedly brought about my success. She had talked me off the ledge when Zadie Smith and Erika Lopez nearly came to blows at a fundraiser. Rosalie had been key in everything. When whoever she happened to be sleeping with at the time dumped her she was always welcome at my house. When she needed a new wardrobe or a new hairstyle or a new car, she came to me. We were friends. But we weren't friends.

Of course, the only person I could talk to was Charlie.

I pulled up to the intimidating structure, parking in some surgeon's spot and taking deep breaths. It never got easier to visit Charlie. As I went in the nurse looked up, about to turn me away until she saw who it was. I smiled at her, and she nodded in greeting. I had no visiting hours.

I knew my way to the elevator, and I knew which floor he was in. I knew which suite they had set him up in, and I knew my way to the side of his bed in the dark. It was late. The lights were out. The hospital was eerie this time of night.

"Hey, Dad." I took his hand, limp and unmoving, and squeezed his fingers. The beeping of the machines was constant, soothing yet strangely aggravating. It was a constant reminder of where I was, and what Charlie had been reduced to. A series of sounds and signals on a bunch of machines. "Good news, we got to pick up that outlet in Dubai. We outbid Kinukuniya by so much, we have a standing priority now in most GCC countries." The machines beeped. I chattered on about business. I told him all about the launch plans I had for the new Philippa Gregory and outlined my plans to have an annual Harry Potter event. Even to my own ears I was boring and repetitive and so fake. The realization halted me mid-sentence, and I sighed, squeezing Charlie's hand for strength.

"I met someone." I was mildly surprised by how it came out, but I persevered. "He wrote that book you bought me that birthday, remember? Edward Masen? The really young one?" Like he would respond. "Alice set it up somehow. I'm not sure how. And she married his brother! Just like that, Dad!" I sighed, massaging his palm. "He took me out on a date tonight. Edward, the writer, not the brother. It was so surreal. Pizza and a scary movie at the drive-in, can you believe it? Nothing French or fancy about the entire evening." I thought about the kiss and blushed. Well, almost nothing French. "I don't date, you know that, Daddy. But I never minded that I didn't before. I was ok with being on my own. I have my work and it's very important to me. It just suddenly feels really repetitive. Like everything in my planner is insignificant or something. It feels like I missed the point on this one, Charlie."

I sighed into the silence and resisted the urge for a cigarette. I had quit three years ago, and was not looking to start again now. Not over Edward Cullen.

"I miss you, Dad."

It was barely a whisper, but I told myself he heard me as I sat in the silence, willing myself to hear a response in the automated sounds of his coma.