The dreary sound of rain on my window awoke me early the next morning.  I lay without moving for a while, trying to differentiate night from day by the degree of light that filtered through my comfortably closed lids, but the clouds and the heavy curtains kept out all possible distinguishing factors.  A burst of wind shook the window frame and took the volume outside up two notches.  I moaned and pulled my three comforters tighter around me.  It felt like I had just fallen asleep.  That was probably because I had.

I hadn’t realized just how much the long trip home and the night’s events had taken out of me until we had arrived in my bedroom after our confrontation with the wolves.  I’d been furious with Edward for hiding Tanya’s presence, and with Irina for violating yet another privacy usually afforded to those who could hear and smell things a mile away.  I had been prepared to accompany Edward to his home and confront Irina myself that moment, but when he had finally placed me on the bed, my mind seemed to surrender to the jetlag that the various in-flight magazines had warned me about on our flight from Madrid to New York.  I hadn’t wanted to give in that easily and so I‘d tried my best to continue the argument that had begun outside my window.

“You should have told me about Tanya…and you should have told Sam about Irina.  You just let her go without warning them at all.  You knew they were going out tonight and that they could cross her path and you…”

His muffled laugh had stopped me.  He’d been seated beside me, running his fingers lovingly through my hair.  The placating expression on his face would have infuriated me if I hadn’t have been running on the last of my endorphins. 

“I shouldn’t have told you,” he’d sighed.  “I stupidly agreed to full disclosure knowing your tendency to take everything onto your own shoulders and now look at you.”  He was looking at me…and the concern in his eyes had been the only thing that had saved him from a bitter come-back.  “Instead of taking pleasure in the last week that you have with your father before you leave for college, you’re worrying about a petty argument between two species that you shouldn’t even know exist.” 

I had opened my mouth to argue but he’d pressed one long white finger to my lips to silence me, following it with a cold kiss. 

“Irina has never been a problem, Bella.  If I can convince a pack of dogs of that fact, then surely I can convince my wife.”

And as I had been half asleep already, he probably could have convinced me of just about anything.  I’d nodded reluctantly, promising myself that I would continue this argument in the morning when my thought processes had been recharged.  Edward had taken me in his arms and held me as I’d drifted slowly to sleep.  Just as I was slipping under completely, his voice had called to me again.

“Bella, I want you to stay with Charlie this next week.”

I hadn’t been awake enough to be surprised…or disagreeable.

“We just got married.  What will Charlie think?”  It had come out slow and dreamsoaked.

“Let me handle Charlie, love,” he’d responded.  “You sleep.”

“Good luck,” I’d sighed, agreeing without any real idea as to what I was agreeing to.  That, of course, had been his intention. 

 A bead of sweat trickling down my forehead roused me again from a doze and alerted me to the fact that it was suddenly sweltering.  I turned, kicking three comforters off of the bed, and discovered the reason behind such a radical temperature change.  The place that Edward had been occupying when I’d fallen asleep was empty.  Worried, I pulled myself out of bed and stumbled to the door.  My mind filled immediately with a thousand things that could have happened in the night to force him to leave suddenly.

The scent of breakfast drifted up to me from the kitchen then—not the cold-burnt-toast-waiting-on-a-plate type breakfast typical of Charlie, but bacon and eggs and, I guessed, every elaboration that the cooking channel had to offer.  I grinned sleepily as two voices reached me at the top of the stairs.

“…knew you were competing with a werewolf and you kept it up!  That took some guts.  I’ve got to give you credit for that.”

“I think you’d agree that Bella is well worth fighting for.”

“Yeah she is.  But a werewolf...”

They both looked up as my footfall made Charlie aware of my presence.  Edward’s smile widened.  It was impossible to understand why he looked at me that way every time I walked into a room—like I was carrying the sun with me in my pocket. 

“Morning, Bells,” Charlie said as Edward slipped around the table to kiss me softly on the cheek.  “I didn’t expect you to be up for a couple more hours.”

“Rain,” I murmured, tumbling ungracefully into one of the three unmatched chairs at the table.  I had gotten used to waking up to sunlight and the calm sound of the ocean in the past two weeks—the joys of a country that had once been able to claim that the sun never set on their empire.  Forks would require another day or two of readjustment before I would be able to claim semi-normal sleep patterns again. 

“Do I smell eggs?”

Edward chuckled and passed me a plate that was overflowing.  He sat down opposite me to watch me eat.  Charlie occupied the third chair, serving himself the last of the bacon.  He had stopped bothering to include Edward at mealtime a while ago, accepting his son in law’s mysterious eating habits in the same way he had accepted a household full of unnaturally beautiful teenagers and their twenty-something parents.  I wondered fleetingly how he had worked out those two particular conundrums in his head, and made a mental note to ask Edward about it later.

