*BPOV*

Edward looked up at the thinning clouds in the sky with disdain. So that ruled out walking. And it wasn't as if we could run without attracting notice in the heart of the city.

Edward sighed and dialed a number on his phone.

"Hi, Alice. I guess you didn't see but Bella and I are in a bit of a jam and could use a ride if it wouldn't be too much trouble," he asked courteously. I could tell by the way he stared intently at the blacktop that the tips of his ears would be burning if he'd had a circulatory system.

Edward listlessly kicked a small rock into the street with enough force that it gouged a chunk of asphalt out of the road where it bounced.

I could hear Alice's tinkling laugh on the other end. "Oh, I saw alright! Thought you'd do a little sight-seeing up in the tower and your car got impounded while you were-"

"If you saw then why didn't-" he cut off Alice only to be interrupted himself.

"Because it was too funny not to let it play out naturally," Alice retorted with a snicker. "Relax, brother dear. I'm around the corner. If I'd been right on time, I wouldn't have gotten to hear you make this hilarious phone call," Alice laughed again.

"Very funny, Alice," Edward said acidly. He ended the call with the jab of his finger and shoved his phone back in his pocket.

Just as he did, the unmistakable growl of Emmett's Jeep could be heard a few blocks away. And then a moment later it came into view. From down the street, I could see Alice's spiky black hair poking just over the top of the steering wheel.

I wonder how many phone books she's sitting on, I wondered while trying to fight a smile. Edward snorted with laughter.

I stared at the approaching vehicle in confusion for a moment. Then it occurred to me that it's not like all three of us could fit in her Porsche, Carlisle's sedan would be parked at the hospital, and Rose didn't lend her car out to anybody.

As the Jeep roared up to the curb, Edward yanked open the passenger door and held out a hand to help me into the massive vehicle. I didn't need help, of course, which he well knew, but Edward was nothing if not chivalrous.

After I was seated, he closed my door then unceremoniously tossed the bulky floor cushions into the back. They were lumpy and misshapen from the candles we'd shoved inside their zippered covers for transport purposes.

Edward then jumped into the back seat behind me and shut the door a little more forcefully than was really necessary. A few minutes later, Alice dropped us off at the tow yard a few miles away. I could hear her cackling all the way down the road over the squeal of the all-terrain tires on the blacktop.

"Six hundred dollars?" I shrieked as Edward slid his credit card across the counter to an unconcerned-looking clerk whose thinning, wispy white hair was tied into a low ponytail at the base of his neck. "How do you sleep at night?!" I demanded accusingly.

Glancing at me from the side, Edward said my name under his breath, cautioning me with his tone.

"Just fine, beautiful," the smirking man winked at me and slid a yellow copy of the receipt across the counter to Edward who folded it in thirds and tucked it in the inside pocket of his coat.

Then to Edward, he crowed, "Got a feisty one, dontcha?" he jerked his chin in my direction and grinned revealing a mouthful of crooked tobacco-stained teeth.

"You have no idea," Edward replied with a smirk of his own.

"Good for you! It's no fun when they don't fight back a little," he hacked out a chest-rattling laugh.

I scowled at the man, curling back my lip a little to expose my teeth. Then I turned on my heel and stalked toward Edward who was walking purposefully toward the lot where the impounded cars were being held captive.

It was easy enough to spot the shiny silver Volvo among the other dirty, dented cars. Some of them had fenders and doors in colors that didn't match the original paint.

Cars that looked like they belonged to people who couldn't possibly afford the outrageous impound fees, much less the parking tickets affixed to their windshields or the $65 per day penalty for leaving a vehicle parked there overnight.

What were those people supposed to do? How could they pay the outrageous fees if they couldn't get to work?

The system seemed disproportionately punishing to those who didn't have a thousand bucks sitting around to bail their car out of jail when their only crime may have been missing a No Parking sign as Edward had.

Inside the small, stuffy office where we had just come from, I could hear a woman pleading with the vulgar clerk.

"Sir, please," she began, raising her tense voice over the fussing of a toddler on her hip. "If I'm not at work by nine, I'll lose my job, and how will I pay you then?" she reasoned.

"If you don't have cash, we accept credit cards and cashier's checks. And there's a payday loan place across the street."

"Do you have any idea how much interest they charge at those places?! Those loans are predatory!" The woman bit back in a quavering voice that was desperate and exasperated.

