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Chapter 10 Teaser

Edward's childhood was not a happy one, not in the least. There were bits of happiness here and there, but for the most part, it was one that was spent achingly alone and ignored. He had a father that saw him only as a means to an end. He wasn't particularly wanted by his father, the only reason he was even here was because his mother had wanted a baby.

Liam Connoly was a charismatic man and as soon as Maggie laid her eyes on him, she was completely under his spell. He became the center of her universe, as exemplified by the fact that she turned her back on her family and everything she knew, to go with him back to Ireland when she was just seventeen-years-old. To say she suffered a culture shock when she arrived in Ireland would be an understatement, but she loved Liam too much to complain. She thought having a baby would make things better for her, give her something to do during the day when Liam was at work, so after they had gotten married, she got pregnant.

Things were better for Maggie for a time, and Liam even seemed excited by the prospect of having a child, once he found out the baby was going to be a boy that is. By the time Edward reached age five, Liam had grown weary of Maggie's attention to the boy and began demanding that she pay closer attention to his needs instead. Faced with the thought of losing the love of her life, Maggie did as he asked.

From that time on, Edward was little more than an afterthought to each of his parents. They were so consumed with each other that he was often left to fend for himself for most everything. Getting himself to and from school, making his own lunch, fixing his own dinner...all of his basic needs, he had to tend to himself.

Edward had learned early on that no matter what he did or how well he did in school or how hard he tried, he didn't matter enough to his parents. They barely acknowledged his existence. Sure there were times his mother went out of her way to do something nice for him or spend time with him, but those times were very few and far between. She was just too focused on making his father happy to be much of a mother to him. By the time he was adopted by Carlisle and Esme, Edward had vowed that he would never feel unworthy again. In order to do so, he figured it was best to keep to himself and not get too close to anyone. In his mind, if he kept his distance and didn't get too close to anyone, they couldn't hurt him the way his parents had.

