Disclaimer: I who have nothing.

A/N: Thank you for your reviews, its very encouraging, I hope this story continues to meet your expectations.

EDIT: I'm so sorry, I wasn't aware until it was mentioned in a review that I never gave a timeline for this story. In the twilight universe this story is based after the events of the first book and before the tragedy that is New Moon.

EDIT 2: I've had a few questions as to the pronounciation of Lija. Its prounounced Lie-Jah.

Chapter Three:

"C'mon Teddy bear, wakey wakey, you 'n mama are going to be late."

Gently smoothing her son's dark curls off his forehead, Lija tried to coax him awake. She looked down upon her son with a loving smile; she really really loved her mornings with him.

She had been awake for almost an hour, and had spent that long trying to get ready. She decided that since they'd been here for three days it was time for her and Teddy to introduce themselves to the locals; and she had to make sure she dressed to impress. Not for the first time she thanked all that was divine for giving her a finely tuned fashion sense, and a huge selection of clothing.

She never used to care about what she wore or how she looked. She was quite happy wearing loose fitting jeans and a baggy t-shirt and could have gone days without running a comb through her short hair. But then she hit puberty, discovered boys, became friends with Lavender and Parvati, and grew out her hair. She found out over the months that followed that whoever said that Magic was wand waving with Latin words, and that confidence came from having a high self-esteem; didn't really know what they were talking about.

No, as she discovered, Magic was a push-up bra and two inch stileftto heels, and confidence was having the opposite sex walk into walls at the sight of you. She had fully explored her power over the other sex and had learnt all she could at the feet of the reigning shallow queens of her school. When she had learnt anything there was to learn, she had quickly become tired of the game and reverted back to her natural charming self. Thankfully the addiction to clothes and shoes had remained, in the hands of someone with such a large fortune it was both a nightmare and a blessing. And now she had a son to dress too.

"Mama, noooo" her baby murmured, trying and failing to open his eyes. She laughed softly and reached down to lift him up into her arms. She positioned him so that his head fell into the crook of her neck walked to the changing table, gently putting him down. She went through the motions of preparing her son for their day, her little man slowly waking with every swipe of the warm wash cloth. Once he was fully awake and dressed in his little denim pants, and his cute blue t-shirt, she slipped him into his warm jacket and put him in his favourite shoes. She placed him slowly on the floor and watched as he toddled his way around the room. She listened for him as he found his toddler drum set and started banging away and quickly went about preparing his travel bag.

Baby bag ready, and having fed her son, she quickly rechecked her outfit one last time. Twisting and turning in front of the hallway mirror she wondered if maybe what she was wearing was bit of an overkill. From the top of her artfully flicked hair to the tips of her knee-high, two inch designer boots she looked like a young mother with money. Turning one last time to look at the back of her skin tight jeans she caught the designer name etched in small writing along the seam and changed her answer. She looked like a young mother, with money and an army of nanny's.

Turning to her son she sought his opinion.

"What do you think, baby. Mama Look like she could melt ice caps?"

"Ma-mu gla-bu"

"Great answer," she replied with a laugh before swooping down to pick up her son and rain kisses on his little face, Teddy giggled and squirmed during the onslaught.

Buckling Teddy into the rear passenger seat of her Land Rover, she froze when she felt the sensation of being watched. Turning around she scanned the street and the surrounding property and couldn't find anything out of order. Shaking her head, she went back to making her son comfortable but made up her mind that next time she would park the car in the garage.

Driving to the main street of Forks, Lija mentally went over her plan for the day.

Between 11 am and 12 pm, she and Teddy were going to go shopping for bed linens, and coverings for her furniture, she didn't really need them as she already had them but Alan had told her that the best way to integrate one's self into the town they've just moved into, is to feed the local economy.

From 12 pm to 1 pm, she was going to park their expensive car in front of a family friendly restaurant in the main street of the town, where they would then go in to eat. Mother Merlin and the Blessed Goats please let the food be edible, but if she ended up with food poisoning that would be alright because the local hospital was the next stop on her list.

At 1.30 pm she had an appointment at Forks General Hospital to see Dr Sanders. He was going to be her family doctor and came highly recommended by the people that highly recommend these things. She had actually asked for the best doctor they had but she was advised that he was the Chief Resident and did not do general practice. She was happy with Dr Sanders for now but only because at the very first sign of Teddy being overly sick she was flying in the best Paediatrician that money could bribe. She would tell Dr Sanders that too.

At 2.30pm she would go home, put Teddy down for his afternoon nap and make dinner. When he woke up they were going to go for a walk to explore the street they lived on and provide gossip for the ladies of the street. She was thumbing her nose at all the busybody's who were going to talk about her and she was going to do it looking good.

