All characterizations, plot lines, backgrounds and details belong to the author. Plagiarism is theft. No copying or reproduction of this work in any language is permitted without the express written authorization of the author. Thank you. March 2010.

Thanks as ever to my fantastic beta, xrxdanixrx- Have I told you lately that you're awesome?

For all of you reading and reviewing-thank you! Hope you enjoy and as ever, let me know what you think.

On with Edward…

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EPOV

Chapter 8

The glorious smell of paint permeates the loft when I wake up. I glance at the alarm clock and groan because I'm late…again. I'm supposed to be at The Foundation to finish up the designs for Rose and her pathetic team of artistic wannabe's. The only thing that's making me not call her to cancel, is the remote possibility of seeing Bella.

I wash away last nights insane painting frenzy under a much needed cold shower. Once I'm dressed, I race out the door, not even bothering to clean up the studio. I know more of the same is coming later tonight, so why bother?

As the elevator doors open at the office, Leanne or Lori's eyes grow wide and she offers me a shy smile. I think she's actually trying to be sexy.

"Good morning, Edward. It's good to see you again." She flips her brown hair behind her shoulder and rakes her eyes up and down my body as if I'm a piece of meat hanging in some butchery ready to be bought and baked. I feel queasy again.

"Is Rosalie here? She's expecting me," I say a little too rudely. Liz seems hurt that I'm not falling all over her, and picks up the phone to ring Rose. I stare at the flowers on the side of the desk and shake my head. Who doesn't like flowers? Apparently, Bella Swan. Is there anything she does like?

"You can go on back. She's waiting." She smiles and watches me as I make my way to the design area.

Bella's office door is shut and I resist the overwhelming temptation to open it and see her again. But after yesterday, I know better than to just barge in on her. Rose is standing with her arms crossed and looking pissed off at the design table when she sees me.

"Thanks for gracing us with your presence, Cullen," she scowls at me.

"I'm sorry. I overslept this morning."

"With who?" she asks without missing a beat.

"Actually…" I start to explain, but she holds her hand up, stopping me.

"You know what? Spare me the sorted details of your pathetic sex life," she says and leaves me sitting there as the young and eager design team stares at me, raring to go.

The team is made up of three extremely attractive women. Normally, I'd welcome their blatant flirting, but all I can do is look down the hallway at Bella's shut door.

As I sit and try to focus on getting this logo done, they engage in shameless attempts to garner my attention. One of them, the blonde, I think her name is Megan or something, actually drops some of the designs on the floor, and then bends over in front of me to pick them up. I'm not turned on in the slightest, and I'm actually beginning to wonder if there is something seriously wrong with me.

Any other time, I would be all over this…literally, especially since there's three of them and that was still on my list of to do's, until the other night when everything I thought I wanted flew out the door the minute I saw Bella. Now, these three just serve to annoy me. Honestly, I could be at the studio right now, not wasting time with tweedle dee and her two side kicks.

A very long and torturous hour later, I see Rose quietly slip into Bella's office, all stealth like. I decide I've had enough of waiting, and announce that I need lunch.

I tell my eager beavers that I'll meet them in the cafeteria, and they race off, giggling like school girls. Of course, it's at this precise moment that Bella has decided to emerge from her office sanctuary. She sees them making a hasty retreat from me, all whispering to each other, and she rolls her eyes.

When she finally looks in my direction, my heart stops beating. Her hair is wavy today and cascades down her back. What is it about women with long hair that makes me want to yank on it, pulling it back while they scream my name? My dick twitches as she makes her way towards me, and I breathe a sigh of relief that there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with me after all.

She's smiling at me…well, ,,it looks like she's trying to smile, but something else is hiding beneath the obviously fake facade she's got up.

"Back for more doodling?" she asks, cocking her head to the side. She moves to the table to survey the designs. "These are really good." She looks up at me in shock.

"I told you, I'm an artist." I'm also completely infatuated with you and would like nothing more than to take you back to my loft and fuck you senseless for the next several hours, days, weeks…you get the picture.

"Ya, about that…" She bites her lip and looks up at me tentatively. Fuck, whatever she wants, I'll give it to her if she'll just keep looking at me like that. I inch towards her and she picks up one of the drawings, running her fingers over it softly. "We have this event coming up."

Holy shit. You have got to be kidding me. She's asking me out? Did I miss the memo that hell had frozen over? I just smirk at her and lean against the drawing table with my arms crossed.

"It's a charity auction to raise money for The Foundation," she says as she fondles the sketch in her hand. She pauses, clearly waiting for me to say something. I stare back at her trying to look like I don't give a damn. "It's at the end of next month, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to donate something. Some of your work, I mean. Rose seems to think it will bring in a lot of money."