"Probably not $65 per day," he countered, unmoved by the woman's obvious distress.

I'd heard enough. While Edward reached into his pocket for his keys, I was backtracking toward the office.

"Bella?" Edward asked warily. I felt his eyes on my back as I marched into the office and slapped my credit card down on the counter. The crusty old clerk stared at me in disbelief.

"You seem like you're in a tough spot and I'd like to help if that's alright," I asked the young mother in a quiet voice, inching the shiny black AmEx toward the ponytailed man on the other side of the protective glass. The girl, who seemed barely older than me, looked like she couldn't believe her luck.

She was so relieved she started crying. "Thank you! Thank you so much! I don't know what I would've done if…"

"It was nothing," I promised, smiling at her sincerely. "I'm just glad I could help. The fees around here are highway robbery," I growled, glowering at the man on the other side of the bulletproof glass. Bulletproof but not vampire-proof, I thought acerbically.

I scrawled my signature onto an electronic pad and snatched the yellow receipt through the narrow rectangular cutout in the glass.

"Y'all come back now, ya hear?" the clerk laughed raspily as he speared the paid invoice over a thin silver spike on his desk, placing it on top of the growing stack of the day's previous thefts, er, receipts.

Edward was leaning arms-crossed against the rear wall, observing the entire interaction.

He held the door open for the woman and her child who exited first, and then me who trailed right behind. The woman, who'd told me her name was Krista, thanked me all the way out the door.

I waved as she put her little girl in a shabby little blue hatchback, one of several cars that had a child's car seat visible in the rear window.

"That was very nice of you, Mrs. Cullen," Edward purred in his velvet voice, a sexy smile tugging at his lips. His stone-solid arm slung lightly around my hips as he towed me through the door and headed back to the Volvo.

*EPOV*

"So what inspired that little act of kindness?" I asked with an easy smile as we were stopped at a red light on our way out of the city.

Bella frowned and shrugged. "That place just made me so mad," she scowled out the window and fisted her hands in her lap. I raised my eyebrows in surprise at the intensity of her ire.

The whole ordeal was inconvenient, sure. Embarrassing too, at least for me, the mind reader who was too wrapped up in making passionate love to my wife to realize my car was being towed in the first place.

Though truth be told, even if I'd been aware, I doubted I would have pulled myself from her arms to go do anything about it. Though I was extremely curious what had my usually even-keeled love so up in arms.

"It isn't fair! It isn't fair that you and I can go in there and slap down a credit card and be on our merry way because we can afford the...the RANSOM when somebody else like her," Bella motioned back toward the impound lot, "can make the same stupid mistake and be put out on the street because of it! It isn't fair!" she repeated furiously.

Brows furrowed, I nodded. "You're right. It's not," I agreed. "And that's just one instance where our government criminalizes the poor. There's the cash bail system, debtor's prisons, criminalization of the homeless...the list goes on and on," I murmured, shaking my head sadly.

When Bella sank back into a stormy silence, I reached across the center console and silkenly grazed the back of my hand across her cheek.

"What are you thinking?" I breathed.

Bella frowned again. "I'm thinking that you all have your causes and charities. You bring music instruction to inner-city youth and Esme and Rose have their foundations for victims of domestic violence. Jasper works with the ACLU and Alice advocates for people with mental disabilities. I think I know how I want to help humanity," she said with quiet determination.

"And how do you want to do that?" I probed.

"I'll have to do some research to find out how and where I can help. Even if it's just funding the politicians that are willing to fix this, I have to do something!'

"Then you will," I encouraged, placing my hand on top of hers and giving it a light squeeze. I smiled at her admiringly. She was so good.

Bella's Hello Kitty wallet contained access to enough wealth that she could bankroll enough politicians and lobbyists to secure herself a job in the oval office if she wanted one.

Though, unfortunately for any of Bella's future political aspirations, she could never pass for 35, the minimum age requirement for an elligible president.

Yet another path closed to her because of my influence on her life, I thought morosely. I didn't really think Bella would have ever chosen that path for herself even if she'd never met me, but the point was that now she couldn't. Because of me.

I felt a stab of guilt pierce my frozen heart. It was nothing new. I felt it every time Bella was curtailed by the limitations of her immortality. Like earlier today when we couldn't simply walk in the early morning sunlight to the tow yard to retrieve the Volvo.

