A/N: I know, I know. I'm a bad, bad person not updating lately, but I started a new story to help me get over the slight writers block that I had…because I had an idea on how I wanted this chapter to go, and then I wrote it down…but i have yet to figure out how I want to incorporate said idea into this chapter, or maybe the next chapter. So…not only do I have a new story out…which I think you guys should read but I won't force you to…but I'm also beta-ing for Vampire Lover 6787 on her story Daylight over Moonlight, so I'm gonna be busy. Plus, this weekend I'm going to be going to West Virginia to visit family for three weeks, and then I'll have like, two weeks to get ready for volleyball tryouts for my high school, so busy, busy summer…but I'll try to update my stories while I'm in West Virginia.
PREVIOUSLY: (Sammy POV)
"Love you too Izzy," Melissa said before shutting the door. We all waited for Bella to come downstairs and when she did, she was bouncing again, and then she tripped.
"Oops?" she asked, as soon as she got back to her feet.
"So, what's for dinner?" Charlie asked her before getting hit by Billy.
"Food now go shut your yap," Bella snapped at him.
NOW: (Sammy POV)
When Bella snapped at Charlie, the man who raised her the few summers that she was here, he looked hurt, and if I new anything about Bella, it was that she didn't mean it.
"Don't worry Charlie, she doesn't mean it. She's probably just worried about Melissa, I don't think that she wants to see her sister go through the pain of phasing," Paul said, clapping Charlie on the back and walking into the kitchen leaving 11 stunned people in the living room. Since when did Paul get so serious?
"He's changed, and I'm liking the changes that he's been through in just two short days," Jared said. "But when the hell did Paul get so…serious?" he asked, voicing my thoughts, and I knew then that my suspicions of Paul being the next in line for being chief is true.
"I've got an idea as to what it is, but Billy, tomorrow we need a meeting with the elders…just the elders seeing as Bella had an interesting question earlier today," I said, bursting my thought bubble, and those of the people that were around me. Billy looked confused for a minute before he had a far away look in his eye, almost as if he was remembering something, and then he came back to the present time, and nodded his head.
"Really? It's Paul?" Billy asked me, confusing everyone else in the room. "Are you sure about that?"
"Positive, you saw and heard what he just said, would you think anything otherwise?" I asked back to him; all he did was shake his head in wonder and he walked into the kitchen.
"Anyone mind telling us what's going on?" Quil asked from the corner that he was sitting in of his own accord.
"You want to tell us why you're sitting in the corner?" Jared fired back, starting a round of insults and Yo Mamma jokes. About thirty minutes later, they were finally done arguing or whatever it was they were doing and Quil put in a movie, and I must say that we are never letting Quil pick a movie again 'cause he put in Evita some musical with Madonna in it.
Half way into the movie, most of the guys are falling asleep, but woke up periodically to go on patrol while Bella and Paul were in the kitchen doing who knows what. Paul came wandering out not so long later, took one look at what we were watching and then walked up stairs. I nudged Emily and Kim and told them to go into the kitchen and wait so everyone on their mad dash into the kitchen doesn't trample them. Paul came back downstairs with a half asleep Melissa in tow and they went into the kitchen as well. I got up and followed them into the kitchen and just stood there, agape at what was in front of me, it was like an Italian buffet. There was pizza, and all different kinds of pasta, and lasagna, and about 5 different cakes.
"Holy shit Bella, you made all of this in three hours?" I asked her, she took one glance at me before turning to Paul and smiled brightly at him.
"Thanks for the help babe," she said, shocking me even more. Since when can Paul cook or bake anything?
"I'm gonna go get the guys in here, and yes I'll make sure that they come in slowly and eat like they have manners instead of like the wolves that they normally eat as," Paul said, smiling down at Bella and walking into the living room.
"Sam, go sit at the table next to Emily and across from Melly," Bella told me and like the obedient wolf that I am, that wants food, I followed her advice and sat where she told me to sit and marveled at the idea of Paul actually doing something. All the guys came in seconds later, in a single file line and sat where placeholders told them. Holy hell, Bella and Paul went all out with this dinner.
"Can you imagine family life with them?" Quil 'whispered' to Leah who just smacked him upside the head. "Ow, what was that for?" Quil whined.
"Being you, now shut up or you're not eating," Bella said carrying in some food with Paul right behind her. "Sorry bout him Melly, he's crude but he's toned it down for now, right Quil?"