“So Bells, Edward told me about your discussion last night.”

I stopped with a forkful of eggs halfway to my mouth.

“Discussion?”

“You should know by now that it doesn’t matter if you’re married or not.  You never have to be embarrassed about wanting to spend a little more time over here.”  My eyes slipped suspiciously over to Edward, who was suppressing a smirk. 

“What would you say to spending a few more days with me?” Charlie continued.  “Give your old dad a chance to get as much as he can of you before you go off to college.  That way you won’t be too lonely when Edward goes off on his camping trip with those brothers of his.”

My eggs fell off the fork and landed on the table between us with a dull splat.  Charlie was beaming.  Edward’s smug grin lit the room.  He had just won an argument that I hadn’t even started yet! 

Edward could play dirty with the best of them.

“Uh…that sounds great dad,” I stammered.  What else could I say? 

Satisfied, Charlie shoved the last piece of bacon into his mouth, rose from the table, and went to the coat rack to grab his jacket.  I seized the opportunity to burn holes into Edward with my eyes.  It didn’t have the effect that I was hoping for.  Vampires, it seemed, were also immune to the fire of my implied wrath.  Edward was smiling innocently down at the square oak table when Charlie entered the room again, complete with police jacket and gun belt.

“Edward told me about your plans for today, so I thought that I’d head down to LaPush again and have another talk with Billy.  Get some things figured out.  I’ll see you tonight?”

“Yeah, dad…thanks.” 

“No problem, Bells.  Tell Alice I said hi.  I never got to tell her what a great job she did on your wedding.  She’s got a pretty bright future in that kind of thing if she wants to.”

“I’m sure she’ll be thrilled you said that.”  Edward said, his voice like honey—evil, duplicitous honey.

Charlie started toward the hallway, then turned almost as an afterthought and added, “You two be careful out there.”

I heard him mumbling as he pushed out the door and into the rain.

“Werewolves on the reservation.  What’s next?  Vampires in Port Angeles?”

And then the room was swallowed in silence.  I sat for a moment, staring at the splatter of scrambled eggs on the table and tried to wrap my head around what had just happened.  Edward had purposely hidden crucial information from the wolves and from me.  He had used my own mortality against me to trick me into agreeing to a week away from him, he had manipulated my father into believing that everything had been my idea, thereby eliminating any opportunity that I had to argue my position, and he had apparently planned my entire day as I slept. 

I watched his still figure from the corner of my eye, not knowing exactly what to feel.  I should have been furious.

“Charlie is taking the news of the wolves remarkably well, don’t you think?  It appears he has the same inadvertent attraction to danger as his daughter.”

That was it.  I was furious. 

I stared at the scrambled eggs as if they were tea leaves and somewhere in their murky depths, I would find the key to my future.  I wondered if that future involved attacking my new husband with the fork that was still held precariously in my right hand.

Edward sat unmoving next to me with his hands folded together casually on the table and a hint of amusement drawn onto his face.  His eyes were cool and calm, observing every fraction of emotion as it bloomed in my expression and made my face a kaleidoscope of confusion. 

I finished my eggs slowly without looking at him…counting the forkfuls as I ate and purposefully making them smaller as my plate edged toward empty.  Edward grew progressively more uneasy in the lengthening silence, and I delighted in that fact.  After what seemed like a very long time, in which the spilled forkful of eggs revealed to me just about as much of my future as the tea leaves would have, I rose slowly and carried my plate to the sink, taking care not to glance his way as I went. 

I took a long time cleaning up, washing the dishes as slowly and as thoroughly as my temper would allow.  When Edward appeared with a towel to dry them, I turned my back on him and found a different one in the top drawer with which to do the job.  He remained indulgently by my side, waiting out the storm.  It wasn’t until I started toward the stairs without a second glance in his direction that the patient smile in his eyes faltered.

“Bella you can’t possibly go the entire day pretending I don’t exist.”

My stride slowed, but did not stop as I mounted the stairs two at a time in my anger.  This was tempting fate, but I didn’t care.  He was right.  I probably couldn’t, but I could at least make him worry until I was out of the shower.  My foot caught on the top stair and I fell forward suddenly, hands splayed in preparation for impact.  So much for any hope of a dramatic exit.  Edward caught me before I hit the ground.  His dark eyes searched mine out and held them, probing.

“You’re angry with me.”  It wasn’t a question. 

“Of course I am!”  I pulled out of his arms, careful not to fall backwards down the stairs, and tried my best to stare him down without meeting his eyes.  “Edward, you tricked me into staying here!”

He made no attempt to pull me back to him, but his face melted into an expression of genuine confusion. “You don’t want a few more days with your father before you go to the east coast?”