Or all the days before when I'd caught her hiding the pain of losing her mother, ostensibly so that I wouldn't feel guilty about the pain I'd wrought. As powerful of a shield as she was, even she couldn't protect me from that.

The stabbing guilt replaced the fiery burn in my throat as I always knew it would. And still, I could never regret it, only hate myself for it. I was just better at hiding it than she was.

"I'm sorry, Bella. If I hadn't been so careless, we never would have had to be there in the first place."

I tightened my hands into fists on the steering wheel as the light turned green but there was nowhere to go due to the line of gridlocked cars blocking the intersection. All around us, horns blared and middle fingers raised skyward at the offending motorists.

"I rather enjoyed your carelessness last night, so please don't apologize for that," Bella teased, nudging an elbow into my ribs. "Besides, who would've helped Krista if we hadn't been there? No, I needed to see that."

The way she said it made me wonder if perhaps Alice had seen something happening as a result of the car getting towed that was more significant than my humiliation alone. Hmm. I'd have to ask her about that later.

The rest of the way home, Bella stared pensively out the window, a resolved expression on her face.

*BPOV*

As Edward pulled into the open spot next to his Aston Martin, I was reminded of an errand I needed to run. "If you don't mind, I'm going to go take my bike out for a ride," I mentioned in a casual voice as I eyed my gleaming white Ducati.

Edward's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Oh..." A tiny pucker formed between his brows.

"It's just I thought you might like your first guitar lesson," he shrugged nonchalantly as he popped the trunk and removed the hard-shelled case containing my new guitar. I could tell he was trying not to show his disappointment.

Crap. With all the car-towing business and the erotic escapade in Coit Tower, I had forgotten all about it.

Grabbing fistfuls of the front of Edward's rumpled button-down shirt, I pulled him to me for a kiss.

After a moment, I felt the awkward obstruction of the guitar case between our bodies disappear. He'd set it down on the floor so that he could wrap both hands around my waist and pull my hips firmly against his.

My resolve wavered when he moaned softly into my parted lips.

"I could come with you," he murmured barely above a whisper. I could taste his sweet breath on my tongue.

"Actually, you can't," I sighed, pulling away a short distance that was more comfortable for conversation. "You told Esme you'd play the piano at the hospital fundraiser," I reminded him, tapping lightly on a shirt button over his chest.

Edward muttered a low curse. "Was that today?" he frowned. "I wish you could come," he griped with an adorable pout.

"Newborns and blood drives don't really mix," I sighed regretfully. I winced just thinking about a room full of humans with punctured veins.

"Not just newborns, love. Esme won't even be in the building. She'll be outside greeting people at the sign-in tent. And don't you remember blood-typing day? All of us skipped class that day.

"It's just that ever since you came into my life and I was able to overcome the temptation...the rest of them have started to regard my control to be somewhere on par with Carlisle's," Edward shrugged self-effacingly. "That's the only reason I was even asked."

"I guess that makes sense. It's not like you're likely to come across anybody whose blood appeals to you the way mine did, right?" I wondered aloud.

I don't know why I felt suddenly jealous at the idea of Edward encountering another blood singer. It may have been stupid and childish but I liked that he was attracted to my scent the most, though I hated that it used to cause him pain.

"Impossible I'd say," Edward murmured, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind my ear.

"So…you're, like, impervious to blood now because you overcame your bloodlust for me? Fabulous," I snorted sarcastically. "Like your ego really needed you to be the best at something else," I rolled my eyes but stood on tiptoe to kiss him, taking the sting out of my words.

Edward grinned widely. "It's a good thing you were just too fascinating and far, far too beautiful to kill. I might've broken my streak. And you know how much I loathe to eat crow," he chuckled.

"Don't you mean swan?" I snickered at my bad joke.

"Definitely not. I love eating swan. It's my favorite treat," Edward's megawatt smile stretched wickedly across his face.

My jaw dropped open just a little at the double entendre. "Was that a dirty joke, Mr. Cullen?" I asked, pretending to clutch my pearls.

"Nope. Just the truth." His smile never wavered.

Then Edward got a faraway look in his eyes, the one he always wore when he was focused on someone's thoughts when their body was elsewhere.

Edward turned his head in the direction of the main house perched on the hill a good hundred yards to east. "Be right in," he said without raising his voice. Then turning back to face me, he explained, "Alice is dressing me for the hospital event and she is getting impatient."

