A/N: Hey sorry for delay. I had last minute family commitments and Christmas and new year are always hectic as hell. I'm home from the fams, and a holiday that felt like a punishment, so all is good.

Footprints in the Sand

Chapter 6

The taxi is twenty minutes away, but the instant I step out onto the street, I consider turning around and waiting for it back inside Alice and Jay's apartment. It's so cold I cannot stop myself from shuddering, and cupping my hands to my lips I futilely blow warm air into them.

That's when someone taps me on the shoulder and scares the life out of me in the process.

After practically jumping out of my skin, I turn only to stare into the same clear green eyes I've been attempting unsuccessfully to avoid all night.

"Can I give you a lift?" Edward asks, his breath causing thick condensation in the air between us.

"Oh, it's okay, I just called a cab," I reply, but I'm beginning to feel disjointed. He has a habit of appearing out of thin air.

"Bella," he says as that smirk of his faintly reappears, "I have to pick up Addie. I'll be driving past your apartment."

"...Okay s-sure," I relent in a stammer, nodding in a fractured movement, but it's cold and I'm leaving it at that.

He opens his arm, gesturing to where a charcoal Mercedes is parked along the curb several feet away. He then proceeds to open the door for me and for a moment appears as if he's going to help me onto the leather upholstery. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not drunk so his motives obviously stem from... something else.

After seeing me inside and closing the door, he slides himself smoothly into the driver's side, slots the key in the ignition, and turns his head to flash me a quick grin.

I return it, but I'm positive I come across as unhinged in my rattled state. Then pulling my phone frmm my purse, I text through my cancellation to the taxi service eager for an excuse to sever his gaze.

"So, what did Rose say to upset you?" he asks after switching on the heating and pulling swiftly into traffic.

I glance at him, mortified that he witnessed what went down between us. "Oh... it was nothing."

He arches a contradictory brow as his smirk threatens to return. "She's really not the bitch she can portray herself as," he explains casually. "She just has a habit of being blunt. Especially when she's drunk," he mutters the latter beneath his breath, and by the tone he used, it obviously bothers him.

"Hmm, well she could drink me under the table," I say wryly, making him scoff softly to himself.

"She could drink Emmett under the table," he says as if I'm familiar with his brother—outside of stalking him on social media, I mean.

I only hum in response, because what can I really say to that? My first impression of his brother's girlfriend was not a positive one.

"How long have you been friends with Alice?" he puts another question to me after a brief period of silence. He does that often, I notice; falls into these moments of contemplation.

It's completely frustrating to witness because it only makes him infinitely more attractive.

"Forever," I reply. "We grew up in the same small town together. Did you know who she was when you ran into us in the café last week?"

"Of course I did," he says as if it went without saying. "Jay posts a lot of photos of the two of them on Facebook."

Wait, he's on Facebook? Why the hell couldn't I find him?

I can only reach the conclusion he's a lurker who's not very active himself. I can relate to that, at least, and it's not as if I have a life to advertise.

"Believe me, she posts just as many."

He chuckles, and I'm pretty certain it's the first time I've heard him laugh. It's soft and rustic, and I quickly find myself smiling along with him.

For the next few minutes he's quiet again despite the relaxed expression warming his face. I spend the time peripherally ogling the way the street lights we pass illuminate his profile, and how sharply angled his jaw is. He looks incredibly like his father, and that man is still eye candy in his sixties.

From the way he's driving, he's obviously left-handed, I note. He steers with that hand, while he keeps his right hand resting on the bottom of the wheel. His car handles just as smoothly as its owner, too.

"Did you always want to be a nurse?" he eventually breaks the silence in a quiet voice, and when I turn my head to him, I realize that familiar knot is once again settled in his forehead.

"No, not always," I answer as my thoughts race to decipher it. He's reacting the same way he did the day of Addie's birthday party. "I mean, it's not something I dreamed of doing, or anything. It just sort of came about."

"Hmm..." he murmurs, appearing to chew in the inside of his cheek.

"What about you?" I quickly turn the focus away from me. "Did you always want to be a lawyer?"

He glances at me as his smirk quickly breaks through his clouded expression. "How do you know I'm a lawyer?"

"Rosalie mentioned it," I answer, surprised at how fast I was able to cover, considering how close I came to disclosing the fact I Googled him.

"Ah... No, I didn't always want to be one. It was initially to spite my father," he admits as his smile turns more toward himself.

"Like that, was it?" I say lightly.

He nods once and appears to suppress the urge to laugh. "It was. He kept pushing me to follow in his footsteps regardless of what I wanted."

