NOTE: Thank you for the reviews! This chapter starts off slow, but hopefully will pick up soon! Please let me know how you like it.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own Twilight or the characters – the only thing mine are a few random character’s and the plot.

CHAPTER ONE

“Bella, Julie Maury is on line five,” the voice of her receptionist, Bree, told her over the speaker.

Bella Swan put down the contracts she was looking over and sighed. “Thanks, Bree. You can go ahead to lunch if you want.”

She could hear Bree already putting away papers. “Thanks! You want me to bring you something back?”

Bree Clark was fairly young, she was still a senior in high school and loved sharing stories with Bella who had been graduated from high school for nearly seven years, thank God, but she was a hard worker. And a great asset to Twilight Special Event’s; she had already brought in three high-budget customer’s. She had been given six percent of the profit from each one, which was over a thousand dollars apiece. Bella had already promised that once she got her license she had a spot as a consultant.

Twilight could really use her talent and Bella had no problem with getting the rest of the managing staff to agree. Then again, the rest of the staff only included Alice Brandon, who had been Bella’s best friend they were in middle school, Karen Smithson who was in charge of finances, and her husband, William who was in charge of the catering. Of course they had a small staff under them who took care of more tedious task like setting up the dining room, serving, and ushering special events.

Bella and Alice had started the business after graduating college. They hadn’t expected Twilight -- named after their favorite time of day – to take off so soon, but after only six months they expanded and brought in Karen and William. The duo had previously worked together under a contract for a company that ended up folding.

Now, after only three years, the company was well known in Washington State and had become one of the most successful Event Planners in the Pacific Northwest. Their busiest time being the wedding season, which now days felt like an all-year thing, and Christmas. They now had a waiting list that seemed to grow every day, longer and longer.

Julie Maury was the mother of a bride-to-be who had been nagging Bella for a month trying to get her to plan her daughter’s wedding. Bella had told her flat out that she would have to find a different date, June 18th had already been booked by a couple, but Julie had a backbone made of steel. She had tried everything in her might so far to pursue her into changing the other couples date.

Bella couldn’t even imagine as to what the old harpy would try now.

Telling Bree she would be fine for lunch, she picked up the phone on her desk and answered with a clipped hello.

“Hello Isabella, this is Julie Maury calling,” the woman replied in a business-like tone.

“Mrs. Maury, what can I do for you today?”

“I called the other couple, Ms. Denali, correct?” Julie pried. Bella had accidently let the name of the other bride slip in her last conversation, but had hoped that Julie wouldn’t catch on. But of course she had caught it and then questioned further. “Anyhow, I called Ms. Denali and told her the situation; she was very understanding, and has agreed to switch her wedding date!”

Grabbing a contract that she had just been looking over previously, she read the names, and smirked. “Is that so?”

“Yes, yes. Of course,” Julie agreed. “She was a very nice lady for agreeing.”

Bella rolled her eyes. “That’s funny. She just brought in her confirmation contract this morning.”

Julie sighed. “Well, we just got off the phone. You can just rip that up, darling.”

The nerve of this woman! Bella was beyond sick of dealing with her and her manipulating tendencies.

“Mrs. Maury, I am very sorry, but Ms. Denali will be having her wedding on June 18th and until I hear from her or her lawyer, there will be no changing that. If you’d like to plan your daughter’s wedding with us, you’ll have to look over the dates for next Summer available,” Bella told her, trying to keep her cool. Mother’s of the bride’s were always the hardest to comply with. “Until then I wish your daughter the best of luck. Good afternoon, Mrs. Maury.”

Hanging up had never felt so good.

She began to look back over the details of Tanya Denali’s wedding; it was a one o’clock wedding, in one of the chapels in Seattle. She hadn’t provided much else yet, but Bella knew from speaking with her over the phone that she was hashing a good $150,000 on the wedding. It must be nice to have a parent who can afford that much on a wedding, but when one of your parents is a senator they probably have no choice but to have a big, elaborate wedding.