Merry Christmas

Warm wishes to all during this holiday season.

~~~~Erin~~~~

Chapter 9 Teaser

That was not to say that Edward listened to much of what others had to say. He was supremely confident in his abilities and it was a very rare occurrence indeed, when he changed his mind or asked for the input of others. His defense mechanism of relying solely on himself and the influence of his grandfather made it next to impossible for him to behave any other way.

"So what we need to decide on next is where to go from here?" Edward finished and sat back in his chair.

No one said anything and Edward looked down to the other end of the table, hoping the all-knowing angel could tell him what the hell was going on.

"Eddie, Eddie, Eddie," Seth tsked with his tongue. "Can you tell me the last time you asked any of them for their input or opinion?"

"Sure it was...well, what I mean is...No, I can't," Edward said with an ashamed shake of his head. "Is that why they're all looking at me like I just broke out into a song and dance routine, naked?"

Chapter 8 Teaser

Jasper, though he tried as hard as he could, couldn’t stop the scowl from showing on his face. It was hard as hell to be friends with someone like Edward Cullen, but Jasper Whitlock had managed to do so for a long time now. It wasn’t without frustration, and it didn’t come without wanting to kick his ass and beat some sense into his thick head either. Like Isabella and Emmett, Jasper was somehow able to look past the hard, outer shell Edward kept around him like a suit of armor and see the man that lay beneath. Besides Isabella, Jasper was the only other person that had ever seen the true Edward Cullen, and it was because of that he was seething mad right now.

Irate…enraged…furious…take your pick…because Jasper was less than a minute away from beating his soon to be ex-friend into oblivion.

Chapter 7 Teaser

“I need to get up and start to get ready. I need to go to the office,” he said in a tone of voice that indicated just how unpleasant that thought was to him.

“Yes, I suppose you have a publishing kingdom to run, don’t you?” Isabella teased, but there was a trace of anxiety and bitterness beneath the surface.

She was afraid for him to leave the confines of the little bubble they’d created since he’d come home last night. She was afraid to lose him to the world of business, power, and money that he had so immersed himself in over the past few years. She was afraid of losing the Edward that she discovered beneath his walls.

Edward knew immediately what plagued her even without an angel having to whisper in his ear to remind him. “Hey now,” he said gently as he ran his thumbs over her still pink cheeks. “I’ll be home before you know it. Perhaps when I come back you can show me around the garden outside?

“Okay,” she whispered quietly.

“Isabella, I promised no more hiding and no more running. I mean to keep my promise,” he told her as he kissed her forehead. “I’m going to try my damnedest to be the man that you need me to be.”

“I love you, Edward,” she said as she stared at her husband. He dipped his head down to kiss her one last time before he left the warmth of her arms.

“I know, my love. I’ve always known,” he said as he softly brushed his lips across hers before he slid out of bed and walked to his bathroom to shower and get ready for the day.

Chapter 6 Teaser

“You going to be okay?” the angel questioned, a tad worried because Edward had yet to move from his position on the bed.

“I suppose that depends on your definition of okay,” Edward said sarcastically, causing the angel to let out a booming laugh, one that shook the walls and nearly toppled over the picture frame that resided on Edward’s bedside table.

Seth grinned, his white teeth gleaming and his eyes twinkled, “That, Eddie my boy, was a good one,” he acknowledged with a clap of his hands.

The boisterous being stood - well it looked like he floated, but that was neither here nor there - and looked down at the man on the bed. “Be careful with her, Edward. I won’t take too kindly to you hurting Isabella again. You’ve made tremendous progress tonight where she is concerned, try not to blow it to shit if you can at all help it,” the smug angel smirked.

Edward stood up and sighed deeply, wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed and feel his wife next to him and said, “I’ll do my best.”

Happy Thanksgiving

I just wanted to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving!

May you and your families have a peaceful and wonderful holiday.

Erin

Chapter 5 Teaser

“You’re so beautiful, but especially so when you blush like that, Isabella,” Edward said as he lifted her hand to his lips and brushed a soft kiss across her knuckles.

“Edward,” she said with a mixture of pleasure and frustration.

Her husband was the most maddening man, even though he could sweep her of her feet with no effort at all.

“What? Can I not compliment my wife?” he said with a self-satisfied smirk.

Reaching the end of her seemingly limitless patience, she pulled her hand back and looked at him, eyes furious. 

“Edward Cullen, don’t you dare try to dazzle me! If you don’t want to tell me what is going on with you, fine, don’t tell me. It’s not like it would be any different than the past five years anyway. But, you asked me a serious question and I was going to answer you and I had hoped you would do the same for me. If you have no intention of listening or talking, then just let me know right now so we can eat, fuck, and then sleep in separate rooms, like we do every damn night anyway!” Isabella said, her temper threatening to take over and make her say something she would really regret. 

