Chapter 5

A/N: Sorry about the delay onwards! Unless you're the person who has a problem with how I portray Rosalie. Darlin', SIGN your review. I think Rose is fascinating. Let's talk. I like talking. I totes get where you're coming from. Totes.

Disclaimer: These lovely characters are property of Stephenie Meyer. I'm just borrowing them for a bit.

Bella started to turn toward the employee parking garage but stopped when Edward spoke again. "My car is this way," he said with a nod of his head. Then he waited.

"You don't know where I'm going," she hedged.

"I will if you tell me," he pointed out.

They were dancing. Edward had let her lead, giving her control of picking the restaurant. Given that he was trusting her instinct when it came to food - something that, as a food critic couldn't have been easy - the least she could do was let him drive. She sighed and gave a little nod of consent. "Sure, okay."

When they got to his car, just half a block away, Bella started to laugh in earnest.

"What?" Edward asked, amused by her amusement. He found himself smiling at her without even realizing it. The sound of her laughter pleased him in some curious way.

"It's just that...this is my car," she explained.

His eyebrow quirked. "You drive a Volvo?" he asked as absently opened the door for her.

The gesture did not go unnoticed and Bella wondered whether she should be irritated or charmed. She decided that she was irritated that she was charmed. "Um, yes," she said, abruptly remembering that he had asked her a question. "Blue, though."

He leaned on her door for a beat longer than he meant to, then he hummed distractedly and closed the door before walking to his side of the car.

"I suppose that means you have good taste in cars," Edward said as he started the engine. Bella chanced a glance at him and noted that he was staring straight ahead, not looking at her. But the side of his mouth was lifted. "Now let's see how you are at restaurants." He looked at her expectantly.

"Just get to the freeway," Bella said vaguely.

For a moment, Edward looked like he was about to argue, but he let it go.

"Why a Volvo?" she asked suddenly. It wasn't that the silence was too awkward. In fact, the silence hadn't been heavy at all. Rather, Bella was insatiably curious about things that didn't quite add up.

There was a lot about Edward Cullen that didn't add up. If he was going to insist on being around, the least he could do was satisfy her curiosity.

He glanced at her before returning his eyes to the road. "What would you think I'd drive?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "It's just that the Volvo really isn't a ... single guy car."

"No, I suppose it isn't," Edward acquiesced. "But it's not a single woman car either," he pointed out.

Bella looked out the window, abruptly angry. "I bought it when I decided I wanted to have a baby," she said, her tone acerbic.

Out of the corner of his eye, Edward saw Bella's posture was tense. He sighed inwardly, knowing that her defenses had gone back up. "It's a good balance. It has a lot of power while still being a good, safe car for when my nieces are with me," he explained carefully.

Bella was glad that she was facing away from him because her eyebrows shot up. "Your nieces?"

"My brother's little girls. They're identical twins," he said, and it was easy to hear the adoration in his voice. "Katrina and Irina."

Bella didn't say anything for a long moment, processing this. According to Jasper, Edward was a consummate uncle, glad to hand his siblings back their children without taking on that responsibility himself, yet he thought enough about his nieces that he'd purchased a car with them in mind. "There's a lot of twins in your family," she murmured absently, more to fill the lull in conversation so that she could keep on thinking.

"Yes, but the twins gene is on the mother's side, so at least you don't have to worry about that," Edward said without thinking.

Almost instantly, Bella bristled. She didn't want to be reminded that there was any reason his genetics could affect her.

"Bella-" Edward began, but she cut him off.

"No...don't...," she took a deep breath, struggling to calm her spiraling emotions. "I'm not ready to talk about it without being furious. I'm trying. I know this isn't your fault...but..."

"I'll be careful," he promised. He really was trying hard. "I just like the taste of my own foot, apparently."

Her lips twitched. "Get off the freeway here," she directed.

"Are you going to tell me where we're going yet?" Edward asked easily, glad for the change of subject.

"You can see it from here," Bella said, nodding in the direction of the restaurant she'd chosen. Now that they were close she was startled by how suddenly ravenous she was. The morning sickness had finally started to wane a bit over the past week. She had every intention of going large with her meal. Triple meat.

While Bella was doing all she could to keep from salivating, Edward was trying to keep from squirming uncomfortably in his seat. A horrible, growing suspicion was percolating in the pit of his stomach - brewing and bubbling and filling the air with a heavy, coffee stench.

Edward hated coffee.

But not as much as he hated the restaurant they were quickly coming up to. "This is what you want?" he asked, trying to keep his tone even.

Unfortunately for him, Bella was perceptive. She'd taken in the way his knuckles were a little whiter as they gripped the steering wheel. His eyes were crinkled as he was furrowing his brows just a little bit.

And his lower lip was pouting out. Just a tad.

Bella had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. He had such beautiful lips. Full. They would be attractive on a boy or a girl.