On Friday afternoon she would be meeting Tanya for the first time to start detailing her wedding. It was already December so she would only have a little over six months to start planning. It was a lot of work to be done in such a short amount of time, but between Bella and Alice they were fully capable.

Besides, wedding planning was Bella’s specialty – Alice was more so into the details of it all – she had once planned a whole wedding in less than a month. But those were memories that she wasn’t in the mood for.

Bella shook her thoughts away and began to clean up the papers on her desk when she heard the clicking of heels that could only belong to one person: Alice Brandon.

“Ding-dong,” Alice sang, poking her head into her best friend’s office.

Without even waiting for a reply, Alice plopped down into one of the leather seats in front of Bella’s desk, throwing her legs over one side and her head over the other. The dark hair she had recently cut into a cute bob, dangled to the ground in waves.

Bella just rolled her eyes. “What’s up?”

Alice clicked her little gold heels that Bella shocked she could even find in her size. She had always been petite, loved shoes, and happened to have tiny feet.

“Bored. My one o’clock called in sick, so I have nothing to do but go over details for a wedding we’ve been working on for nearly two years.” Alice sat up and pulled some paper’s off of Bella’s desk and start reading.

“When’s the wedding?” Bella asked.

Without even looking up Alice replied, “Saturday, three PM at the park. Hey, whose the Senator’s daughter marrying?”

“No idea,” Bella shrugged. “Some poor schmuck? I’ll find out on Friday. Wanna go grab some lunch?”

“Sushi!” Alice threw the paper’s back down and was already racing down the hall to grab her purse before Bella had stood up.

Half an hour later they were sitting at a booth inside a Chinese restaurant. Alice was recounting the details of her date last night with Jasper Whitlock. They had been dating since high school, moved in to his house last year, and now they were talking about marriage.

Bella knew that it was coming, but somewhere deep down she had been hoping it wouldn’t. It was that she didn’t want Alice and Jasper to have their happy ending, God knows they deserve it and they’re perfect for each other, but seeing them so happy and ready to take that step made her ache.

She knew what it was like to be ready for that moment; to be standing there at the end of the alter, ready to say “I do.” It was a memory often blocked out.

“What do you think?” Alice asked, breaking Bella from her deep thoughts.

“I’m sorry, Alice, what were you saying?”

Alice swallowed her last bit of sushi and frowned. “I was asking what you thought about going to a hockey game with us on Friday night.”

“Oh,” she mumbled. “Sure. That’d be great.”

Alice squealed. “Awesome! You’ll love it. Jasper says that this game is going to be the biggest game of the season.”

Bella had only been to a few games before, always with Alice and Jasper. It was fun, but she had a hard time really getting into it since she had no idea what was going on. Growing up her dad, Charlie, had always been a fan, but even after watching game after game on TV she’d never really grasped the rules. Jasper had been trying to teach her for at least two years now.

Jasper was good with that kind of stuff, which is why she guessed he decided to become a teacher. In high school they always thought he’d be the guy who ended up as a lawyer or something, but instead he shocked everyone when he told them that he wanted to become a history teacher. He was now working on his master’s so he could work as a professor at the university.

Later that night, Bella was just putting her things away, ready to leave when her blackberry rang. She fumbled around, wishing the phone was much simpler to use, and finally answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey Bells! What are your plans tonight?” It was Jacob.

Jacob had been a close family friend growing up, and that’s all that they stayed as, until recently. He had been hinting at them trying for a relationship for months now. She had tried to turn him down, but something in her told her to just go for it. She had been single for almost six years; one date wasn’t going to the end of the world.

Of course one date turned into two, then three, and now it had been two months since they had started dating. She wasn’t sure how she felt about him yet. She loved him, like a friend, but wasn’t able to find that deep, passionate love. She never got tingles or all warm inside, but he made her laugh and he made her feel safe. That had to mean something, right?

“No plans, you want to go somewhere?” she asked, already heading out the door. She didn’t have any plans except maybe watch some House reruns and work on some details for an upcoming New Year’s party.