"Yeah, just please let me eat," he said, begging and using the puppy dog eyes, while the rest of us are staring at the food without abandon, and as soon as Bella and Paul set the food down in the middle of the table we all attempted to get our plates fixed but Bella had to stop us.
"Paul, will you go get the rest?" she asked before turning to glare at us. "Now…you guys know the rules right? Guests get their food first, so Mel, go ahead and get whatever you want to eat, Emily, Kim, Dad, Billy, you guys are after, then the rest of you will go one by one in a civilized manner. Quil you're last for that comment that you made…" Bella said smiling sweetly, while I was counting heads to see if everyone was here.
"Where are Collin and Brady?" Embry asked shyly since he was sitting next to Melissa, I wanted to growl at him for that but Bella would get pissed.
"Yeah, they should be here by now," Leah added, and she sounded like she cared. I was about to go and look for them but they just walked right in and looked amazed at how everyone was acting.
"Collin, Brady go wash up and come back and sit," Bella said, smiling sweetly at them. "Oh, wait…before you guys walk out of here, I would like to introduce you to Melissa who is sitting next to Embry, Melly, these are Collin and Brady," she continued, pointing out which one was Collin and which was Brady.
"Nice to meet you," Collin said, bowing slightly at the waist.
"It's a pleasure," Brady drawled in a horrible southern accent while acting like he was tipping a hat to her. We had to wait for Collin and Brady to get back and get their share of food before we were allowed to eat, well us werewolves had to, the humans were allowed to eat and get seconds if they pleased.
"Oh my gosh, Bella this is good," Leah gasped out after she had a bite of everything.
"Thanks, but I didn't cook it, Paul did, I just helped him," Bella responded while everyone looked at Paul astonished.
"What? I know how to cook, Jeesh," he yelled, and started to shake while Bella just lightly rubbed his arm until he calmed down and started to eat again. "I wanted to try to bake but Bella wouldn't let me," Paul pouted while Bella and the rest of the girls giggled.
"Aw, but babe if you baked then it would have been harder to fix any mistakes that may have been made, and anyways, you wouldn't have been able to make five cakes and cook at the same time," Bella quickly replied back.
"So, Ms. Melissa," Paul said smirking mischievously at Embry. "How are you liking us…as Bella's friends I mean?"
"And with Sam being you're half-brother," Bella muttered under her breath so only us wolves could here.
"Well…I'm not really sure…I mean the only people that I've really talked to are you, Sam, and Emily…but everyone else seems really nice, especially Leah and Kim," Melissa said, causing us to gape at her. "What? I know enough about Leah to know that if you're her friend she's loyal as hell…pardon my English…but if you screw up then you're fried. Bella's told me enough. But the rest of you seem nice enough," she said before lowering her voice to where if we were completely human no one would have been able to hear her, but we definitely heard her say: "Especially Embry."
"Okay…so I'm not starting school until next week, so we can go in tomorrow and get your classes and you can start when I do, that way you can get to know Sam and Emily some more and Sam and I can show you around when Sam's not working," Bella said, and it sounded like she had everything thought out. "Sam stop staring at me like that, it's creeping me out," Bella said, and I hadn't even noticed that I was staring at her.
"Yeah Sam, keep your eyes on your woman and off mine," Paul growled out, making us all laugh.
"Paul… I would like to tell you something very important," Melissa said, trying to hold back her laughter, which when I looked around I saw Jake and Leah doing the same. "Run." And Paul did just that, he took off out the back door like a bat out of hell while Bella just calmly stood up and before she walked outside she turned to glare at us.
"If any of you so much as breathe on any of the cakes that I made, I will come after you too…so don't touch them. Better yet, don't even go into the kitchen," Bella said before turning on her heel and walking outside where Paul was most likely hiding in the garden.
"Anyone want to go watch?" Melissa asked excitedly, we took one look at each other before quickly hurrying outside to see what Bella would do.
"I like the way you think, Melissa," Leah said, smirking as all the guys groaned. "BELLA, CHECK THE GARDEN!" Leah yelled out to a smirking Bella.
"Oh, I already know where he is, so Paul, honey, you may want to come out of hiding and I promise not to make it hurt too much," Bella said super sweetly.
"Bella, babe I promise I didn't mean it that way, I just don't like Sam staring at you like that," Paul said, coming out of his hiding place with his head down and his arms behind his back. "I wasn't trying to sound possessive, if I knew that you were going to take what I said as me being possessive, then I would have politely asked Sam to remove his eyes off of you," he continued before he paused and got on his knees. "I just want you to know that I'll do anything you want until you forgive me…oh and that I picked you some pretty green leaves," Paul said, removing his hands from behind his back and producing Poison Ivy.
