Okay, this one is far longer than I thought it would be.

Thanks to eeeeaud and yorrusorra for your lovely reviews! (eeeeaud, I've posted her playlist on my profile now! Hope you like it!)

Chapter 4 - Forks, Early November 2003

There wasn't really much to fear in a town like Forks, Washington. Or at least, that's what Carys told herself as she sat in her car, covered her face with her hands, and squealed quietly to herself in triumph.

After three full weeks spent settling into her new home and searching for and applying to jobs in Port Angeles, one of the waitresses in the diner she'd taken to spending Saturday mornings in had told her about a job at Forks Community Hospital, in the general administration department.

As she'd come to find, department had been a bit of a stretch. There were three full-time members of staff and one part-timer who served the general admin needs of the small hospital. Of course, there were other people scattered around the building who took on various administration roles, but she'd just about managed to get her head around the expectations of her job let alone the others.

It surprised her how easily she'd managed to get the job. It'd taken two interviews which had involved a couple of hours of explaining how she could apply what she'd learned from her part-time admin jobs through university to this role (and, at one point, what a 2:1 was), and chatting through her choice to move to town.

Then - two days later as she'd returned to her car to set off home after a trip to the supermarket outside town, her mobile(-no, cell phone as they call it in America) had rung with the news that Forks Community Hospital would be delighted to offer her the job.

It seemed in that moment that no matter what happened in the next year or two she spent in the idyllic town of Forks, she was just about the luckiest person alive.


"... And this is Doctor Cullen's office." Sandra pointed towards a door in the middle of the hallway as they passed it and Carys smiled politely, realising for the second time since her tour of the hospital began that there was no way she was going to remember everyone's names. "Doc Cull, as we call him."

Carys was sure by the horrified look on the tall, handsome dark-haired man standing at the end of the hallway's face that no one called him that.

"He's probably off doing his rounds so you'll meet him later. He and his family moved here back in January, so you're not the only newcomer we've had."

Biting her lips together, Carys nodded emphatically when Sandra glanced at her to check she was still listening. As soon as the other woman turned away again, this time pointing to another door, Carys caught the eye of the dark-haired man and widened her eyes. His own lit up with laughter as he shook his head slightly as if to confirm her suspicions. She nodded to him in greeting and thanks as she followed her guide to the other office and tried desperately to recall the name of its occupant.

"Doctor Martins, d'you got a sec?" Sandra asked, poking her head in the open door. A soft voice said something in reply that Carys didn't catch, and then she was being ushered into the room. "Doctor Martins, this is Carys Vale. She's joining the admin team next week."

"Good time to start!" Dr Martins replied, standing up and shaking out her white coat before slipping it on and reaching out a hand to shake Carys' as she did so. "Though, I'd put your request in for Thanksgiving leave asap if you want the time off."

"Oh, I'm erm- I'm English, we don't really... Celebrate it there..." Carys replied, releasing the other woman's hand and trying to resist the urge to brush her hands over the front of her skirt in case Dr Martins or Sandra thought she was being rude rather than nervous. Dr Martin's eyes widened and lit up as she put her hands into the large pockets of her white coat.

"You're from England?" She looked to Sandra and then back to Carys with a grin. "We've not had one of those in... God, can't remember the last time we had an English person live here. What on earth made you move here of all places?"

"My step-dad's from Seattle," Carys told her easily, liking the doctor already - in part because she'd said England and not Britain as most others had. "One of his family left him a house here a few years ago, so I guess... It just happened."

"Not the little one at the edge of town? The old McKinley house?" Carys nodded awkwardly at the question, wondering if everyone knew where she lived. It was such a foreign concept to her, that people would just know something like that. "I used to live there!"

"What? No way!"

"Yeah!" Dr Martins rounded her desk and left the room, turning as she did so and waving the pair to follow her. "Sorry, I've got to check on a patient. Yeah, I lived there... Oofh, must have been... Two? Years ago now? I heard they'd decided not to rent it out after the Harding girl moved in with her boyfriend - I guess now we know why!"