She could hear Jacob opening and closing a car door. He must have just got off work, she thought, which was weird since Jake was an engineer and normally was off by three. It was well after six already.

“Yeah, I was just stopping by the store to pick up some dog food for Wolf.” Wolf was his year old husky he found at the pound outside the reservation his family lived at. “Wanna go grab something to eat and see that new zombie movie?”

Ever since he had taken her, for their third date, to see some scary movie he had been trying to get her to see another one. Bella knew it was because she got a little jumpy at one point and ended up ducking into his shoulder. She didn’t have to heart to tell him it was because she had thought she’d seen someone she hadn’t seen in years and was hiding. Thank God it wasn’t him though.

Bella agreed to meet him wherever, not really in the food for food, but she was defiantly in the mood for a laugh or two. Even when she was having the worst day, Jake knew how to cheer her up usually without even knowing it.

They met up at a pizza parlor close to his apartment. She found him, already sitting at a booth in the back, his long black hair tied back and hanging down his back. She always found his dark skin and hair sexy on him.

When he saw her, he jumped up and wrapped her in his arms, grinning largely and kissing her square on the mouth. “How was your day, Baby?”

She blushed at his pet name for her. She always found it hard to stay serious when he called her that. “It was fine,” she said, simply, and threw her pea coat into the booth. “Yours?”

Jake grinned. “I got a promotion!”

Bella beamed up at him. “That’s great, Jake!”

“Yeah,” he replied, almost in a daze. “I totally wasn’t expecting it, but hey, I guess it’s about time. Jones said there was no doubt in his mind that I deserved. I’m going to be in control of all the incoming projects.”

“That’s really great.”

They chatted for a few more minutes about the promotion until the waitress came up to take their order. Jake ordered them both a beer – something that Bella wasn’t too fond of but drank just to make him happy – and an extra large cheese pizza. She knew that she’d only eat two pieces and the rest would go to her Native American boyfriend who had far reached past six foot five when he was seventeen.

“You’re dad called,” Jake said suddenly, looking hard at the girl sitting across from him. Bella was pretty, she always had been, but over the last few years, she seemed to just fill out in all the right ways. “He was asking about you.”

“Oh?” she mumbled.

Jake sighed. “Bells, when are you going to go see him?”

“Soon,” she shrugged. She hadn’t been back to see her father in years. He’d always drove out to Seattle to see her, he’d never complained before. And she called him at least every other day to make sure he was okay. “When I get a vacation.”

“Then give yourself one, baby.” Jake was worried about her. “You’ve worked so hard lately, give yourself some time off.”

“It’s not that easy, Jake,” she told him in a clipped tone. “I can’t just run off whenever I want.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m busy, Jake. I have commitments to people. I can’t just not show up.”

How many times was she going to have to tell him this?

“You need to get over this fear, Bella.”

“Don’t tell me what I need to do, Jacob Black,” she fumed, standing up and grabbing her coat. She heard him call her to sit back down and relax, but she was already half way out of the parlor.

She didn’t have to sit there and listen to him tell her what to do. He didn’t even know half the story! How could he act like what she went through was just something she could forget and move on from?

Just as she was about to pull the door open it swung towards her and knocked her purse to the ground. “Shit!”

“Oh, sorry about that,” a deep voice apologized about that, bending down to help her grab everything that had fallen out.

Bella sighed. “No, it’s not your fault. I wasn’t looking at where I was going. I’m surprised that there was actually someone behind the door – normally I do that on my own.”

He laughed and helped her up.

She blushed when she felt his hands. Unlike Jake’s they were soft, not callused and rough.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

She nodded and brushed her long hair away from her face. “I’m… Oh, my God.”

She starred into his deep green eyes and looked past towards the soft golden-hued brown hair that was standing in soft tufts around his head. She didn’t even have to blink once and look again to recognize him, even after all these years. She knew those eyes and messy hair, the slight dimples in his cheeks, and narrow jaw.

Her heart dropped. “Ed… Edward?”

.-.-.

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