Oh, there was much she wanted to say to her stunned husband right at the moment, she thought angrily as she began serving the mushroom ravioli. Insufferable ass was the chant currently racing through her mind followed closely with arrogant bastard and both were rather apt descriptions at the moment. How dare he…how fucking dare he, after all she’d been through and after all the time she’d spent trying to get him to this moment, how dare he carelessly discount the serious discussion they were having. 

“‘Can I not compliment my wife?’ my ass,” she muttered, loud enough for Edward to hear. “Ha!” she exclaimed heatedly and then turned an icy glare of her own on her husband before handing him his plate of food. 

“Damn it!” she muttered in extreme annoyance when she realized she’d forgotten the freshly grated Parmesan cheese inside. 

Edward watched, totally dumbfounded as his wife stomped from the deck into the house, her arms flailing about as she continued to mutter to herself. His wife just said the word fuck. He’d never heard that word come out of her mouth…ever. And the fact that she said it in terms of their lovemaking left him shell-shocked. Finding out about his impending death, being in an almost plane crash, the introduction of an angel into his life…all paled in comparison to the despair he felt right at the moment that she would believe he felt that way about her. 

“What the hell just happened?” Edward said as he ran a hand through his hair and took a drink of his wine. The wine, supposedly delicious since he only bought the best of the best, was bitter and left a horrible taste in his mouth. 

“Edward, my boy, you really are the dumbest bastard on the planet,” Seth said when he suddenly appeared in the chair just vacated by his wife. 

“Excuse me?” he asked, clearly not understanding. 

The angel laughed heartily, shaking the ground and the table with the sound and then looked at Edward. “Would you like me to enlighten you on why your lovely Isabella just turned into an Italian spitfire in the blink of an eye? You are obviously completely clueless when it comes to your wife.” 

“If you think you know, then by all means enlighten me, oh angelic one,” he sneered petulantly.

Chapter 4 Teaser

“She’s something else isn’t she?” Seth smirked at Edward as he exited the bathroom after taking what had to be the world’s shortest shower.

Edward glared icily at the annoying angel person who was still dressed in his Chicago Cubs regalia and stomped toward his dresser to pull out his own pair of cargo shorts and t-shirt. Studiously ignoring the deep chuckle that rumbled from the unwelcome presence in the chair by the window, he marched back into the bathroom to get dressed.

“Damn nosy, know-it-all, pain in the ass seraph,” Edward muttered under his breath as he yanked on a clean pair of boxer briefs and then his khaki shorts and black t-shirt.

He wrenched the door open and stared at the being across the room. “Edward Anthony, you do realize I possess extraordinary hearing don’t you? And while I readily admit to knowing it all, I’m neither nosy nor a pain in the ass, as you so eloquently put it,” Seth said, quite amused at his young charge.

“Whatever,” Edward said in a voice that sounded much like a surly teenager being lectured by a parent.

“You want to tell me what’s bothering you? It is, after all, my job to help you navigate these types of situations,” the angel stated, tempering his amusement for the time being.

He sighed deeply, trying to articulate exactly what he was feeling. He was raw, the reality of the day hitting him like a tsunami. He walked toward the large windows that faced the backyard and realized with a start that he had only to take a moment…just one fucking moment at anytime …to look out of these windows and he would have been granted an insight into who his wife really was.

“I’m such a fucking idiot,” Edward said sadly and rested his forehead against the cool glass. He tried to keep the melancholy he was feeling from spilling out of him, but he was having a hell of a time doing it. He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture he’d done thousands of times before whenever he was upset.

Seth snorted, the sound filling the large room and Edward turned and narrowed his eyes at the angel. “What, you want me to disagree with you?” Seth asked smugly. “Edward, you are not a stupid man. Of course you’re an idiot. You’ve lived the last twenty odd years with a chip on your shoulder the size of the moon, not to mention burying your head in the sand like the world’s most stubborn ostrich. Besides, I can’t lie to you so why even try?”

“It’s not fair,” he said pitifully and Seth couldn’t help but laugh, shaking the glass beneath Edward’s head.

Chapter 3 Teaser

“What do I do now?” Edward asked, this time really wanting to know the answer.

“Well, if I am not mistaken, and we’ve already readily established I am NEVER wrong, the lovely Isabella will be waking momentarily. Just a word of warning my young friend, you will have some massive explaining to do.”

Seth let out a booming laugh that shook the ground.

“I’ll be close by if you need me, Eddie. I can’t wait to see this,” the annoying being chuckled as he faded into the night.

Edward shook his head, and looked at his delectable wife. Surely, the angel was mistaken, right? There was no way Isabella…soft, quiet, and gentle Isabella would ever be anyone to be afraid of…was there?

Chapter 2 Teaser

“She should kick my arrogant, self-deluded ass,” Edward sighed and threw his head back against the headrest.

“Indubitably,” Seth snickered as he fiddled with the radio until he found a station that was playing a serene song that filled the car with its calming measures.

Edward let himself drift off with the notes, hoping that somehow, someway, he would be able to right the wrongs he’d perpetrated against her.