“Not if it means a few more days of waiting until Charlie gets home while the man I just married is off with his two perfect cousins picking fights with my friends!”

Edward’s lip curled up into an impish half-smile then, and he pulled me to his chest with a steady arm.

 “Why Mrs. Cullen,” he teased.  “I believe you sound the slightest bit jealous.”

I forced myself to look away as he gazed down complacently at me from underneath his long lashes.  I wasn’t in the mood to be dazzled.

“It’s not funny, Edward.  Our plan was to stay with your family until Tanya and Irina showed up and changed that.  Why this sudden interest in keeping me away from your ex-girlfriend?”

That struck a nerve.  His brow furrowed, and he frowned at me, frustrated.

“I told you that I’ve never had the slightest interest in Tanya.  I’m yours, Bella.”  He caught a lock of my hair between his fingers and placed it lovingly behind my ear.  “I’ve belonged to you from the day I was born.”  His eyes grew reluctant as he stared down the stairs and off into the distance.  “If I’d ever doubted that fact, it was affirmed unequivocally on our first night in Andalucía.” 

He stroked my hair absentmindedly, his eyes somewhere else.  I wondered if they’d gone to the same place mine had—to a distant balcony overlooking the ocean in the moonlight.  My heartbeat increased.  It was so hard to stay angry at a mindreader…even when those mindreading skills were limited only to certain intimate moments in my specific case.

His smile returned and his voice grew light again as his gaze returned to me.

“And keeping you away is unfortunately not an option,” he clarified in a playful tone.  “Alice missed you more than you realize.  She’s arranged a gathering for us all today to demonstrate just how much.  You can see Tanya again and meet Irina, and you’ll be able to pass your own judgment on both of them.”

He seemed less than thrilled at that possibility.

I groaned internally, knowing altogether too well what Edward’s carefully chosen term gathering was disguising.  Call a spade a spade:  Alice had prepared a welcome home party.  

And Edward still hadn’t answered my original question.  Why was I stuck here for the week?

Sensing the direction that the conversation was about to turn, he picked me up and carried me effortlessly into the bedroom.  The rain had moved on for the moment and the clouds had retreated just enough to allow a miserable grey half light into the room to illuminate the pile blankets still tossed carelessly in the middle of the floor.  Edward caught them up with one hand as he made his way to the bed.

“Alice is expecting us in less than an hour,” he said, placing me on my feet at the foot of the bed.  “I’m assuming you want a few human moments before we go?”

I stared at his angelic face, contemplating pushing for my answer, but his expression gave off every indication that he had become impenetrable for the moment.  I may as well have been wearing the white flag pinned to my forehead as I made my way, defeated, into the bathroom.  My shower wasn’t nearly as refreshing as it should have been, but it gave me time to strategize for a counterattack of sorts at a later hour.  Edward may have been able to take momentary advantage of Charlie’s fear of my leaving for college, but I knew that Alice was equally unhappy about our fast-approaching move across the continent.  A few well chosen words on my part would have her arguing in my favor, and Alice was not as easily manipulated as poor Charlie.

By the time the hot water began to run out, I was feeling much more optimistic.

I only made it halfway through drying my hair before deciding on a pony tail, changed quickly into a long tan skirt and a turquoise top that Alice had bought for me and that Edward had already delighted in removing several times in our two weeks in Spain, and I bounded down the stairs.

He was in the kitchen, waiting to fold me up in his arms when I finally made an appearance.

“I don’t think I ever had the opportunity to tell you how beautiful you are in that particular color,” he whispered into my ear.  His breath on my neck caused my legs to tremble.  I wrapped my arms tighter around his muscular shoulders as every last drop of irritability disappeared from my mind.

“Actually, I think your lips were otherwise occupied.”

His breath caught and a smirk fluttered across his face as he ushered me slowly toward the door, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Bella, you are the singularly most dangerous creature that I have ever encountered.”

I laughed.  “You just wait until I’ve got venom.”

The smile disappeared instantly from his face.

Stupid!

“Edward, I’m sorry,” I stammered. 

“No, you’re right,” he said, his voice bleak.  “You will be dangerous…more than any of us, I think, with your predilection for attracting misfortune.”

The air around me suddenly seemed to drop at least ten degrees.  The rain had turned into a mist that caught in my hair and sent tendrils of ice down the back of my neck. I shivered as his cold eyes held mine, searching…assessing. 

“But not until January,” I reminded him, not knowing what else to say.  His eyes seemed to come slowly back into focus and he smiled a wistful smile, nodding painfully.

“Well, Mrs. Cullen,” he said, breaking up the cloud of gloom that I had summoned, “we don’t want to be late for the party.”

I gulped.  Suddenly, I didn’t feel very dangerous at all.