I was remiss in doing this last chapter, but I must show my appreciation for my friend, Brochet, who is a native of Ontario. She helped me with my secondary school French and the logistics in Montreal. I very much appreciate her making me look like I know what I'm talking about.
Special thanks to my betas extraordinaire, Shug, SavageWoman and Irritable Grizzzly who whipped this chapter into the best shape possible. Thanks again to Katinki for pre-reading and giving me constructive criticism.
RL is too erratic for me to give you a regular posting schedule, so I will refrain from doing that since I don't want to lie to you. However, just as I have with TLC, I will promise to continue writing until the story is done and not abandon you without closure. I do hope to complete this story shortly after the New Year, since most of it is already written.
Chapter 2
Bella quickly recovered from her mishap with the stranger. The adversity she'd experienced over the past year made it easier for her to get over being the clumsiest person in all of North America. She was now keenly eyeing the object of her very tiring trip to Les Salons Des Métiers D'Art and agonizing over which piece of authentic Diane Sullivan Arabesque pottery to get for Renee for Christmas. Her mother had coveted something from this collection for as long as Bella could remember, but wouldn't purchase it for herself. Even during the holidays, she wouldn't let Bella or Charlie get one for her because she deemed it too expensive for their meager budget.
In recent years, she'd been particularly adamant because of the mounting medical bills they had accrued, in addition to Bella's education costs above and beyond the scholarships she'd received to college. This time, though, she refused to bend to her mother's wishes. Her exchange semester at McGill University was ending, and she would be returning to Forks in a couple of weeks. This Christmas, she was determined to bring home at least one item to surprise her mom.
"Those pieces are both quite lovely." A silky voice startled her out of her reverie. "They would look very nice in your home."
Bella turned and looked up into the oddly-colored, golden eyes of the handsome stranger she had literally run into a few minutes before. Now that she was afforded the opportunity to view him unhindered, she was able to take in all of his features. He stood more than a foot taller than she. His hair was a reddish-brown, almost bronze in color, and he sported a style that was part bed-head, but too ordered to be completely accidental. His skin was pale, almost too pale, and his jaw line was sharp and masculine, with a barely-dimpled chin. His red lips, when curved into the crooked smile he was now brandishing, were mouthwatering. She was happy to see that he was no longer angry with her.
"Yes, they are lovely, but they aren't for me. They—or well, more likely it—would be for my mother for Christmas. I was just trying to decide between the two."
"I'm sure your mother would love whichever piece you decide upon," he said smoothly, "as it would be a gift from the heart from her beautiful daughter."
Bella felt oddly drawn to this gorgeous stranger. Never in her twenty years had she encountered anyone who was as beguiling as he was. And he had called her beautiful.
She smiled. "I think I'll go with the Wild Rose Ewer. This pitcher will make a great centerpiece in her dining room and maybe my father will buy additional pieces for her when he can." She set the plate down and picked up the pitcher, hugging it happily to her chest.
The stranger regarded her with a smug satisfaction that she couldn't quite decipher, and she was just about to make her way to the register to pay for her purchase, when she noticed the piece in his hands.
"That sculpture is beautiful. It's a one-of-a-kind piece from Ms. Sullivan's residency in China, isn't it?" Whomever he was purchasing that item for was going to have a very merry Christmas. Those pieces went into the thousands, and she definitely could not afford any of them. She wondered if he could either. He wasn't dressed as if he was outlandishly wealthy, wearing a modest pair of jeans and a navy pea coat, under which she saw a green button-down shirt over what appeared to be a pair of standard long johns.
"Yes, it is," he agreed. "Like you, I am purchasing it for my mother for Christmas."
"That's so sweet," she said smiling. "Your mother is a very lucky woman." She then lowered her voice and whispered conspiratorially, "I don't mean to be too forward or anything, but do you realize how much that piece costs?"
"Actually, I haven't priced this specific piece, but I have a vague idea of the cost, yes."
"Okay, just making sure. Wouldn't want you to suffer from buyer's remorse over this one item," she offered casually.
"Mademoiselle...?"
"Swan," she supplied, smiling coyly up at him again. Oddly, in addition to the heaviness in her chest, she actually had butterflies, but she swallowed her nervousness, held out her hand, and supplied her full name. "Isabella Swan."
