What's this?! Two chapters in one calendar-week?! I'd say that I amazed even myself here, but I know the only reason this is done and posted is because I'm desperately trying to procrastinate on my own American History project.

Thanks to all of you who have reviewed and sent me messages. I didn't get a chance to respond to your kind reviews, but I thought a new chapter might absolve me of that slight.

This is a bit of a fluffy chapter, but it does have some "awww" moments and that sweet side of Edward we all like to see.

Let me know what you think!

. . . . .

I held my hands up in a defensive karate chop position and hollered into the night. "Who are you and what do you want?"

A dark shadow loomed toward me and I raised my arms higher. "You don't want to fight me!" I bellowed.

"I guess that's true. But I am dying to see your mad karate skills, Bells."

Jake's massive frame separated from the darkness, and his white smile beamed in the castoff light from the porch. "I doubt you could hurt me, but I may laugh myself to death."

"Oh, Jake. You scared me." I let out a giant breath and dropped my arms. At the same time, the doormat slid away from the door, taking me with it. I fell backward in a heap, landing flat on my back, weighed down by my massive bookbag.

Jake roared with laughter, slapping his thighs and throwing back his head.

I burned with embarrassment, and struggled like a drunk crab to get up off of the porch floor. But my bag was too heavy, and I couldn't sit up enough to get my footing. Jake kindly composed himself enough to step forward and give me a hand up, but he was still chortling as he brushed off the dirt from my backpack. I slapped at him annoyedly, and then fought with my key to open the door. Jacob kicked the doormat back into place before following me into the entryway.

"So, that Cullen guy drop you off? What is he, your boyfriend now?"

I turned to roll my eyes at him. He was smiling, but his eyes didn't look very amused. I focused on that in an attempt to not blush and give away my growing feelings for Edward.

"No, he is not my boyfriend. We are working on a project for school. Not that it's any of your business, Mr. Bond." I didn't bother to tell him that we hadn't started working on it yet. Or that he was returning me from some kind of strange family meeting about my safety and their family's apparent skill as bodyguards. That seemed like information he didn't exactly need to know. "What are you doing here anyway? Other than spying on me, that is."

He shrugged and followed me into the kitchen. I reached into the fridge and handed him ingredients for supper over my shoulder.

"I was just talking with my dad about your break-in the other night—"

"It wasn't that big of a deal, Jake. Besides, now Billy's going to tell my dad about it and he'll get all weird."

He looked at me sideways and pulled a pan down from an upper cabinet at my mimed request. "It kind of is a big deal, Bells. And Dad won't tell Charlie. I asked him not to. But he did think that maybe I should hang out with you a little more when Charlie isn't here. Especially after dark."

I rolled my eyes and put my hand on my hip. "You know, I don't need a nanny. I'm a big girl, and I can take care of myself."

Jake instantly jumped back three feet and whipped his arms up in front of him, mimicking my earlier defensive posture. He flailed around, throwing in a few waaaahs and hi-yas before stopping abruptly and asking in a deadpan voice:

"You mean, like this?"

I grabbed a head of lettuce from the counter and chucked it at him. He cracked up and caught the flying ball of green like a football, then rushed toward me and pinned me against the counter. I screamed and laughed, banging on his back with my fists. He grabbed a ripe red tomato and held it over my head, threateningly.

"Don't start a food fight you can't win, Swan. I'm warning you. I practically live with Quil and Embry, and they are professional food-fighters." His laughter grew as I attacked him with a cucumber, whacking him on the shoulder until he threw up his hands in mock surrender. "Good god, Bells. Don't destroy a perfectly good vegetable salad on my account. Or on my rock-solid body."

He flexed his bicep at me and then laughed harder, congratulating himself for making a joke. I stifled a giggle, pulled a knife from the block behind us and pointed it toward him.

"Chop, Mr. Funnypants." I jabbed at the tomatoes and a can of black olives on the counter next to him.