~~~~OOO~~~~OOO~~~~

As if she could tell he was there, Isabella opened her eyes and stared at her husband.

“Hello, love. It’s so nice to see you,” Edward whispered as he ran his fingers down the side of her cheek and bent down to kiss her.

Chapter 1

“You’d better enjoy that scotch while you can,” said the man next to Edward. “I’ve been told you don’t have much longer to enjoy the finer things in this life, Edward Anthony Cullen.”

“Excuse me? Do I know you?” Edward asked, startled by the use of his whole name.

Click Here to read the rest of Chapter 1 of TGG

Chapter 1 Sneak Peek

“You’d better enjoy that scotch while you can,” said the man next to Edward. “I’ve been told you don’t have much longer to enjoy the finer things in this life, Edward Anthony Cullen.”

“Excuse me? Do I know you?” Edward asked, startled by the use of his whole name.
Edward hadn’t noticed anyone sitting next to him on the late afternoon fight from LaGuardia to O’Hare. He glanced to his right and took in his companion for the short hour and a half trip. The man was huge…like NFL linebacker huge, with short brown hair and the bluest eyes Edward had ever seen. And they…twinkled? What the fuck? Edward thought surely he was seeing things because when he looked back at the man, his eyes looked like every other set of blue eyes he’d seen before. The man was expensively dressed. There was no doubting the Italian cut of the gray suit he wore or the costly, gleaming black Italian leather shoes the man had on his feet.

Edward knew precisely how much the shoes cost, he had the exact pair at home. Isabella had bought them just a few months before.

Isabella…Edward’s wife of five years…five very long, often lonely years for both of them.

Edward picked up his glass and took a sip of the scotch. He shuddered as the liquid burned his throat going down. The stuff was mediocre at best but that was what he got for flying commercial, he thought to himself.
Damn last minute meeting, Edward cursed to himself again. He had had to make the emergency trip to meet with a disgruntled client. Thinking back over the reason for the meeting had him gritting his teeth in frustration. Incompetent fools, he thought.

“My name is Seth,” the large man told Edward in a voice that seemed to fill the entire cabin of the plane. In fact, the voice was so loud he cringed in response but as he looked around, Edward noticed that no one else was affected. Not one person even glanced their way.

As soon as that thought registered with him, his stomach roiled and he cursed the spicy Mexican food he’d eaten for lunch.

Edward very pointedly ignored the obnoxiously loud, beast of a man and thought to himself that the best way to get through the flight home would be to just pretend his seat mate was not there.

“I’m an angel,” the man named Seth said then continued, “in fact; I’m your own personal guide to the afterlife. You have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time to do it, so I’ve been sent to help you along.”
He shook his head and signaled for the flight attendant. Surely he didn’t hear what he just thought he did , he lamely tried to convince himself. He smiled as she approached. Edward Cullen had been using his natural born magnetism and charisma since before he knew what those two words meant to get what he wanted, especially from members of the opposite sex. This time was no different. He was going to demand to change his seat but when she approached and asked what he needed, the words he wanted to say got stuck in his throat.

When he glanced to his right to point out what his problem was…there was no one there. What the hell?!  So instead Edward asked for a refill of his drink.

He felt his stomach churn again and seriously thought about suing the restaurant for serving food that made people hallucinate because there was no way in hell what he thought just happened, really happened. It wasn’t possible.

“She can’t see me, Eddie. In fact, no one but you has the pleasure of knowing of my existence. You should count yourself extremely fortunate,” the deep, rich voice said.

The flight attendant returned with his drink and handed it to him with a bashful smile…and a blush on her cheeks. The poor woman’s reaction to Edward was something that he was quite used to and he chuckled to himself when her breathing picked up when he smiled back at her.

So totally predictable, Edward mused silently, forgetting momentarily the invisible presence to his right. Well, pointedly trying to ignore whatever was going on next to him would be more precise. He picked up the glass and took another tentative sip of the amber liquid. He shuddered again and set the glass down in frustration.
How fucking hard was it to serve a decent scotch on this damn flight? Edward haughtily thought to himself. Again he cursed the meeting and the fact he was unable to take the company jet to New York City. Especially since his brother Emmett and his wife Rosalie, along with their children, were currently comfortably ensconced in it while he was drinking barely palatable scotch and hearing voices after eating what seemed to be spoiled Mexican food.

