A/N: I still do not own Pride and Prejudice. Thank you so much to all my reviewers. You guys really do motivate me. I really can't believe I've made it to chapter fourteen; it seems like just yesterday I was starting this story.

Chapter Fourteen: A New Hope

Lizzie's POV

My twenty-fifth birthday was July 1, 2008 and my friends decided to make it the "greatest birthday of my life." My birthday was on a Tuesday and I was living town the following Friday, so the Saturday before my birthday, they threw me a surprise birthday party at La Mesa, a Spanish restaurant near Becca's apartment. They lured me there by telling me that we were going to get the wedding party together for a nice dinner to talk about things and to get dressed up a little bit. So I put on a nice summer dress and headed over to the restaurant at seven o'clock, the appointed time. I walked into the restaurant and told the hostess I was there to meet the Logan-Gilbert party. A minute later, Steve and Adam Caldwell appeared next to me. "Please come with us," Adam said, taking my right arm. He was wearing black pants and a navy blue dress shirt with a black tie.

They led me into La Mesa's private party room where I found my friends and family all waiting for me. When I walked in, they all yelled "SURPRISE!" I was stunned. I threw my hands on my face and screamed.

Becca came up to me and hugged me. "Happy birthday, gorgeous! We wanted to give you the best birthday possible."

I smiled and leaned against her shoulder. "Thank you. This is not what I was expecting."

"Well, Char had a huge party for her birthday so we decided to do something special for you. You do so much for the rest of us."

I looked around the room, stunned at the number of people they'd gathered together. My parents were there as were Jane, Katie, and Mary; Lydia had left for Fiji with the Forresters and Damien a few days earlier. Hannah and Jenny were there as was Maria Lucas with her new boyfriend, Nate Caldwell. "Char wanted to come, but she just can't keep taking time off of work right now," she told me.

"Well, I'll see her in about a month for her wedding," I replied. "And I'm glad you two could come. It's really great to see you doing so well."

"I'm glad I was invited and I was able to come."

They'd also invited the three girls Becca and I had lived with during college. From our sophomore to our senior years, we'd lived in a house in downtown Grand Rapids with Meg Hale, Mary Gibson, and Beth March. Meg was now living in Ecuador doing mission work, but she was back in Michigan for the summer, so Becca had managed to convince her to come visit us for a week, the week of my surprise birthday party. Mary was working for Chrysler in the Detroit area and was becoming consumed by her job. She flew back and forth between the US and Germany on a regular basis and I'm pretty sure she didn't know which country she was in half of the time. Beth was a quiet soul. She taught music to all the elementary schools in Pinckney, a small town north of Ann Arbor. It was a busy job and kept her insane, but it left her with plenty of free time in the summer and I think she enjoyed that.

A few minutes later, I was talking to Paul Jacobs, one of the algebra and geometry teachers at Lakeview. He's a couple years older than I am and we've become good friends over the past couple years. A lot of the girls think he's "absolutely gorgeous" and my younger sisters think I should "hook up" with him. "I was surprised when I heard they were throwing you a surprise party. I didn't think they'd do anything big since you're going to visit your aunt and uncle next week."

I shrugged. "Yeah, I wasn't sure they'd do anything this year. We've already got so many things going on within our group of friends with weddings and everything, but I guess they did remember."

"I'm sure they wouldn't let you slip between the cracks," he told me with a reassuring smile. Paul is pretty darn good-looking and he has a great smile; it's not Will Darcy's smile, but it's still a good smile. Paul is taller and has light brown hair and blue eyes. He's a really good teacher and a pretty great guy.

Paul looked at me and smiled. "Lizzie, you're a great person and you matter to a lot of people. Your students adore you and you have so many friends. You're a really lucky girl."

And that was my only problem with Paul; he's only a couple years older than me, but he always treats me like I'm twenty years younger than him and just a little kid. I doubt he knew how much I hated it when he called me "girl" but it drove me nuts. I was almost twenty-five but Paul treated me like I was fifteen. But here he was at my birthday party. I didn't get it at all. Life would be easier if I had brothers to help me with all of this crap. They could explain the way boys think to me. I really don't understand the male mind.