I only hum in reply, fighting to keep the smile from becoming a permanent fixture on my lips. I feel strangely at ease with him, except a part of me is beginning to feel self-conscious. I have no idea why. On second thought, I know exactly why; I'm sitting in this insanely handsome man's car beside him while he appears to be enjoying my company.

Only a few days ago, I was certain he was a complete asshole who existed solely to make me question my purpose for living.

He glances at me, and then again before he articulates the reason his brows are beginning to furrow again. "Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" I ask after gazing at him for a moment in confusion. He's a lawyer, I quickly remind myself; it's only natural he'd be this perceptive.

"You seem... uncomfortable," he muses more or less to himself, and I don't think that was the word he meant to use.

I'm not uncomfortable, after all, but if he'd said intimidated he'd have been right on the mark.

"I'm fine, really," I insist, meeting his eyes and offering him a smile for good measure.

He immediately returns it but what's obvious is this man is scrutinizing me, and I'm worried about the conclusions he's making.

"I really had no idea Addie knew anyone outside of my parents when she's with them," he seems to decide, while evidently feeling the need to explain again how I became his daughter's imaginary friend.

"I believe you," I assure him, but it doesn't surprise me at all. Why would Mrs. Cullen feel the need to mention me to her son? While we might be neighbors, we're only really acquainted because our mail is constantly being mixed up.

Addie on the other hand seems to mention me a lot.

He turns down West Highland Drive and pulls to a stop not in front of my apartment, but his parent's house.

"I'll walk you," he answers my questioning gaze.

"Oh... I mean—okay..." I say with enough ambiguity that he's smirking again, but he's really beginning to confuse me.

He walks beside me so close his shoulder brushes against mine several times even with both hands jammed into his pants pockets. He's fallen quiet again, and as well as glancing down at me, he keeps his eyes steeled ahead of him.

He's completely unreadable, but then I definitely have a habit of reading people wrong.

"How long have you lived here?" he asks when we reach the entrance of my apartment block.

"A little over a year," I answer, omitting any mention of my father.

He hums again, his voice thick with contemplation. "I almost bought an apartment here on the third floor when Addie was a baby. I figured it'd be easier with my parents so close," he tacks on when my brows raise in response.

We could have been neighbors, but what stands out to me is there was no plural in his confession. He used "I" as opposed to "we" in the context of when Addie was a baby, and I immediately start wondering how long he's been a single father.

All of Addie's life?

What the hell happened to his wife?

"So why'd you decide against it?" I ask when he frowns, alerting me to the fact that I was losing myself in thought again.

"I wanted Addie to have a yard to play in," he answers simply, shrugging a single shoulder, even as his hands remain wedged in his pants. "She's very... active." He grins to himself, and this time I join him.

She's not even mine and I'm well aware of it.

"I noticed that."

His eyes meet mine and his smile turns broad before he clears his throat as if breaking himself from it. "When are you free next?"

"I'm sorry?" I ask blankly.

He wants to see me again?

"You still owe me that later, remember?" he points out, reminding me that it completely slipped my mind.

"Oh... I do! Tuesday," I hastily blurt.

"Do you want to meet for lunch?" he asks, his eyes trained on mine intently. I nod and open my mouth to ask where when he beats me to it. "La Marzocco at one?"

"Sure." It's the same café where he ran into me and Alice a couple of weeks ago.

"I'll see you then," he says, and placing his first two fingers to the side of his forehead, he salutes me again; the same way he greeted me earlier tonight.

It's—jesus—a lot sexier than I'm willing to admit.

"Oh, and by the way," he adds, quickly turning back to me, "my mother asked if you will please call her Esme."

"Huh?" I utter vacantly. "Oh, I mean, sure..."

What the hell is going on here?

He breaks into an entirely too amused smile at my expense before turning a second time and heading toward his parent's house.

I watch him leave, his tall frame rigid and his shoulders slumped in an obvious effort to combat the cold.

"I'm in the damn Twilight Zone," I mutter, coming infinitely close to laughing humorlessly to myself as I trudge up the single flight of stairs to my apartment.

My hands are shaking. In fact, my entire body almost feels as if it's tremoring.

My phone rings just as I'm offloading my heels in my tiny, square foyer, and rummaging through my purse I pull it free.

Alice.

"Hey," I say breathlessly, shuffling my feet into my Uggs.

"Hey, just calling to see if you got home alright," she says with way too much innuendo behind her voice.

"Or whether Edward drove me home?" I say knowingly, rolling my eyes.

