Chapter Ten

What have I done?

That was the million dollar question, Edward thought as he drove home.

It was supposed to be a small dinner. An informal party for old friends. And he could've just done his duty – gone there, eaten the food, had one reasonable drink and then called a cab home. Nothing had obliged him to take Dr. Swan with him. In fact, he should've thought better of it, since Sulpicia Volturi knew many women, most of them his former girlfriends, and that she was bound to invite some of them over. Did he honestly think he could've gone there with a woman without running into one, or more, of his exes?

When he had walked into that room, he'd already been tired of the party and having the full intention to go back. Then he had seen the two women on the couch, and for the briefest, briefest of moments, he could've sworn he'd seen a flash of panic in Dr. Swan's eyes. Her face had gone pale and her hands had been clasped tightly into her lap, a sure sign that she was trying to stop them from shaking.

Hence why he was feeling like a complete idiot. His only defense in the case would have been that he never imagined Tanya would have the gal to approach him, or his guest, after the way they'd broken up. It didn't matter that he didn't like Dr. Swan much; she was still his guest and deserved respect. But Edward couldn't figure out a way to explain himself and apologize to her without coming off as the biggest ass in the history of forever.

It was just that she was always so judging! Whenever he imagined offering an apology, he would see her stern face behind the glasses (currently misplaced) and feel like an ignorant fool, which in turn made his inner jerk rear his ugly head. Edward couldn't come up with a single logical reason for his hostility towards Isabella Swan, other than the fact that she just rubbed him the wrong way. Always prim and proper and polite, with that hair pulled back ruthlessly. He longed to release it, to feel the texture of the curls, let it breathe, let her breathe, he wanted tear down the façade and see what was underneath, to see her undone, without pretense and…

And…

And now it came off as if he wanted to have sex with her.

Which was not true.

At all.

He cast a glance towards the object of his thoughts. She was slumped slightly in her seat, her elbow propped against the window and her face resting on her fist. Her dress had ridden up slightly, exposing her pale knees, while her head was angled so it could showcase her slender neck.

Ok, he reconsidered, maybe a little attracted, but not out of the realms of the normal. I'm not dead.

Before either of them knew it, they were in front of the house. Edward killed the engine, but neither he nor Bella made a move to open the doors. He was deep in thought; she was well on her way to falling asleep. Finally, gathering his courage, he said:

"I guess that this evening wasn't as productive as we wanted it to be, huh?"

"Apparently not," she said, rolling her head back to work out the kinks in her neck. "Though you have some interesting friends."

Let her blow up, Edward thought, let her blow up in my face so that I can come out as the right one this time.

"You mean Tanya?" he asked causally.

"No, I meant Bree, but Tanya as well. They're very similar, you know. Almost the same, only the former is the younger version," she said. "But Professor Volturi wasn't interested in whatever I had to say."

"Oh." Edward paused. "I'm sorry."

"For?"

"For whatever Tanya said to make you feel bad."

She stared at him for half a second, before releasing a peal of laughter. "Bad? You mean her measly attempts at intimidation? Oh, please, you don't have to be sorry about that. If anything, it was very amusing."

He stared at her, shell-shocked. "But I thought…"

"Make no mistake, I was kind of pissed that she automatically assumed we were sleeping together, but her know-it-all attitude quickly erased that."

"Oh."

That wasn't going according to plan. Their conversation, according to the plan, would involve a very offended Dr. Swan and a very apologetic Edward. He would be calm and polite and talk her through the hysteria, and they would go on with their lives, with him feeling righteous and her feeling humbled. However, the reality of it was that Tanya had only managed to amuse her, and Edward felt slightly offended that Isabella would think that her sleeping with him was just about as probable as snow in the Sahara desert.

"Well, I guess we better go in." She cut his thoughts off as she slipped out of the car and walked gracelessly to the front door porch. Edward raced after her.

"But surely," he began as they moved up the stairs to the second floor, "you weren't amused when she first started it."

"I wasn't, but like I said, I got over it." She shrugged. "It's better that you don't piss yourself off over something so insignificant."

"Funny. Most people wouldn't consider that insignificant, but apparently, you would think that being accused of sleeping with an employer is amusing."

