Jacob lifted the spoon that was smeared with black and white icing and licked. He dropped the spoon on his plate with a clink and smiled at the uncharacteristically smug look on Bella's face.

Caleb was snickering at the background while Mercy watched everybody else with her big black eyes. The Three, Brian and Damien looked flabbergasted, disgusted and envious at the same time.

Bella held up a hand to them and wriggled her fingers. "I told you he can finish a whole cake by his lonesome. Pay up. "

Still shocked at Jacob's display of X-treme eating, they pushed tenners into Bella's hand without taking their eyes of a laughing Jacob.

Bella counted the money in her hands with an unmistakably scrooge-like glee. He supposed he should be disturbed by Bella's sudden turn to the mercenary but Jacob knew how she felt, he felt it himself in his earlier days with JEQ. Every penny counted. Besides, the way she squinted her eyes and made a show of counting the money was just so damn cute.

Bella's fingers paused in her counting and then aimed a dirty look at Brian. "Nice try, Bry. Fork up the other 5."

Jacob snickered when he saw that Brian did in fact play the oldest trick in the book, crinkling the money so you would see there were more than one bill. Brian groused and grumbled but slid another five toward her.

"Hey, if you couldn't afford it, you shouldn't have made the bet." She admonished him and started counting the money again.

Brian slid further down the booth they were seating in, due to their large numbers they took the dinner party to the cafe rather than upstairs at Bella's place. The younger boy pouted. "Well, who knew that he could do it? Who eats a whole cake anyway?"

"How about the people who goes on those 'all you can eat' contest?" Tina offered and Brian scowled. "You're raining on my rant here, T."

Lulu still wore a half disgusted, half awed expression on her face. "Where do you put it all?" She eyed Jacob's flat abs. The soft green T shirt he wore didn't so much as hid but emphasize his muscular body.

"He probably throws up after." Misha mumbled and stabbed her piece of pie. She was never happy when she lost a bet. Especially when she lost money.

"Maybe Jake has an extra stomach, you know, like cows." Tina smirked.

Jacob laughed. "Don't be a sour loser, guys. Just so you know, when it comes to food, don't bet against me." He paused and tilted his head. "In fact, just don't bet against me."

Bella rolled her eyes. "On that note, all this goes to the wish jar." She smiled when everyone of her crew beamed.

Caleb swallowed the rest of his strawberry cheese cake. "Wish jar?"

"It's like our road trip money. Once every three months, we pick a place to go and break the jar." Tina nudged her piece of cake to Caleb and he flashed her a grin.

"How can you eat one whole cake and still look like you?" Lulu narrowed her eyes at Jacob.

"Great metabolism."

"It's just not him, you know." Caleb pointed at Jacob with his spoon. "You should take a look at his friends, they all eat as much and look like that."

"You guys were probably a government hormonal mutant project." Misha snickered.

Bella shot him a laughing look from where she was stuffing money into a jar. He ignored it and just smiled.

Lulu looked at her hips and thighs. "Ugh, I am so hating you right now."

"We all hate you." Bella took her seat beside Jacob and grinned. Jacob grinned back, "Sure, sure."

Tina threw them a look. "Bella likes to say that. With the exact same tone."

Bella shrugged, a little bit embarrassed. "I guess I picked it from him and Billy."

"Billy?"

"Jacob's dad."

Caleb suddenly lifted his head from his almost empty plate. "Say, I almost forgot. The dentist dude came back with an offer, Jake."

"The dentist dude?"

"Yeah, you know. The one who keeps giving you offers for your bike."

Jacob sipped coffee. "Who talked to him?"

"I did."

"And you said…"

Caleb swallowed the last piece of his cake and stared mournfully at the empty plate. Mercy rolled her eyes and shoved her plate of cake at him. He grinned and nudged his shoulder against hers. "That you weren't interested in selling. But when I did, he just hiked up the price."

Jacob shook his head. "Keep telling him that, maybe one day he'll believe it."

"That bike over there?" Damien craned his head to see Jacob's black Harley at the front of the store. "Sweet ride."

Jacob nodded, graciously accepting praise for his baby.

"He seems determined, Jake. You sure you don't want to sell?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Sentimental reasons." Jacob perched his arm on the back of Bella's chair and smiled. "It was a birthday gift from Bella."

