Chapter ten
Bella stared out of the large window in the conference room overlooking the sea, her mind somewhere between Boston and San Francisco.
The March sun was blazing and even with the AC on in the room, Bella had to brush away some perspiration from her brow. The morning had started cool enough for her to choose a sophisticated, thin charcoal grey dress that hugged her curves and reached her knees. A wool cardigan had kept her warm in the cool early morning breeze but as the sun rose higher on the sky, she shed herself off the cardigan.
"Is everything ready?" Bella turned away from the window to see Emmett, her new boss, poke his head inside the small conference room.
"Everything is ready, just waiting for you and your client," she smiled at him, gesturing to the table where at one end, refreshment was placed and at the other end, a file in front of each seat that would be occupied.
"Give us a few minutes and we will be with you."
She had been living in San Francisco for almost four months and Bella couldn't deny that she loved the city, though she couldn't deny that she also missed Boston, missed working for Phil and, most of all, Edward.
So much had changed since had walked out of the office her last day, thing she would never have dreamed off.
"Bella have made sure that everything is ready and that we won't be disturbed during our meeting," Emmett's voice reached Bella's ears and she quickly straightened out the skirt of her dress and waited for Emmett and his client to enter the room. "She's amazing and I don't understand how you were able to give her up."
"Believe me, I didn't give her up willingly," that voice made Bella stiffen and all color drained from her face. She quickly thought about sneaking through Marissa's office before they could see her, hide somewhere or go home, claiming to be sick, but before she could decide on what to do, it was decided for her.
The door opened and Emmett gave her a smile as he walked past her and took a seat at the table. Bella didn't return the smile but stared straight ahead at the man who had followed Emmett inside the conference room.
"Hello Bella," Edward drawled, a smirk on his lips, and Bella's hands quickly shot to the small swell of her stomach.
With wide eyes, she watched his eyes darken and his posture change before he joined Emmett at the table. Grabbing a bottle of water, Bella took a seat next to Emmett as the meeting started.
Hours later, Bella felt hungry, nauseated and tired to the bone, and she waited patiently as Emmett and Edward wrapped up their meeting. She had no idea what they had been talking about as she had been too occupied glancing at Edward now and then, wondering what he would say if they had a minute alone.
"I've got to run!" Emmett announced suddenly, quickly rising to his feet. Within seconds, Bella found herself alone with Edward, who reclined back in his chair, his fingers drumming at the edge of the table.
The silence was deafening and Bella wasn't sure what to do with herself, unable to look at Edward as he drummed his fingers against the table, a soft humming coming from him.
"You look good." Those were the words that broke the silence between them, those words were the reason why Bella wasn't leaving the room in a hurry to reach the bathroom. Those words stopped her and she swallowed back the bile that was threatening to push itself up to exposure.
"Thank you," she said in a soft and low voice.
"Emmett told me that you've been amazing," he continued, his voice devoid of emotions.
"I'm glad to hear that: I've been working hard to keep up with the standards I've gotten used to."
"Yet he's also tells me that he doubts that you're putting your heart into your work, that you're not on the same level you were on back in Boston. Why is that, Bella?" the slight smugness and curiosity in his eyes and voice was unsettling.
"I miss Boston," Bella told him honestly, "I like San Francisco but I love Boston: I had made it my home and though Charlie's house felt like a home just as much as my apartment in Boston, the feeling went away as I packed away his belongings. Now, it's just an empty shell with no one to live in at the moment."
"That's where you had me at loss, Bella," she loved the way her name rolled off his tongue, as if he enjoyed saying it, "you never hid how much you loved Boston, yet you were so willing to uproot the life you had built for yourself. Now, of course, I can see much clearer why you removed yourself from the city you love." Bella hand automatically went to the small swell of her stomach. Edward's eyes followed and they narrowed slightly.
"I removed myself from a situation I knew would become impossible," she murmured, softly stroking her stomach through the linen fabric of her dress, trying to sooth her stomach into calming down.
"The baby is mine, isn't it, and you removed yourself from my presence," Edward stated, rising from his chair elegantly and gracefully, walking with long strides to the window where he gazed out from the same spot Bella had stood earlier that day. "I would like to know why you found it necessary to keep my expecting fatherhood from me. Do you despise me so that you found it urgent to get away from me? Or is this a pay-back for how I gave you a choice, jail or my silence?"
"This has nothing to do with how we met and how you blackmailed me, or how I earned my living during college," Bella said clearly, setting the facts straight. "We would have met at some point anyway, I believe, as Charlie would have flown to Boston to meet me and invite me to dinner with his doctors, where, you of course, would turn up as well." But meeting you like that would have been much easier on my heart, Bella thought to herself.