She found herself imagining them on a tiny face and instantly, she was angry again. Then she was glad that he was horrified at the thought of McDonald's. She'd come here with every intent to push his buttons. "My favorite," she said enthusiastically.

He cleared his throat. "I wouldn't have pegged you for a McDonald's girl."

"What's wrong with McDonald's?" she demanded.

"Nothing," he said quickly.

"You're lying."

"No, I'm..." he trailed off when he saw the look on her face and realized he wasn't fooling anyone. "It's just... if you're going to have a hamburger, why wouldn't you want a real hamburger?"

"McDonald's hamburgers are real hamburgers."

"Real hamburgers are not gray," he countered.

"It says 100% beef right on the carton," she argued.

"Oh, sure," he scoffed. "The parts of it that are beef are 100% beef. But even then you have to wonder which parts of the beef it is."

"So you don't want to go to McDonald's in other words," Bella concluded. Despite her initial irritation, she found that his facial expressions were too amusing. She couldn't stay angry when he was arguing about things like McDonald's beef patties.

Edward sighed as he parked the car in the strip mall where the golden arches of doom was located. "No, no it's fine. They have salads, right? It has to be fairly impossible to mess up a salad," he muttered distractedly, even though he knew that wasn't true. He thought for a moment and decided, as a last ditch effort, to try a method that had occasionally worked on Emmett when they were kids. "You know who makes real burgers? Red Robins. That's a real burger. And you have a diverse selection of toppings and seasonings to choose from and endless fries and strawberry lemonade...with strawberries in it."

"I don't want a burger," Bella said, crossing her arms for effect.

Edward looked at her, a little thrown. "Chicken nuggets?"

Bella shook her head. Edward looked from her to the fast food joint and back. Then his eyebrows shot skyward. "Are you messing with me?" he blurted.

"I like McDonald's," Bella answered, carefully avoiding the question.

Getting more suspicious, Edward noticed her evasion. "You are. You're messing with me. If you weren't, we wouldn't have driven all the way over here to eat at McDonald's. There has to be a McDonald's every block and a half."

"Maybe I like the service here."

They stared at each other, Bella glaring.

But Edward had seen her real glare. This was not it. He looked surreptitiously at the rest of the little strip mall. Liquor store, nail place, laundromat, Mexican food... maybe.

Edward's stomach did a hopeful flip, perking up like a dog who heard the refrigerator door being opened. "You want Pho?" he guessed.

Bella couldn't help it. At the mention of the word her lips actually smacked in anticipation.

Taking that as a good sign, Edward got of the car, an anticipatory grin spreading across his features. Now he was close to salivating himself. Pho had that effect on people. "This is a good choice. It's pretty hard to find a bad Pho place."

"I wouldn't know. There's actually one closer to work, but this was the first one I ever went to," Bella admitted.

When they were seated Bella ordered a water and the large pho bowl with flank, brisket and tendon - triple meat. Edward ordered his with flank, brisket, tendon, and tripe, noticing that Bella's nose wrinkled adorably when he added the last meat.

The waiter asked if they wanted anything else. Bella hesitated, wanting to order a side of spring rolls but not wanting to look like a pig. Then she reminded herself that firstly, she was pregnant and if there was any perk to the whole ordeal that was pregnancy, it had to be that she could eat whatever grizzly combination of food she wanted at the quantity she wanted and no one was allowed to judge. Secondly, there was absolutely no reason that she needed, or wanted, to look good for Edward Cullen, so who cared?

That settled, Bella ordered the spring rolls.

"So,"she began, both figuring that it was her turn to try and make conversation and wanting to distract herself from the wonderful smells that were threatening to drive her mad, "What's the best thing you ever had? To eat, I mean."

"Mountain lion," Edward replied without missing a beat.

Bella blinked at him sporadically, sure she'd heard wrong. "What?"

"You know, the mountain lion population in South America is staggering, so they just started serving them up as main courses," Edward said conversationally, methodically rubbing his chopsticks together to smooth any splinters. "A rare mountain lion steak is about the most decadent thing I've ever had in my mouth."

She studied his face but his face was open and serious. "You have to be messing with me," she said, more to herself than anything.

"Of course I am," Edward replied.

Bella let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. She wasn't one of those PETA types who went above and beyond to save the animals. Obviously, she was a carnivore and all that, but somehow the slaughter of mountain lions seemed inherently wrong to her.

"Mountain lion is gamy. I would never eat it again," Edward continued, oblivious to her internal monologue.

For the second time in less than five minutes, Bella's head snapped up to look at him. This time, though, he was chuckling. "Turnabout is fair play."

"Right, but what I did was a passive aggressive reaction because I was angry. You just think you're funny."

