A/N: Still don't own Twilight, Leah or Nahuel...I do own Beautiful and Nate. Yay for me
Many thanks to my beta Ashtwi and my hubby for his incredible patience when I read this to him.
- - Chapter 14 Where's the Love?
"Miss Leah," a small voice called out before whining in a sing song, "Miss Leah! I'm tired, we're tired, can we go in now? Please Miss Leah? Puh-lease?"
Stopping my mad dash across the playground I turned to face my young charges, "You really want to go inside?" The weather was nice, actually sunny, and it was fairly warm. It was the first time this week I had been able to take the kids outside to play.
"Yes," a little head bobbed up and down emphatically. "It's cold and I'm tired." Other little heads nodded to agree and one volunteered, " You run too much." I took in their appearance and checked my watch. They looked droopy and a couple rubbed their eyes, not for emphasis but because they truly were worn out. My watch revealed we had been playing freeze tag for over an hour. It seemed as though only a few minutes had passed.
"Okay, everybody get in line," I called out and they all did as they were told. Inside I began to fume as I took stock of myself. The kids settled down for some circle time with Ms. Crisp, the teacher. Clearly they needed a nap but it was far too early. I slipped out of the room to use the phone.
"Paul, this is Leah. Can you put Nate on?" Paul passed the phone without a bunch of bullshitting around first. He knew what was up.
"Beautiful, what can I do for you?" Nate's honey tone answered but I was not in the mood for that sex god shit.
"What you can do for me is put the coffee cup down. Can you do that? You've had more than enough. I've had more than enough." I hissed at him, trying to keep it down. We weren't supposed to make personal calls during the day.
I made Nate sleep everyday, therefore he needed a coffee fix everyday when he woke up. He and Charlie shared a cup or two every morning at the asscrack of dawn. No big deal, it helped me get out of bed. By the second cup he had our heart pumping and I couldn't sleep any longer. I showered and kissed him goodbye before Anthony and Paul came to get him at seven a.m sharp to head to the diner. At the diner the same waitress poured Nate cups three and/or four. She made lewd comments to the other waitress whom she never let get near her table of 'man meat'. Anyway cups three and four had me ready to charge the world on my way to work. I had been forcibly turned into a morning person. Some mornings it was all I could do to actually drive to work when I'd rather run but it wouldn't do to turn up sweaty.
"My heart is racing and I want to run a freaking marathon. It's 10:30 and the kids need a nap! I wore them out...again, you know like last week when you promised to cut back." I had more energy than any preschooler. I had more energy than the 15 kids in the room combined. My toe was was tapping the floor but it irritated the fuck out of me that my sneakers didn't make a sound. I wanted a staccato rhythm to give my pissed-off-edness an outlet.
"Leah, don't get so excited," Nate tried to calm me.
"Excited?" I hissed into the phone. "I am beyond excited." Nervous agitation crawled all over me. I had no idea why I was more sensitive to the caffeine he imbibed than he was. My metabolism was kick ass fast but Carlisle suggested it was because I didn't directly metabolise it whereas Nate had vampiric metabolism which was crazy slow. What Carlisle couldn't explain was why what went in Nate's stomach affected me physically. Sure the shared heartbeat was part of it, and although the coffee accelerated our heart rate it didn't make him antsy like it made me. I questioned and questioned until he had to go with the standby answer, 'magic.' When he caught my look of derision he pulled that cool look of superiority and said that since we were living together expect more. More? More than what we already had? Nah, I had enough as it was.
I tried stealthily switching him and Charlie to decaf but that doesn't work well on vampires, hell it didn't even work on Charlie. Besides that, it caused me to oversleep.
Nate spoke to me in the patient tones of one dealing with the mentally unstable, "I am sorry, I did not mean to cause you discomfort. Mrs. Spencer offered us coffee when we arrived and I was trying to be polite. You asked me to make more of an effort in my social interactions."
All I could do was sigh. I did insist that he try. In the beginning there was something every day for Paul to pull out during patrol to share and savor over the Sam/Jacob broadcast network. Some of his favorite stories went like this:
"We went to this lady's house over off Church street. She has three little kids, none of them in school yet. She should have called a plumber but my dad's nice and all and costs less. He had me and Nate go under the house. I go under; it's cold and nasty. Nate comes under and the lady's three year old gets set to follow. I mean the kids on his knees in the mud and got so far as to poke his head in the crawl space. In like two seconds Nate's in the kitchen holding the kid saying "Ma'am, we do not babysit, please keep your child out of the way". He didn't do that thing either, you know, where chicks wanna drop to their knees and blow him. It was that scary voice of death shit. It was pretty damn cool. She kept her kids and herself out the way after that.