The rest of the party was great. Katie only spent the whole night complaining about how she wished she was in Fiji with Lydia. Mary thought the whole thing was a stupid joke and there were so many better things she could be doing with her time. Apparently celebrating your older sister's birthday was a waste of time; now granted, my parents were having a small family birthday dinner for me on Tuesday night. But it's a party, not a funeral. People are allowed to be happy and celebrate events every once in a while. And I was happy that my friends had thrown me a surprise party despite Mary's moralizing about how humiliating it must be. My antisocial sister hated being the center of attention and she couldn't seem to understand how I could enjoy having someone throw a party in my honor.

But I loved it. I loved having all these people celebrating my birthday and giving me presents. And people gave me some really nice things. Hannah gave me a pair of earrings that she claimed matched my personality perfectly. They were dangling earrings with dark blue beads; I love dark blue. It's one of my favorite colors and it really does suit my personality. Jenny bought me a white pashmina wrap-scarf because she knows how much I love those scarves. I have what seems like a million but I'll always take more, especially in colors I don't already have. Steve and Becca bought me the best gift of all, though.

At some point during my sophomore year of college, I developed a particularly nasty case of pneumonia and spent the better part of a week lying on the couch, coughing my lungs up and watching various movies ranging from Beauty and the Beast and Mulan to Wives and Daughters and other such long movies. I also spent the entire week under a seven foot long pink blanket I'd crocheted for myself earlier that year and I ate soup and other canned or boxed foods that Becca or another one of my roommates could easily prepare for me. This had been a particularly horrible week, but I'd never forgotten it, mostly because Steve spent that whole weekend hanging out with me and suffering through listening to five girls singing "I'll Make a Man Out of You" at the top of their lungs. (Okay, Becca, Mary, Meg, and Beth were singing at the top of their lungs; I could barely speak but I was still trying to sing along.)

The note with my gift explained that it was in honor of that weekend. They gave me a basket with five skeins of yarn to crochet "whatever your heart desires", copies of Mulan, Beauty and the Beast, Little Women, and North and South on DVD, two bags of goldfish crackers, and two dozen pink roses "just because we love you." I knew it had cost them a lot of money but I also knew that it came from the bottom of their hearts. That's the thing I love about those two; she finds the gift that's perfect for the sentimental side of you and then he throws in the goldfish crackers to make you smile. He's great like that. Once when she was really stressed out, he sent her a basket of play-doh, a slinky, and various other children's toys. It was the best thing he could have done for her that week.

Tuesday night, Claire-Marie made my favorite dinner and everyone in the family except Lydia was there. Lydia had emailed me to wish me a happy birthday and tell me how amazing Fiji is, especially compared with Michigan. I was glad of the email but I knew what she was really thinking about all the fun she was having with Kristi. Her daily emails to Katie were filled with details of cute boys met on beaches and secret consumption of alcohol. Katie didn't know I knew this, but she made it way to easy for me to find out. That day I had been doing something for my mom on her computer when I found my little sister's MySpace account, Facebook account, and email all open. So I happened to find out that my seventeen-year-old sister is putting pictures of herself on MySpace and Facebook; and she's drunk in half the pictures. Oh, and she's always with a different guy. Yep, my parents did the right thing when they let Lydia go to Fiji.

But I digress…for dinner that night, Claire Marie made spaghetti with a pesto sauce, garlic bread, salad with Vidalia onions, feta cheese, big chunks of tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce, and her homemade olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing. And for dessert, she made tiramisu. It was divine, absolutely divine. My parents gave me a pearl necklace with matching earrings that they'd been promising to give me for my wedding or my twenty-fifth birthday, which ever came first. It was slightly depressing to realize that I was twenty-five and single.

However, my sisters still loved me. Jane bought me all of the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde. Mary gave me an unabridged dictionary; I love words and it's actually pretty much one of the greatest gifts I've ever been given. Katie bought me a gift card to the mall, which was actually from her and Lydia. It wasn't the most useful gift on earth, but it showed me that my sister actually did love me and try to do nice things for me at times. Sometimes I had a hard time believing that Katie and Lydia actually had emotions towards me, that they could actually care for me. And I'm still not sure about Lydia, but I know that at times Katie isn't really as dense as she seems to be.

