I do not own the copyright to characters, places or plots in this story. Stephanie Meyer is the Copyright holder. I am just playing with her fantastic characters.
Chapter One
Edward POV
"Someone's been at the house" Alice said as her eyes regained their focus. Emmett, Jasper and I tensed, preparing ourselves for any threat to our family "Human I think" continued Alice, "they seem to have left a bundle or something on the stoop."
"It'll just be the town busybody dropping off a casserole or something equally as revolting to welcome us to town" said Rosalie scrunching up her nose in disgust. "Do you remember the last time that happened? I had the smell stuck in my nose for days, vile human food!"
With Alice seeing no danger in the future from the parcel on the doorstep, we continued our hunt before heading home. As we approached the house, the smell of human became stronger and I stopped dead in my tracks. A heartbeat. I could hear a heartbeat. It was faint, but definitely there. My family all paused behind me as I let my mind wander out into the night, but all I encountered was silence. Odd. I could generally hear every inner voice within a 10 mile radius, but all I got was the inner ramblings of my family as they realized that there was a beating human heart in the near vicinity and waited for me to tell them why it was there.
Then Alice gasped. We all turned to stare at her, her eyes now glazed over, one of the tell tale signs she was having a vision. "It's a baby" she whispered. "The parcel on the stoop, it's a baby, that's the heartbeat!" Everyone stared her with mixtures of incredibility and confusion on their faces, and Emmett let out a huge guffaw. "Jeez, folks around here really do know what to bring us for dinner!" he chuckled. We waited for Rose to smack him upside the head as was her custom when he said something inappropriate, but it didn't come. She had disappeared at Vampire speed around to the front of the house.
By the time we caught up with Rose, she had picked the baby up and was cradling it in her arms like a pro and talking to it in a sing-song voice which I had never heard Rose use. As the rest of us approached she turned to us, shielding the baby in her arms and let out a low growl. "Rose" I said, not needing to read her mind to see what she was thinking, "We're not going to take it off you" Yet I added in my mind. "We just need to see if it's ok, and figure out why the hell someone left it here." "She's not an 'it'!" she snapped. "She's a beautiful little girl, aren't you my precious little Isabella" she cooed at the baby, who appeared to be sleeping peacefully as if she hadn't just been ditched on a doorstep and manhandled by an overly maternal vampire. "You named it already?" asked Emmett, "we can't keep her!" Esme had sidled closer to Rose and was stroking a finger down the side of its small face as we all slowly edged closer to look at the small bundle in Rose's arms. "I didn't name her, her name's written on the card I found with her. And who says we can't keep her? Whoever had her clearly didn't want her!" Rose stared lovingly down at the tiny bundle in her arms and rocked her slowly back and forth, while Esme took the scene in with tears of joy in her eyes. She turned to her husband, "Carlisle my darling, can we keep her?"