“That bad huh?” The large man asked from his seat on Edward’s right. Seth chuckled and then waved his hand over the amber liquid. “See if that’s better,” he said with a point of his chin in Edward’s direction.
Edward rolled his eyes, not wanting to play along with his mysterious flight companion, but he picked the glass up and took a tentative sip to appease him. None of this was really happening, anyway, Edward thought as he tried valiantly to convince himself.

It was delicious. His mouth exploded as the liquid flowed over his tongue and down his throat. He was immediately flooded with warmth and the taste reminded him of Isabella. Soft, smooth, enticing. It was the best thing he had ever tasted and he wanted more of it. Immediately. He wished to taste the exquisite elixir every day for the rest of his life if he could.

“What brand is this?” Edward demanded of the man to his right and Seth just shook his head in response. “It can’t be bought, no matter how much money you have,” Seth told Edward and Edward again felt a stab of…something in his stomach.

Those words seemed to carry another meaning altogether but he wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly what.
It was late afternoon and a summer storm was brewing outside the planes’ windows and lightning flashed dangerously close to the aircraft. If his damn plane wouldn’t have been delayed in New York, he’d be on the ground right now; ahead of the storm, Edward thought to himself, and cursed his brother…again.
“What the hell do you want?” He demanded of the big man, tired of playing whatever game he was unwittingly a part of.

“I don’t want anything, Edward Anthony Cullen. Like I said my job, as it was put forth to me, is to help you get your life, such as it is, in order before it is your time to go.” Seth told Edward.

“Go where?” Edward asked the Seth person…being. Whatever the hell he was.

Seth shrugged his shoulders at Edward and said, “Wherever it is you believe your soul goes after you die.”
“You’re telling me I’m going to die soon?” Edward asked Seth incredulously. “Impossible,” he went on. “I’m young, I’m in perfect health. I have more money than I can spend in this lifetime…probably more than I can spend in ten lifetimes. I am a powerful man. I can have what I want, when I want. I am not going to die anytime soon,” he stated emphatically.

Seth shrugged his shoulders at Edward and regarded him shrewdly, “Big deal, Eddie. You are rich and powerful.  You think the world should bow at your feet and you have no time for those you have deemed unworthy of you. But you can’t have everything you want. You can’t buy immortality and you can’t buy the affections of your lovely Isabella either.”

At the mention of his bride’s name, Edward felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest. In fact the pain was localized right where his heart was. Edward gaped at Seth as he tried to rub the pain away but to no avail. Seth watched Edward as he futilely attempted to ease the ache and waited until he said, “Make it stop. Please!”  Seth waved his massive hand again and the pain ceased.

“What the hell was that?” Edward challenged, somewhat afraid of what was happening to him. He couldn’t dispute the pain he’d just felt and he couldn’t deny that there was …something going on that he didn’t quite understand.

Seth turned his blue eyes and Edward cringed from the intensity he saw there. Suddenly, he was very afraid.
“That, Edward Anthony Cullen,” Seth bellowed in such a voice that Edward felt it in his bones, “was only a brief, albeit painful reminder of the pain you have caused our Isabella. I have to tell you in all honesty Eddie my boy; you are one giant piece of excrement.”

The lightning outside the airplane continued to crackle and flash and Edward suddenly felt like he was falling apart. It was as if he were a piece of glass slammed up against a brick wall, shattering into unrecognizable pieces as they fell to the ground. One more brilliant flash of light burned brightly and then the plane lurched and began to fall. Trays and belongings began to fly through the aircraft as the pilot tried valiantly to right the large piece of machinery.

Seth sat docilely beside Edward as Edward was pitched forward against his seatbelt. Edward’s life began to flash before his eyes…and it was not a pretty sight in the least. He didn’t care; he just wanted it to stop. If that meant it was his time to go now, so be it. But after a few moments, he realized he did care.

 He cared a lot.

 He closed his eyes to try to halt the onslaught of images, but it was a wasted effort. Moment after moment after miserable moment he relived in vivid clarity and it was…painful. So much regret, so many wasted opportunities.

“Save me!” Edward begged the so-called angel to his right...

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