Friday morning, I flew to Chicago to spend three glorious weeks with Uncle Ed, Aunt Sophie, and my adorable cousins. The first week we were all going to hang around Chicago and have fun. Code for Uncle Ed and Aunt Sophie take me to see Wicked on Saturday night and one other day during the week, Aunt Sophie and I go shopping together, just the two of us. One day, I was going to go to the zoo or the Shed with Ben, Emma, Karl, Johnny, and Elana. I love my little cousins and I was really looking forward to spending time with them, especially with Elana; she's four, almost five, and she's my goddaughter. And I love her.

We were going to be spending the second and third weeks in Virginia at some resort that a friend of Aunt Sophie's recommended to them. It's supposed to be family-friendly and a great place to stay. It's on the Atlantic coast and it sounds like a really nice place. I can't remember the name of the place but it's a resort-spa and it sounds like a really nice place. My aunt was really impressed by the website and I trust my aunt's judgment. Plus I'm really looking forward to spending a couple weeks with sane people.

My aunt picked me up from the airport without any of her children. Ben, my twelve-year-old cousin, was babysitting his younger siblings. "He actually almost enjoys it some of the time," Aunt Sophie told me. "He isn't very fond of spending time with Emma, Karl, or Johnny; he thinks they're all annoying. But he likes Elana. He said she's too cute to be annoying."

I smiled. Ben and Elana probably would be closer to each other than to any of their other siblings simply because of their age gap. Karl and Johnny were two years apart in age and always playing together. Emma would play with Ben sometimes but not much because he was a "dumb boy. See, Lizzie, not all boys are stupid, just some of them," she'd told me at Christmas. "Ben is dumb, and so are Johnny and Karl, but Dad isn't dumb."

Being at my aunt and uncle's house just filled me with a great sense of peace. Their house is a very homey place; it seems like people really live there. My parents' apartment is the top floor of a luxury hotel and it's always perfectly clean. Everything looks like it's from a magazine or the set of a TV show and it's just not homey. There are no pictures of our family and no toys or anything; it's sterile. But I love the Gardiners' house; people live there. There are toys lying around the living room and they have pictures of family members hanging on the walls. My mom is always complaining that their house is in complete and utter chaos, but I love it there. It's a home; a family lives there and you can tell it by looking around the house.

When we walked into the living room, my five cousins were sitting there watching Mulan. I had to laugh because Steve and Becca had just given me that movie less than a week earlier. "Lizzie!" Elana screamed as I walked in. "You're here! We're watching a movie; you can watch it with us."

She jumped on me, so I picked her up and swung her around. "How are you, sweetie? I've missed you."

"I'm starting kindergarten in September," she said. "That's the school for five year olds. Johnny was in that school when he was five."

"I know," I told her. "I remember. I also remember when Ben was in kindergarten and when Emma was there and when Karl was there."

"Wow, you remember a long time."

I smiled. "I even remember when I was in kindergarten."

"Are you older than the dinosaurs?"

That night, we all had dinner together. It was fun to spend time with my cousins and my aunt and uncle. My cousins are all officially nuts. Not only am I apparently older than the dinosaurs but according to Johnny and Karl, I need to join the circus. I'm not quite sure why but I think it had something to do with the number of Gardiner children climbing all over me like I was a jungle gym or something. I loved it though. I really don't spend enough time around little kids. I might see high school students all day, every day during the school year, but I miss the joy my little cousins bring into my life. Elana and Johnny are my darlings. They just love snuggling and talking and playing. I could spend the rest of my life playing with them.

The week in Chicago went by so fast. Wicked was amazing; it was pretty much the greatest birthday present I've gotten in a long time. My shopping expedition with my aunt was also fantastic. And my day with the munchkins was wonderful. We went to the aquarium and they loved it. My cousins were so cute about the animals. Johnny asked me if we could take the sharks with us; Elana wanted the penguins. I remember when I wanted a pony. I asked for a pony for my birthday and for Christmas every single year until I was twenty-two. Then I gave up; I was never getting a pony. I would have settled for a stuffed pony or a plastic one; a toy would have been fine. I just wanted a positive response to my demands for a pony. My youngest two sisters got everything they wanted; what was so hard about giving me a toy pony?