"Oh my god, he's so stupid," Embry muttered under his breath.
Bella took a step backwards, away from Paul, while shaking her head saying, "Paul, you realize what you're holding is poison ivy right?" After his quick response of 'no,' Bella shook her head again. "Oh god, we're going to need a lot of calamine lotion. Okay…uhm Paul…put the poison ivy down…don't touch me or anyone else…and slowly walk into the house not touching anything and go take a shower and steal a pair of Jakes shorts and then come find me."
"Okay," Paul said before walking back into the house dejectedly, but doing as Bella asked.
"Sam?" Bella called, after everyone else went back inside. "Can wolves get the rash that comes as a side effect of touching poison ivy?" she asked me.
"Yeah, sorry Bella, I didn't know that he would react like that, hell I didn't even realize that I was staring at you, sorry…but you just had everything planned out I was just shocked because I hadn't thought that far ahead," I told her.
"Oh, it's fine, I just wanted to see him grovel…never did I think that he would run into a patch of poison ivy," Bella said before walking into the house and washing her hands in the kitchen sink. She wandered off somewhere before she came back into the kitchen with cotton balls, tissues, rubbing alcohol, and calamine lotion. "Go into the living room and talk with everybody and get to know your sister some more Sam, you'll all benefit from knowing her," Bella told me while pushing me towards the living room where everyone was.
Bella POV:
After I pushed Sam towards the living room, I started to smirk ruthlessly. I admit, Paul was sweet with his groveling, but I was trying not to lose it when he pulled the poison ivy from behind his back. Paul came into the kitchen with a pair of Jakes cut off shorts and a towel. When I saw the towel, I was confused because I didn't tell him to bring out the towel.
"I figured you may want to use it so I don't spread the poison ivy anywhere else other than where it already is," he said so softly and sadly that I just wanted to cry.
"Come on into the living room, you can talk to them while I do what needs to be done," I told him, walking in front of him. I glanced around quickly before deciding the Quil can evacuate the corner that he's sitting in. "Quil, move. Now," I growled out and watched satisfied as he moved quickly to sit next to Leah on the other side of the room. I walked to where he was sitting and grabbed the towel from Paul's hands and layed it out on the floor and made Paul sit.
"Uhm, Bells…what are you doing?" Jake asked me, making all eyes turn to me and Paul.
"Going soft on my man and letting him talk to you guys while I do what needs to be done, and damnit I already said that," I told him before sitting down on one side of Paul, grabbing a tissue and the bottle of alcohol before saturating the tissue and rubbing it along every part of Paul that was touched by the ivy. After that was done, I grabbed the cotton balls and the calamine lotion and doing the same thing as I did with the alcohol, except I rubbed it in a lot more so that his beautiful russet tan skin had a very, very light coating of the lotion to where you could barely see it.
"Bella, you'd make a wonderful mother," Emily told me, shocking me out of my reverie.
"What?" I asked, confused as to where she got that idea.
"She's right Belly," Melly said to me. "The whole time you were doing whatever you were doing, you had this really soft and caring expression on your face, that's why everyone was sad when you left Arizona. That's why you were our favorite person on the team, why you got chosen for the captain spot above Brenda, granted she was a bitch and so are you to an extent…but you're a caring bitch, but you just have this mother-y air about you and it showed through with Paul," Melly finished, making me blush.
"Okay, I don't want to listen to everybody saying that my daughter would make a great mother at this age," Charlie told us. "I'm going to bed, it was nice meeting you Melissa, night guys and Leah, night Bells," he said before walking off.
"So, Melly how's my other mum?" I asked her, getting confused looks from everyone. They must not know…
"Other mum? Bells are you forgetting to tell us something?" Seth asked me.
"Nope, Melly's mum and my mum are practically best friends…that and Melly and I always knew each other because of that, so Joan is like another mother to me," I told them all, slightly leaning on Paul.
"She's good, said something about maybe moving up this way. She told me that she was tired of the heat, so you might see her soon," Melissa said, starting to get excited.
"Really? Where's she going to move to? Seattle, Port Angeles, Forks, or here?" I asked, getting as excited as Mel.
"Seattle most likely, you know how she is about living towards the city, or near a city in general. She can't do small town life," she said.
