Its 31C or 89F in temperature here in Sydney...and its MIDNIGHT!!! As i struggle to sleep i decided you guys should benefit!! Enjoy
Chapter 3 – Coffee Order: One Adonis to Go
Jasper had arrived the day before to join Alice and Cassie for a week. Bella was more than overjoyed to see her brother-in-law again, who was so close she thought of him as a blood brother. Jasper had asked her question after question to make sure she was completely okay with being a surrogate again. She had lost count of the number of "Are you sures?" that both Jasper and Alice had asked. They had agreed that they would use the same obstetrician as with the first surrogacy. Bella liked Dr. Grace. She never felt judged and felt comfortable talking to her without worrying about it being mentioned again when either Jasper or Alice came to an appointment.
The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Bella was about to start her period, and there had been a cancellation that Friday with Dr. Grace at her midtown clinic for her to have the initial blood tests and hormone levels checked. Bella had been up most of the previous night googling the latest IVF treatments, knowing that in six years they had probably changed. Jasper had a low sperm count that made artificial insemination unlikely to be unsuccessful. Bella had often teased him since he had found out that it was all his days in the south riding horses that had killed off his little swimmers. Luckily, Jasper didn't think his lack of sperm made him any less of a man, and he took it on the chin. He had taken turn to tease her about her sticky outie belly button that had appeared around six months into her pregnancy with Cassie.
Bella waited with trepidation for her name to be called after she had re-registered and filled in the forms that probably had taken up a whole forest of trees with the sheer number she had to complete. She had managed to stop Alice coming with her this time. Her legs in stirrups and PAP tests were not something Bella wanted Alice to witness.
"Bella Swan?" An authoritative voice called.
Bella walked slowly into the clinic room to find the familiar face of Dr. Grace sitting at her desk. She stood up with a smile on her face and motioned to the bed in the middle of the room. Bella toed off her shoes and sat up on the bench. She knew what today would involve, so she had dressed appropriately in comfy yoga pants, a tank top and a dark blue NYU zip-top.
"Hello again, Bella."
"Hello, Doctor Grace."
Dr. Grace smiled slightly and shook her head at Bella's nervousness. "I told you last time to call me Michelle. I spoke to Alice and Jasper yesterday, so no need to explain why you are here." Bella smiled, thankful. "You know the tests we need to run and then the procedure?" Bella nodded in confirmation. "So where are you in your cycle?"
"I have two days before I start my period, and it is usually on for five days."
Dr. Grace held a calendar in her hands. "Okay, well I will get a rush on the labs and we should be okay for starting injections in about a week and a half." She handed Bella a gown. "You can go behind the screen and get changed."
Bella moved away hesitantly. She knew what was coming next; needles for blood work and the uncomfortable pain of the PAP test. Mercifully, Alice was going to come over every day and administer the Menopur injections. Bella had tried it once and it had ended up with her having a panic attack, passing out on the bathroom floor and Alice finding her. Needles, blood and Bella did not mix in any way.
Forty minutes later, Bella made her way out of Dr. Grace's office and back out on to street. After the needles and intrusions, the ultrasound had been a doddle. Even so, she was craving a hot chocolate to quell the adrenaline still coursing through her system. She went into the nearest, slightly busy coffee shop and walked up to the bar. Thankful there was only one person in front of her, and she was able to place her order quickly and move to the area where the barista would serve up her hot chocolate with foamed milk and extra marshmallows.
She picked up the large back mug and turned to go find a table when she felt her mug hit something solid, liquid spilling over the hand that was stabilising it at the side, before the mug slipped completely from her hands.
"What the hell?"A velvet-like voice enquired angrily.
Even with anger running through the tones, it sounded like crescendo music to her ears. "I'm so sorry, so sorry." Bella immediately crouched to the floor to pick the fallen mug up. Once it was securely in her hands once more she made to stand up. Half way up she felt the top of her head connect with something hard yet hollow sounding.
"Ouch. Jeeze, are you always this clumsy." The voice spoke again, this time more amused than angry.
Bella stood up fully to find the man wiping at his casual white shirt, now with a fast strip of muddy brown liquid down the front. Finally he looked at her. The breath rushed from her lungs as she struggled to catch her breath. Now familiar moss-green eyes met hers, a spark seemed to be growing behind them. Bella hoped for her sake it was not a spark of enraged lightning in the storm that was still brewing behind his eyes.
"YOU!" She exclaimed in a high pitch voice that surprised even her.
"Me! Fancy bumping into you again." Her Adonis said, unable to suppress his chuckle anymore.
"I am so sorry again." Bella turned as the barista handed her a new hot chocolate.
"Here." He plucked the mug out of her had. "I think for both our sakes I should take that." He grabbed his own coffee from the bar and lead Bella to a small round table with overstuffed armchairs. "I'm Edward, by the way." He held out his hand.
"Bella." She shook it, a blush creeping into her cheeks as she looked away from his eyes and sank into an armchair. The toll of the afternoon was hitting her, especially as she had been up late chatting with Alice and Jasper.