But a week in Chicago and two weeks on the Atlantic coast of Virginia with the Gardiners was a pretty amazing birthday present. Saturday, July 12, we flew to Virginia. Around noon, we arrived at the airport and it was about two o'clock when we checked in at Pemberley Resorts and Spas. Yes, this would be the same Pemberley Resort and Spas that is owned by one William Darcy who is also a lawyer and a very good friend of one Charles W. Bingley. The receptionist, Laura Reynolds, told us that we might see the owner during our stay but she wasn't sure. She knew Will, his sister and niece were planning to be spending some time at that particular resort during the summer but she wasn't quite sure of the dates.

That made me nervous, really nervous. I was afraid of seeing Will Darcy again. What if he was still in love with me? What if he hated me? I was really starting to like him. He was a good person; sure he'd destroyed the whole "Jane and Charlie" thing, but I could understand his motives. My family was quirky, to say the least. And Damien Wickham really was a sleaze.

The first four days we were there, I saw nothing of Will or his family. Pemberley is made up of a large hotel with a restaurant, lounge, and a bar and smaller cottage/villa type buildings as well as the spa building. We were staying in a four bedroom villa called Isabelle. All of the villas were named; they had names like Anne, William, Georgiana, Isabelle, Emily, Alexander, Nicholas and Sophia. I knew that Will's younger sister was named Georgiana and Anne was their mother's name, but I wasn't sure were Isabelle, Emily, Alexander, Nicholas, and Sophia had come from. I explored the place a lot with my cousins, but the Darcy family wasn't there, so I didn't see them.

Wednesday, I took Emma, Johnny, and Elana to the pool because it was raining and they were bored. My aunt was napping and my uncle was playing tennis with Ben and Karl on the indoor tennis courts; Johnny wasn't really very good at tennis yet and he preferred to play with my uncle when his older brothers weren't there. There weren't many people in the pool and we were really enjoying ourselves. We'd been the only ones in the pool for about fifteen or twenty minutes when a tall, dark-haired young man came into the pool room wearing swim trunks and a dark blue t-shirt that said "MICHIGAN LAW" in white letters. I had Elana on my back when I first caught sight of his face and my body immediately grew stiff. "Come on, Lizzie!" she yelled. "We've got to beat Emma to the other side of the pool."

Will Darcy just looked into my eyes as she said that and I could feel all the blood draining out of my face as he looked at me. And then he smiled.

Will's POV

Gianna, Emily, and I had just arrived at Pemberley Resort in Virginia. The girls were relaxing up in our private cottage while I went to the main hotel to go swimming. I really wanted to go swim in the ocean, but it was raining, so that was out of the question. So I put on my black swimming trunks and a navy blue "MICHIGAN LAW" t-shirt from my years in law school at the University of Michigan. With that, I was off to the pool where I found a young woman with dark brown hair with two little girls and a little boy. The young woman's hair was in a ponytail and she was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit. The younger of the two girls was on her back while the older girl was trying to swim the width of the pool. The boy was sitting on the side watching all of this and kicking his legs with an entertained smile. The little girl on her back yelled, "Come on, Lizzie! We've got to beat Emma to the other side of the pool!"

And then the dark-haired woman turned around so I could see her face; it was Lizzie Bennett. I stared at her in shock for a moment, wondering what she was doing there, but then I smiled. I was genuinely pleased to see her. She might have crushed my pride and damaged my heart, but I still liked her.

Her face was as white as snow to see me. "Come on, Lizzie," the older girl, Emma, called. "Are we going to race or not? You promised me we'd race."

"Just a minute, Emma," Lizzie said. "I just need a minute."

"Lizzie, you look sick," the little boy said. "Are you sure you don't want Emma and me to go get Mommy to take care of you?"

She shook her head and looked at me. "No, Johnny, thank you, but I'm fine. Elana, I need you to get off my back for just a second. I need a drink of water and I'll be fine."