"That too."

"Yes, he did."

"I figured as much. He practically bolted after you."

I scoff full of doubt because Alice has a way of over exaggerating everything. "I'm sure he didn't."

"Seriously," she insists as her voice turns high. "He waved goodbye to me from the other side of the room and got my name wrong. He called me 'Mary Alice'"—I scoff back my laughter—"Then after he left, Jay said to me 'when did this happen?' Meaning you and Edward."

Expelling my breath in immediate exasperation, I slump down on the two-seater sofa in my living room. Alice..." I complain. "There is no me and Edward. He thought I was his daughter's imaginary friend, and he made it up to me. That's all there is to it."

"And you say I'm delusional," she chides me. "Did he ask you out?" I hesitate to answer, and naturally, Alice takes it as immediate confirmation. "A-ha—he did!"

"Okay, yes, he did, but..."

"But...?" she coaxes me to continue.

"...I don't know," I concede behind a gushing breath. "The man is as confusing as he is good-looking."

"So... Wait. Do you think he's out of your league?" she asks as if the notion didn't even occur to her.

"Only by a continent," I say ruefully.

"Bella..." She sighs.

"What?"

"I knew that asshole Tyler would send you back fifty steps," she says bitterly.

"What—"

"Have you forgotten that you totally Neville-Longbottomed?" she reminds me completely unironically. It's a phrase she tagged me with on my twenty-first birthday. Sure, I was an awkward kid, and it took a few extra years than average to grow into my ears and teeth, but Alice and her Harry Potter euphemisms... It's how she once convinced me Jacob Black was crushing on me, too. He was Ron Weasley and I was Hermione, so therefore, our love was destined.

That's Alice, and I love her for it. She fully expects life to meet the expectations of fiction, and for the most part it has. For her at least.

I'm more of a realist. I'm my father's daughter in that retrospect.

"Harry Potter? Still? You are such a dork," I tease her.

"No deflecting. Okay, Edward's a bonafide hottie, but so are you, missy," she reprimands me like I'm a ten year old.

"Thanks for the pep-talk, Mom," I say drolly, pulling myself to my feet again, and wedging my phone between my shoulder and cheek, I reach behind me to unzip this contraption of a dress Alice hoodwinked me into wearing.

The moment it falls loose, I take an enormous breath and release it. I could barely breathe the entire night.

"Quit sighing at me!"

"I'm—"

So you think he asked you out to play Uno?" she cuts in sarcastically? "He asked you out because he's into you."

"Okay, maybe," I'm forced to concede, because why else would he want to see me again? If he just wants to tell me to stay away from his daughter, he can do that anywhere. "I mean, it almost felt that way."

"Of course it did, you dope. Jay said he was staring at you all night."

"And Rose said he has a gigantic wall around him," I counter.

"Rose is a lush!" Her tone immediately clouds. "I cannot believe what she said to you tonight."

"Yeah, well... Edward noticed as well," I relay, shoving open my bedroom door.

"Well, that doesn't surprise me. He barely pulled his eyes from you."

I sigh in deliberate emphasis this time, and shimmying myself from the dress, I toss it to the chair in the corner of the room.

"I was thinking of inviting Rose to the wedding," she adds, "but I don't want anyone passing out at my reception."

I chuckle lightly. "She's probably already coming, Al."

"Huh?" How do you mean?"

"Did Jay invite Emmett?"

"Yeah—oh shit, she'll be his plus one."

"Yep."

"Damn it. I'll have a word with the bar tender to make sure she doesn't drink the place dry—Isn't Addie adorable?" she quickly changes the subject, and honestly, sometimes I'm not sure whether it's Alice who has ADHD, or me. "She makes me want one."

"She is," I agree. "Al, I have to go. I still need to jump in the shower."

"Okay, sleep well—hey, coffee Tuesday?"

"Um… I'm meeting Edward for lunch Tuesday," I confess, and I can practically hear the smug grin on her face through the receiver.

She clears her throat pointedly. "Okay, let's meet Wednesday and you can tell me all about it."

. . .

My shift starts at midday, and if I'm really lucky I'll be home by one a.m. It's not as if I have time to count the hours, though. The day starts as hectic as usual with a baby with shoulder dystocia. My second mother needs an emergency C-section, and the third delivery is relatively routine—induction, Pitocin, epidural, and baby out in five minutes of pushing. No incident reports and no arrogant OBGYNs, thank god.

I'm actually blessed with ten minutes to buy a decent coffee at the cafeteria, and by the time I stagger through my front door again, it's two-thirty in the morning.