"So, Bella, are you usually this clumsy?"
"I would love to say no, but that would be a lie. I generally spend more time in the Emergency Room than out of it. Thank you for saving me from an even more embarrassing fall on my butt the other day. My niece hasn't learned the art of stopping yet when running at full speed."
"It was my pleasure. Sorry I didn't stop long enough to introduce myself then, I was running late for a lunch meeting."
"It's okay, once Cassie, my niece, is in residence; she demands your full attention to stop her from getting into trouble. So was it successful, your meeting I mean."
"So, so. I work in finance. It's high stress, long hours and very competitive. What about you?"
Bella grimaced a little at his question, as she always did. When she said Shoe Designer, people often looked her up and down and drew two conclusions: One, it was a shallow job that probably required little brains and two, automatically assumed Bella must be obsessed with fashion, and they always wondered why she was always in casual skirts or jeans and t-shirts. To distract her from the look that would appear on his face, she watched as he played with his long fingers as his hands sat on the table in front of them. Briefly her mind wandered to what exactly those long fingers could do.
Taking a deep breath to quell her blush and steel herself for his reaction, though quite why it mattered what he thought she wasn't sure. "Um, I design children's shoes."
He studied her blush and gave her a lopsided grin. "I bet you get to let your imagination run wild. Is it like getting to invent children's toys and games?"
To say Bella was shocked by his reaction was an understatement. "Um…maybe, I guess. I don't know. I haven't tried to invent children's toys before. I do love my job though, so I suppose, yes it is."
After their introduction, the usual questions followed about family, thoughts on the city and other idle chit chat. As an hour or two passed by, their coffee and hot chocolate replaced by a bored barista, they moved onto politics, the election of the new president providing plenty of debate material. The conversation moved easily and Bella forgot that she was usually shy and quiet around new people.
She had noticed that Edward's eyes had brightened from their previous troubled moss green to a more vivid colour. The furrow on his forehead had smoothed out. Edward talked animatedly with his hands, and Bella had dared him to sit on them and try talking. He had lasted eleven seconds before he pulled one out from under his thigh and showed her how big the tyre was on his brothers new jeep they took off-roading the weekend before last. She couldn't help but notice how defined his thigh was, even under his dark wash jeans. He had explained that Friday was casual dress day in his company and that he had taken a half-day, so Bella didn't need to worry about him getting back to the office.
"Emmett loves adventure sports. He got the adrenaline-junkie genes in the family. Though since he married Rosalie, he has had to tone it down a bit."
"Do you still get to see him lots? Does he live near-by?"
"I get to see him when he is in the city. He runs his own project management firm. It's in its early stages and keeping him busy. I usually drive out to Scarsdale for dinner, and we meet up to shoot hoops on a Sunday."
"When I was little, I used to pretend my doll was my little sister. I was so desperate for a brother or sister. Being just me and dad was lonely. He used to go fishing every weekend he wasn't working. I had to sit on the bank because I couldn't be trusted in the boat. Once I was leaning over the side trying to look at all the creatures in the water and I caused the boat to capsize. Me, dad and all his fishing stuff ended up in the lake. Then Alice came into my life and it's been non-stop since. I love her so much, would do anything for her. You have a sister too now, Rosalie? What she like?"
Edward chuckled to himself and Bella got the impression it wasn't a 'ha ha' chuckle. "Rosalie is certainly...a character? When she and Emmett first got together, no one could figure out why. Emmett is a total goofball most of the time, but in essence he is serious and has a very deep heart.
"When I first met Rose, I thought she was superficial and only in it for Emmett's money. She is intimidating, stunning. You will see when you meet her. She also has a very stand-off personality and can be quite hard to get to know. The complete opposite of Emmett. Now she seems to mellow him out a little, keep him grounded in ideas."
Bella couldn't help but notice that he said 'when you meet her' like it was fully expected she would meet his family. It was only the second time she had met Edward and something within her was extremely happy she might be part of his life enough to meet his family.
"They are very stressed at the moment. They've been married a while and want children. They've been trying for over a year and nothing."
Bella laid her hand on top of Edwards and squeezed it in support. No one knew what it was like more than Bella. It was the one problem that words and actions couldn't fix.
Bella glanced at her watch and realised she had been chatting with Edward for over three hours. "I'm really sorry, I have to go." She watched his face fall in disappointment but quickly hid it behind a neutral expression. "My sister Alice and her family are coming over to my house for dinner and I haven't even been to the store. They are staying at the W Hotel but Alice and Cassie are coming to stay with me when Jasper heads back to LA."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to keep you so long." Edward seemed almost sullen.
"Don't be, it's been fun." She paused, unsure of what to do next. Bella reminded herself to Google tips on dealing with hot guys at coffee when she got home. "You should come, to dinner I mean. You probably know more than enough about them. That way they won't be strangers. You know, if you want to." Why was Bella desperate for a guy she had only met twice, on accident, to meet her friends and family?
He smiled at her. "I would like to, but I can't. My parents are flying in tonight from Chicago, and my brother can't pick them up from the airport, so I said I would. Thank you for asking though."