The next hour went surprisingly well. Though Bella was normally quiet around new people, she found herself opening up to this virtual stranger. As long they skirted around the issue of the baby, their conversation was almost intimate - as if they had known each other for ages. There was something about the earnest way Edward would look at her that made her answer his questions in full.

Perhaps it was just refreshing. In this day and age, people rarely actually wanted to know what was going on in other people's lives. In Hollywood, that habit of asking 'how are you?' when you really couldn't care less was even worse. But Edward listened as if her life was fascinating. He clucked in sympathy when she talked about working under Victoria. He seemed genuinely concerned when she spoke of Charlie's long, horrible illness. It was, he said, something he feared - his parents getting sick. Logically, he knew it was probably going to happen.

Eventually, they found themselves on the rather serious topic of love and relationships.

"Oh, I believe in love," Bella answered the inevitable inquiry that came up when anyone heard her viewpoint on relationships. "I just don't think it's magical. I think it gets in the way more than anything. People believe that love can work some kind of miracle – that it can be the glue that keeps them together for years. Well, it isn't glue. More often than not it's a blindfold that leads an otherwise logical person to overlooking a flaw they, ultimately, can't live with. Love isn't enough."

To her surprise, Edward didn't look appalled or pitying like so many others had. "Spoken like a woman who hasn't ever been in love," he observed, his voice not betraying any type of judgement at all.

"You have, I take it?"

"No," he admitted. "But I've seen the… magic," he smiled at her flippant term. "You know, my parents married straight out of high school. Now, even I would have said it was a stupid, stupid decision…and in a lot of ways it made their lives harder – but I think that they are more in love now than they have ever been. And I've seen that love does have the power to save. My sister…" he cut himself off. Though neither of them had said so, Rosalie was on the list of things they weren't going to talk about yet. "Well… anyway. It did take hard work for them to make it together. Most people don't understand that. You are right… love is most certainly not all you need.

The conversation came to a natural silence then and they were both suddenly aware that they were leaning forward, arms on the table. They were both smiling in that way people were prone to when they found someone else of a like mind. It was like a highlighter - with all the people in the crowded city, in the crowded world, there were those select few that would always be kindred.

Their small smiles fell slowly, and they both straightened up.

It wasn't that they didn't want to get along. They were both relieved, on a level. It was just confusing. If they had been two people truly meeting each other for the first time with no other complications - without the baby or the situation with Rosalie - they would have come away from that lunch as friends. Maybe even, if they were being honest with themselves, they would have left with a little crush - the kind that made them smile secret little smiles when they thought no one was looking.

Instead of all those positive feelings, they both left more confused.

~0~

That evening, Jasper and Jacob arrived at her house unannounced. She was annoyed because she knew somehow Jasper had found out that she'd talked to Edward. Then he had obviously called Jake for backup. They did that sometimes, when they thought she should talk about something that she would otherwise not.

Pushy motherfuckers.

However, Jasper came bearing ice cream - chocolate chip cookie dough to be exact - and so he was admitted entrance.

Jacob was carrying a huge jar of pickles. "Funny, Jake," Bella deadpanned as she let them in.

"What? You can't have enough pickles, Bells. They're a staple," he said in mock seriousness.

Jasper and Bella settled on the couch with the ice cream between them. Jake sat in the comfy arm chair, legs tossed carelessly over the side. Knowing that the would pester her until she talked, Bella told them about the meeting.

"I wonder what he's playing at," Jacob said, sounding irritated.

Bella perked up, glad she wasn't the only one who was at least suspicious, but Jasper sighed. "Why does he have to be playing a game? Seems to me that he's just trying to get to know you."

"Well, I don't want to get to know him. I don't trust him. I don't li-" She found herself unable to say that she didn't like him because that wasn't true...at least, not anymore. "I don't trust that the person he showed me today is really him."

"I'm sure that what you saw today is not all there is of him, sugar. You hardly know the guy. Why rush to judgement one way or another?" Jasper countered.

"I just don't understand. At the clinic, he looked at me like I was insane for wanting to keep this baby. Then he shows up today and he's talking about lawyers and that it was his baby too," Bella said, frustrated. She dropped the spoon she was holding back into the carton and wrapped her arms around her middle, feeling threatened.

Jasper sighed and put the ice cream off to the side so he could scoot closer to her. He put his arm around her shoulders and Bella leaned into him. "Honey, I know you're scared, but you're giving Edward a really hard time over something that isn't his fault."

Jacob scoffed. "He should leave her alone. How is that not his fault?"

"And if it was you?" Jasper asked, lifting his head to give Jacob a pointed stare. "What if it happened to you and Lizzie? What if some strange woman ended up with your baby? Would you be able to walk away from that child?"

The other man opened his mouth to argue but he was brought up short. Bella closed her eyes, remembering Jacob's words the day she told him that she was trying to get pregnant... how he would have had to tell her no if she'd asked him. I don't think I could have a kid out there and not be a father to him, he had said.

