a/n: Exuberant thanks to my beta, EverlastingMuse!
Inside Job
So I'm working on my best non-creepy workplace demeanor this week with Bella starting as our secretary. Some changes have to be made to the office to accommodate an actual human, like a refrigerator in the break room and toilet paper in the bathroom. I try to warn Alice about making too many changes that call attention to Bella's delicate condition after the ice cream and pickles debacle. Alice ignores me. Typical.
She actually orders a new desk chair from Europe specially designed for pregnant women which is funny to me because I thought that European countries had way more progressive maternity leave policies than the US. At least that's what all our snooty European vampire friends say. Those guys totally bug me. If I have to see them sitting around in their clogs talking about the fair distribution of wealth and socialized medicine one more time I'll vomit. Only figuratively, of course.
I mean, what do those guys even care? It's not like they use the health care system or anything, right?
Anyhow, Alice says that she'll take care of Bella's response to the changes to our office and I should just focus on "acting like I've actually talked to a girl before in my 100 plus years on earth." Apparently I come off a little awkward.
Emmett keeps telling me I need to act "smoother." Emmett's idea of looking smoother pretty much involves saying "babe" a lot and leaning on stuff nonchalantly.
Jasper keeps telling me to calm down because apparently I look a little tense when she's around. I tell him he would look a little tense if he had an unrequited crush on a pregnant human. To which he responds, "Well, Edward, it's a good thing that stuff only happens to you."
A plus on the normality front is that I have an actual client meeting scheduled for her first day. I figured it would help her take me seriously if it looks like I do something besides stalking and chasing wildlife.
Except, the client that my divorce lawyer buddy referred to me is a total pig. The guy is cheating on his wife, wants me to find evidence that she is cheating, and he completely misses the irony in that, even when I point it out. I let him know that I'll be in touch and am ushering him out of the office when he sees Bella, who showed up while we were in our appointment.
I want to punch him in the neck when I hear his thoughts about her but when she stands up and he takes in her…condition I freeze because I so shocked by the conclusion he comes to.
Because he assumes it's mine. The phrase "dipping your pen in the company inkwell" actually goes through his head. I haven't heard that one since the sixties. He turns to say it to me and thinks better of it when he sees my face. Which is frozen in a "surprised vampire" face, apparently.
"Mr. Fowler, this is Miss Swan." Fowler reaches out a hand to shake hers as she smiles politely.
"Mr. Fowler, a pleasure," she sits back down and looks at me to see if I have further directions. What I want is to usher Fowler the hell out of there so I can think about the implications of this.
I mean, it seems like I could make this work to my advantage, now that I clearly am not going to eat her and there was no "baby-daddy" jumping out of the woodwork. Sorry, I got that phrase from Emmett and it won't go away.
I am about to engage Bella in some ultra-smooth, non-creepy dialogue when Emmett comes crashing into the office.
"Dude, I have to talk to you!" Emmett begins to pull me into the office while I clear my throat and gesture toward Bella, trying to tell him that he's cutting in on my attempts to have "face time" with my new employee.
"Are you choking? What? Oh, yeah. Hi, Bella." Emmett gives Bella a wave and continues to pull me into the office. She smiles at him. "Hi, Emmett."
Emmett pulls me into the office and closes the door. "Dude, you are not going to believe…" Just then the door opens again and Alice rushes in.
"Edward, I have to tell you about what I just saw!" Alice is really excited and she pushes in front of Emmett.
"Oh, no, Alice, I was here first." Emmett crosses him arms and glares at her. Which, if you didn't know Emmett would be scary. But because we do it just looks silly. I mean, we've seen this guy in a giant bunny suit. Don't ask.
"Don't you have somewhere to be? I have to talk to Edward about business." Alice pulls the "I'm a professional" card. More like "professional pain in my ivory ass."
Just then the door opens again and Rosalie comes into my office. This is possibly the strangest thing I've ever seen her do, with the exception of that piece of "furniture" she ordered for her and Emmett's seventeenth anniversary…I shudder in recollection. That certainly taught me to look more closely at address labels. It's strange because Rosalie has never been to my office and has never actually walked more than ten feet out of her way to see me.
"Hi, uh…" she looks around at the office and then looks down at the floor awkwardly. "I, uh, was just coming by to say 'hi' and see if you needed any help getting the office ready." Emmett and I just stare at her.
"Uh, wow, Rose." I rub my head in confusion. "That's really nice of you. I don't really…" Just in case this wasn't bizarre enough I hear the sounds of Jasper and Carlisle greeting Bella in the outer office and then they enter the room, surprised to see the impromptu vampire party that I am apparently hosting here.
"Hey, guys. What's up?" Emmett greets them. Jasper looks from Alice to Rose and them to me.
"Um, we wanted to talk with Edward." He gestures between Carlisle and himself.
"Where's Esme?" I ask, since she's the only member of my family not here.
"She stopped to get Bella a plant for her desk. She'll be here in fifteen minutes." Alice has sat down on the couch. Emmett leans on my windowsill and grins at Rosalie, who still looks uncomfortable. I guess because she's unused to interacting with me without insults.
Jasper sits down next to Alice and looks at Carlisle questioningly. Carlisle shrugs back at him. Just then there's a knock on the door. "Come in," I call out to Bella.