My heart falls and I feel like a complete idiot for even thinking she'd want to ask me out after the way I behaved in her office yesterday. "Rose thinks it will bring in a lot of money? What do you think?" I challenge.

"I trust Rose. If she says it will help us, then I believe her."

"But you don't trust me?"

"You've given me no reason to," she says.

"I've also given you no reason not to, Bella."

"Does it really matter what I think?" she asks, looking flustered.

"Yes, actually it does." You have no idea how much it matters.

"Why? Why does it matter so much?"

"I'm always interested in what people think about my work."

"I've never seen any of it, well, other than these. I'm sure it's interesting on some level," she says dismissively. I lock eyes with her. She gives me nothing more than some unreadable emotion as she waits for a response. "Well?" she asks, putting the sketch down.

"I don't do charity auctions, Bella," I say insistently.

"What's that supposed to mean? It's for a good cause." She pouts at me and it's all I can do not to whisk the entire contents off the desk with one swoop and lay her over it.

"The first piece of work that I've done in a year probably shouldn't be debuted along side the likes of random prizes like tickets to the movies, or spa treatments which I'm sure are part of this auction." I know I sound cocky as hell right now, but I also don't really care.

"I knew you wouldn't do this," she taunts me and makes a move to leave. I step in front of her blocking her path.

"I never said I wouldn't do it." She looks up at me through her eyelashes and I lose the ability to breathe. Fuck, this woman makes me crazy.

"You never said you would, either," she says quietly. We stay like that, our eyes locked, her gaze intense and piercing, until she breaks the silence. "Well? I haven't got a lot of time, Edward. Yes or no?"

"If I do this, can I ask something of you?"

"Perhaps you need to look charity up in the dictionary. It means you give, and you don't expect anything in return," she says smirking at me. I take it as a breakthrough. It's the first time she hasn't looked pissed off and like she wants to kill me since I met her.

"Oh, this wouldn't be for me. It would be for you."

"For me?" She looks at me bemused, and I just nod my head slowly. "OK, let's have it," she says.

I lean toward her and place my mouth at her ear. "Let me paint you," I whisper.

"You want to paint me?" She takes a step back and eyes me suspiciously.

"Very much," I admit. Please say yes…fuck, please say yes. I repeat the mantra in my head as if I have the ability to change her mind or something.

"And, if I agree to this, you'll donate something for the auction? Something good?" she asks.

"Everything I do is good, Bella." I smile knowingly. She ponders this for a moment while she studies the patterns on the floor and then looks back up at me.

"I can keep my clothes on right?" she asks innocently, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, of course, but if you want to take them off, I won't object. I've painted plenty of nude women before." I smile smugly at her.

"I bet you have," she says as I see a faint blush make its way to her cheeks. "OK," she whispers.

"OK? Really?"

"Really." She nods her head and brushes past me. "Oh, and, Edward?" She pauses and turns back to me as I gape at her open mouthed.

"Yeah?" My mouth is suddenly dry as I contemplate what I've just agreed to… fuck, what she's just agreed to.

"The auction is in four weeks. Will you be ready?" She's asking like it's a challenge or something.

"I was born ready, Bella." I lift both eyebrows to her. She simply nods her head once, turns on her heel, and disappears back into her office.

I stare after her, trying to fathom what's just happened. I've just agreed to donate an original piece of my work…a piece that people have been waiting for, that isn't even done yet…that Jane could probably get close to a million if not more for. I plunk down in the chair to keep myself from falling, and rest my forehead in my hands.

Oh, why did I agree to this? This was going to be my big comeback and now it's tied up with some granola crunching, tree hugging, charity event. Jane is going to fucking kill me.

But even though I know I'm going to have to deal with the wrath of Jane, as I stare at the closed door to Bella's office, I know exactly why I did this. I can't bear to see her disappointed again. I want her to believe in something again. I want her to believe in me.

I am so fucked.

xxxxxx

I don't see Bella for the rest of the day. She's apparently decided to stay barricaded in her office. I finish with the logo around two o'clock and leave with the phone numbers of the three giggling amigos.

I contemplate stopping to talk to Bella before leaving for the day, but decide against it. We ended our conversation on, what I consider, a good note today, and I don't want to push my luck. Lana is, thankfully, not at her perch when I make my escape out of the office.

I'm back in the studio and standing in front of the canvasses, staring at them. I've got a thousand ideas in my head and I begin to panic, wondering if I'm going to be able to get all of this out and onto them before they leave me altogether.

The buzzing of my cell phone momentarily halts my mini melt down. I put down my pallet and look at the number before answering.

"Back in town for a good lay, Dad?" I ask flatly.

