Chapter twelve
"So, when is this little thing due?" Edward asked, absentmindedly stroking Bella's slightly rounded stomach.
"January 8th," Bella smiled, closing her eyes as Edward's fingers tickled her skin.
After hours of making love, Bella and Edward were finally sated with each other, for now. Neither was willing to let go of the other as they stayed in bed for the rest of the day, cuddling up to each other as the weather outside changed yet again and the rain poured down, thunder rumbling above them now and then.
"I must say that I wasn't expecting this," Edward confessed after a long silence and Bella had been sure that he had fallen asleep.
"Neither did," she told him, kissing his chest softly. "It was defiantly a surprise."
"A good surprise?"
"How could it not be a good surprise? Edward, this is evidence of our love and even though our love has been short, there's nothing that can change what I feel for you or the fact that I need you in my life."
"Don't worry, what we have is something that I would never want to change, even when I thought that you had sex with that guy Jacob, I still wanted you for myself."
"Good because I have no plans on leaving any time soon," Bella grinned up at him and Edward leaned down and captured her lips with his.
"Anybody home?" someone hollered from down stairs, making them break apart and stare at the bedroom door, which was still open.
"That sounded like Emmett," Edward mumbled, "If we don't get up, he's going to barge in here and neither of us will be able to live down the taunting he will be giving us for the rest of our lives." On cue, heavy footsteps were coming up the stairs.
"Shit!" Edward had just enough time to react and cover Bella's naked body before Emmett appeared in the door with a grin.
"Of course you choose your pregnant girlfriend over your own flesh and blood," he snickered as he entered the room.
"Emmett, get out!" Edward ordered, a small corner of the sheet covering his junk.
"Why? I've missed you bro."
"Emmett, if you don't get out so we can get dressed, I'm going to tell Rose that you've been working out behind her back and that you got an eyeful of Edward and me doing, ending in you asking if you could join us."
"You wouldn't!" Emmett shouted.
"I will if you don't get out!" Bella shouted back, reaching for her phone.
"Okay!" Emmett turned on his heels and disappeared quickly.
"If you can handle Emmett, I think you can handle anything," Edward grinned from ear to ear as he escorted Bella to the shower.
~O~O~O
"Edward!" Esme came rushing out as soon as he was out of the car and she threw her arms around his neck, hugging her boy close to her.
"Hey mom," he laughed, giving his father and Jasper a nod over his mother's shoulder.
Edward took his time to hug everyone in turn, lingering with Alice who refused to let go of him to begin with. Poor Jasper looked torn as he watched his girlfriend hugging her cousin and adoptive brother as if her life was depending on it. From the side line, Bella watched as Alice whispered something in Edward's ear and how he quickly shot Jasper a look before whispering something back at Alice.
"Why don't we have some lunch?" Esme asked when everyone had been hugged more than once and Emmett quickly agreed, leading his very pregnant Rose into the house.
"What was that? With Alice I mean," Bella couldn't help but ask as they walked inside.
"Oh, nothing important, trust me," he smiled, wrapping his arm around Bella and kissing her on the top of her head.
Lunch was like any other lunch they had had together before Carlisle and Edward came home, though the volume was rather different as Emmett told everyone how he had walked in on Bella and Edward. Bella had blushed so hard that it had been Edward's job to explain that they had just been lying in bed but he didn't hide the fact that they had just had sex when Emmett came in.
"I still walked in on the two of you!" Emmett boosted proudly and Bella noticed how Rose didn't smack him on the back of his head. Her eyes were on the plate in front of her but she wasn't eating anything.
"Uhm, Rose, can I talk with you?" Rose's head snapped up, a smile plastered on her face, by the sound of her name.
"Of course!" Bella quickly helped Rose up and led her away from everyone. "What is it that you want to talk about?" Rose asked, still smiling brightly, a little too brightly, as they sat down in the living room, away from all the prying ears.
"Is something wrong?" Bella asked bluntly, taking Rose's hand.
"Why do you ask that?" Bella saw how the smile faltered a little.
"Because you didn't smack Emmett on the back of his head as he boosted about walking in on Edward me. Normally you're all over him as soon as he says something stupid."
"He did that?"
"Clearly your head wasn't in there with us, was it?" Bella laughed slightly. "Come on Rose, tell me what's bothering you."
"Okay," she sighed, leaning back in the couch, a hand on her belly, "Emmett is cheating on me. He doesn't want me so he finds what he wants in someone else, not that I can blame him; I'm a fat whale that doesn't even get turned on by my big belly or Emmett's slight love handles."
"Rose, Emmett could never cheat on you."
"Then why does he disappear for hours every day?!" Rose almost shouted.
"Emmett's been with me those hours every day for the past three weeks."
"You? He's cheating on me with you? I thought you were my friend!"
"No! I would never dream of having sex with Emmett, Rose. No, I'm only helping him hide the fact that he can't stop working out even when he promised you that he would stop. He's been eating and eating but he works it off right away by running and lifting weights in the garden, hidden from you."
"He's not cheating on me?" Rose asked in a small voice.
"No!" Bella laughed, "He's just been taking care of his body behind your back and before you fly through the roof, he's also made a program for you that you can do when the baby is born, if you want to of course. I've been helping him finding appropriate exercise for women after giving birth."
"God, I'm such a fool!" Rose moaned into her hands.