"Edward Cullen." He hesitated, but then shook it, albeit briefly. His hand was so cold, it was as if he'd just come from outside. "So very nice to meet you, Isabella."
He said her name so reverently. In just the few minutes she'd been conversing with this stranger, she found herself not wanting to leave him; however, she couldn't quite think of anything else to say, so she reluctantly made her apologies. Besides, his expression had begun to morph into something akin to excruciating pain. Coupled with his pale and cold skin, she wondered if he suffered from some chronic condition, just as she did.
"I guess I should go ahead and pay for this," she said reluctantly. "Nice to meet you, too, Edward."
Turning to make her way to the register, she was surprised to find him following her.
"I promise, I'm not a stalker," he said. "I was about to check out, as well."
"No problem," she replied over her shoulder, unable to resist taking another long look at him.
There were a few other people in line at the register, so she took her place at the back and was very aware of Edward as he came to stand behind her. She wanted to turn and look at his handsome face again, but decided that would be creepy, or at the very least, rude. As she was berating herself silently for even believing she had a snowball's chance in hell with a man as beautiful as he was, she heard him say her name quietly.
"Isabella."
In her excitement, she turned so abruptly, she briefly lost her equilibrium, and Edward steadied her.
"Are you all right?" he inquired, a hint of concern wrinkling his brow.
Desperately clutching the ewer, she shook her head to clear it, took a deep laborious breath, and flashed him her most welcoming smile. "I just got a little woozy there for a minute."
He narrowed his eyes briefly, and then seemed to study her.
"You were saying…," she prompted.
"If you are not otherwise engaged after making your purchase, I was wondering if you might like to join me for coffee."
Her heart went into overdrive and she struggled to answer, but when her voice wouldn't cooperate, she just nodded vigorously. Taking another deep breath, she struggled to find her voice again and finally was able to whisper an emphatic reply.
"Yes, that would be great."
She felt the warmth creeping under her skin that indicated she was blushing what was probably a particularly dark shade of crimson. Embarrassed, she turned away from him as she heard the salesclerk call for the next person. She wracked her brain in an effort to find something else witty or clever to say, but her shy nature and uncharacteristic lethargy caused conversation to elude her.
As she waited, the heaviness in her chest seemed to intensify, and she remembered that she had walked the equivalent of several blocks from where she'd left her roommate's car and was already breathing heavier than usual. Her heart was pounding rapidly, and her chest, which had felt burdened since waking up that morning, now felt like a weight was sitting on her lungs.
She attributed some of the heart palpitations to the beautiful man behind her, but then realized it might also be a result of her condition. She hoped fleetingly that she wouldn't embarrass herself by fainting in the exhibition hall, particularly in front of Edward Cullen. What an impression that would make.
When the salesclerk finally motioned to her, Bella handed her the pitcher, and she expertly wrapped gingerly in swaths of tissue paper, slipped the item into a corrugated box, and filled it to the brim with packing peanuts. After placing the box in a shopping bag, she handed it to Bella as she took her credit card.
"That will be three hundred and seventy-five dollars, Mademoiselle," the clerk said, but that was the last thing Bella heard. There was a resounding ringing in her ears as blackness engulfed her.
~888~
Edward found himself in a position he'd never expected to be in: riding in the back of an ambulance to a human hospital. He'd listened helplessly as Isabella Swan's heart had become increasingly bogged down by the fluids surrounding it, until she'd finally given way to unconsciousness. Due to his medical training, he knew that she had suffered congestive heart failure, but didn't know why. He'd just deftly caught the fainting Ms. Swan and hurriedly barked instructions to the clerk to call an ambulance.
Until the paramedics arrived, he'd made sure the girl's airway was clear and she possessed cervical spine control. He'd also ascertained that she was breathing, albeit barely, her circulation was good, and there didn't seem to be any internal or external bleeding. He had to be careful not to crush her delicate bones or break her skin while he examined and tried to revive her. It would not be a pretty sight for the humans in the exhibition hall to witness him draining an unconscious woman of her blood.
Now the EMTs had put an I V drip into her hand, intubated and bagged her, and attached a heart monitor and pulse oximeter. They had also administered Lasix, a diuretic, to inhibit re-absorption of sodium chloride. Although she was stable now, he wondered what had caused the carditis. Holding his breath through all the procedures that involved pricking her skin, he stayed with her from the moment they got there until they rolled her on the gurney into the ER.