"Edward, it's nice to hear your voice, too." Fuck, Carlisle would pick now to come waltzing back to Vancouver. I wonder what slut has him flying all the way back here this time. Carlisle is a successful lawyer…actually a very successful lawyer. After my mother died from breast cancer when I was nineteen, Carlisle kind of lost it.

He was catatonic for weeks after she died. And then one night, he brought home a girl. And when I say girl, I mean it. She might have been eighteen. The next night, there was a different girl, and his pattern just kept repeating until I was sure he had slept with the majority of the female population of Vancouver by the time I turned twenty.

We never talked about it, cause I guess, that's what guys do. The revolving door to my father's bedroom was my definition of normal, until I graduated from high school and went to Kingston to study art at Queen's University.

We grew apart even more during my four years there. He came to visit a couple of times a year and would inevitably end up with some young student who he would forget about the next morning. I guess you could say that I naturally came by my recent behaviour of fucking everything in sight. He's been in Toronto for the last two years raking in the money from his practice there, and I'm assuming, whoring his way through every woman he can find.

"How long are you in town for?" I ask, staring at the canvas and scowling that he's interrupting me.

"A couple of weeks, Edward. I'm actually on vacation."

"And you chose to come here for that? Why not some exotic tropical place with lots of hot, drunk women? Isn't that more your scene?" I ask skeptically.

"I'm a changed man, Edward. I've met someone."

I burst out laughing. "This is me you're talking to, Dad. You meet someone every night."

"Not any more. I want you to meet her. She's important, Edward."

"Important? Why, because she gives good head?"

"That's enough, son. I know we haven't been on the best of terms lately, but…"

"The fucking best of terms? Are you serious? I haven't laid eyes on you in two Goddamn years, Carlisle. You've been non existent in my life for as long as I can remember."

"I know." Silence takes over the airwaves. "Can you meet us for dinner tomorrow night? We have a lot to talk about," he says, sounding all parental all of a sudden.

"You want me to meet you and your mystery fuck for the time being somewhere?"

"Edward! I came here to spend time with you. So you can meet her. I'm in love with her."

"The only person you're in love with is yourself." I throw my paint brush in the pile and lean back against the wall.

"I probably deserve that, but Edward, you're my son. I want to see you. Please?"

I shake my head because I know this is a bad idea. But something in his voice sounds sincere and he is my father…even though he hasn't exactly acted like it in a long time. Even if he hasn't changed, I can at least get some shit off my chest. As I stare at the blank canvasses in the studio, I suddenly think it's time I met up with Daddy dearest. "Where?"

"We're staying at the Wedgewood," he says. Of course he is. Could he be any more fucking pretentious?

"How elitist of you, Dad."

"Why don't you meet us here, say seven tomorrow? You can bring Angela."

I cringe at her name. "Dad, Angela and I broke up months ago."

"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't know, Edward."

"No shit." If he had fucking called me, he would have known. Well, actually, I guess that works both ways. I haven't exactly been the son of the year.

'So, tomorrow?" He sounds almost hopeful.

"I'll try to be there," I say and he exhales.

"Thank you, Edward." I hang up before he can say anything else. I toss the phone back onto the desk and stare at the canvasses. His call has me shaken. Why did he have to mention Angela? As I stand here and try to refocus, I'm having a hard time sorting out what I want to paint next. I rake my hands through my hair and realize that I need to see Bella. I need to feel the burn of the flame again. It feels like its slowly dying out, like its going to disappear, and I'm going to be left with the meager beginnings of an unfinished masterpiece.

I take the stairs down to the first floor and grab my keys. It's a bit late, but I may still catch her at work. I have a feeling that she works a lot. I mean, there's no boyfriend. She doesn't date, she said so herself, unless, of course, that Mike guy from the cafeteria has made a move. Something tells me that she'd turn him down, and right now, I hope to hell I'm right.

I peel out of the garage in my Audi and make my way back down to her office. Thankfully, the traffic isn't too bad. I pull into the parking lot beside the building. It's a bit dark as I'm making my way around the corner towards the front door. I feel my heart start to race at the mere anticipation of seeing her again. The front door opens, and I'm greeted with the welcome sight of flowing dark hair. Her back is to me and it looks like she's fumbling with the door.

As I near her, I ready the panty dropping stare and try at the same time, to at least appear like I'm a normal person, rather than the slightly stalkerish addict I seem to have turned into.

My carefully constructed act falls apart as soon as I reach the door and she turns her head and spots me. "Edward, how interesting to see you here," she purrs.

My face falls as I stare into the eyes of my fucked up recent past that has come back to bite me in the ass.

Chapter End Notes

Uh, Oh…what has he gotten himself into now?

BPOV coming up soon.

Thanks as always for reading.

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