Disclaimer: Still own nothing, including songs and song titles.

Would have had this up last night, but I spent all of last night and most of today at random Christmas parties, getting beaten up by cousins, neices and nephews who refuse to accept what I bought them because they wanted a DS, not games for it...even though their parents bought them the stinkin' DS.

So, anyhow, sorry that I could not get you all your quote, but my computer crashed again, so this had to be rewritten yesterday, but not during the Christmas parties...and not during today...

Anyhow, here's the newest chapter, hope you like it because some of it got summarized in the end.

*sigh* MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Chapter Thirteen

EPOV

We were early. I half contemplated going to a flower shop close by and getting her roses as compensation, though it would be half jokingly.

I park against the curb and go to open Bella's door, only to notice that she appears to be doing perfectly fine on her own, small black clutch purse in hand. I think that was one of the things I found so attractive about her; she refused to need a shoulder to lean on. This fierce independence sparked in me a tenderness I had never felt before. I felt as though she needed someone to watch after her, to take her heart off of her sleeve and protect it, kissing each break away.

Of course, Bella Swan was not offering her heart and I was not looking for it…not yet, at least.

I watched Bella look over my car appraisingly.

"How many cars do you have?" She asked, I think I hear a note of contempt.

"Two," I say, trying to keep the mood light. "However, this one is very special. It does not get out of the garage often. Only on special occasions."

Bella turns toward me as I offer her my arm. She accepts as I escort her into the restaurant. "Like every single date you go on with your costars?" She smirks jokingly. I frown at her. She sees my expression change before I can wipe away the frown and she immediately backtracks. "I mean, I hear you have a playboy reputation. Just from the way you bounce between that director…Tanya, is that her name?...and Victoria…who seemed very irate yesterday when you were speaking with me…" She opens her mouth wide, only to close it. "I dug myself a nice hole here, so I think I'll just curl up and die in it," she says with a joking smile on her face.

I laugh and push back a piece of her hair which has fallen over her face. The contact comes as a surprise to her, but I wish she would stop flinching from under my touch. Each time she flinches, I feel guilty for daring to chance a caress, especially on camera. I sigh. "I find it very humorous when you make assumptions based on what other people have told you. You take each thing for the honest to God truth."

She bites her lip as we walk through the front door of the restaurant. "Is it?" Her timid response comes just as people rush to help us. I'm sure that, since we were here twenty-five minutes early, a table had miraculously appeared from thin air as a rather flirtatious waitress shows us to a table.

I pull out Bella's chair and allow her to be seated before I go to my side of the table. Though there are several other parties in the room, the setting seems intimate. I watch Bella take her napkin and place it in her lap only to twist it around. I was glad they didn't use paper.

As soon as the waitress leaves, I turn back to Bella. "No, what you have heard is not true. I stopped dating exclusively after I turned nineteen."

Bella grimaced. "You stopped dating right when I stopped watching movies."

"Oh?" Another curiosity. Bella didn't watch movies, but she wanted to star in one. I puzzled over this as the waitress came back. I order from the wine list without even looking at her.

Bella freezes. "That's a red wine. I don't think that's the best idea…"

I see her apprehension. I could not read her as easily as I could read most people, but I saw in her face her reasoning: she thought her temper would get the better of her and the reminder of how she believed she had hurt me would only make her more apprehensive.

"A nice white wine, then?" I ask her. She looks almost shocked that I'm even asking for her opinion.

She looks at the wine list and shrugs, as though she has never been asked for her opinion on a date before. No wonder she flinched away instinctively from men. She had never met one who actually would treat her as if she had a brain.

"Order what you like," she says, softly, still twisting the napkin, though this time her hands are above the table.

As soon as the waitress leaves, I reach across the small table and take her hand which is twisting the napkin. "Bella," I say to her, softly. "There's no need to be nervous." The jolt of electricity that travels between us every time we touch becomes easier to ignore. The pull I feel toward her is something which I do not ignore.

Bella looks at me with doe-like eyes. She eventually breaks eye contact to look at the table cloth. "This was a bad idea," she whispers.

I shake my head. "Bella," I say softly back to her. "Do you honestly believe that?"

Bella takes a deep breath, still not looking up from the cloth. "No…I mean…some times…I just…" she struggles to find the right words. "I feel like everything is so…surreal." She musters a small, bitter laugh. "Why did you ask me out to dinner, anyhow?"

I look at her full, red lips. How I want to kiss them, take away any doubts that she has. "Bella," I shake my head. Her name, rolling from my tongue like a caress. I'm pretty sure I see her shiver. "Are you alright?"