He snickered, yielding his offense to serve as sous-chef. "You, Isabella Swan, of all people, should not be playing with knives."

I kicked at him with my left leg, steadying myself on the counter to make sure I didn't fall again. Once was enough for one night. "Cut enough for four salads and call Billy. Tell him my dad will pick him up after work for dinner."

. . . . .

Charlie and Billy arrived just about the time the oven dinged to remind me to take the casserole out. By then, Jake was wearing my pink apron, which was ridiculously small on him and barely covered his chest. He was waving a wooden spoon for some unknown reason, singing a ridiculous song he was making up as he went, and I was drunk on laughter and up to my elbows in soapy dishwater.

Charlie and Billy paused inside the door, looking at us like we'd lost our minds. In reality, we sort of had. After the stress of the last few weeks and particularly the last few days, I needed a mental vacation. And Jake was nothing if not a mental vacation.

Our dads caught up on the latest Sports Center stats while Jacob and I readied the kitchen for dinner. I gave him the task of wiping the soap suds off of the walls and ceiling while I set the table and got the food ready to go.

The four of us chatted while we ate, and then we sent the old guys back up to the living room to argue about the upcoming baseball games.

Jacob loaded the dishwasher and I packed the leftovers in two containers—one for Jake and Billy to take home, one for Charlie to take for lunch tomorrow.

"Want me to come back tonight, Bells? You know, just to be safe?"

"No, I'm fine. I'm sure whatever was going on was just a one-off. Besides, I have the Forks Chief of Police sleeping just two doors down. I'll scream if anything weird happens."

Jake looked at me sternly, and he reached out to grab my arm. "Just lock your window, ok? And don't let anyone in your room. Not even one of the Cullens. Especially one of the Cullens."

I jerked my arm away from him. "Come on, Jacob. Why on earth do you think they'd be coming into my room in the middle of the night? You're going to have to get used to the idea that I have other friends."

"You can have other friends, Bells. I just don't like them; I want you to be careful around them."

"You don't even know them, Jake. Why are you being so weird about this? They're nice. All of them. Well, maybe not Rosalie, but you'd probably like her best of all. She's really gorgeous."

He laughed at me. "Yeah, gorgeous or not, she's one of the last people I'd ever like."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Stop being such a jealous jerk. You know I love you the most."

He gently punched my shoulder and gave me a wink. "Well, let's make sure we keep it that way. I've never been too good at sharing."

At the rate Edward and I are going, you'll never have to, I snarked to myself. I handed a pack of leftovers to Billy and patted Jake on the shoulder as he pushed Billy's wheelchair out the front door. He turned to give me a kiss on the cheek. "Thanks for the leftovers, Bells. See ya."

I watched them leave and then locked the door behind me. I snuggled into the couch and pulled a book from under the coffee table, but Charlie interrupted my thoughts of reading.

"So, you and Jake seem tighter than ever."

My heart stopped for a second and I wondered if I could just ignore away the comment. Charlie was staring at me over his newspaper. Like he expected a reply.

"Jeez, Dad. How many times do I have to tell you? Jacob and I are friends. Best friends. But just friends. We'll only ever be just friends."

Charlie nodded at me thoughtfully; it was the reaction he had to almost everything I'd ever said or done my entire life. He cleared his throat and looked down at his paper. "Just make sure Jake knows that, Bells. For all his brawn and swagger, he's a tenderhearted kid."

"Jacob does know that, Dad. And besides, I've—um, I've kind of... met someone." I was blinded by embarrassment, and I felt my entire body blush from my forehead down to my toes. My dad and I didn't talk about much, and we definitely didn't talk about boys. In fact, I wasn't even quite sure why I'd brought it up at all, except for the fact that Edward was just about all I'd been able to think about for weeks. Maybe longer if you counted those strange photographs.

Charlie's paper dropped to his lap, and I stared at it as if I were reading the most interesting story ever. I could feel his eyes burning into my forehead.