"If you think that I'm going to stay out of my daughter or sons life, you're gravely mistaken Bella, because I will do anything in my power to be as much a part of his or hers life as you." When Edward turned to her again, his eyes were cold and hard, the way she had gotten used to so many times, yet they unsettled her every time. "First on my agenda is to bring you back to Boston with me: I'm not having you living three thousand miles away from me when you're expecting my baby."
"And then what?" Bella whispered as she struggled to keep the bile at bay.
"You will find an apartment suitable and resume your work as my assistant."
"Your professional or personal assistant?"
"Oh, just because you've filled out some, I think I still find you attractive enough to fuck you now and then," he smirked and Bella stared at him with her mouth open.
"Oh God," she suddenly moaned, quickly clasping her hand over her mouth, "I'm going to be sick."
"You never had a problem with me touching you before you managed to get yourself knocked up," Edward snapped at her with narrowed eyes.
Ignoring him, Bella got to her feet and rushed to the door but Edward blocked it for her. Looking frantically around, her eyes landed on the wastebasket in the corner and she rushed over to his, earning carpet burns on her knees as she skidded in place in front of his and emptied the content of her stomach into it.
"When do we leave?" she asked when it finally stopped, a light sheen of sweat covering the fair skin of her body as she got to her feet.
"Now," was Edward's clipped word before he took a firm, yet gentle grip of her arm and led her out of the room.
*** C R S ***
Everything was settled. Hired help would empty Charlie's house of the belongings Bella had decided to keep and a moving truck would transport it across the country.
Edward leaned back in his seat in the company jet, glancing over at Bella. She looked fragile and vulnerable where she was curled up opposite of him, her shoes lying carelessly on the floor in front of her.
She had fallen asleep the minute she had gotten comfortable in her seat and it gave Edward an opportunity to study her. God, how he had missed that body, the body that always so willingly responded to his touch, the body that was full of curves and soft places to dig his fingers into. He couldn't wait to explore her changing body: her breasts were already much fuller than before and her hips flared out more than he could remember.
He wasn't going to deny that the first thing he wanted to do was to have her soft thighs wrapped around his back as he merciless fucked her hard. He felt himself grow hard as Bella shifted in her seat, her dress riding further up her thighs, and as her thighs parted slightly, catching glimpses of the silk that covered her pussy.
Then it was time for take-off.
Bella was already secured with her seatbelt, something Edward had seen to as soon she was asleep, but as Edward started to put his own seatbelt on, his hands started to shake slightly: he hated flying. He had never liked flying, not even as a kid, but it didn't help that 2014 had been the year of disappearing planes, first with the MH370, followed by MH17 and QZ8501. Or that in 2015 alone, there had been three emergency landings and crashes, one including Harrison Ford.
However, Edward had handpicked the pilot and his co-pilot personally, and the staff of the jet where the best who knew what to do if anything would happen on the plane or to the plane.
A moan came from Bella and Edward quickly shifted his attention to her instead of the runway. She looked paler than earlier and he quickly grabbed a bag for her, holding it to her mouth as she vomited like a college student after beer pong and tequila shots.
"There, there," he soothed, holding her hair away while she retched into the bag.
Looking pale, a slight green tinge to her skin, and sticky, Bella fell back in her seat and continued sleeping as if nothing had happened, shivering slightly as the temperature dropped in the room as the plane went higher.
Edward didn't bother calling for a stewardess but unclicked his seatbelt and went to the bedroom in the back of the plane, pulling the soft fur blanket of the bed and bringing it back to Bella, wrapping it around her to keep her warm.
He spent the rest of the flight watching a sleeping Bella, wondering what the hell they were going to do when they reached Boston. They would have to explain themselves to Phil, maybe even the board. There was a possibility that Bella wouldn't be allowed to work for him anymore, not even on the same floor if it meant they would be a distraction to one another.
"We'll figure it out when we get there," Edward murmured to himself as Boston Logan came into view.
*** C R S ***
Everything was exactly the same yet everything was different at the Boston office of Dwyer, Holland & Lee. Everyone knew that Bella was pregnant and that Edward was the dad, and she knew they were talking behind her back now and then, but it seemed that the gossip had died down just as fast as it had come alive.
It felt good to be back in Boston and Bella realized how much she had actually missed the city, even the desk in front of Edward's office.
On her first day back, only the day after Edward had seen her in San Francisco and brought her back, cards of congratulations and flowers were covering her desk. Being a hormone-filled woman, Bella had started crying like a baby, a watery smile on her face as she smelled the flowers and read the cards.
That was how Phil found her not long after.
"Bella," when Bella met his eyes, he looked concerned and that only made Bella cry even more.
"They're all so beautiful," she sniffed as she tried to calm herself down, gesturing to the flowers that filled the area with an intoxicating flowery scent.
"Are your hormones running away with you?" Phil asked with a laugh.