She pokes her head into the office. "I'm sorry to bother you guys…" My entire family, in unison, says, "Oh, no, Bella, it's OK," with giant smiles on their faces.
"There's a Dr. Carmichael on the phone?" She looks at me and then around the room at my grinning, overly friendly family. "Do you want me to take a message?"
"I'll take care of it," Alice says and walks out of my office to take the call.
"Thank you, Bella," I say, with a smile. She nods and gives my insane family another glance before she goes back out, closing the door.
"So, who wants to go first?" I say to the assembled vampires. They all look at each other. "Emmett, what was so important that you couldn't wait until tonight?" Emmett gets an image of some vampire friends of ours, Tanya, Kate and Irina. The sisters are kind of like cousins, if your cousins were to try to have sex with you all the time.
"What's up with the sisters?" I ask Emmett with a little anxiety. Having them show up and make Bella uncomfortable would not be great.
"They're coming to visit. They left a message on the answering machine this morning." Emmett gives me this huge grin, like he thinks that this is a great idea.
"When?" Emmett looks embarrassed now. "In August," he said, looking down.
"August," I say to him. He nods. "And you had to come by today, on Bella's first day, to tell me this?"
Emmett looks around nervously. "Yeah, uh, I also needed to get some…" he looked at my desk, "uh…staples! I needed some staples." Emmett walked over to the office supply cabinet and grabbed a box of paperclips and waved them at me. "OK, I guess I'll get going," he said and walked out of the office.
I looked at Rosalie, Jasper and Carlisle.
"Yeah, um, I wanted to talk with you about something I noticed about Bella," Jasper says, looking at Carlisle who interjects, "Yes, Jasper came to me with an observation he made and we thought we should come talk to you about it immediately." Carlisle does his best to seem serious.
"At my office. On Bella's first day. You both came to talk to me about something you noticed about her." I eye them pointedly. They look at each other.
"It seemed like a good idea at home," Carlisle admits. Rose snorts.
"I'll admit it, if you guys won't. I wanted to come down here so you could help me make friends with Bella. You know how I feel about children, Edward. I thought that maybe if she and I were friends that she would let me, you know, be involved in her baby's life."
"Rose, that's very…sweet," I am actually touched by Rose's sincerity. "But you want me to help you make friends with her?" Rose laughs and shakes her head. Apparently she forgot that I am not doing so hot on the "make Bella like me" front.
"Yeah, you have a point. Maybe I'll just go talk to her." Rose walks out of my office where she sees Esme already sitting talking with Bella and joins them.
"Alright, you two. What's up?" Carlisle looks at Jasper and nods.
"Well, it's just that I've noticed that Bella's emotions are actually getting harder for me to read. Usually, the longer I'm around someone, the clearer they become, but with her, they're getting fainter. I can tell she's having emotional responses, from her expressions."
"Not to mention the fact that she's a pregnant human," Carlisle interjects.
"But, it's almost like they're being turned down, like with a dimmer switch." Jasper frowns. "I've never experienced anything like it."
"Can you get anything from the baby's mind?" Carlisle asks.
"I can't. I guess I wasn't thinking anything of it. I don't have a lot of experience being around pregnant women and I guess I was assuming that Bella was blocking it." I frown. "That's interesting but I don't see why that couldn't have waited until tonight." They look at me sheepishly. I walk into the outer office where Alice is still on the phone and Esme and Rose are talking with Bella.
"How about you, Esme? What brings you here?" Esme looks up in mild surprise.
"I came in to see Bella. I knew it was her first day so I thought I'd see how she was doing." Hand it to Esme to be transparent about her motives.
"Well, I guess we'll get going," Carlisle corrals Jasper. "We should let Edward and Bella get back to work." He looks pointedly at Esme and Rosalie. I nod at him thankfully. Even if my idea of "getting back to work" is resting my chin on my hand gazing at Bella while she works. I wonder if she'll let me do that.
"Oh, goodness, of course!" Esme gets up, pulling a reluctant Rose with her and my annoying family members say their goodbyes.
"We'll call you when we have any information, Dr. Carmichael," Alice wraps up the phone call and hangs up.
"Well, what did you need, Alice?" I ask. She grins at me.
"I was just coming to tell you to take that job but I just accepted it for you." She is still smiling broadly and looking at Bella and I in a way that makes me extremely anxious.
"Do you want to talk about it in my office?" I gesture toward the door but she shakes her head.
"No this involves Bella, too." Bella looks up in surprise.
"Dr. Carmichael is a podiatrist in Port Angeles. He is extremely paranoid and he is convinced that the Dr. in the office next to him is saying negative things about him to patients. You just have to go to the other Dr.'s office, undercover, and see if it's true."
"How does that involve me?" Bella asks, looking between the two of us.
"Dr. Richards is an obstetrician. We need a pregnant woman." Bella looks uncomfortable. Alice winks at me.
When I see what is in her head I realize that made an excellent hiring decision bringing my little sister into the business. She's totally employee of the month.
a/n: Thank you to the people who have been pushing this lunacy, I'll try to justify your faith.
It occurred to me that this is a fine time for another disclaimer about how ridiculous this story is. It is neither a real mystery story nor is it terribly skillfully developed. It's just stupid. So if people's motivations don't make sense to you, it's because they don't make sense. It's not you. It's me. Thanks for reading anyway! JuJu