"You? You met someone? A boy?" His voice rose a full octave with each question, and he cleared his throat again before returning to his normal register. "Well, that's something new."

"Yeah, um, new. I mean, it's not like he's my boyfriend or anything. We—we're just hanging out. Or something."

"'Or something'? Is that code for something I should know about?"

"No!" I sputtered. "We're partners. Not—I mean... lab partners. We're lab partners. And we are doing a history project together. So he might come over tomorrow night to study. Or I might go over to his house. We haven't decided yet. I don't know. I just thought you should know."

Charlie's left eyebrow was still in the stratosphere, and I wasn't sure which one of us was more embarrassed. He smacked his lips once before talking. "Is this the doctor's kid?"

I exhaled louder than I'd meant to. "Yeah. Edward. Cullen."

. . . . .

After I'd managed to escape from Charlie's attempt at father-daughter bonding, I washed my face, brushed my teeth and crawled into bed fully-clothed. The events of the day had exhausted me, and I was ready to lose myself to the blissful unconsciousness of sleep.

I woke up a couple of hours later, overheated from my jeans and warm sweater. I struggled out of my clothes and rummaged around in the dark for a tee-shirt. Throwing it over my head, I peered out of the window into the dark. Shining in the moonlight, I could see the blue reflection of animal eyes staring back at me. Far too big to be a cat or a raccoon, maybe even too big to be a deer. It was hard to tell the size of the animal against the black of the woods and with the height distortion caused by being on the second floor of my house.

I checked the lock on my window and confirmed it was indeed latched. I looked again at the place where the eyes had been, seeing only darkness. Whatever it was, I silently willed it to watch over my house and my little family of two in the night.

. . . . .

I got out of bed a little early the next morning. I wanted to have enough time to get ready so that I wasn't scrambling and late when Edward came to pick me up.

I showered, dabbed on a little makeup, wrestled with my blow dryer and round brush and spritzed on a tiny spray of perfume. Then I dug through my closet three times before settling on a pair of dark bootcut jeans and layering a simple dark blue long-sleeved tee-shirt over a plain white one. I didn't want to look like I was trying too hard, but I knew the dark blue was a good color on me.

I was pulling on a pair of much-loved sneakers when I heard the doorbell ring. Peeking out the window, I saw Edward's Volvo parked behind my red truck. I clapped my hands and hopped up and down and couple of times I excitement before composing myself.

I grabbed two blueberry muffins from the kitchen and then opened the door with what I hoped was a cute flourish. He smiled at me, and reached for my backpack.

"That's ok,"I resisted. "You really don't have to carry it. It weighs a ton. You know, AP classes."

He grinned and reached more insistently. "That's exactly why I should carry it. What kind of gentleman would I be if I made you carry your own 86-pound backpack everywhere?"

I let him take it from my shoulder and then handed him one of the muffins.

He balked just long enough for me to notice before taking it from me. "Thank you, that was very kind of you."

"It's my grandma's recipe. You'll like them. They're amazing. She was an incredible cook, and every one of her recipes turns out great every time I make it."

"You made these?"

I grinned and nodded. If there was one thing I wasn't shy about, it was my love for cooking. It was one of the few times I felt completely graceful. Well, except for when I spilled the ingredients or slipped on a spill. But the actual cooking and the way recipes turned out—that was something I was truly good at.

"I love to cook. You'll learn that pretty fast."

Edward ushered me to his car and closed the door behind me.

Part of the way to school, I couldn't help but notice that he hadn't taken a bite of his muffin. Mine was half gone.

"Oh my goodness—do you have some kind of 'no eating in the car' rule that I'm breaking?"

"No, no. Of course not. I'm just not that hungry right now. You go ahead."