The little girl on her back climbed off and Lizzie helped her out of the pool before climbing out herself. "Do you need any help?" I asked her as she approached me.

Her eyes looked tired and overwhelmed and I knew that was my fault. My presence was causing her pain. She shook her head and smiled. "If you wouldn't mind, could you keep on eye on them for a moment? I need a drink of water; I'm feeling a little lightheaded."

I nodded and she turned to the children. "Kiddos, this is Mr. Darcy. He's a friend of mine and he'll keep an eye on you for just a second. Will, Emma is the oldest, then there's Johnny, and the little fairy munchkin over there is Elana."

The kids all smiled at me and then Lizzie left the room. She was barely gone for a minute and the kids didn't really pay any attention to me. When she came back, the little "fairy munchkin" ran up to her. "Can we race Emma yet?"

She smiled and picked her up. "I just want to talk to Mr. Darcy for a minute. I haven't seen him since Easter."

"Only if I get to stay," the little girl with dark brown pigtails said. "I like you and I don't get to see you ever."

Lizzie kissed the little girl's cheek. "You can stay." Then she looked at me. "Hi," she said slowly. "How are you?"

I shrugged. "I'm doing pretty well. I'm glad to be on vacation for the next couple weeks. How are you?"

"I'm good," she said with a slow smile. "I'm on vacation with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. This is my youngest cousin, Elana."

"She's my godmother, too!" Elana announced with a smile. "And I love her."

"You should," I replied. "Lizzie is great."

"Are you here with your sister and her daughter?" the great girl in question asked.

I nodded. "The two most beautiful women in my life are here."

She grinned. "That's great."

"And I'd like you to meet them sometime," I said on impulse. "You and your family should have dinner with us some night this week. Charlie and Caroline are coming out on Friday, and I bet Charlie would love to see you. But I would like it if we had dinner together before the Bingleys show up."

I don't know why I was making all these offers, but I really did want to spend time with Lizzie and her family. I liked these cute little kids that I'd only met five minutes earlier.

"That sounds like a great idea. You'll like my aunt and uncle; they're from Chicago. And they have five kids, these three and then two more boys."

"Ben is thirteen and he's my best friend," Elana announced. "Do you know how to play Go Fish?"

"I do," he replied.

"Okay," she said. "We can be friends if you'll play Go Fish with me tonight."

And somehow out of that extremely awkward conversation, Gianna and I ended up having dinner with Lizzie and the Gardiner family. Sophie and Ed Gardiner were such amazingly nice people and their five kids are great. We all had dinner in the restaurant in the hotel and then after dinner, we went back to my cottage for coffee and dessert. Gianna and Lizzie got along wonderfully; they had a lot of interests in common and it was great to see them bonding. And Lizzie loved my baby niece; she was holding her most of the night and it was adorable. That woman is a natural with babies.

Of course, I played Go Fish with Elana, Lizzie, and Elana's thirteen-year-old brother, Ben. Ben was a stitch; he had a really good natural sense of humor and he actually really did like his little sister. They were just playing together and talking, having a good time and it was great. They were really cute and they kind of reminded me of Gianna and me when we were little. But we didn't have three siblings in between us. Well, okay, we have five siblings who are between us, but none of them lived. My mom had two stillborn babies between having me and having Gianna as well as three miscarriages; she and my dad named all those babies and some of the cottages at every Pemberley Resort are named after those five children. Emily and Nicholas were the stillborn babies; they both died about five and a half months into gestation. Alexander, Sophia, and Isabelle were what she named the babies she miscarried. Gianna named Emily after the stillborn baby and after our mom. I really like the names Nicholas, Alexander, Sophia, and Isabelle and I think I might like to use them for my own children someday. That is, of course, provided I get married.

Watching Lizzie with my niece made me want children of my own and it made me want to marry her. I was amazed with how friendly she was being towards me. I was starting to wonder if my email had actually impacted her. I was kind of hoping to get to talk to her at some point that week.

A/N: So they're back in the same place again! Please review. From here, things are really going to start moving…probably. That doesn't mean I'll update faster or anything, just then when I am writing, it'll move faster.