BREAK

That wasn't so bad, she thought as she left Dr Sanders office with a sniffling Teddy.

Her poor boy had just received his vaccinations. The doctor hadn't been at all impressed to discover that Teddy hadn't received any of the necessary shots when he was a baby, and he'd been downright horrified to learn that Lija hadn't even taken him to a doctor since birth. Lija didn't think that having a person who had a direct line to Child Welfare think you were a bad mother was a good thing, and crossing her fingers under the table, she started spinning a rather sad story of her stay with a religious cult. By the end of it Dr Sanders was praising her for finding the strength to leave and had offered to give her son his shots now so they didn't need to rebook another appointment. At the conclusion of the appointment he had given her lots of forms and pamphlets about the different illnesses that her son could get and also the how's and why's of prevention. She wasn't even going to bother to read half of them, she knew that if she did she'd turn into a paranoid wreck, and poor Teddy would end up being wrapped in cotton wool.

She was making her escape down the hallway towards the exit, when her unhappy son decided he just wasn't comfortable enough. Adjusting her grip so as to get him in a more comfy position, she lost her grasp on the papers and could only watch as they went fluttering to the ground. She lowered herself and tried to put Teddy on his feet so that she could pick them up, but he was having none of that and grasped on to her hair and started crying.

"Oh crap!" she muttered in mild panic. Trying to soothe her son, she looked helplessly at the mess around her and tried to think of a solution when a blonde lady approached her.

"Here, let me pick these up for you," she offered in a kind voice. Lija could only stare, because really, the blonde had to be the most beautiful person she ever seen in her life, and that's saying a lot since she knew a quarter-veela.

"Where do you want me to put them," the blonde golden-eyed beauty asked as she looked at Teddy. She was forced to repeat the question though because Lija just couldn't form an answer through her daze. Even Teddy had quietened down, it was as if he knew he was in the presence of a woman to be adored, and had to take the time to appreciate that before jealous women everywhere discovered her and tore her reputation to shreds.

"Oh... I'm sorry. I'm just thinking... I'm damn sure that when I read the description of this town before I moved here, absolutely nowhere did it ever mention that it was often used as a movie location."

Smiling, the blonde woman nodded her golden head as if to say that the reaction was to be expected, and her eyes strayed once more to Teddy.

Handing the stranger her carry bag to place the papers in, it was the blonde's turn to be surprised.

"This is a Givenchy design! I've never seen this one before, where did you get it?!" she exclaimed.

"Oh... I bought it in England before I came. There was this sale, damn good one too."

The blonde looked up and really looked at her, her strange golden eyes assessing what she saw and finding it acceptable.

"You have good taste."

"Thank you. Going by the Prada heels you have on, I'd have to say the same thing for you."

"I have exceptional taste," she replied looking down at her heels. When she finally looked up, she zeroed in on Teddy, "He's beautiful, how old is he?"

Teddy must have felt that he was now the subject of conversation, as he ducked his head to hide in the crook of her neck and stuck his thumb in his mouth. Lija smiled as she lovingly ran her hands over his face before answering.

"He's just turned two. He's usually more talkative then this but I guess being in a new town makes him a bit more reluctant."

"I love his hair, he's got beautiful curls," she replied, almost wistfully.

Smiling, Lija leaned down and planted a kiss right in Teddy's unruly curls. She sent a quick prayer to the only deity she knew that she wasn't about to try and befriend a baby snatcher.

"Yep, my baby boy's going to be a real heartbreaker when he's older. By the way, I'm Lija O'Carroll," she said offering her hand.

"Rosalie Hale," was the hesitant reply, as if she wasn't used to introducing herself to others. 'Rosalie' reached over and shook her hand tensing as if she expected some sort of reaction on contact.

Lija felt the unnatural coldness of her hand but didn't react, if the years as a witch had taught her anything it was that you minded your own business until the magical map tells you that someone was under polyjuice. She shook the hand warmly, and smiled. She was making friends.

"So Rosalie, where's the best place to go shopping for children's clothes, or will I need to make a weekend trip to Seattle?"

Rosalie tossed her wavy golden hair as she practically glided into the kitchen of the Cullen's three storey house. She came to a stop when she saw her entire vampire family there.

"Where have you been babe?"

She looked over to the vampire who asked the question and smiled when she saw his curls. She wondered if Emmett knew that she had saved him because of his hair, she was in love with it long before she realised she was in love with him. Now she couldn't imagine her life without him. He was 6 foot 5 inches of perfect man; he made it his duty to make her happy and he went out of his way to prove her right; that the world really did revolve around her. Rosalie came out of her thoughts when she heard Edward choke on a laugh, throwing him a glare, she looked back at Emmett and gave an answer that none of the vampires in the room were expecting, and when the company included a seer and a mind reader, as surprises went it was a good one.