He'd told the paramedics he was her boyfriend for the sole purpose of staying with her until he could figure out whether he wanted to have her as a meal, or woo her as a lover, which was his original reason for asking her to coffee. Now, though, he really didn't know how to feel about killing a human who wasn't quite one-hundred-percent healthy. While his kind did not suffer from human ailments and didn't have to worry about any diseases obtained from human blood, he preferred not to know if his prey suffered from a disease. He'd been very germophobic as a human, and vestiges of that aspect of his personality had passed onto him as a vampire. He was still very neat and tidy, and was not one to tolerate filth, squalor, or communicable diseases.
The ER doctor found him in the waiting room and updated him on her progress.
"Are you the gentleman who came in with Mademoiselle Swan?" he inquired.
Edward stood and shook the doctor's proffered hand. It was winter, so there wouldn't likely be any questions about his lower body temperature. "Yes, I'm her fiancé," he said, sweetening the lie even further. Perhaps the doctor would be more forthcoming with information if he had a stronger connection to Ms. Swan.
"Here's what I can tell you right now. Your fiancé has suffered congestive heart failure." We're draining the fluid around her heart and beginning a round of corticosteroids to treat her. She will most likely be here a few days, and then you can take her home."
Edward played the part of the devastated fiancé well. "Thank you, doctor. Please spare no expense in her treatment. When can I see her?"
"The nurses should be done with her in about half an hour, and then she'll be admitted into a room. Please check with the desk to find out her room number." The doctor's thoughts were already on the next case.
"Thank you," Edward said graciously.
While the nurses were completing their treatment of Isabella, Edward decided to run back to the exhibition hall to retrieve his car. He'd already parked and found his way to Isabella's assigned room by the time she was wheeled in. When she was settled, they told him to be sure to press the nurse call button if she needed anything, and then left them alone.
In their haste to finish and move on to the next patient, the nurses had left Isabella's medical chart attached at the foot of her bed. He read through it quickly. She apparently had rheumatic heart disease, and had a case of rheumatic fever once when she was younger. It had been misdiagnosed, and last summer she'd had a recurrence after going several weeks without treatment for strep throat. Her heart muscle had been damaged irreparably. She was on the donor's registry list, but the odds of her getting a match were very slim due to her rare blood type. Hearing Isabella's breathing pattern changing, he quickly replaced the medical chart in its holder.
Opening her eyes, Isabella looked quizzically at him, and gave him a wry smile. Through labored breathing she said, "Bet you never expected a girl would try to pick you up by going into congestive heart failure, did you?"
Despite her condition, she was alert enough to tease him, so he considered that a good sign.
"You did go to extraordinary measures, Isabella. I would have come quite willingly had you just asked." His smile turned into a slight grimace as he got another whiff of her delicious blood. The venom pooled in his mouth, and he swallowed convulsively. Sick or not, this woman's blood had him mesmerized.
"You're sick, too, aren't you?" she asked. "Is your condition terminal… like mine?"
She was very perceptive, even though she had wrongly diagnosed his condition. He wasn't sick, but the effort to avoid killing her was causing him pain unlike any he'd experienced since his change. If she knew his real condition, she might have gone into full-out cardiac arrest, but not before he revived her enough to drain her of every ounce of her scrumptious blood. Her death would be an unfortunately profound waste to him.
However, now that Edward knew what she suffered from, he was determined to keep her as healthy as possible before he took her one way or another. Just as he did not want a sedentary bear for a meal, he did not want a sick human. Nor did he want to seduce a sick female. He would wait the several days she needed to remain in the hospital, until she was recovered enough to leave. Then he would insinuate himself into her life, figure out the best course of action to take, and quietly leave Montreal to find another place to exist; one could not refer to his current state-of-being as "living."
"My condition is not terminal, but it is chronic," he said, choosing his words carefully. "It is a very rare condition, but I'd rather not talk about that now. Someone must be worried sick about you—is there anyone I can call?"
"Only my roommate, Lauren Bergeron. I used her car to go to the art festival. She'll need to get it back."
"Shouldn't we call your parents?"
"They're in Washington state in the U.S. and I'd rather not trouble them with this. I'm going home in a couple of weeks, and I want them to see me healthy."