"Yeah, but you are my pregnant fool," both Bella and Rose turned to see Emmett standing a few feet away from them, a lovely smile on his lips.
"Oh baby!" Rose tried to sit up but the more she tried to get up on her own, the more she struggled and neither Bella nor Emmett managed to hold their laughter.
"I'll take her, Bella. Besides, Esme and Alice wanted talk with you," he gestured with a nod of his head that they still were in the dining room.
A baby shower, they wanted to talk about a baby shower. Rose had already had one before they left Knoxville but now it was Bella's turn. She pointed out several times that she didn't have any other friends then those she could see in front of her at the minute, but it didn't matter to Alice and Esme; she was getting a baby shower either way, no matter if she liked it or not.
There was no chance that Bella was going to talk about a baby shower when she had the most beautiful and sexy man next to her, one that couldn't take his hands of her even though they were right in front of his parents.
With a lot of persuasion from Edward, they agreed to let them have the night to themselves but only if Bella would meet them the next day.
And there she was, sitting with two hopeful women, trying to make them see why she didn't want a baby shower.
"Oh, come on Bella, with a baby shower you don't have to drag Edward with you to Seattle and make him look at cute binkies, blankets, and bottles and so on."
"Alice, that's exactly what I want. I want to bring Edward with me everywhere to buy things for our baby! We've already lost the first three months of this because I didn't know I was pregnant, but we're not missing anything else." Both girls huffed and crossed their arms over their chests while Esme looked between them with a small smile.
"How about we just have a small gathering, not a shower, eat and have fun. We can invite the girl from the bakery, you like her don't you?"
"Angela? Yeah, she's nice and she always remember what I want and makes sure that there's at least one cinnamon bun left at the end of the day."
"Good, that makes us four. Should we invite the boys or make it an all-girl-thing?"
"Just us girls," Bella nodded.
"How about we go to that spa in Seattle, the one where they have massages for pregnant women and fish treatments?" Alice suggested.
"Oh, that would have been lovely," Bella sighed. "Where's Rose by the way?" she hadn't seen her all day, in fact not at all since she had been told that Emmett wasn't cheating on her.
"Emmett pulled the big guns last night after you left and said that Rose would be spending the day in bed, liking it or not. I think she likes it though, because Emmett's been staying in bed as well," Alice laughed and Bella couldn't help but join in.
"It's good for them to have some time alone because as soon as that baby is born, Emmett will suffer a serious case of blue balls," Esme said seriously just as Carlisle, Edward and Jasper walked into the kitchen.
"Mom!" Edward groaned, covering his ears.
"What? It's true! When Emmett was born, we could just place him with our parents so we could be man and wife again, but as soon as you were born there was no chance so poor Carlisle had a dangerous case of blue balls; he was about to explode when my mother said she could look after the boys so we could go out. We didn't get to the restaurant though," Esme's face was straight as she talked but Bella couldn't' help but laugh as she looked at Edward; he face was red as a tomato and scrunched up as if he was tasting something funny.
"That will be you son, in a five months' time," Carlisle snickered before kissing Esme softly and informing her that he was heading to the hospital with Edward.
As soon as they were gone, Bella had to ask Alice what was going on between her and Jasper since they were acting so damn stiff around each other all the sudden.
"Oh, it's nothing," she tried to laugh it off but Bella wasn't giving up.
"There's something so you better spill the beans, Alice."
"It's-"
"Don't you dare say that's it's nothing because there is something!"
"Fine! I mentioned to Jasper that I would like a baby with him one day. When I told him that he lit up like a Christmas Tree but when I said that I would love for it to happen soon, he paled and started to mumble about being married first. I think I scared him and now he's reconsidering the whole baby thing and me."
"Alice, you are ridicules, you know that? Okay, Jasper may have gotten a little scared but he would never doubt his love for you or your love for him; that boy loves you with all his heart," Esme all but scolded and all Alice could do was to nod.
~O~O~O
"I don't want to, not right now at least!" Bella shouted as she threw a pillow at him.
"You wanted it before! Or have you changed your mind about the two of us?" he threw the pillow back at her.
"Of course not, I just don't want to get married at the age of twenty-one!"
"But you had no problem getting pregnant," he sneered, "Or were it just a way to get into this family since you quite your own family!"
"That was a low blow, Edward; you know why I couldn't stay with mom and Phil and you know that this pregnancy wasn't planned, at all."
"I know," he sighed, sitting down on the couch, "But it doesn't explain why you don't want to marry me! I thought I was doing the right thing here, asking you to marry me before the baby is born so that no one can point out that it was born out of marriage."
"It is the right thing, but it isn't what I want. I don't want to get married now and it's not because it's to you, I will give anything to know that when the day comes, it will be you, but I'm twenty one and if we get married now and the baby pops out in five months, everyone will think that the only reason we did it was because of the baby."
"I get that but I don't get why you had to say no; we can be engaged to be married for as long as we want to, for years or the rest of our life if we want to."
"Edward," Bella sighed, kneeling down on the couch next to him, "I want to be with you, live with you, love you and give you everything you want," she whispered as she wrapped her arms around him.
"Then, Bella, will you marry, not now but when the time is right?"
"Of course I will, when the time is right," she smiles at him before kissing him softly on the lips but it quickly turns into a hungry kiss, full of passion and love.