"I was having coffee with a friend."

"Rose... babe... when you say that you were 'having coffee with a friend' do you mean that literally, or do you mean that in the 'the friend was the coffee I was having' way?"

"I mean that as in I met a friend, we found things in common, we went for coffee and then we parted ways with the invitation to do so again in the near future."

"I think I've seen that kind of scene in a movie, and I'm sure that coffee had another meaning there too. Do I need to... kill this friend?"

Sniffing disdainfully, Rosalie sat down next to her husband and punched him in the arm.

"Do not be an idiot, Emmett," she said impatiently, "As if I'd even want some other beast just out of the cave when I've almost got you trained."**

"Oh, that's good... I think."

Rose smiled indulgently at her mate before looking to the other members of their family. They all looked back at her expectantly, she knew what they wanted and she wasn't going to give it until they asked her. She felt very possessive of her 'friend' and she really didn't feel like sharing. Just like she had felt connected to Emmett when she had first seen him, so had it been with Teddy and his mother.

She had just left Carlisle's office and was heading to her car when she saw the tall brunette and her son. Like she always felt whenever she saw a mother with a child, she had been overcome with the twin emotions of envy and sorrow. When the girl had paused to tend to the child, she half turned towards her and Rosalie caught a glimpse of her face. The girl was rather attractive – for a human. She didn't have the unnatural beauty of a vampire but she did have a presence, one that spoke of both an abundance of confidence and an unbreakable spirit. Her hair was artfully done and it fell in dark waves to fall just below her shoulders. Where the artificial lights of the hallway touched her hair, she could see tints of dark red.

As interesting as the mother looked, it was her son that really caught and held Rosalie's attention. Looking at the child with his curly hair and his adorable features, she was transported back to when she was human and had held her childhood friend's child for the first time. Longing, the likes that she had not felt before in years, almost overwhelmed her, and she stared wistfully at the little boy.

Continuing to watch the mother struggle to calm her son, Rosalie gave into the urge to be closer to the little one and approached them to help.

During the consequent conversation, Rosalie was surprised with how at ease she felt around the human. Usually they pretended that they unaffected by her cold beauty by becoming loud and boisterous. Then there were those that were so uncomfortable that they either hid behind people, or they made themselves small and meek so as to not garner her attention and her inevitable scorn. This human acknowledged that Rosalie was beautiful with humour and accepted it for what it was. She didn't try and make it into a focal point of their exchange and she didn't try and increase her own presence by overindulging the conversation. This was a woman who was not easily intimidated.

Rosalie's interest in the human increased even more when she really looked at what the other was wearing; it took a special kind of person to be able to carry off high-end labels without looking pretentious. All in all, she was quietly impressed, and when the well dressed woman introduced herself as Lija O'Carroll and then later invited her to coffee, Rosalie wasn't about to say no.

She had finally found a human whose throat she didn't want to rip out and whose conversation she actually enjoyed. Their conversation was filled with laughter, discussions on the latest fashion trends and places that they had been, anecdotes on Teddy's life, and shared derision of different people that they had met and disliked in the past. It was comfortable and for a brief moment Rosalie forgot just how different they actually were. She was unsure as to whether she was doing the right thing when at the conclusion of their impromptu outing they swapped numbers, but it was promptly overlooked when Lija let her carry Teddy to the car and then invited her to come along to their shopping expedition the following week. The others had always told her that she was too judgemental, narcissistic and discriminating to ever be good company for anyone else without a similar disposition, but she obviously got along with Lija O'Carroll so maybe it was just that everyone else was weak? Whatever the case, Rosalie could not wait until their shopping trip. She was so sure she could persuade Lija to let her buy Teddy a couple of outfits and she already had a few of them in mind.

It was the clothes that she was thinking of as she waited in silence, and she knew that Edward was trying and failing to read her mind past the baby clothes. If the silence kept up any longer then she was going to start naming the car parts of her BMW, she was sure she could stretch that to at least three minutes. Then she would start on the car parts of Emmett's jeep. There was no way that Edward was going to take this from her mind, this was sooo her event to share.

"I didn't know you had a friend in Forks, Rosy. Is her Coven… visiting?" asked Esme, breaking the long silence.

"She's human, she and her son have only just moved here from England."

"Oh... and where did you meet... this... friend?"

"The hospital, it was after I dropped in to see Carlisle. She needed help and we just started talking."

"Oh that's lovely Rose, does your human friend have a name?"