"What?" Bella blinked then turned her head to look at the bike in question before looking back at Jacob. "You mean that's the old Harley Sprint?"

"Yup. Total make over but the skeleton is still the same."

Bella looked at him as a thousand emotions passed through her heart. Her eyes felt hot and she blinked them fast to discourage tears. As if he knew how she felt, Jacob's fingers curled on her shoulder and squeezed gently. He ducked her head to look at her and when their eyes met, she smiled and in that smile was love and gratitude.

"Woah. Wait up!" Caleb waved his hands around. "Bella, you gave Jacob a bike for his birthday? My birthday is coming up. Gimme some of that love."

Bella laughed. "It wasn't like that. What I gave him was crap, I got it for free from one of the neighborhood boys who wanted to throw it away." She jerked a thumb to the man beside her.

"He did all the work." A stray thought caught in her mind. "What happened to mine?"

"She's in the garage actually, she's one of our teaching tools. The part-timers get to dismantle and put her back together again."

Bella smiled, her eyes soft at the thought of her motorcycle and the days she and Jacob spent riding their bikes.

"Wait a minute." Now it was Lulu who interrupted their conversation. "You, Bella, had a bike? We're talking like a mini-bike here right? One of those toys?"

Bella huffed as if offended that her badass-ness was in question. "Of course not."

Tina gawked. "You had a bike? Did Jake let you ride it?"

"I did. She got the hang of it after a while."

"After how many trips to the ER?"

Jacob glanced at Bella. "They really know you, don't they?"

Bella scowled. "Hey, I was good at it."

"Jake, why in God's name did you let her get near a bike much less ride it?" Damien demanded. "I thought you were the responsible one in the relationship."

Jake took a moment to get his laughter under control before slyly saying, "You shouldn't underestimate Bella, you know. She was pretty wild back then. Cliff diving, riding bikes, inciting fights, running away from home."

"Jake!"

"What? You were."

Bella rolled her eyes but can't help but smile at the way he grinned at her. Besides, when you think about it, he wasn't actually lying. It sort of tickled her that the most dangerous, not to mention supernaturally charged, moments in her life could be summed up in one harmless sentence. She pressed her lips together. "Well, I'm reformed now. I'm perfectly ordinary."

Jacob scoffed. "Yeah, keep telling yourself that."

Their eyes met, amusement and affection glowing softly in their eyes. Jacob stroke her cheek with a gentle finger as conversation rose softly around them, both of them not noticing the eyes that watched them closely.

"Hey, what happened to my car?" Bella asked suddenly between pouring a cup of ice lemon tea.

Jacob picked up a cookie. "It's Caleb's car now."

"The old monster used to be your car?" Caleb asked with a grin.

"Hey, be respectful. That car is old faithful, it never disappointed me. Even once."

Caleb laughed. "Yeah, I'm starting to think that Jake did a ritual sacrifice to keep it running."

Jacob leaned back on his chair and smirked. "Why do you think I always need new part-timers?

"So, anyone going to tell me why you guys felt the need to mess up the kitchen? Jacob asked while he scooped ice cream into a bowl. He raised an eyebrow when Bella stifled a groan.

"Oh, that." She waved a dismissively but Jacob was intrigued by the soft color that rose up from her neck to her cheeks. "It's nothing."

"Uh, huh. You do that often?"

"Once a month." Lulu chimed in. "It helps with Bella's OCD tendencies."

Jacob laughed, loud and long. "You noticed that, huh?"

"Are you kidding me?" Tina scoffed. "You should've seen how she was the first day we opened."

"I wasn't that bad." Bella mumbled and slid down her chair when Tina hit her with a dirty look.

"Bella, you tackled me because you thought you saw a speck of dirt on the plate I was carrying."

"There was!"

"It was chocolate powder! And I was carrying chocolate cake!"

"And the debrief after we closed? It was all very name, rank, serial number." Misha emphasized each word with hitting the table with her fist.

Bella smacked a hand on her glowing red face but her so-called friends wasn't done embarrassing her just quite yet.

"I once caught her rearranging everything in the kitchen. At three in the morning." Lulu recounted, she always had to come in early to prepare.

"I couldn't sleep." Bella pouted.

"What happened to watching TV?"

"I didn't want to watch TV."

