LWFE
Ch 7
After Bella had eaten and cleaned up, she flicked trough the large number of channels only to find there was nothing that she wanted to watch.
Falling back onto the bed, she let out a long breath in frustration.
Over the last week she had fallen into a routine of sorts, spending the evenings in the company of a guy whom she'd really grown fond of and now she was completely at a loss.
She eyed her cell sitting just out of reach on the bedside table and had the urge to call Edward. It wasn't too late yet, so she grabbed it and searched for his number.
With her thumb hovering over the button, she hesitated for a moment and before she could overthink it, she pressed down and waited for Edward to answer.
The call went straight to voicemail.
She'd be lying to herself if she felt she wasn't somewhat crestfallen. She chose not to leave a voice message and convinced herself he was in the shower or something and that he would call her back at some point.
Only half an hour away, Edward had checked into a motel near the airport and was still fuming that he'd let himself become so emotionally invested in Bella Swan.
He wasn't angry at her.
She hadn't revealed much of her personal life and she never promised him anything either. This was totally on him and he'd fallen for her hook line and sinker.
Seeing her and roidboy get all cosy before they even made it out of out of the carpark felt as though his heart had been ripped out of his chest and left to bleed all over the tarmac.
Completely in his own head and brooding like a school kid, Edward startled when his phone rang.
Picking it up, the screen showed Bella's number and in that moment he made a decision, and with a shake of his head, he let it go to voicemail and turned the bloody thing off.
It would be better if they weren't friends, he was not going to let himself get mixed up with someone who was clearly invested in someone else.
Been there done that and it didn't end well.
As Bella expected, she didn't sleep well that night. If she wasn't thinking about how she missed Edward's company, she was dreading the day to follow and even when she did manage to drift off, her sleep was interrupted by visions of her past, the heat, the flames and the feeling of betrayal.
All the things that caused her to turn her back on the country she was born in.
The next morning, Bella waited for Jacob in the lobby. He had asked her to join him for breakfast, but her stomach was all tied up in knots and there was no way she could eat without it coming back up.
Jake bounded towards her looking very satisfied with himself.
"Missed out on a bonza breakfast Bells," he said brightly, laying on his flat Aussie accent and even in Bella's anxious state, she couldn't help but smile at his jovial mood.
"What's got you so cheery on a Will reading kind of morning?" Bella asked, pointing out the irony.
"Ah you know Bells, a little bit of this and a little bit of that," he answered waggling his eyebrows and rubbing is hands together.
"I bet," Bella said suspiciously, paying closer attention to his face.
He was baked.
Which came as absolutely no surprise to her.
Only he could muster that sort of pep in his step at the most inopportune moment. Tact was not his strong point and he was forever the opportunist. Bella knew Jacob would be sniffing around if there was something in it for him and that was whether that something was intended for him or not.
He was welcome to it.
Bella just wanted to get things out of the way. Beyond the formalities, she had every intention of leaving any material gains for the vultures to scrap over.
The pair headed outside into the crisp morning air where Jacobs car was waiting for them.
Bella snatched the keys off the valet.
"Hey!" Jacob protested.
"You're a kite, I'm driving." Bella said, dismissing him and sliding into the driver's seat.
"You haven't changed one bit," Jacob said with a grumble.
"Neither have you." Bella countered, before entering the address into the GPS.
Jacob had developed the need to take the edge off when it came to dealing with his mother, and Bella - true to form – always had the knack to be the wrong place at the right time and take the tiller to steer the ship away from the rocks.
"Always riding in on that white horse of yours aren't you?" Jacob asked with a slight slur. He didn't expect an answer and instead he received that long suffering look she always got in these situations.
Jacob had followed Bella's career on and off for years. While he didn't think himself anything quite as sinister as a stalker exactly, there was something about her that had captured him from the moment his mother had married Bella's old man and dragged him to Adeline Station all those years ago.
Jacob reminisced. "Are you still a crack shot these day's Bella?" he asked randomly.
Jacob was seven years older than Bella and even at five years old, she was far more capable than he was at twelve.
The little girl could ride horses, help her dad fix fences, use a radio, keep her room tidy and could shoot a tin can off the fence with an air rifle at fifty metres.
The latter was the coolest thing he'd ever seen, and he wanted to learn too - much to his mother's horror - so Victoria made Charles promise to stop teaching his young daughter how to shoot, because there was no way she'd let any son of hers become an uncivilised outlaw.
He spent his semesters at boarding school and his holidays bored out of his skull on the endless plains of the Kimberly. He liked the motor bikes and he liked the blokes that worked on the station... but they had a job to do and it wasn't to entertain his obnoxious arse.
He resented every moment of it and in his fourteenth year, he took a dirt bike across county and headed to Derby, a town a bit over a hundred kilometres away.