Was that what Edward wanted, ultimately? To be her baby's father on more than a biological level?

"I thought not," Jasper said quietly. "Bella, don't you think it would be better all around if you just gave him a chance? I don't think he knows what to do any more than you do."

Bella was beginning to feel tears prick at the corners of her eyes. She took a deep breath, trying to calm the whirlwind of emotions. She knew a little about hot fronts hitting cold fronts - the chaos it created. The hot feeling of her anger at the injustice of her situation, that this stranger was being forced into her life and her unborn baby's, was hitting the icy cold stab of pure terror. The result was threatening to overwhelm her with useless emotions. She didn't want to start a crying jag, it would just frustrate her more.

Because, logically and legally, she knew she didn't have a leg to stand on. If Edward was after some kind of custody over her child, she knew that he would probably get it. He had a job and a home. He had a biological right. This was what she had wanted so much to avoid. She didn't want anyone else to have a say in how she raised her child. She didn't want to be attached to anyone, having their life interfere with her own.

Not ready to talk about all her fears - from the insignificant to the downright ridiculous - Bella struggled with how to answer Jasper's question. "It's hard for me to trust him knowing that he's Rosalie's brother. He must have some opinion about the whole thing with Royce King. I can't imagine that it's positive. So yeah, when a person who has every reason to despise me treats me so...nicely, I find that a little suspicious. Then there's the whole fact that he's Rosalie's brother in the first place. Rosalie Hale, Jasper. How different can they possibly be if they were raised by the same people?"

Jasper gave a short little laugh. "In answer to your first question, I'll tell you from experience what Edward might be thinking. You know how I feel about Rosalie."

Both Bella and Jacob snickered. Rosalie had been the topic of discussion at many of their get togethers. Jasper did a particularly good impression of her self-important, nose-in-the-air strut.

"Well," Jasper continued, "I've tried to put that aside because, in all honesty, I don't know her. And how could my prejudice help, at this point? I mean, this is a fucked up situation, baby. Think about it from her point of view. She's feeling threatened and insecure because the baby her partner is having isn't hers, even by blood.

"And what if I let how Rosalie is affect what I thought of Alice? I mean - Alice is Rosalie's partner, what does that say about her? Even now I'll tell you...I would have been missing out. Because Alice - she's amazing. I'm glad that I know her. Of course - I wish I could have gotten to know her outside this situation, but that's just not the hand I was dealt," he said, smiling ruefully.

"Yeah, but to get her, you have to deal with the Ice Princess of the Universe. Poor Alice," Jacob muttered, crossing his arms.

Jasper was quiet for a minute. "I haven't seen much of her so far. But you know, I don't think her public persona is what she's like at home. Alice has told me some stories about her that I wouldn't have believed. She seems like a good partner," he finished, shrugging.

Bella lifted her head, staring at him with a hint of incredulity. "It's so weird to hear you say that."

In the run of things, Jasper was the most put out by Rosalie's behavior and had, in the past, done more than his fair share of griping about her. Then again, the diva-types were the bane of any producer's existence, so he was naturally biased.

Her best friend sighed. "Like I said, there's no point in dwelling on my biases. If we're going to be in each others lives for the long term - and Alice and I have discussed that; she wants me around, at least - then it's not going to help if I just concentrate on what I thought before. There's a lot about her that we don't know, Bells. I'm not saying she isn't who she is - even Alice will tell you that she can be uh," he struggled to overwrite his initial, more colorful choice of words, "She can be self-centered. But no one is one thing, you know? I'm just doing my best to see her for all that she is."

"Ugh," Bella grumbled, burying her head against his chest again. "Why are you being all reasonable?"

Jasper chuckled and stroked her hair soothingly. "That's why I brought this idiot," he said, gesturing at Jacob.

"Pffft. Idiot," Jacob responded, but he was smiling. He looked thoughtful for a minute. "I don't know, Bells. I was going to offer to beat him up for you," he joked, "but now... maybe we should wait until he takes some type of action. There's no point in getting upset until there's something to be upset over, right?"

"One day at a time," she said distractedly.

Part of her was almost looking forward to it. She wanted to know more about Edward; he intrigued her. Though it was a thorn in her side, at the very least, there was something to say about a man who could have walked away free and clear of any responsibility and yet didn't. She knew that she had been unreasonable with him, not letting him talk to her at first, yet he had been patient. She had seen the irritation cross his face and that he very deliberately quelled it several times. He was trying, really hard, not to antagonize her.

Her hand rested over her bump. One day at a time...but she knew those days were numbered.

A/N: Gawd I'm hungry. Let's go get some pho.

Y'all, josieswan, she's totes making this a better story imho. I love her. Mwah, darling, mwah. And also thanks to tellingmelies. I struggled with this chapter. They were godsends.

How bad was your morning sickness?