As the group made their way to the end of the corridor, Carys noticed that the dark-haired man was no longer there.

"Yeah, I think they wanted to get me out of the house," she joked with a smile. "I am renting it from them though." Carys wasn't sure why she wanted the pair to know she was paying her way, but she did for some reason.

"Oh, 'course!" Dr Martins replied with a grin, sharing a look with Sandra that Carys couldn't quite catch. "So... How long're you planning on staying in town?"

Carys reeled yet again from the question. She'd been asked it countless times over the past few weeks, but it still took her a little by surprise for some reason.

"I'm not sure, but definitely a couple of years. It's really cool here, I really like it."

"You think Forks is cool!?" Dr Martins stopped dead in her tracks and looked at Carys with incredulous surprise.

"Well, don't you?" Carys responded, brushing awkwardly at her skirt to give her hands something to do when she felt a rush of embarrassment from the question.

Dr Martins shook her head and then gave Carys an interested once over before setting off again towards the double doors at the end of the hall. "I grew up here. I like it enough, but I've just not really heard many people call it cool before. Other than the odd hiker," she added in a musing tone as she tipped her head to the side. "Give it a couple of months then come back to me on that one!"

Carys felt the need to defend her new town well up inside her, but she said nothing. She could hardly argue with the doctor about it when she'd only been there for just under a month and the other woman had spent the majority of her life there.

"Have you shown her the emergency department yet, Sandy?" Dr Martins asked her colleague as they stopped before the double doors and she reached across to grasp the handle. Carys was interested to hear the nickname.

"Not yet Sarah - it's next on our list though, so lead on!"

With a glint in her eye and a smirk on her face, Dr Sarah Martins turned to Carys again. "You've not met Doctor Cullen yet, have you?"

Carys shook her head. What was it about this man that the mere mention of his name had Sandra sighing from where she stood beside her?

"You're in for an exceptionally pleasant surprise then." With that, she opened the doors and led them across the threshold. After they'd all sanitised their hands and Sarah had insisted Carys use her Christian name, she looked around and pointed over to a man standing with his back to them all. "That," she whispered to Carys with a conspiratorial grin on her face, "is Doctor Carlisle Cullen. Brace yourself."

For what? Carys wondered, before the man turned as if he'd been called, and smiled at the three women.

Dear. God. In. Heaven. They don't make faces like that in England, Carys thought to herself as she subconsciously began to pull at her sleeves and her lungs constricted slightly. Or bodies, she added, then admonished herself for the thought.

"Dr Martins, Mrs Connifer," the blond man called calmly across the room in greeting. "I'll be with you in just a moment." He paused for a second when he saw Carys, eyes widening minutely as they seemed (impossibly she thought, and hardly something she could see across the room if it was possible) to darken, then turned back to his patient.

Carys turned to Sarah and Sandra when his gaze was safely elsewhere, her mouth slightly agape.

"Yee-up." Sarah told her, still grinning and raising her eyebrows briefly before excusing herself and heading to the other side of the emergency ward.

"He's gorgeous, isn't he?" Sandra whispered to her, the most animated Carys had heard her since they'd met. "I told you he moved here with his family back in January, right?" Carys nodded. She loved hearing a good bit of gossip, though she was such a good keeper of secrets because she forgot so many of them, that she tended to need to feign surprise whenever she heard some and remembered she already knew about it. Not this time. "He's got five kids. And no wife."

"Five kids? And he's a doctor? How does he find the time?" Carys asked, whispering back as she leaned in to accommodate their height difference. She'd been at least 6 inches taller than Sandra when she'd first met her whilst wearing flats, but the heels she was wearing that day added to the disparity.

"They're all teenagers," Sanda responded, looking about before adding, "three adopted and two foster children. Probably why he looks so tired at times."

"Oh, that's lovely!" Carys told her, an easy smile gracing her lips.

"Lovely?" Sandra asked, seemingly shocked by how easily she'd taken the information.

"Yeah, that he adopted or fostered them all." When Sandra continued to stare at her with an odd look, she added, "My step-dad adopted me when I was a teen. He and my mum want to adopt other teenagers one day." If they can, Carys added in her mind. "It's nice... I just... I didn't know you could adopt when there's just one of you?"