He found a group of kids and after getting caught by the cops riding around on the unregistered bike, he had to come up with a plan if he wanted to hang out with them without sneaking around.
He tried to convince his mother to let him find a holiday job if that meant he could stay in town with one of the boys and his parents.
Seeing Jacob so unhappy at the homestead and with him showing a tendency for getting into mischief, Victoria reluctantly agreed on the condition that everything checked out and that he'd still have to spend two days a week at the station or she'd feel neglected by her own son.
With Jacobs idle hands showing clear propensity for the devil's work, Charles Swan didn't mind one bit that the boy wasn't yet another thing he had to manage amongst everything else.
Victoria had made it quite clear that Jacob was her son and therefore Charles kept his mouth shut where parenting him was concerned.
Jacob really started to look forward to the holidays after that.
"Psht," Bella made a huff at Jacob's question, snapping the man out of his daydream.
"Jacob, I live in a country with the second amendment. What do you think? Besides, you don't think dad actually ever stopped letting me shoot do ya?"
Jacob smiled at that, "Of course he didn't," he said, supposing out loud.
Bella slowed and turned into a driveway to an underground carpark.
She looked up at the trendy three story office building while they waited for the security gate to open and a pang of unease ripped through her.
She drew in a long breath and let it out again.
"Nervous?" Jacob asked.
Bella nodded.
"Relax, it's just family." Jacob said, trying to sound casual and thankful he'd lit up earlier.
"Yeah, family at a will reading, what could possibly go wrong?" Bella quipped.
Jacob didn't say anything to that. He knew that they weren't really family and wondered if it was true that blood was thicker than water.
They'd all find out pretty soon.
They were silent in the elevator on the way to the top floor and when it dinged, the doors opened to reveal a lobby with a reception desk not unlike Bella imagined most legal offices looked like.
There was no one at the front desk so the pair waited.
One of the doors down a hallway could be heard cracking open and shortly after a guy in his mid-twenties appeared.
"Oh!" he said, "are you here for the Swan hearing?"
Bella and Jacob nodded in unison.
"Ok, come this way, they're waiting for you."
"Great," Bella said under her breath. The pair hadn't arrived late, but she never liked it when she was last to show up, it always felt as though she was being tardy. Further to that, she just knew that the woman who was waiting for them would have something to say about it.
They were shown the way and their escort opened the door to let them through.
In the large board room there was a typical long boardroom table with Victoria sitting at the head on one side and who she assumed was Jenks on the other. There were also two additional places set with paperwork.
Bella could feel Victoria's eyes bore into her before the woman rose to her feet and greeted her son.
"Jacob sweetheart," she said, before kissing him on both cheeks in her usual upper class phony performance.
With a brief glance towards Bella, Victoria actually made an effort and uttered her name even if it did come with a contemptuous nod of her head before she turned her attention back to her boy to scrutinise him.
"I hope you didn't drive," she said in mild irritation before wiping off the red lipstick she had left on his face.
Jacob, feeling chastised shook his head discretely. Gone was is relaxed demeanour, his mother never missing a thing.
"Come," she said dismissively, "I have other things to do today, so let's get this over and done with."
Once all seated at the table, Victoria glared at Mr Jenks, "I really don't have any idea why you called all of us here, couldn't this just be signed off on and it be done?" she said non too kindly.
Jenks started. "Well Mrs Swan... "
"Noir, Mrs Noir" Victoria said, correcting him and letting everyone know she had taken back her first married name.
Bella looked at Jacob suspiciously, who only shrugged back helplessly.
Bella shook her head, she knew Jacob's father was still alive, Victoria had divorced him only six months before she married Charlie.
Mr Jenks cleared his throat. "Well, Mrs Noir. As you know Mr Swan had made a provision in the ownership of the property on the title of document 1A to be transferred wholly into your name on the first of July next year."
Bella was not surprised, nor did she care to contest the directive.
Victoria sent Bella a triumphant smirk for only a second before she registered that the date was more than six months away.
"But.." Victoria started to utter before Mr Jenks held up a finger so he could continue.
"However, Ms Swan has been given power of attorney over the property, plant, buildings and contents including the business and holdings known as Adeline Station PTY LTD by the way of a conditional lease due to expire on..." Jenks flicked through some pages, "the thirty first of June with an option to renew for a further five years.
"The new lease has already been prepaid and is held in trust for Ms Swan. Should she wish to renew the lease, the provision has been made to automatically release the amount to be calculated at the market value of the property and thereby paying off all the debts. Should she not wish to renew the lease, the funds will be transferred instead to Ms Swan and leave the property with any debt remaining in Mrs Noirs possession.
"What?" All three questioned at once.