I crawl into bed barely conscious.

When I wake well into the late morning the next day, I realize Edward had sent me a text sometime the day before.

Jay gave me your number. Hope that's okay.

I'm smiling to myself like an idiot, even as I hastily scrub my teeth; my phone teetering on the edge of the vanity.

It's fine. I type one-fingered.

Busy yesterday? His reply comes so fast it startles me and makes me gag on my toothbrush.

It's always busy.

I don't envy you. It's never too late to change profession.

Okay—what?

I only stare down at my phone, with toothpaste oozing between my parted lips, in complete confusion.

Does this man have a problem with nurses? Does he think they're beneath him?

I cannot read him for the life of me.

I procrastinate on replying for so long I end up late for work. I leave my apartment in such a rush, I don't realize I've left my phone in the bathroom until I'm pulling into the hospital employee's parking lot.

I don't have time to go back for it, but his message plays on my mind for the entire day.

I'm distracted, which is never a good thing in my field. I slip on one woman's broken amniotic fluid and crack my elbow after only a few minutes on the ward, and the day only goes downhill from there.

I'm practically flung across the delivery room when the leg I'm holding of one of my mother's shoots out of the stirrups as her baby's crowning, one of my fathers faints and then vomits all over the floor, and I come infinitely close to losing a baby from a triple nuchal cord.

It's one of those days that's all too common, and made worse by one too-handsome man constantly occupying my thoughts.

When my second shift ends, it's with tears, and that's how I fall asleep.

. . .

I'm sorry. That was rude.

His reply had come an hour after his last, and only a couple of minutes after I'd left for work.

It's fine. I text back as I'm brewing my morning coffee in the kitchen. I'm honestly too wearied to give it any more thought, and it's the only thing I can think to answer with without being short with him. I've got him wrong once before. I really don't want to make a habit of it.

In my experience, those who constantly say those two words are everything but. Again, he replies within moments.

"Huh?" I mutter out loud to myself. "Who the hell is this man!?"

Is that right? Is my response, a tad too aggressively.

It was once my default response too. I was fooling no one.

Are you a lawyer or a psychologist? I type out, rolling my eyes as I do.

Speaking from experience. Am I annoying you?

No.

I don't believe you.

Placing my coffee mug to the breakfast table, I fall into the chair and drop my head into my hands with a languid groan. I'm not even certain if he is annoying me. He definitely has me flustered, though.

You're just very candid.

It comes with the job description.

"He's enjoying this..." I mumble, but then I'd be lying if I said I wasn't, despite his ability to make me constantly question myself.

Apparently so. Are you going to offer me your business card?

Would you like one?

No.

How was work yesterday? He asks after several minutes where I almost convinced myself he had work to do himself.

Same as usual.

How do you handle it?

Again his question stumps me, and I can only conclude that he's had a negative experience with nurses of some kind.

Perhaps that's why he didn't want to go into the medical field.

It can be hard, but I'm there when babies are brought into the world. It's amazing.

He doesn't reply, despite the fact I keep checking my phone every five minutes as I'm getting ready for work.

I leave my phone in my locker before my shift starts, determined not to have Frowning Daddy front and center in my thoughts, dampening my entire day again.

I'm half successful, and my third shift is a lot smoother than the previous two.

The wife of a comedian delivers baby number three on my watch. He has us all in stitches, OBGYN and his naturally delivering partner included. I actually get a vending machine sandwich and a coffee for dinner, and I'm not vomited over, or get amniotic fluid up my nose. Not to mention, I'm able to clock out by midnight.

A twelve hour shift is something of a luxury for me, and after undressing out of my scrubs, I grab my purse, and head for my car with a huge smile on my face.

Tomorrow is my lunch date with Edward.

It's not until I get home that I recall my concern over his last message this morning. I grab my phone a little too eagerly, and with more relief than I can reconcile, I realize he left me another two messages while I was at work.

I suppose it can be. Is the first, which only creates a hell of a lot more confusion. At first I'm positive it's patronizing, only to immediately reconsider. In fact, it almost feels as if there's something despondent in the tenor of it, or maybe I'm over analyzing everything exactly like Alice is always accusing me of.

His second text was delivered just after seven p.m.

See you tomorrow.

Despite the hour, I text back a smiley-face emoji, and that's how I fall asleep; with a too broad grin on my face and underlying emotions that follow me into my dreams.

I can't deny my anticipation, but I already feel like I'm in over my head.

A/N: thank you for reading :)