"Okay, then let's begin by calling Mademoiselle Bergeron. Is her number programmed in your cell phone?"
"Yes, it's there. Oh…" She looked around the room. "Where did they put my purse?"
"Your personal belongings are in this bag," Edward said, holding it up. As he got closer to the I V needle in her hand, his throat burned as hot as lava, so after handing it to her he promptly retreated to the foot of the bed. While she was rummaging for her phone, he moved even further away and sat in the lounge chair. If it were possible, she had become even more pale after the incident, and he could almost see the blood flowing through the veins that showed through her diaphanous skin.
Edward closed his eyes while she conversed with her roommate. Although he never needed rest or sleep, he hoped that closing his eyes would stave off the visual. When the human fell asleep, he would leave late in the night to hunt, but for now, he would stay with her. He did not want this luscious "moveable feast" to elude him.
~888~
The next day, the roommate came and went rather quickly. Apparently, it was examination time at McGill University, and she was totally preoccupied and not very concerned about Isabella's well-being. Ms. Bergeron had been more interested in trying to figure out who he was, even though from her thoughts, Edward knew that she was in a committed relationship. He wore "the glare" until she visited briefly with Isabella, retrieved her keys, and left to locate her car.
Between nurse visits to her room, he talked to Isabella Swan. She was at McGill University on exchange for the semester and was studying in their Département de langue et littérature françaises. She was returning to the University of Washington in Seattle in the spring, was a native of Forks, Washington, and the only child of a small-town police chief and a schoolteacher. This was interesting to him, since he and his family had lived there long ago and had come to coexist peacefully with the Quileute Tribe that owned protected lands in the vicinity. The Cullen family still owned property in the area, but had not actually lived there for several decades.
Edward was thankful when Isabella's lunch was delivered. At least the smell of the food masked the allure of her blood somewhat. He sat stiffly on a chair in the corner farthest from her bed, wrestling with the proliferation of venom that had pooled in his throat prior to the lunch delivery. He swallowed and cleared his throat as a human might.
Isabella looked up from her meal. She read his discomfort as having to do with his "condition" and frowned in commiseration.
"Edward, if you need to go—to take care of yourself —please do. If you push yourself too much you might end up in the hospital with me. Then what a pair we'd be." She brought a forkful of salad to her mouth and chewed.
"I assure you, I've been taking every precaution, given the circumstances," he answered carefully.
He'd drank so much animal blood the night before, he'd been fearful of some of it coming back up, but he'd been able to keep it down, and his invigorating run back to the hospital burned off just a fraction of it.
Unfortunately, no volume of animal blood made him completely immune to eau de Isabella Swan. Her smell was a cross between strawberries and another fragrance that was oddly comforting to him, despite the siren's call of her blood. It must have been something from his human life, because it was vague, almost like a forgotten memory. Whatever it was caused venom to continuously leak like post-nasal drip, leaving his throat raw and irritated. Nevertheless, his condition was no mere human ailment, and lack of control on his part would not bode well for Ms. Swan.
As she was taking a sip of tea, she seemed to remember something. "Oh, where are my manners? Are you hungry? I'd be happy to share my lunch with you. I'm sure I won't be able to eat it all. Of course it's just hospital food, but you're more than welcome."
"I had a rather large breakfast, so I'm good, but you should eat as much as you can, Isabella. You need to get your strength back," he encouraged. Edward's first thought was that she could fill out and replenish her blood stores for the slaughter, but then he remembered Alice's premonition. He was torn between taking her blood and really getting to know a human girl for the first time ever.
She smiled a Mona Lisa-like smile. "My friends call me Bella, Edward. I think the kindness you've shown me proves you deserve that honor as well."
Bella. Beneath the paleness of her skin and her frail frame, he could see the beautiful girl underneath. Her condition had ravaged the wholesome, girl-next-door beauty, but it was clear from his early interactions with her that her true beauty was more than skin-deep.
"That is even more lovely than your given name," he said with a smile.
His compliment made her blush, and fresh venom sprang automatically into his throat. He could feel himself giving into the lust of the hunt. In a panic, he quickly made an excuse and exited the room. The blush had taken him totally off-guard, and he was just barely able to climb out of his fugue in time to flee. He moved as quickly as he could through the halls of the hospital until he breached the exit and found blessed fresh air. While breathing wasn't necessary for him to live, he found it useful to purge his sense of smell from unwanted, undesirable, and, in this case, dangerous scents.