Bella paused in front of her door and turned towards him slightly, eyebrows raised. "Pardon?"

"You're always so composed, so calm, of course you wouldn't be upset. Why do I even bother?" he asked himself, forgetting that he wasn't just speaking in his mind. She stared at him inquisitively.

"I don't seem to understand. You make it sound like you wanted Dr. Denali to upset me."

"I do," he blurted out. "No offence, but sometimes, even the most composed of people need a little shaking up. I don't understand how you could be so calm, as if you had no feelings, as if you were a robot."

Bella's mouth hung open.

"I think it would be very useless to get pissed over something as insignificant as another woman's unfounded jealousy."

"Tanya believes it's founded."

"But it's not true, and neither is her jealousy, since she tried to determine whether or not I was an idiot or a lesbian when she realized we weren't sleeping together." She bristled. "I don't see why you antagonize me so, Mr. Cullen. I have done nothing to offend you."

Edward took a deep breath and dug up some of his good manners from some deep well. "You're right. I'm sorry. But surely you know that you have this effect on people."

"What effect?"

"This. This… high school teacher effect. You make everyone feel like they're under scrutiny, that they're being disapproved of. It's haughty and it's also very unsettling. You act like you're doing the whole world a favor with your presence." He stopped when he realized what he was blurting. It shocked him – usually he was able to keep to himself, even in the middle of the worst fights. Dr. Swan stared at him, her expression neutral and unreadable, before she said:

"I do not see why it is so strange to you that I would not be insulted by someone who's not worth anyone's scorn? It makes no sense to be mad."

"Why should it?" he said. "Are you always all about sense? Have you never trusted your heart? How can you live like this?"

"I live like this because it's a mode of life that suits me. I have worked my way through college, Mr. Cullen. That does not give me a reason to antagonize you for being a trust fund baby," she said, before decidedly stomping into her room and closing the door in his face.

Edward stood in the hall, staring at the dark rectangle of the door, too angry to speak or move. How dare she? A trust fund baby? Really? What next, was she going to accuse him of living off other people? He was a Cullen, following a time-honored family tradition and earning his living. If there was anyone who ought to be ashamed of their origins, it was probably her. She couldn't trace her family roots all the way back to the Middle Ages, he was sure.

He gathered his wits long enough to drag down to the living room and pour himself a drink. These thoughts did not suit him. Edward Cullen was a man of many flaws, but even Tanya couldn't add conceit to his sins. Pride, maybe, but he had never been big on his family's history. He trued to reason with himself – both he and Dr. Swan were tired. She had had a glass of wine, maybe a little more. He was sure the two of them would be more than happy to forget the incident in the morning and go on with their lives. She would continue her research and he would stop fantasizing about her. What was there to fantasize about anyway? She certainly didn't see him as a sexual object and he saw nothing attractive about shrewd, bitter women like her.

Preoccupied in his thoughts, he nearly missed the gentle ring of the doorbell and ran to open before someone else came down to see what was going on. He straightened his shirt and ran his hands through his hair, giving it a messy look, before opening the door:

"Hello, Bree."

Bella stormed in the bathroom, where she went about her night time rituals more slowly than usual, removing her make up and brushing her hair into a tail with meticulous, merciless strokes. Her lenses were removed and cleaned until her fingers were pruney. She removed her dress and put it away with care, making sure there wasn't a single crease in the material, and cursing under her breath all the way:

"Jealous? Of that woman? Pfft!" she said. "I can beat her Botox-filled ass to the ground any day. Thinks he knows me! What a joke!"

If anything about the whole story was insulting, it was his assumption that she might consider Tanya a rival. That would have implied certain equality between the two women, and Bella couldn't imagine how she could be compared to someone that was the living show of everything tacky and cliché.

"Moron. Who does he think I am?" she continued as she walked back into the bedroom. "I wish he could at least know his place, the bastard!"

Her words trailed off and she stifled a shriek when she saw Edward right in front of her, standing in the dark room. The garment bag fell on the floor as one of her hands flew to her throat and the other started for the light switch. For a second, dark spots of fear danced in front of her eyes, and she felt certain that she was going to faint.