Bella looks up at me now. "Yes…" she mutters. She glances around before looking back at our clasped hands. She is fighting instinct to rip her hands away and something else which tells her to follow it and leave her hands inside mine. I can tell from the way her body quivers. I have seen her behave this way on-camera, as well. "Maybe I should just go…" she begins.

"No," I say, sternly. She narrows her eyes. I see the resilience flare in them. "Bella, I asked you to dinner because I wanted you to come to dinner with me, not to intimidate you, not to make you feel threatened by me," her face softens to my words. "Please…stay for dinner."

She opens her mouth about to protest, and, so, I stop her with my words. "I'm asking for one dinner, nothing else. If it is…unpleasant, it is not an experience you have to repeat," I say, giving her a choice for future situations. I did not want her to feel obligated toward me in any sense. I knew that her harsh independence would not allow her to be.

The waitress arrives, inconveniently, and I drop Bella's hands, drawing back from her. After placing the cart with the wine on it next to the table as well as leaving a glass to our right, the waitress turns to her first for her dinner order, though it is only out of politeness which she does so. I barely hear what the flustered Bella orders before I turn to the waitress and say, "I would like the same."

Bella sips the wine delicately. I watch the wine as it travels down her throat, imagining my hands traveling along her neck, imagine kissing her now wet lips, licking the wine away, appreciating her rather than showing her that all men were monstrous. I'm not sure if Bella notices, but she looks at me, wide-eyed again. "Edward?"

"Hmm?" I try to feign disinterest as I pick up the wine glass and sip from it.

"Thank you," she says, quietly, "For getting my job back."

This is a puzzlement. I'm quite startled, enough so that I would not have trust myself if I had had wine left in my mouth. I told Emmett he was forbidden to tell her that I had threatened Rose, that I had quit until Rose had begged on hand and knee for both of us to come back. "How did you know?"

Bella looks very smug. "I guessed." I see the lie.

I laugh. "You're a bad liar."

Bella rolls her eyes. "Yes. Very bad liar, pretty good actress, though." She takes a sip of wine. "Ok, so, Emmett mentioned it when he became tired of me mentioning it to him, but you can't tell him I told you."

She was correct in assuming that I would be upset, but incorrect in assuming that I would immediately go out to beat Emmett. "I'm glad that you can…appreciate the job," I said, unsure of what else to say.

"How'd you do it?" She asks. As the waitress sets our food down, I notice for the first time that we had been leaning closer and closer to one another over the table. I make no effort to back up as I wave the waitress away.

I shake my head. "It was very selfish, really," I say, hoping she will dismiss it, assuming me to be the pampered Hollywood star.

Bella twirls pasta around her fork. "That's not a very creative answer. You're begging the question." She pulls the pasta off the fork, baring her teeth. Whether it was supposed to be provocative or not, it makes something flare inside which I have not been accustomed to: lust.

Had I been the playboy she assumed me to be, I would have already been trying to get her to stop eating and come home with me. The things she did were unintentionally alluring, or so I assumed. She seemed too innocent to be a seductress like Victoria and too morally adept to be like the morally inept Tanya.

Why couldn't Rosalie have been trying to get me to go to premieres, dinner, dates, dances…absolutely anywhere that this goddess was?

I sigh and pull my eyes away from her mouth. "I threatened to quit. I actually did when she did nothing that made it appear she believed me."

Bella nodded, appraisingly. "So, you were the reason for the two day hiatus?" She says so jokingly, taking another bite of pasta.

My self-control is not what it could be. I make a mental note to kiss her fiercely tomorrow when we have to reenact her death. We were going out of order with the script, but I was suddenly grateful. "Yes," I said, slightly jokingly. "I gave us all a premature break."

Bella sipped her wine again and smirked. "Bet Rosalie flipped."

I nodded. "Actually, she did."

"I can imagine," she started moving pasta around on her plate. "Aren't you going to eat?" Her question is laden with concern. Quite honestly, I hadn't even noticed the food. I considered how I should answer before picking up pasta with my fork and eating it in small amounts.

Bella checked her watch constantly. She seemed to relax soon, though, after about an hour of us eating, throwing barbs, and talking about work. We soon began to exchange life stories, enough for me to find out that she had been a year behind me in school and that she had attended the same high school I had.

Through the night, I tried to place her face with the name from high school. It struck me then that she had been my lab partner in Biology and that she had not always been so fiery. She had acted like a frightened lamb throughout that class, keeping as close to the edge of the table as possible. I became increasingly cold toward her as the year wore on. I wondered whether I should feel sorry about it and then wondered why I had not felt this way about her in high school.