When he'd recovered, he was able to get his thoughts together and remembered how she'd offered him her food. He found it rather endearing. At the same time he found it maddening, yet equally intriguing that he couldn't read her thoughts. Perhaps if he were, he could anticipate when she was about to blush. In this case, he would just have to use his hearing to ascertain when her pulse rate changed.
After about an hour in the cold midday Montreal air, he gathered his courage to return to Isabella's room. On the way back he passed the hospital gift shop and, on a whim, stopped in. If he was going to continue the charade as her fiancé, he needed to play the part convincingly. A bouquet of flowers as a get-well token for Bella might be in order. As he went into the shop, the fragrant aroma of various types of flora and fauna assaulted his senses.
The flowers would also help mask her delicious scent and hopefully reduce his production of venom for a least a little while. The clerk was more than happy to help him with the purchase, both for personal and professional reasons, and he tolerated her horrid thoughts simply because he wanted to do something nice for Bella. It was indeed new that he was buying a gift for a human, and he hoped it wasn't perceived as strange.
The clerk encouraged him to purchase an assembled assortment of flowers. As he followed her through the store picking up various stems and greenery, he got a whiff of a flower that smelled of the other fragrance he attributed to Bella's scent. He stopped in his tracks and approached the tuft of long narrow leaves and a slightly branched stem bearing eight funnel-shaped flowers forming a loose cluster at the top of each stalk. The one-sided spikes of narrow white flowers were familiar to him.
Suddenly, he was taken back about as far as his human memories would go. He was in grade school, and his father had taken him to market to get a birthday gift for his mother. The flowers they had selected for her had been one and the same. His human memories were peppered with scenes in which this flower was prominent in their lives and brought his human mother great joy.
"What is the name of this flower?" he asked the clerk.
She proudly rattled off what little she knew about it. "That's Freesia, sir. It symbolizes innocence."
Edward glanced at her, and she flushed. "I read it in a book once."
Even the flower was apropos for Isabella Swan. From the little he had gleaned of her since their meeting, she was the closest he'd ever come to an adult innocent. He often found varying levels of innocence in the humans he read from time to time, but mostly it was in very young children. By and large, he'd found that human thoughts ranged from mildly sinful, to abject evil.
He emerged from the gift shop bearing a large basket of flowers, with Freesia interspersed throughout the bouquet. When he arrived at the door to Bella's hospital room, it was closed just as he'd left it. He knocked and listened closely. From what he could ascertain, hear heartbeat was steady and she was breathing evenly as if in slumber. He turned the knob and entered the room, then deposited the basket of flowers on the bedside table and made his way to the foot of the bed so he could observe her unhindered and from a relatively safe distance. Watching her sleep was quickly becoming one of his favorite pastimes.
It seemed that Bella was both mobile and vocal in her sleep, and he'd heard names and phrases that he was only able to make sense of as she shared more of her life with him. Her father and mother were constants. She also spoke of Billy, Sue, Angela, and Jacob. Of all the people she mentioned from her hometown, the one that troubled him most was this Jacob. Her voice took on a different timbre and her heartbeat quickened infinitesimally when she spoke of him. Apparently she had been close to this boy. For some reason unknown to him, Edward didn't want to know just how close they had been. Despite his own indecision about his intentions concerning Bella, he was oddly discomfited by the mention of a male friend, even in her dreams.
He stood immobile, watching as she came out of REM sleep, and her breathing changed, signaling him that she was waking up. As her eyes focused on him, her heart began to race, and her face morphed into a wide grin. Edward gave her a wary smile in return.
"You came back!" she exclaimed happily. "I was worried that you had gotten sick."
"Believe me, Bella," he said, "I don't plan to leave you. I'll be here until they discharge you or you tire of me and send me away, whichever comes first."
She picked nervously at the blanket covering the lower half of her body. "I would never send you away. You're the first person I've met in a long time who doesn't pity me or isn't repelled by my illness."
"Then we have that in common, as well. My condition also precludes me from making lasting friends."
She finally spotted the bouquet, and breathed deeply, in spite of the nasal cannula, which was feeding her body supplemental oxygen. "They're beautiful, but you really shouldn't have—"
"Why? Friends do nice things for friends, do they not?" He moved to the side of the bed and gestured to the flowers. He searched his vampire memories for thoughts and conversations he'd heard for something clever to say to a girl he was pretending to woo. "The white ones remind me of you."