"I'll bring this stuff back to our place and you can give me my first lesson when you get back," I promised, reaching for the handle of my guitar case. I picked it up off the PVC-tiled garage floor. It was large enough to house the entire collection of Cullen cars and motorcycles with room to grow.

"I'm holding you to that!" Edward enthusiastically agreed. "And you know what a dedicated tutor I am," his laughter had a dark edge to it.

"I'll miss you. Try not to attract too many groupies when I can't be there to shoo them away," I said only half-joking.

"I'll do my best. And I'll miss you more. Have fun on your ride. But not too much fun, Mrs. Cullen" his eyebrows quirked upward suggestively, and I knew he was remembering my very first ride when I'd nearly brought myself to orgasm from the bike's powerful vibrations.

"No promises," I teased and kissed him goodbye, eliciting a playful growl. And then he was gone, vanished in the direction of the main house.

After dropping off all my guitar equipment at the cottage, I quickly suited up in my riding gear. Black jeggings, black boots, and my favorite riding jacket. It was made of tightly fitted black leather with an asymmetrical zipper spanning from my left collarbone to my left hip.

Not gonna lie, I felt like Catwoman in the getup. Whenever I wore it, there was a little extra jaunt in my step because I knew how Edward went wild whenever I donned my bad biker girl ensemble.

The funny thing was, if Catwoman were real, I could kick the crap out of her. So shouldn't she want to look like me, I wondered idiotically. Though I doubted my usual uniform of skinny jeans, oversized flannels and chucks would invoke fear into the hearts of anyone, least of all her enemies. Black leather it was, then.

*EPOV*

"There. Perfect," Alice chirped, using a steam wand to smooth out a stubborn wrinkle in my pants as I pulled a perfect Windsor knot up against my throat with deep blue silk.

"Alice-" I began, but she cut me off with a wave of her steam wand.

"You're going to ask me if there was some other reason why I let your car get towed. I thought it was rather obvious. Weren't you listening? Didn't you hear her get angry enough about something to want to change it? That's exactly the kind of drive she'll need to make a real difference in this world. And that's what we're trying to do, isn't it?" Alice huffed with impatience.

"I'd say $600 plus a $200 parking ticket for the greater good of humanity is a bargain," I smiled fondly at my sister. She gave me a knowing look.

I glanced out the window as I heard the crunch of gravel under Bella's boots as she sauntered back toward the garage in her black riding gear. I groaned internally. She looked like sex on high heels.

I had to work to contain my less civilized urges to run outside, throw her over my shoulder, and take her back to our cottage where the only person who would see her looking so devastatingly alluring was me.

But I'd made Esme a promise and would never dream of disappointing her, so my caveman tendencies would just have to wait. Bella wasn't the only one who needed to be occasionally reminded to keep a healthy balance.

A moment later I heard the bassy growl of her Ducati and then she was taking off down the driveway, kicking up a spray of gravel in her wake.

"I wonder where she's going?" I said out loud so that I might glean a hint from Alice's mind, but she was no stranger to my tricks. Careful not to think of Bella, Alice started loudly singing a popular Abba song in their native Swedish.

Peals of Alice's silvery laughter filled my ears as I grimaced. "Maybe you should stay out of my head if you don't like disco," she scolded, sticking out her tongue at me.

"Well you're absolutely no help," I complained a bit petulantly. I couldn't help it. It got under my skin when people thwarted my abilities. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, being married to a shield, but it never got any less irksome.

"You'll find out soon enough. Now off you go. Don't keep Esme waiting. And a word of advice? Steer clear of the woman with a cat broach," she said pleasantly.

I furrowed my brow in confusion. "How am I supposed to steer clear of anyone when I'll be sitting at the piano the whole time?"

"Don't say I didn't warn you!" she sang, an odd expression on her face as she drifted from the room.

*A/N* I'm so sorry this took so long to get out. Life has given me a lot of distractions this month. And then I struggled to get this finished because I had a recurring attack of creative self-doubt. Every word I wrote was reading like hot garbage. I'm trying to get back into the routine of writing every day, and I thank you for your patience while I work on getting my mojo back.

If you're still out there reading this, would you drop me a line? Nothing encourages me to keep going like hearing from you all. I LOVE hearing your feedback and suggestions and try to fit them in whenever I can. Thank you as always for reading, reviewing, and supporting me. Til next time, lovelies!