OOO Chapter 36

Paradise

EPOV:

It was difficult for Bella to say goodbye to her father after only two weeks in Forks. He'd used up most of his vacation time when he came to Los Angeles in February, and only would have enough time left to come back for Tanya's second birthday in August and that would be the last time we'd see him until we came back for Christmas. This year, mom and dad were going to go to France to spend Thanksgiving with Alice so Bella and I were staying in California with Jessica.

We were now on our final flight to the Bahamas and only had about thirty minutes left until we landed. Alice and Alec's flight wasn't due until two hours after we landed so they were going to meet us at the hotel. Mom and Dad had reserved two suites for all of Alice and Alec were staying in the same suite and we were since it was three bedrooms and Mom didn't want to deal with problems with Dad with Alice and Alec sharing a room. Dad could be a little protective of his only daughter, especially since none of us had met Alec. Jasper told me that he thought he was a nice enough guy when he met him. I didn't understand how he could be so calm and accepting about the whole thing. I would never be able to handle the thought of Bella dating someone else without throwing some kind of fit that I'm not ashamed to admit would involve a good amount of tears.

Tanya was currently sleeping in Mom's arms where she and Dad were sitting two rows in front of us. Which Bella and I were relieved about, we had worried that the excitement of all the flying would put her off her nap schedule. She had going back and forth between us and my parents when she crawled up into mom's arms, laid her head on mom's shoulder, and was asleep minutes later.

Before I knew it the flight attendants were going around having us prepare for landing. I had spent the last two weeks excited about spending time with my girls on the beach. I was excited to take Tanya to the beach and teach her how to make sand castles.

Three hours later we had gotten settled into our hotel. We had unpacked, changed our clothes and we were now sitting on the floor of the main living area playing with Tanya and waiting for Alice and her boyfriend to arrive when there was a knock at the door.

I jumped up and ran for the door. I opened the door and Alice immediately threw herself at me. It had been way too long since I'd seen my sister. I hugged her back, "I missed you, Alice!"

"I know," she sniffled before pulled away from me. "Edward, this is Alec. Alec this is Edward." I shook his hand and moved to let them into the house. I promised Bella and Jasper that I would be nice and give the guy a chance. Even though I still believed that Alice belonged with Jasper.

Alice ran past me, into the room and through herself at Bella before noticing Tanya on the floor watching them, "Oh, she's so big! She's so much bigger than she looks on Skype." She dropped to her knees, "Hey beautiful girl, I'm your Aunt Alice. Do you remember me?"

"No." I smiled because poor Alice didn't realize that even though Tanya had a large vocabulary, 'no' was still one of her favorite words.

"You remember Alice, sweetie. You see her on the computer," Bella said to her.

"NO!" Then she started giggling.

"You do remember me, don't you. May I have a hug?" Alice smiled as she finally caught on.

"NO!" Tanya laughed again before jumping up and running for me, "Daddy!" she yelled holding her arms up for me to pick her up. I grabbed her into my arms and she gave me a hug. It wasn't really personal to Alice, and I told her that, "She'll warm up to you quickly. I guarantee that by bedtime she won't let you put her down."

Alice nodded and she and Alec went to put their bags in their room and change for dinner. By the time that they came back out it was time to meet Mom and Dad at their room. As we were leaving, and we were ensuring that we had the room keys, I gave one key card to Alice. We only got two, so each couple was going to have to share and then we made our way upstairs.

Mom cried when she got ahold of Alice. I didn't think that either of them were going to be willing to let go of the other for a long time. We all stood there waiting for them to stop hugging but finally Alec turned to Dad and went ahead and introduced himself to Dad.

We gave Mom and Alice a few more minutes of hugging before Dad intervened, "Ladies. We have reservations for dinner." Mom finally calmed down and let Alice go, but ran off to the bathroom saying that she just needed a minute.

The resort that we were staying at had several restaurants. Dad had chosen to make reservations at one of the more casual family friendly ones for our first night here. I was glad. We were all tired from traveling all day, especially Alice and Alec who'd been traveling since yesterday.

It took Bella and I awhile to figure out what we could order on the menu that was acceptable to her diet. I was glad that we had dad here to help us navigate the menu. This was going to be different for us. We had stopped going out to eat after Bella's heart attack in February. It was mostly a matter of me being busy at school and Bella being bored at home and cooking meals made her feel useful. Well, that is after Mom left, but strangely, Mom cooked for us for the same reason. Besides, it was cheaper to eat at home and we'd saved a lot of money.

As soon as the waiter left after taking our orders, Dad smiled at looked over at this strange boy that his daughter had brought with her on our vacation, "So, Alec, tell me about yourself."

A/N:

I'm sorry for the delay. I wish that I had a good excuse but all I have to that my son has been hounding me to read the Hunger Games since we say the movie last March. I finally gave in and read them. I wish that I could say that I guarantee updates will come sooner, but I really cannot write at work anymore which means I only have the evenings, after I cook, clean, workout, yell at my son to do his homework and practice his violin 5 million times, and shower. And that doesn't include the night I have to take my son to his hour long music lessons. I will not let too much more than a week go by between updates but I also have to write updates for Assumptions which may go to permanently updating every other week. We just have to see if I can get a chapter of that written every week. I'm sorry but I just can't help it right now.

Not long ago, I was going through my twitter friends and I was deleting people that had flounced the fandom well over a year ago and somehow I managed to delete people that I didn't mean to. I've been getting messages from people asking why I unfollowed them and until that moment I had been unaware that I had. SO, if I unfollowed you by accident, I apologize and ask that you let me know so we can rectify the situation. If you want to follow me, I'm branson101 there. I do tend to mention how updates are coming along and if there will be delays in posting. I also talk about my son and my five cats a lot and I vent about my job. I'm also on facebook as branson writering. I've promised myself to go post over there more this year.