"Is it because I'm so deathly pale?" she asked with a smirk.
"We're kindred spirits in that respect," he said soberly. He feared the truth might be construed as laying it on a little thick, so he chose the least romanticized explanation. "Actually, the clerk informed me that Freesia symbolize purity, as is commonly associated with the color white."
Edward realized too late that his words evoked a mixture of embarrassment and sadness that had her coloring again, but he was able to stay in her presence by looking away and breathing in the flowers until her coloring came back to normal.
He quickly apologized, even though his eyes were averted. "Please forgive me if I'm being too forward, or if I have offended—"
"No, it's just surprising that I still give off that vibe. Am I such an open book?"
"Your blush is a dead giveaway," he answered, turning to look at her again. "It's quite involuntary then?"
"Yes, it's a gift from my dad," she said, smiling fondly. "We both blush at the slightest provocation and have the same temperament."
He almost mentioned how she spoke of them in her sleep, but thought better of it. "Are you very close to your parents?"
"I had no choice. I'm an only child, and I've been the center of their world as far back as I can remember."
He remembered that from his life as a human. From what he could glean from his memories, his parents had doted on him and given him the best life loving parents could in the early twentieth century. Elizabeth Masen's dying request had been for his adopted vampire father, Carlisle Cullen, to save his life. Had she really known the doctor wasn't human, or had the fever ravaged her mind to the point of hallucinations?
He chastened himself to stay focused on Bella. The more he knew about her, the easier it would be to cover his tracks later. He decided to coax her into talking about suitors, particularly Jacob.
"Has some young man back in Forks become the center of yours, or do your parents still hold that place in your heart for now?"
"I think my heart is too weak to hold a place for anyone besides my parents." She frowned. "Although I suppose I should be thankful for my condition, if only for one reason."
"What might that be?"
"My damaged heart saved their marriage."
Edward didn't know how to react when she told him the story of how her parents' marriage had been crumbling before she contracted rheumatic heart disease. The previous summer, she had returned home to Forks for her summer break from UW to find them on the verge of divorce. It became quite uncomfortable for him when tears began to stream down her face.
"My mother felt that now that I was away at college and had only one more year before I graduated, they could finally take the opportunity to move away from Forks. My father didn't agree. He loved their life there and didn't want to move. The disagreement caused a rift in their marriage that they almost didn't recover from," she said sadly. "They reconciled after my illness was diagnosed. They didn't want me to come to Montreal, but I had already made plans to study here prior to the episode that damaged my heart irreparably and I wouldn't have it any other way. I refused to sit in Forks and wait for my death. There's no life in that."
Edward was not accustomed to humans and their weakness for showing emotion. He usually didn't get close enough to them to experience it. He moved back to her bedside and, without thinking what her reaction would be, took her hand. She did not recoil.
"I noticed earlier that your hands are cold," she commented. "But as they say, 'cold hands, warm heart. '"
He almost laughed aloud at the irony of her words. His heart had not beaten in ninety-two years, and there was nothing warm about him. If only she knew his true intentions for befriending her, she would not be sharing so freely with him.
She gave him a small smile and then continued her story. "I was so devastated over my parents' problems, I ignored the symptoms when I got strep and just continued going to work at Newton's everyday and made sure things were going well at home for my mother. I thought that if I helped to ease her burden, and I made life more bearable for her in Forks, she would change her mind and stay. A couple of weeks after that, my heart failed for the first time. I guess the stress from exams made me forget to take my medication—that's probably what brought this episode on."
Her eyes were troubled, but when he looked into them, all he saw was a very kind and compassionate girl who didn't deserve her lot in life. Edward was no better than the parents who had worried her to the point of ignoring her own health issues to make sure they were happy. His intention to have her as a meal was wavering. He had to learn to be more like Jasper and accept the collateral damage, but he couldn't resist offering her words of comfort.
"You must take better care of yourself, Bella," he said soothingly. "We need you to stay healthy until your name comes up on that Organ Donor Registry."
"How did you know...?"
He ducked his head sheepishly. "I told the hospital I was your fiancé so they didn't withhold any information from me."
