Chapter 7
"Family meeting!" shouted Rosalie from the living room, needlessly loudly, all the while glaring at the box of cookies she'd watched the dumb human buy for them which sat innocently where the sofa used to be before Emmett broke it.
Alice, of course, was already present, sitting dreamily in her normal spot on the floor.
The other Cullen teens filed in stormily, unaccustomed to any kind of family organisation and finding Rosalie's sudden attempt rather tiring.
"Oh really, though?" huffed Edward in response to what was on her mind, rumpling up his hair.
"Yes, we do need to talk about this!" Rosalie snapped, while Emmett nodded loyally at her side, though it didn't look as though he knew what was going on.
"Sorry, what is this all about?" Bella asked, looking from Rosalie to Alice to her husband and back again.
"This is about our family," Rosalie said. "And how we're going to protect it from a human who is about to get too close."
"We had the same issue when Bella was human," Edward sighed wearily. "And that resolved itself."
"But this time it's a little different," Rosalie countered. "Bella wasn't your singer."
There was a moment of quite while the vampires gave this thought.
"…If ah may," Jasper said at last. "Ah have often wondered if Esme did not mean more to Carlisle than he has chosen to tell us. He feels confused by his feelings for her, but ah sense they aren't all negative."
He took a breath to continue but was interrupted.
"That's a wonderful idea, Jasper!" Alice squealed, flickering to her feet to squeeze him in a junkyard crusher's hug.
"Er, hello?" Rosalie asked, annoyed.
"Ah was going to suggest one of us might change Esme to a vampire," he said. "That way she would no longer tempt him with her blood and they might…"
He shared a knowing look with Alice while Edward's eyebrows flew up into his hair.
"…Get to know each other a little better."
"No. Fucking. Way!" laughed Emmett who, despite not always being very emotionally receptive, was very much so to any sexual inference. "Please tell me Carlisle doesn't sleep with his secretary! What a cliché!"
"Technically he can never actually sleep with her," murmured Edward and Bella in unison, enjoying a private joke of theirs with identical smiles on their faces.
"Sleep with her!" Rosalie cried, voice an octave higher than normal. "He's going to kill her! Have you seen him lately? Jesus!"
"Nobody's seen Jesus in two thousand or so years, silly!" Alice giggled.
"If he ever existed," Bella said under her breath.
Rosalie mouthed wordlessly.
"Carlisle's been worse than normal since that girl moved here," she rushed when she recovered the power of speech and had decided not to attack her sisters. "Frankly, I can't take his negative energy anymore. So either we move or she is somehow removed, using any means necessary."
"Well, when Dr Misery has finished screwing Kate's brains out and has savaged some unlucky nature reserve, I'm sure he'll feel better about the whole thing," Emmett said optimistically. "It might not come to that."
Rose glared at him.
"She's actually a very sweet lady," Edward said conversationally.
Emmett spluttered with laughter.
"Kate?" he asked incredulously.
"No, Esme," Edward said.
At the mention of the name, Rosalie stared at the cookie box as if trying to incinerate it with her eyes. Sadly, her own talent was far more discreet.
"Her ex-husband was a character, though," Edward continued with a frown between his brows. "From what I can make out."
"Fantastic," Rosalie said sweetly. "She's single! Happy days! Why don't we set them up on a date?"
Her voice dropped to sarcastic normality again.
"See how well that fucking goes!"
Edward's head snapped up.
"Careful, Rose, I can hear him. He's on his way back."
He smirked.
"Kate gave him a telling off."
"What mood's he in?" Bella asked, a little nervously.
Edward cocked his head to one side to listen.
"Great, fantastic. A little manic, perhaps…"
To demonstrate Edward's point, in less time than it should have taken, even at the speed of a normal vampire, the door opened and closed in the same breeze and their adopted father stood before them, looking extremely windswept and extremely pleased with himself.
The other vampires eyed him warily.
"Er…Carlisle?" Emmett asked haltingly, having given the half-naked man a look up and down. "How much did you feed?"
The doctor's irises were almost silver and he seemed to be trembling.
"Sufficiently that…" he began brightly. "…I believe myself not to be a danger to Miss Swan at work."
"What!" Rosalie asked, incredulous.
"…Ah think he may be a little…over-fed," Jasper muttered quietly to Alice who looked practically giddy at the prospect.
"I'm going to see Miss Swan and apologise for my behaviour towards her," Carlisle explained cheerily, grinning like the closest thing Dr Cullen could get to a buffoon.
"You're not going out like that," Bella said plainly.
"You're going back?" screeched Rosalie. "You'll kill her!"
"'Course not," Carlisle said brightly, eyes darting around. "She's far too important for that."
Alice shared a smug look with anyone who wasn't gaping open-mouthed at the doctor.
"Please wear the blue shirt!" she burst suddenly. "She really likes that one!"
"Does she?" Carlisle asked interestedly, vanishing upstairs before Edward could answer the rhetorical question.
The doctor re-appeared a few moments later looking perfectly presentable.
A fraction more so than usual, Rosalie noticed.
"She would drool over you whatever you wore, Carlisle," she said icily as he swaggered out to his car and the rest of the family filed out to watch in fascination. "She didn't look very picky to me."
Carlisle shrugged unapologetically.
"Second appearances are important," he said loftily. "Especially when one is trying to un-do the first."
Rosalie's lips tightened into a thin line.
"Quite right, quite right, I should say," Emmett brayed in the stuffiest English accent he could manage as Carlisle got into his Mercedes. "Oh and Bond…Do try and remain emotionally detached, if you could, old boy."
Carlisle rolled his eyes.
"The accent jokes were funny for the first thirty years, I suppose," he conceded, feeling too elated to properly chastise his most boisterous adopted son.
"Maybe we shouldn't let him drive…" mused Bella with a look of suspicion on her face as Carlisle became apparently fascinated with the control for his rear windscreen wiper in his new, blood-buoyed state of consciousness.
"Nah…" Emmett said before turning towards the car and raising his voice needlessly. "Carlisle, bro! You're all good, buddy. Leave the thingy alone now. C'mon."
Rose smirked behind him.
"You're going to work, remember? At the hospital?" the enormous vampire continued slowly.
"Yes, yes," Carlisle said vaguely, dismissing the boy with a lazy swat of his hand out of his window.
"Alright then, sir!" Emmett called with a salute and a grin in the direction of Carlisle's retreating car. "I'll be seeing you at the altar!"
The doctor merely waved in response as the car rounded the corner at a speed that didn't seem possible, let alone legal.
"God help the poor woman," Edward muttered when Carlisle's jamboree of happy thoughts had faded from his 'earshot'.
"God help us," Emmett said. "It's just like…remember that time at that Christmas market?"
He turned to the rest of the family excitedly.
"Munich '87?" Edward asked, chuckling with the memory.
"Man can't hold his blood," Rosalie said with a grudging smile twisting her lips.
"I hope he calms down before he gets there," Bella frowned.
"Oh, he will," Alice beamed, leaning in to Jasper who looked a little shocked at his father's good mood.
"Well, that's daddy happily married off," Emmett whispered contentedly into Rosalie's ear. "And now we have the house to ourselves…"
"And four other people," Edward reminded him flatly, unimpressed with the path his thoughts were taking.
Ignoring the fact that Edward even existed, as was her custom, Rosalie leaned in and kissed Emmett hotly on the lips.
"I feel like skipping first period," she chucked.
Emmett kissed her back enthusiastically.
"Make that first and second," he growled as the rest of the family made themselves very scarce.