"Hey Bells, Brady and I are going to head home, we're starting to get tired," Collin said, breaking the slight silence that we had. I glanced at the clock to see that it was 11 pm. "It was nice meeting you Melissa and thanks for dinner Bells, Paul," he continued before ushering Brady out the door.
"Bye guys!" I yelled after them before a huge yawn came out.
"Why don't we finish this tomorrow after the guys and Kim are out of school so that you guys can get some sleep tonight," Sam said before throwing a pointed glance at Leah and Jared.
"Yeah, mom wants me and Seth at home before midnight tonight. Night Bells, Mel, guys. C'mon Seth lets go home so mom and dad don't call and get Charlie out of bed," Leah said before dragging Seth out.
"BYE!" Seth yelled out while laughing at Leah.
"Sam, Emily can I crash at your place tonight?" Kim asked them before yawning.
"Yeah, that's fine, Jared should know where the key is. We'll be there shortly dear," Emily said, not even giving Sam a chance to respond which caused me to giggle deliriously. "What's got you so giggly Miss Izzy," Emily asked me sharply.
"Are you sure that I'd make a great mother? Em, sweetie you just basically made a decision without asking Sam about it, but the fact that Sam would have said the same thing is what makes it so amusing. I think it's safe to say that you're the one that wears the pants in that relationship. I mean Sam does whatever you ask of him, and he protects you, makes you safe, and you go and do that. That's just funny," I told her, giggling throughout the whole thing.
"I know," is all she said before she erupted into a fit of giggles with me. "C'mon Sammy, let's get going so that the girls can get some sleep. Looks like Paul and Embry are going to be here with Jake and the girls so they can have extra 'protection,'" Emily said before coming to give me a hug then Mel. "G'night girls, see you two tomorrow," she told us before Sam said the same thing.
I looked at Jake, Embry, and Paul real quick and just laughed. "Are you guys staying here tonight?" I asked Paul and Embry. They took one look at each other and then Jake before Paul spoke up.
"If it's okay with you, we'll stay out here if you want us to, but I'm gonna have to run home early to get ready and I'll be back here in time for breakfast," he told me.
"And I have some clothes here already so I'll probably sneak into Jakes room in the middle of the night and push him off the bed," Embry told us, getting Mel to laugh a little.
"We do have two extra rooms that you guys can use you know," Jake told them, "but they're in the basement. We were going to convert it into either Bells room or a game room but we couldn't decide, so you guys can stay down there tonight," Jake finished.
"Thanks Jake," Paul said before standing and holding out a hand for me to help me up. "Here, I'll take you to your bedroom door and say goodnight," he told me, smiling impishly.
"Ew dude, please don't, I don't need the visuals," Embry and Jake said together. I glanced at them before I laughed.
"Paul will you help me get Mel upstairs to her room?" I asked him.
"Yeah, go on up and open her door so I can carry her in there," he said before picking her up bridal style.
"Man, I'm supposed to be doing that," Embry whined while Jake snickered.
I walked upstairs to the room across from mine and opened up the door and turned down the comforter so that when Paul came in he could just slide her into bed. When Paul walked in, I had some type of vision of how the future was supposed to go, except instead of carrying my best friend it was our daughter, and I smiled softly, lovingly almost. Paul shot me a confused look and I just shook my head as he laid Mel in bed. He stepped back and I tucked her in and dragged Paul out of the room.
"You know, her and Emily are right. You would make a great mum," Paul said to me. I shot him a look before shaking my head.
"Don't get any idea's I'm only a junior in high school," I told him before walking towards my bedroom door.
"I know, I'm just saying though. Whenever you have children you'd make a great mom," he said, defending himself.
"Oh, I know. And don't you mean when we have children?" I asked him, smiling deviously.
"I didn't want to assume anything," he said, looking bashful. "C'mon, lets get you in bed so you can get some sleep tonight before you have to spend a whole day with Mr. Poodle," Paul said opening my door for me. Luckily I already put my pajamas on when I came in here to get the stuff needed for Paul and his poison ivy problem. Paul lightly pushed me to my bed and turned the covers down and gently laid me down and covered me. "G'night babe, sweet dreams," he told me, leaning down and gently pressing his lips to mine.
"Night handsome," I told him smiling brightly, watching as he walked towards the door and shut it quietly behind him as he left the room. I turned over in my bed and just laid there til I fell asleep, dreaming dreams of the future, having kids…maybe owning a bakery or a diner with Emily and the rest of the girls, peaceful things. But I can finally say that I'm happy about how my life is turning out, and I will take on anything that will jeopardize that head on and go down fighting if I have to.