"So you rearrange the utensils instead?" Misha scoffed. "How is that normal?"

"I think she rewashed all the dishes once." Brian grinned when a kernel of pop corn bounced against his head courtesy of Bella.

As her pack detailed all her humiliating past actions, Jacob stared at Bella and shook his head slowly.

"What? You can't tell me that you don't prowl around at night at your garage and check everything?" Bella demanded mulishly.

"Actually, I don't. I have staff to do that." His face set into an unbelievably condescending expression that made her want to punch him-or kiss him. She wasn't exactly sure.

He sent her a pitying glance. "We need to trust the people we work with, Bells."

Her pack nodded seriously in tandem. Caleb chortled. Even Mercy crackled a smile.

"Oh, shut up and eat your ice cream." Punch him, she thought, definitely punch him. She tried to remember where she put the crow bar they used to open crates.

"So, riding bikes, cliff diving, running away from home and picking fights?" Lulu smiled sweetly when Bella glared at her. "I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. When you're drunk you get pretty riled up."

Now it was Jacob who perked up. "You got Bella drunk?"

Damien snickered. "We had our first mentioned in the papers, so we celebrated."

Jacob winced at the thought of drunk Bella but was interested enough to ask. "How long did she last before she fell flat on her face?"

He didn't bat an eyelash when Bella smacked his chest with a hand. Instead he caught it, kissed the back of her hand and laced their fingers together. Bella blinked, blushed at the look on her friends' face and settled back into her seat.

The crowd snickered at the display.

Lulu leaned forward, her face excited as if she was going to share a delicious secret. "She danced. On a table."

They laughed as Jacob gaped at them with his mouth open. "She danced? On a table?" He turned to Damien. "Tell me I'm not just hearing things."

Damien smiled, amused. "You're not hearing things."

"Pictures?" He asked again, everybody else, excluding Bella, snorted at the hopeful look on his face.

"I'll email you."

Jacob clinked his glass against Damien's. "Excellent."

"Ha. Damien, you're fired." Bella scowled at Damien.

"No, can do, sweetie. You promised me a job for life, remember?"

"I changed my mind."

"Ever heard of breach of contract?"

Jacob was delighted when he heard Bella growled.

"Let me get this straight. She danced on a table and didn't break her neck? Did she break somebody else's neck?" Jacob confirmed.

Misha pointed a fork at Jacob, her face serious. "That's the thing, something about being drunk actually makes her coordinated."

"She was pretty good, actually. Very sinuous, very sexy. Almost graceful." Tina agreed.

Brian joined in with a snigger. "The alcohol probably short-circuited her brain and reset her motor skills."

Jacob laughed so hard he had to wipe tears out of his eyes. "Oh, man. I've always known there was something wrong with your brain, Bells, but seriously." He flashed Lulu a wicked smile.

"Have any tequila around? Wait, what's your poison, Bells?"

"Just wait and I'll poison you." Bella threatened, glaring down at her cup.

"His metabolism would probably suck all of it and ask for seconds."

Bella blinked at Jacob's thoughtful and only half-joking 'probably'.

"I'm not all that bad, you know." Bella played with her bowl of ice cream, meshing and twirling the spoon around.

"Bells, your OCD is awful. Charming but awful. I mean just look at your kitchen." Jacob waved a hand in the air.

"I didn't do anything to the kitchen. They trashed it."

"Not that kitchen, your kitchen. The one upstairs."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's the exact replica of Charlie's place."

Bella gasped. "No, it's not. It doesn't look like Charlie's at all."

"No, but the placement of everything is."

"It is not."

Jacob's fingers curled around the back of her neck as he leaned forward until their noses touched. "You want to bet on that, Bella honey?"

In a show of spine, Bella bristled. "Damn right I do."

Jacob's wide, even lips widened into a grin. His eyes sparkled with glee. "Oh, the game is on."

A/N: Ah yes finally. I know. I know. New chapter will be posted tomorrow. Thanks for all the support guys, you all rock. And thanks for following this story, getting all passionate and even stalkery. LOL.

Shenannigans and Jacob/Bella fluff will continue with the next chapter, as will the date!

You should all check out my The Passing Years Facebook Group, called Everything About The Passing Years and my twitter DFJULES for updates and snippets!