"I suppose it was good I bumped into you, then," she teased. "Who knew that a random act of clumsiness would secure me a fiancé?"
~888~
He smelled her before she poked her head into the door of Bella's hospital room. Alice had come to Montreal.
I'm alone, she assured him in her thoughts before he could pose the question.
Ever the socially adept one, Alice carried a bouquet of flowers and a basket of fruit. She had plucked a great deal of information about Bella from her visions while en-route and apparently did not need an introduction.
"Hello, Bella," she said with her best friendly smile. "I'm Alice, Edward's sister, and these are for you."
Bella's surprise was poorly-concealed as her eyes grew large with wonder. "Nice to meet you… Alice," she said. Her voice was still shaky from her previous emotional disclosure. "But you really didn't have to…"
Alice placed the flowers on the nightstand and the basket of fruit on the ambulatory table.
Tutting like a mother hen, she adjusted Bella's pillow and said, "I know I didn't have to, but I couldn't allow my brother's new friend to stay in the hospital without some creature comforts. Besides, I have it on good authority that we're going to be great friends." She crinkled her tiny nose and then smiled smugly at Edward.
~888~
While the nurse was in taking care of Bella, Edward and Alice excused themselves. To the untrained eye, it looked as if he was guiding her gently by her elbow as they walked together down the hall. In truth, he was really hauling his sister outside. He needed to speak to her uninterrupted about her diabolical plans that she was trying to shield from him. If he knew Alice Cullen as well as he thought he did, she never did anything without a plan. Once they were sure that they couldn't be seen by human eyes, they took off at vampire speed and found a secluded spot near a seldom-traveled road.
"Why are you here, Alice?" he asked through clenched teeth.
"I'm here to keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life," she said. "The girl in that bed is your soul mate, Edward."
"She's a human, and a very delicious one at that. Am I to forego the best meal of my existence for one of your subjective visions?"
"It's getting clearer and firming up every day. She is going to die Edward, but not from you feeding from her. She has a condition that is very likely terminal, unless you intervene."
"By 'intervene,' you mean 'turn her'?"
"Yes. She is destined to be one of us."
"I have never changed anyone and never plan to. You know this. Neither you nor I had a choice when we were changed. Bella does. She could get a transplant, which would prolong her life, but I don't think I could stay away from her long enough to allow her to live that life. Her blood is too potent. If I don't claim her, another of our kind will eventually run across her scent and do it themselves. Why not me, now?"
"Her blood really does smell good." Alice snorted. "But, believe me when I say she's not meant to be a meal for you—she is meant to be your mate."
Edward scowled. Could his sister's scatterbrained prophesy be true? Had the fates finally sent him a woman who could hold his interest for the rest of eternity? Could this be the reason they literally bumped into one another while Christmas shopping? Edward had to admit, he was growing rather tired of living his existence alone. Every member of his family had a significant other. For one-hundred-and-nine years, he'd only had his family and himself.
How many times had he longed for someone when Alice and Jasper were heavy on the public displays of affection, Rose and Emmett were tearing up furniture, or even Carlisle and Esme were being romantic? He didn't like to think of his father and mother in that way, but little was left to the imagination when you could read minds and everyone in your household was coupled off except you.
Did he dare believe this Isabella Swan was fated to be his mate? The desire to have someone to love was second only to the insane call her blood had for him. Could he really stave off killing her long enough to see if they could love one another? Even thinking of her blood had his mouth pooling with venom again, despite the very satisfying hunt he'd had the night before. Did he dare try?
The words were out of his mouth before he realized he'd relented. "Bella leaves for Forks in two weeks. If there is a spark between us, surely it will have ignited by then. But if not, she will never leave Montreal."
Alice nodded gravely, understanding exactly what he meant.
~888~
E/N:
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http : / 209 dot 172 dot 36 dot 254/smaq/index dot php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1&lang=en (Les Salons Des Metiers D' Art) Dec 4-22, 2009.
Département de langue et littérature françaises = Department of French Language and Literature
http : / www dot dianesullivan Dot ca / (only at Les Salons from Dec 4-13). Bella's pitcher for Renee costs $375 Canadian dollars, which is $357 USD.
Université McGill
Département de langue et littérature françaises
853, rue Sherbrooke ouest
Bureau 265
Montréal, Québec Canada H3A 2T6 Télécopieur : 514-398-8557