Bella tried not to let her disappointment show. They stood there, neither moving, neither sure what to say next, neither wanting to part.
"Can I see you again?" They both rushed out at the same time before dissolving in to giggles and gawfs.
Bella, in a bold move so unlike her, grabbed a pen from her purse and reached for his hand. She scrawled her cell phone number onto the top of his hand.
Edward led her from the coffee shop, his hand on the small of her back. She felt a slight tingling from the tiny bit of contact with Edward, even through her clothes. The chill in the Fall air caught her as they left the warm confines of the shop.
"Thank you for a wonderful afternoon, Bella, it was fun." He ran a nervous hand over the back of his neck.
Bella smiled. "Yeah, I promise not to spill hot chocolate down you next time."
Slowly Edward moved closer to her and gave her a soft peck on her cheek. His lips were soft and warm against her cooling cheek. He pulled back, his eyes still closed, opening to reveal his vivid eyes back from their earlier disappointment. "Next time, Bella."
Bella watched as he walked down the street, the pedestrian traffic almost parting as this stunning man walked towards them. Next time! A thrill shot through her as she realised there would be a next time. Who was this man, who had walked into her life in a hotel lobby? She had only really known him three hours. Even then did she actually know him? Bella mentally hit herself on the forehead. She never reacted this way to men. She was shy. They made the first move, and she took those moves at face value. Now she was second guessing herself, wondering what he thought of her. What on earth was he doing to her?
~*-*~
It had been a week since she had bumped into Edward in the coffee shop. They had met for coffee a few times in their lunch breaks as it turned out that Edward's office was only a block from hers. Their conversations flowed seamlessly as if they had known each other for years, not mere days. No topic seemed out of bounds, from favourite films to the story of how Bella couldn't walk past a Disney Store without buying a pair of character socks for two years due to a lost bet. Bella had told him about her family and how Alice became her sister. Edward had told her tales of the antics he and his brother, who lived in Scarsdale, just outside the city, used to get up to and drive their mother mad. She was shocked at the amount of hours he worked and even further appalled at his admission that he survived on eating out or the occasional frozen meal. He had quickly followed with that it wasn't that he did not know how to cook, his mother had taught him well, it was more he didn't like to. Bella found herself issuing an invitation to her apartment for at least one home-cooked meal a week.
The only day they hadn't met was Friday. It had been a week since her appointment with Doctor Grace and, except for slight anemia, she was perfectly healthy and most importantly not pregnant. Bella had been unable to stifle a laugh when Dr. Grace had scheduled a pregnancy test as part of the routine testing before beginning fertility treatment. She had even joked that it would be the Immaculate Conception as Bella hadn't gotten any in six months.
She had used her lunchtime to go into the doctors to pick up her Menopur injections that she would take for ten days, starting the following Tuesday. Dr. Grace had warned her that they would closely monitor her this time. When Bella had started the injections during her pregnancy with Cassie, her ovaries had become overstimulated causing unpleasant symptoms for Bella. Alice would be moving from the hotel to Bella's house on the Sunday, after they dropped Jasper off at the airport for his flight home.
Bella had wanted to tell Edward about her situation with her surrogacy but she was unsure of where their friendship was going. They still hadn't told Joanna, Alice's mom and Bella's step-mom, about Bella offering to be a surrogate again. She had to know first. Bella wasn't denying it, she had feelings for Edward, but there was no way she was ready to tell him about them yet, not until she knew what he felt for her, if anything beyond friendship. First she had to sound Alice out as to how she felt about Bella maybe having a boyfriend during the pregnancy. She didn't have a clue how to go about starting that conversation, and how to introduce Edward into the mix. Somehow she knew it would have to involve a bribery of shopping; Alice's great love and Bella's idea of hell. It was amazing the sacrifices you were willing to make for your sister.
As for meeting Edward... With Charlie gone, there was no 'come meet my daddy', but he did have to pass Alice and Joanna's strict inspection. It was a tall order for the man. There hadn't been a boyfriend yet that had survived two weeks after a turn down from her family. Bella's family was important to her, and she respected their thoughts and feelings. They had never steered her wrong. However much she loved her family, it still made Bella nervous. Introducing anyone to the over-excited and inquisitive ball of energy that was Alice was almost stomach churning in the anxiety department.
Maybe I can convince Edward to come for dinner and gauge Alice's reaction over my meatballs that Alice and Cassie both love, and wine. Yes, must have wine. Alice, Cassie, and the man my ovaries are screaming at me to make mine. Wine is a necessity.
A huge thank you to my beta Tina72899. She gives me such great ideas, she should get some serious credit! Please totally check out her story 'A Pretend Marriage'. Its amazing and i am totally loving her Esme! Also another story very close to my heart and completely life altering is Intersection by Lillybellis. Its a beautiful story and pain and healing.
All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author (that would be ME). No copyright infringement is intend.
A/N: How do you take your coffee/tea/hot beverage/alcohol containing tipple? (Think i covered all options there)
Sneeky Peakies still being offered (bribed) for reviews - i have no shame!