'Because I had been as cynical as she was,' I remind myself mentally. I thought that anyone who approached me at the age of seventeen was after something and could not genuinely like me. I think that was what shocked about Bella Swan. That was the year before I decided to move permanently to Los Angeles with my entire family.

I purposely avoid discussing Biology.

"Why did you leave Forks?" I ask her as she ignores what little is left of her pasta. She acted as though she was completely starving.

Bella shrugged. "Well…I got a full ride to New York University in their Musical Theatre department. That was a rarity in itself, so I knew I should take it. I was cast in an off-Broadway show almost as soon as I made my New York debut in NYU's showcase at eighteen. I scheduled all of my classes around rehearsals for the show and, soon, my career took off. Alice became my agent as she studied fashion design at the Art Institute of New York while she took business classes at NYU. She had to be the busiest person I ever met, but I was glad to have her as a roommate.

"My career took off pretty fast, I'll admit, though the money wasn't there initially. I remember the first apartment Alice and I moved into was roach infested and the plumbing didn't work! We had to put new drywall up. Imagine two nineteen year olds trying to put up drywall, one five foot tall, the other five-five and thinking she could do anything!" Bella laughed.

I could not help but smile with her. "And did you succeed in making it work?"

Bella grimaced. "Let's just say, it took weeks before we couldn't find plaster in our hair." I laugh. "We barely had enough cash to pay the electricity and Alice ended up dropping her design classes so that she could get a job. We lit the apartment with candles for a good year, but we did have heat and water by that time."

I felt guilty. She had lived in semi-poverty while I had been allowed to live a luxurious lifestyle of my choosing. This part of the story, I had heard from Alice once while they were still living this way. Alice had always been close to my family and, when she came asking for money, I did not deny her. I told her that she should not even bother paying it back. Alice had been closer to me than Rosalie and we lived in the same household. I would not let my chosen little sister starve. "And then?" I prompted. How had they gone from having nothing, to their names in lights.

"Well, my career had taken off already. It skyrocketed to leading roles in nearly everything! Alice was offered an internship and, with the connections she built she was able to become a partner to Jessica Stanley, some chick from high school, and they formed Mary Alice. Alice bought out Jessica's half of the company and now she owns it and does…everything. She's very hands-on. That company is her baby." Bella's smile seems bitter.

"And you? Are you as happy as Alice with your career…or is there something more?"

Bella seems startled by the question. "I…" she messes up her face into a confused pout. It was very childish and, also, very cute. She contemplated this for a second. "I want certain things which Alice is completely content without, but…yes. My life does revolve around acting."

The answer is heavily guarded…heavily weighted to account for any reaction. I let out a long breath before asking a question I know she will dodge. "Things such as…?" I gesture for her to continue.

Bella's mouth is wide open and I watch her snap it shut before placing a content mask in place of her surprise. "Childish things," she says with a smile. "It's all quite boring."

"Quite the contrary," I say, smiling back at her. "I think that any of your dreams would be quite fascinating simply for the fact that you are so unpredictable."

Bella looks at me, biting the corner of her lip. "It's nothing to be concerned with, nothing fascinating," she says, assuring. She had been about to tell me, I could see it. She wanted to confide in someone, but she was afraid of what people would think. I wasn't going to force anything out of her.

"And you? How did you get where you are now?" Bella's lilting voice breaks my thoughts.

I smile and think back through my life. I remember pain the most frequently. I sigh. It wouldn't hurt to sum up everything in a neat, rosy package, would it? "I was born in Chicago. My father was an architect, my mother had no career. When I was six my father was killed in a train accident and my mother, Elizabeth, was left to suffer through life. She died when I was seven of a hereditary disease. I was taken in by Carlisle and Esme, my adoptive parents at seven.

"By that time Esme had also taken in her twin niece and nephew and, though they were young, they were confident that they could care for me, as well. Carlisle was a doctor and made more than enough to provide for all of us. Esme restore antiques when she wasn't busy bearing over Rosalie, Jasper, and I like an overprotective mother hen." I can't help but laugh. I knew Bella knew I was summarizing. She had gone into detail, except about her parent's divorce as a baby and that was only because she could not remember a thing of it.

Bella smiles thoughtfully as she watches me laugh. "So you were taken in and raised by the Masens?"

Ah. Bella didn't know. Just as well. I was sure Alice would have told her all of this by now. "No…my parents, my biological parents, they were the Masens."

"Oh!" Bella said. "I'm sorry…I just…"

"No, no. Please don't apologize," I smile brightly at her, trying to wipe away any hurt she might think I was feeling. "I was raised by Dr. Cullen and his wife. Esme couldn't have children, but she always mothered us like we were much younger than we were. She more or less babied Alice when Jasper and Alice began dating."

