27
One Week Later
I enter the kitchen cautiously. "Bella, we need to talk."
She closes the oven, tosses a dish towel over her shoulder, and turns around with a big smile. It's only been a week, and things are going great, mostly. "What's up?"
Here we go.
"You have got to stop all of this." I wave my hand around. "I didn't bring you here to make you a servant."
Bella just laughs. "I know that, Edward. This is actually something I enjoy doing. At the White House, I single-handedly fed the human employees and sometimes even their families regularly."
"The girls have chores."
She nods.
"Chores that you need to stop helping them with," I elaborate.
Imagine my surprise when I came home from the office yesterday to find Alice in her spotless bedroom that once was a black hole of girl things, listening to music and flipping through a magazine. I asked her what happened, why the sudden change, and she rolled her eyes.
"Your vampire doesn't understand the concept of personal boundaries. I came home, and it was like this," she said before kicking me out.
I took today off so we could talk while the girls are at school.
"I'm here to help, Edward," Bella mumbles softly.
"Which reminds me we never went over your expected duties,"
"I'm not going to just sit on my hands until Jasper comes around," she tells me with a hard face. "Alice is still grounded for another week, and I want to be useful."
"Elaborate meals from scratch are not part of the job title."
"You can't expect me to just sit around, twiddling my thumbs all day," she argues.
I hold my hands up in defense. "You aren't bound to this house. When you aren't with the girls, you're free to come and go as you please."
"Fine."
Wait. That was too easy. I was married for seventeen years and have raised two teenage girls. I know by now that nothing is ever "fine" when it comes to females. I'm sure vampires are the same in this aspect.
"Fine?"
Bella rolls her warm butterscotch eyes so far in the back of her head I can only see the whites. "No. Not really. I enjoy cooking, so I won't stop doing that, and as for the cleaning, I'll pick up around the house and stay out of everyone's bedroom. I've visited Jane and Alec enough to know this city and the ones surrounding it have nothing to offer me as far as entertainment goes." She sits down at the island and shuffles a stack of recipe cards before placing them in an old tattered box.
"It's not just that. I know Angela pulls her weight around here and that you're teaching her how to cook and helping her with her homework—"
"You can't possibly ask me to stop ensuring that your daughter learns the necessities in the kitchen and making sure she gets good grades." Bella throws her hands in the air, exasperated.
"Of course not. But you've been buying her things—"