"They've been taking me places I didn't even know existed for months now," Bella confessed when she was calm enough to talk.
"It's all worth it in the end," Phil smiled warmly, handing her a handkerchief to dry her eyes. "Now, I would like a few words with you in my office."
Bella knew what he wanted to talk about and she felt the dread settle in her stomach, making it churn uncomfortable.
"I know what this is about," she said as she took a seat in front of his desk, "You asked me in the beginning of December if there was something between Edward and me, an office romance, and I told you 'no'. It was partially the truth: there was a mutual attraction between us and, well, this is the result," Bella placed her hand on her stomach, feeling slight movements from the baby. "But, I can assure you that nothing is at stakes here," Except my heart.
"Ok, if you can promise me that this won't come back and bite you in the ass, or mine, I see no reason for not letting you continue your work for Edward. Just keep it clean, will you, to avoid any gossip."
"Oh, the gossip has already happened," Bella shrugged with a small smile, "And it died down pretty quickly because, from what I've already heard, everyone had their version of what really went down between Edward and me."
"How come I didn't know about that?" Phil questioned, looking puzzled.
"It all happened this morning when I arrived," Bella explained with a shrug, "No big deal."
"If you say so, but please Bella, come to me or talk with Edward if the gossip should come alive again: some of the women in this building can be outright cruel when there's something fresh on their plate.
"And soon there will be something more exiting and fresher than my pregnancy," Bella promised as she got to her feet, a wave of nausea washing over but Phil didn't seem to notice the green tinge to her face.
On slightly unsteady feet, Bella made her way back to her desk and sighed with relief when she sat down, leaning back and closing her eyes as she tried to control the nausea: she had no desire to bend over a toilet at the moment.
"What the hell is this?" Edward's sharp and cold voice cut through air like a knife and Bella opened her eyes to see a furious Edward towering over.
"What is what?" she questioned as she straightened up.
"This," he slapped an envelope on her desk with such a force that a few papers fluttered to the floor.
If Bella hadn't already been pale, she would have paled as she took in the envelope with Emmett's name at the right bottom corner.
"You want me to sign away my parental rights?" he demanded in a furious voice.
"That was when I was in San Francisco," Bella started to explain.
"Oh, so because you lived over 3ooo miles across the country, it makes it ok for you ask me to sign all my rights of my unborn baby over to you, a baby I didn't know about until yesterday?"
"I was contemplating it," Bella confessed, her eyes quickly darting around to see who found their scene entertaining.
"Come," Edward barked and Bella quickly pushed herself out of the chair and followed him into his office, jumping slightly as her nerves were at the end when she heard the lock clicking into place.
"Remember back in September when I didn't get my period?" Bella asked and Edward gave her a brisk nod. "Then you will also remember how you bought a pregnancy test and forced me to take it while you were watching, and, when it turned out to be positive, how you barked at me to get rid of it."
"And if you can remember as well, Bella, you will remember that I apologized for my reaction and informed you that I would stand by your side until you no longer needed me: I stand for my responsibilities. If you had been pregnant back in September, I would have stood by your side as it was confirmed, stood by your side when we saw our child for the first time, growing inside of you, and I would have argued with you about names. Now, you have robbed me of those experiences and you're planning on robbing me of every heartbreaking experiences that are to follow. Trust me when I say I will fight you on this, that I will not let you take my child away from me!" with brisk and harsh movements, Edward opened the door for Bella and she walked out on unsteady feet, sinking into her chair by the desk as the door was closed with a final click behind her.
She had barely leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes when her phone ran and Bella groaned inwardly.
"Bella Swan," she answered in a tired voice, her eyes closing once again.
"Bells, its Emmett."
"How could you Emmett?" Bella demanded at the sound of her voice, holding back the tears and the sob that was building in her throat. "I told you not to send it as I had changed my mind, but now I am to expect the court."
"I didn't send it," was Emmett's first words.
"How can you say that when I'm looking at it now?" Bella almost screamed into the phone as she crumbled the notice in her hands, left by Edward at her desk.
"I didn't send it Bells, but the girl who took your spot did," he explained, "She found a lot of letters and unfiled papers from the day you left and thought it would be a plus if I saw how efficient she could be: she didn't know the letter was supposed to be destroyed instead."
"It should never have been written at all," Bella mumbled tiredly.
"If Edward decides to take this to the court, I will of course come and be at your side, take your case, pro bono. And I will try to talk with him, explain, before it can go any further," as Emmett spoke to her from the other end of the line, Edward quietly stepped out of his office and placed a sheet of paper in front of Bella, in face set in stone, before returning back to his office.
"It just went further, Emmett," Bella whispered brokenly into the phone as the tears started to stream down her face uncontrollably.
Bella and Edward's story continues Friday 17th of April.