"So…" Bella said, something in her brain clicking. "That's why Alice refers to you as 'Edward Cullen'." It wasn't a question, it was a statement.

"Yes. Alice knew. She had been hoping you figured it out, I suppose."

Bella muttered, "Yes, because she gave me so much to go off of."

I have to laugh at her.

She glances at her watch, her eyes widen, and then she jumps up from the table, collecting her purse. Her actions surprise me and I jump up from the table as well. I take her by the shoulders. "Bella, what's wrong?" Bella breathes in raggedly before laughing.

"Sorry. It's just…it's eleven. We've been talking for the past two hours! Alice probably thinks I have a curfew and I…"

I laugh. "It's alright, Bella, but you needn't worry. I'm sure Alice won't mind if I keep you out late."

She looks at me skeptically. "You wanna bet?"

Rule number one: When it comes to Bella Swan, don't bet against the odds.

As I escorted her back into her apartment, we talked animatedly. There seemed to be nothing either of us wanted to discuss, except work and, playfully, whether Alice would be angry.

I felt at a loss when we reached her door. Neither of us knocked, rather, we both stood there, facing each other.

Bella was the one to break the silence. "Tonight was…better than expected." Her smile was catching.

"In other words you enjoyed yourself, yet you don't want to admit it because you were with me," I say, jokingly.

Bella smile widens. "Yes. That is exactly what I mean."

I take her hand and raise it to my lips. I gently place a kiss on the back of her hand. "Goodnight, Isabella Swan." Even though I say it, neither of us move.

I reach my hand slowly toward her face, cupping the side of her face. I lean slowly closer, watching her eyes as they became heavily lidded. She leaned forward, swaying. I caught her by the waist and pulled her close to me with one arm. She doesn't object, rather she places her hands limply against my shoulders.

I move my lips to barely hover above hers before I stop. "Are you sure?" I whisper.

Bella looks at me, her eyes hazy, but she whispers one word coherently. "Yes."

That's all I needed to hear. I allow my lips to touch hers, plundering them, exploring. I run my tongue over her lips, asking for permission. She yields to me all too easily. Her arms wrap around my neck as I tangle my hand in her hair, holding her close, making sure that she is completely tangible, completely real.

The kiss becomes more heated as our tongues dance in a completely foreign pattern to me, one that leads me to explore the recesses of Bella's mouth. Her hands travel down my chest, exploring as I back her against the wall.

Lust was a driving force, a beast which neither of us could stop, nor could we will it to stop.

"Ahem," I hear the throat clearing as Bella and I force ourselves away from each other. Bella looks to the ground, embarrassed. I look to Alice who does look extremely irate. "I'm glad that you two are having a wonderful evening, but I would prefer you did so in a place that…oh, I don't know…somewhere private…like a bedroom in a secluded house or in the car would even be a better place, but I would prefer it if I didn't have to watch my innocent friend have sex in MY HALLWAY!"

Bella mumbles something that I don't catch. I'm not sure if Alice does, either. I look in the background to see the tall, Native American man who had been with Bella in the hospital. He looks like he could rip my throat out when he looks at me. I glare back at him, matching his fury.

Alice takes Bella's arm and begins to pull her inside, looking extremely uncomfortable by the man at her back. "Quickly say goodbye to Edward before Jacob kills him. I don't want to be front page news for anything but my highly successful line!"

Bella turns to me, her lips red and swollen from my kisses. I feel a pang of anger at myself, as though I had done something wrong for kissing her. Her eyes were wide and still hazy. I wanted to hold her close to me, but I refrained from so much as reaching out to her, afraid that the man behind Alice might very well commit murder.

"Goodbye, Edward," Bella says, her eyes bright as she said my name, her face lighting up with a smile. "I'll…see you in the morning, then."

"Goodbye, Bella," I answer her smile with one of my own. Alice pulls her inside, whispers something to her and I watch as she spins off inside the apartment. Jacob follows her.

Alice turns to me. "Do you know how boring clubbing is when the only person who would get drunk is on a date, intent on staying sober?" Alice sighs. She smiles. "I know you two would be perfect together." She laughs. "Oh, and if you see Emmett, please, make sure he's a little bit sober. I don't want to have to be the one watching him being drunk off his ass." Alice begins to close the door before she giggles and says, "Good night, Edward," so mischievously that I have to wonder what she has in mind for Bella later.

I walk to my car with a smile on my face.

Am I supposed to feel attached to someone I thought I hated?

Reviews= quotes this time! I promise! Sorry, I couldn't control my laptop!...but I do have the story on a flashdrive, so it's safe!