He was never unkind to children provided you think it's okay to tell a kid to go wipe a snotty nose. I guess that means he was never deliberately unkind to kids but he didn't hesitate to let a parent know they were working, not performing show and tell. Another of Paul's favorites was:
We went to this dude's house to fix the steps and install a ceiling fan. Pretty basic stuff, right? The dude goes on about how he can't take the time off to do it. He's talking about he's some big shot at work and the fucking world revolves around him, then he stays hanging over our backs playing know it all. Dad is trying to show Nate how to check to see whether or not the steps can be repaired or have to be replaced and the whole time dude is contradicting him. Dad says they need to be replaced for safety. Dude starts to run off at the mouth when Leah's boy cuts him off with, "If you know how fix the steps and obviously have nothing better to do, perhaps you should get to it. We have other places to be." Nate starts packing our shit back in the truck. The dude's face turned like fucking magenta or something insanely red and purple at the same time. Dude couldn't even talk, standing there mouth open. Dad was trying not to burst out laughing, I stuffed my fist in my mouth to keep quiet and Nate asked for payment. Dad worked it out but best believe that dude took his ass off to work pronto.
Honestly I think Mr. Rivers had a shit list and whereas he would never allow his son to tarnish the family name by being rude he was setting up jobs and letting Nate do his dirty work even if it meant he had to talk fast to smooth it over. My analogy was it was like a courtroom drama where the witness runs off at the mouth and the judge says 'strike that from the record' but everybody heard it. Anthony made a big show of placating his customers but Nate had already delivered the message; shut up and back off.
Last night's little tale went like this:
"So we went to old lady Cranston's right? She's like a damn leech, the non-vampire kind, all over us from the time the we get there with, "Can I get you a drink? Do you want something to eat? My grandkids, blah blah, blah." Nate tells her, "The charge is by the hour, you may wish to remove yourself so we can work without distraction. Then he walks her to the den and sits her in front of the TV."
Some of Mr. Rivers most consistent customers were the elderly who regularly had maintenance work done just for the occasional company. They offered beverages, sandwiches and wanted to talk extensively about whatever door wasn't closing just right or whatever. Mr. Rivers allowed them this although it slowed progress down so he made it known the charge was hourly. Nate just made it explicitly clear.
So yeah, I had asked him to make more of an effort with honesty in the sense of not regarding it so highly. Most of Anthony's long time customers, use to his patient nature were stunned but let it slide when he explained Nate was new and still being trained, implying that his behaviour would change. So far though every time they got to Mrs. Mallory's where she swanned around in a robe with nothing on underneath Nahuel still saw fit to tell her, payment was expected in cash and she should really put some clothes on. Since she still invariably offered to stuff the money right in his pockets I guess the conversation would be repeated again and again.
Nate's explanation made it sound so reasonable. "Okay then babe, thanks for trying. I'll be in late today, I have a meeting after school from 3:30 to 4:30. I'll be home after that." I was thinking about slipping out during my break at naptime to have nice long run to burn off the excess energy.
"No, Beautiful, Nessie is having a tea party today at 4:00. Have you forgotten?" He was sometimes perplexed by my lack of a perfect memory. You would think I was senile to hear him react.
"It slipped my mind that's all. I may have to make my excuses. I do have to work and all." My lips curled up on the ends and Nate answered me with a chuckle. He understood this easily.
"No, you cannot be late, after all you have to escort Emily and Kim." Nessie's tea party preempted work. Little girls have tea with miniature dishes, imaginary tea and heck, usually imaginary friends. At least I did unless Daddy was so unfortunate as to have to sit with me while I forced him to drink the dirty water I had been playing with all day and eat imaginary cookies. Mom teased me about it but I don't remember.
Nessie's tea involved a hand scripted invitation sent by mail, would be served on antique bone china, and would be attended by every imprinted female she knew in addition to one she very much wanted to meet.
She was excited to meet Claire, Quil's imprint. Jacob and Quil were beside themselves planning this event. It was too damn cute they way they came up with tea. Quil, Jacob and I had patiently explained that Claire would be the roughly the same size as her but different. Being Nessie, she carefully explained to us that she needed to interact with children her size to understand the behavior expected of her by the outside world. Although the Cullens had delayed their move yet again we all knew the day would come when we would have to share our Nessie with the world. None of us looked forward to that but had to concede that Nessie was right. She needed this lesson.
Kara and I had actually been Alpha commanded to attend. See, this is the problem when your Alpha has a munchkin for an imprint. I had to blow off my job to drink tea from antique cups that probably came from some queen's wedding china pattern. If I broke one, Esme would invariably apologize for the cup's alarming rudeness.