"Oh, well, he did," Sandra told her as if nothing else needed to be said. Carys supposed it didn't really, but any other questions or comments she might have had flew from her mind when Dr Cullen left his patient and walked towards them with a good-natured smile.

"Mrs Connifer," he greeted Sandra with the smoothest voice Carys could ever remember hearing, before he turned his smile on her. "And...?"

"C-Carys. Carys Vale," Carys told him quickly, fighting down the frisson which nearly knocked her off her feet physically as well as mentally when they locked eyes. It was as if hot and cold waves rolled through her from head to toe, stealing her wits. "Or, Vale, Carys if reading a register." She could feel herself begin to ramble, and tried to stop herself.

"Oh?" Dr Cullen replied, raising an eyebrow in question as his golden-brown eyes remained locked on her darker ones. She'd always liked her eyes, with their depth and the darker ring around them, the exact shade changing in different lights. Now she thought they must be rather dull compared to his.

"I-erm..." She looked to Sandra for help, but the other woman simply looked intrigued, so she continued on as she met Dr Cullen's gaze again and swallowed, hands flitting about at her sides. "Carys... Carys means love, and... Well, Vale has a few meanings, but one of them is farewell. So, you see... Said in a certain way, my name could mean..." She trailed off with an awkward half chuckle which didn't quite land in her slightly breathless state.

"Farewell, love," Dr Cullen finished with an expression in his eyes she couldn't quite put a name to.

"Yes, exactly. Erm... I'm the new admin," she added quickly.

"Doctor Cullen!" Sarah called from the bedside of her patient, her slightly urgent tone capturing all their attention.

"It was nice to meet you, Ms Vale," Dr Cullen told her with a calm smile, turning briefly as he headed quickly in the direction of his colleague, seemingly oblivious to the state he'd left Carys in.

Carys stood for a few moments in shock before Sandra broke through her haze.

"I wouldn't bother if I were you," Sandra told her kindly, "he doesn't seem like the type to date around with his kids at home."

Carys shook her head - more to clear the last of the haze than in disagreement with Sandra's statement. "I wouldn't," she assured her quietly.


Across the room, Dr Cullen's back stiffened as he blindly stared at the patient's charts and only half-heard their explanation of their additional symptoms since being admitted. He listened as the pair of administrators moved on, leaving the emergency ward, and scrambled to recover his wits. For the first time in his 340 years as a vampire, he'd had his breath taken away and knocked for six by the most exquisite pair of eyes he'd ever seen.

Even as he returned his attention to the patient and settled into a discussion with his colleague, he reeled as a dark voice in the back of his head roared with need. Need to take, claim, possess Carys Vale both body and soul. The need to haul her against him and take her off somewhere no one would find her.

The need to hear his name on her lips - murmured, whimpered, moaned, screamed in ecstasy only he could bring her.

He closed off the voice. Closed off the animalistic part of him he'd learned so well to control. Closed off the confusion it brought him.

After his shift was over, he'd have time to work out what had happened to him and then discuss it with his family. Edward would probably know everything in seconds if he was still as shaken to the core as he currently was.

Once he was home and safe, and as calm inwardly as he outwardly appeared.

Once he was somewhere her sweet smell of tea, honey, and lemon didn't linger on the air around him, invading and confusing his senses.

When Alice had told them all that a little girl she'd watched for hours one winter as she stared at a painting in London was coming to town, he'd been worried. Seemingly for all the wrong reasons. Though Alice had assured them the girl wouldn't know who she was and they'd be safe, she had negated (or not known/thought) to mention the girl was very much now a woman.

A tall woman with glorious eyes, long curly brown hair, warm olive skin, full rosy lips, and though he didn't know it at the time, a body that would haunt him for many months to come.

A/N: This story will bounce back and forth through time - the flashforwards won't be chronological, but the main story will be - keep an eye out for the date and place at the start of each chapter.

Let me know what you think of Carlisle... *cough*