And then it was over as fast as it had begun. She hit the switch and filled the room with light… and Edward disappeared.

She blinked. She grabbed her glasses to see better and was surprised to find them fog over the heat of her hand. The room was empty.

Bella walked over to the door to see if it was locked like she had left it, and it was. Her eyes raked around the room, from top to bottom, trying to locate any secret passages and whatnot. Nothing. Even the windows were bolted shut.

But she had seen him. She had. She knew she had. Edward Cullen, messy hair and sullen eyes and all, standing in front of her in spite of the locked doors and windows. And then he was gone, dust in the wind. Was she going mad? Or perhaps she had overestimated her alcohol tolerance that night? She wasn't sure, but this was no sexy daydream. It was a downright hallucination.

"Jesus…" she thought as she ran her fingers through her hair and gathered her things from her floor, before slipping into her pajamas and hiding under the quilt. Never mind she couldn't sleep – the heat made her feel a thousand times better.

It became painfully clear to him that Bree wasn't quite sober after she flounced into the house, dress askew and hair blown all over the place. She kissed him. She tasted like whiskey and something else, something very sweet.

"I've been waiting for you to call for forever," she said in a low, husky voice. Edward grinned and picked her up bridal style to carry her up the stairs. His bedroom was on the opposite end of the corridor, far away from Dr. Swan's room, but he still made an extra effort to be quiet as he passed it. He didn't want another showdown, not when he was in such a good mood.

Bree moaned quietly as he kissed down her neck. He got them into his room, set her down on the bed and pulled away to look at her. Even in her drunken state, she was beautiful. Pretty and curvy, with just about enough make-up to hide the natural flaws of her skin but not enough to make her look tacky. She was wholesome. She was lovely. And she was the opposite of Dr. Swan, at least as far as attitudes went.

He kissed her again, long and hard, and she pulled the shirt over his head. Her hands ran down his chest, fingers threading in the brownish-red tuffs of hair around his nipples, nails scraping the skin slightly. He ran his hands up her thighs, hips and sides, then slid behind her back and found the zipper of the dress. A second later the material slid down to her waist in a whisper of satin and silk, before he pulled it away completely to reveal her body. She found his belt buckle…

As Bree was struggling with his zipper, however, something strange happened. A wind started to howl outside, so strong and loud they couldn't ignore it after some time. Suddenly, the windows were thrown open with such force some of the glass cracked and a vase from his desk was sent flying towards the wall, where it shattered loudly. Bree screamed as Edward ran to close the windows, struggling against the biting cold that was more appropriate for a January afternoon than a midsummer night.

When he was finally done, the room was freezing. He stared at the carpet, littered with shreds of broken glass and porcelain, and felt immensely glad that he hadn't taken his shoes off.

Bree sat on the bed, eyes wide and frantic.

"What the hell was that?" she slurred, looking around like a deer in the headlights. "What just happened?"

"I don't know," Edward began, before realizing she wasn't expecting an answer. She looked around with growing panic, before bending in half and throwing up on the floor.

Thirty very painful minutes later, he had managed to wrestle Bree into one of his spare pajamas and forced her to lie down in one of the guest bedrooms. If the sudden windy weather hadn't been enough to kill the mood, her emptying her entire stomach's contents in front of him was a definite deal breaker. He couldn't possibly take advantage of a woman so obviously sick. When he was sure she was sound asleep, he left her two Tylenol on the nightstand as well as a glass of water, before seeing to his own room.

Another hour later he sat in a relatively clean place and rubbed his tired eyes. That night was definitely not going according to plan. Not only had his hopes of spending a pleasant evening at Suplicia's completely plummeted, his booty call had showed up half in the bag and the weather had decided to play tricks on him. He wanted nothing more than to rest and forget about it, but he knew he couldn't sleep in a cold room. The wind filtered through the cracks in the glass, the holes in the windows.

Resigned, he got on his feet and walked down to the first floor again, fully intending to borrow a page from Mr. Rochester and spend the night in exile from his quarters and into the library couch. Only when he got there, he was surprised to find somebody had gotten there first.

A/N Once more, power to Courtney for helping me out and putting up with me. You're awesome, sweets!