"I'll be home after tea or are you coming over to Esme's for dinner?" I hinted broadly. Charlie had a tendency to hang out on the reservation these days after Mom in her campaign to get him moved in, stopped frequenting his house. The first few days Charlie looked to me to cook but seeing as my dinner specialty was also stroganoff, the Hamburger Helper version, he made his way to Mom's.
"No, we will not be dining at Esme's today. We will have dinner with Mrs. Spencer today at 6:00 p.m. sharp."
"What?"
"She kept talking to us. She brought us more coffee and then she stayed in the basement while we were coating the walls. The work takes longer when they stay to watch." This was another reason Nate ran customers away while they worked. He and Paul were limited in speed with a watcher about. "I walked her back up to her kitchen and asked if she had a program to watch on the television and explained that if she was lonely I could come back later for dinner with my soulmate but right now I had to work. She said that would be lovely and to come at six sharp. She went to the grocery store so we are almost finished. I may use this tactic again. Do you want me cancel? I fear she will be disappointed however if I retract." Nate explained and I think, although I couldn't prove it, he got some sort of perverse delight from doing as I asked and then taking it too far.
For Valentine's day we tried the standard romantic dinner at the French restaurant in the Port. Nate had been well prepped, his French is flawless anyway. He held the chair, he offered to order for me, chose the wine, then summoned the waiter with a snap of wrist and fingers calling out loudly, 'Garcon!" I could have died of embarrassment instead I sent a text to Rose to kick Emmett's ass, taking it straight to the source, and told Nate 'garcon' was out of line and demeaning. The next time he needed attendance at the table he summoned a waitress from another table. He stared at her until she hot footed over there twitching, giggling and groveling all at once with the offensive aroma I like to call 'in heat for Nate's meat.' He had a way of making me eat my words. Make more of an effort to be social indeed.
"There's no need to cancel. I'm fine with dinner at Mrs Spencer's. Anything as long as I don't have to cook." The kitchen was not my forte, I could do breakfast just fine but pork chops eluded me. We didn't have the income to eat in restaurants often and there's a limit my pride can stand to showing up at Esme's around dinner time. It never bothered the rest of my pack. Kara, Quil and Embry simply ate dinner twice a day with no qualms, but they were kids. I was a grown woman living away from home, it didn't feel right to bum meals. Unfortunately that meant we had to eat out more often than I would like. Of course by eat out I don't even mean the vulgar implication of oral sex, nope it's worse. I mean running down a deer, mountain lion, rabbit or whatever in the forest. I couldn't cook but I could catch anything on four legs. It's not something I intended to brag about to the ladies at tea today if recipes came up.
"Look I need to get back into the classroom so I'll see you later after tea back at the house. Oh and Nate, could you stop calling me soulmate? It sounds, I don't know..."
"You know my terms, Beautiful. You can be my soulmate or you can be my wife. The sooner you set a date the sooner I stop calling you soulmate."
"Is girlfriend so hard? What about fiancee? That's nice too," I cajoled, already knowing he wouldn't back down.
"After you set a date, I will consider calling you my betrothed. Is that out of date and peculiar enough to make you cringe?" He teased.
"Yeah, that would embarrass me for sure."
"Then I suggest you set the date according to how long you can bear to hear me call you 'my betrothed' with every other breath. Admittedly I like the sound of it." He chuckled then practiced, "This is Leah, my betrothed." What do I do about rubbing off on him? I am pretty sure he didn't start off taunting me the way I taunted pretty much everybody.
"It is your call, Beautiful." Beautiful was a whole other issue. Nate called me that like it was my name, anywhere and everywhere kinda like I called him Nate. Other people started calling me Beautiful too. Could be mockery, could be not, but my vanity decided it was authentic every time, even if it was Quill going, 'Yo Beautiful what'd you burn that smells like ass?" Vanity said, 'you can't cook but you got looks going for you.' Vanity and I were on good terms.
"Okay soulmate it is then. I don't want to get married before Mom or upstage Kim. Besides, I want an outdoor wedding. That's not happening in February or even March. Could you shorten it to mate? I could live with mate."
"I know you can live with 'mate' and that is exactly why I will not use it. Leah," Nate turned serious, "just because they are pregnant their reason for marriage is not superior to ours." Nahuel could also be stubborn. Oh the joy of learning him as my grandma called it.
"I need to get back to the room to get the kids ready for lunch," I sighed, ignoring his comment. I hated this part the most.
"That's fine. I should get back to work. They can never seem to remember how to place the furniture". Nate's impeccable memory was a helpful contractor's tool. "I'll see you later at the house. Bye."
"Bye. See you soon." We hung up. Every phone conversation ended like that, with the absence of an exchange of the perfunctory 'I love you.'
I would settle for a hasty, obligatory 'I love you' right about now. So yeah I thought Mom and Kim had a more legitimate reason to marry, they were loved and they knew it.