I nodded, slightly disappointed that I wouldn't get to see his reaction to my cooking. I had come to learn that most of the reason I loved cooking so much was the gratification I got from watching other people enjoy my food. Charlie wasn't vocal about it, but the way he scarfed down his meals made me feel good. Jake was always bragging up my culinary skills to the guys, which embarrassed me in the best of ways. Especially when he compared my cooking to Emily's. Even Billy was constantly showering me with praise for my baked goods, and I loved seeing his eyes twinkle when I sent home leftovers after dinner at our house.

Edward looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and I smiled at him. I didn't want him to think I was weird or anything. It seemed like a juvenile thing to care so much about someone liking my food.

"It does smell really good, though. I guess I could use some dessert after breakfast." He smiled at me and took a tentative bite. "Oh, yeah. This is a good muffin. I haven't had a good blueberry muffin in ages."

I couldn't help but grin at his attempt to make me feel better. "You really don't have to humor me like that, you know. Sometimes one just isn't hungry."

He smiled at me, the rest of the muffin still in his hand. "I'll always humor you, Bella. I have this strange compulsion to make you happy."

My cheeks burned and he grinned out the windshield as we pulled into school.

I felt the eyes of my classmates burning through the car as we pulled into the lot. I hadn't ever dated anyone, and it wasn't for lack of opportunity. I knew the Cullens had made everyone crazy with their good looks, and most of the lustful glances of the girls fell on Edward since he was the only single one. Him pulling up to school with me in the passenger's seat was quite the entrance.

He seemed to know it, too, and he was taking full advantage of the stares. He exited his door and opened mine with a grandiose gesture. I waited, trying not to melt under all the stares, while he retrieved my backpack. Then he walked me across the lot, past the gawkers, up the stairs and down the hall to my locker. Then he waited for me to collect my books for first period.

After class, he returned to carry my books. I let him without argument, and gratefully exited the room with him before Jessica could corner me alone. He nudged into me with his elbow gently, which earned a smile. "So, Miss Swan, your house or mine tonight?"

"I have to cook dinner for my dad, so maybe you want to come over after school? We're having lasagne. It's already made, so I just need to pop it in the oven an hour before we eat. You could even stay if you wanted to."

"I have to be home before dinner, but I'd love to drive you home and work on our history report a bit." He smiled sideways at me. "Maybe I can even meet your dad."

"Um, do you have a bullet-proof vest?" I laughed. "If so, you might want to wear it. You know, just in case."

Edward chuckled. "You don't bring home too many guys, I take it."

"Ha! That's one way to put it," I shook my head. "I've never really dated anyone before, so I haven't brought anyone home."

Edward's head snapped in my direction and he smiled at me slyly. I realized what I'd said and started backpedaling.

"Not that we're dating. I just meant—I mean..." I sighed a deep exhale and started nervously laughing. "Wow. Open mouth, insert foot. I didn't mean to imply that we were dating or that that's what I thought this was. It's just, that's when you normally bring home someone. So, I haven't done that. And I haven't really had a study partner before, either. So I haven't brought anyone home at all."

Edward chuckled again. "No offense taken. Except maybe that you make it sound like dating me wouldn't be a good thing..." He looked at me again, this time out of the corner of his eye, teasingly.

I laughed and put my hands over my face in a defensive gesture. I was dying of embarrassment. "No, I didn't say that. I just don't think that's really what's going on here. Or, you know. Not right now. I mean, our history report is what's going on. That's all I meant. I'll shut up now."

He laughed softly and put his arm lithely around my shoulders, pulling me slightly closer to him. "Well, history report it is. I'll have to continue to wear you down, I see."

. . . . .

The rest of the day passed in a haze of drinking in Edward's presence between classes, trying not to stare at him during classes and avoiding Jessica with everything I was worth in the spare moments in between. I had a yearbook meeting during lunch, so I didn't get a chance to see if Edward would invite me to sit with his family. Then again, the meeting also protected me from having to avoid Jessica. And Rosalie.

When the final bell rang, I was so ready to burst out the doors and have Edward to myself for a few hours until Charlie came home and a whole new set of interrogations began. But I could wait to worry about that until at least six o'clock.

. . . . .