Rosalie raised an eyebrow at Carlisle who had asked the last question. Both he and Esme were smiling, they seemed curious as to why all of sudden she would want to befriend a human. Alice she could see bounced on her feet with a smile stretched across her face, she obviously knew something and so did Jasper, if the surreptitious glances that he kept making to Edward were anything to go by. Edward on the other hand looked uninterested, when he thought she wasn't looking, he shared a look with Emmett as if to say 'new toy, she'll become bored eventually'. She snarled at him for that before promptly ignoring him and turning to answer Carlisle's question.

"Her name's Lija O'Carroll. She has a two year old son called Teddy," she said with a smile, and at the mention of Teddy's name a beatific smile stretched across her face and she couldn't help herself. She babbled.

"Oh Esme, you should see him, he's absolutely gorgeous. He has these adorable brown eyes and the cutest laugh ever. He's so perfect, and naughty, and he has the most beautiful hair. It's like Emmett's, curly and all over the place, oh he's going to be so beautiful when he's all grown up. Lija asked me to carry him to their car and he fell asleep on the way and we had to find a way to put him in her Land Rover without –"

"Land Rover? She drives a Land Rover?" this from Edward who had jerked at the mention of the car. She glared half-heartedly at him for cutting her off but then she saw that Edward looked almost frantic.

"Yes, a black one... why?"

"Show me everything!" he demanded, looking her in the eyes.

"What? Edward!" she replied, she was concerned with her brothers reaction. His eyes had darkened from gold to almost black, he had an almost feral look on his face and truth be told she was almost scared of him, she could feel Emmett tense beside her, ready to jump to her defence if it was needed.

"Show me!"

"Is it Lija, is there something wrong with her? Is she a danger to us?" she asked anxiously, she could almost taste the disappointment at the thought of losing what could have been a great friendship, but her family came first and if Lija was a danger then she would destroy her, regardless of how she felt about Teddy. Sometime during the confrontation, Carlisle had moved to be closer to Edward and had his hand on his shoulder as if to calm him down, while Esme moved closer to Emmett and stood there wringing her hands – a very human reaction. Everyone was on edge except for Alice who was looking pensively into the distance.

"Show me!"

"She's my human! If she's a danger I'll take care of it."

"Show me!"

"No!"

"Rosalie! Just show him!"

"What!" she hissed, glowering at Alice, "Not until you tell me whats –"

"ROSY! JUST SHOW HIM!" they all shouted, exasperated with her stubbornness.

"FINE!"

Frustrated, worried, and angry, Rosalie pictured her entire meeting with Lija and Teddy and threw it at Edward. Every word, every action, every emotion, ran through her head and she knew also through Edward's. She finished off with her last vision of Lija as she looked over her shoulder, smiled and then waved. She looked angrily at her brother as he closed his eyes in surrender and dropped his head into his trembling hands. Apprehensive, she looked to Alice who looked as if she could dance up the walls any minute and then at Jasper who was struggling between Edwards's intense emotions and his mate's joy. Looking to Carlisle, Esme and Emmett she was happy to note that she wasn't the only one in the room that was confused.

"If someone doesn't tell me what the hell is going on – "

"Oh Rose, what colour do you think Teddy would look good in? I'm thinking light blue, or we could just use that for his room, do you –"

"So help me Alice, if you don't tell me what you know, I will belt you one!"

"I can't tell you, that's Edward's secret to disclose. But it's such great news. Well... not for everyone... but everything will be okay... Eventually... maybe."

"What secret?" "I'm so lost" "What's great news?" "Edward are you alright?"

Rosalie, Emmett, Esme and Carlisle all spoke up at once only to stop abruptly when Edward stumbled out of his chair and sped out of the room.

Rosalie and Carlisle both got up to go after him but they were stopped when Alice swiftly moved to intercept them by blocking the exit that Edward had left from.

"Give him time... he's just realised something... and he needs to come to terms with it."

Turning to her pixie sister, Rosalie narrowed her eyes.

"Spill it Alice!"

A/N: This is honestly not the way I had intended to write this chapter. It's also not the way my plot for the chapter was going to go, I wasn't planning on introducing Rosalie for a while, but it's as if my fingers typed themselves and well, here she goes. As the canon characterization of Rosalie goes I don't think this it, but Rose has always been one of my favourite characters and I wanted to put her in a positive light. This is my Rosalie and I really like her and I hope you do too. Have I introduced her too early? Is the interaction between Lija and the other characters unbelieveable?

Now I have to go and reconstruct the plot summaries I have for the next couple of chapters and rewrite Chapter 4 . Please read and review, let me know if there is anything misspelt, missing, anything you don't like, do like, love? I thrive on reviews. Good and Bad.

** Love this quote. Borrowed from Dark Magic by Christine Feehan, said by Savannah to Gregori.