Author's Note: Here is the encore to Made In Morocco! I got quite a few requests to continue that storyline, so this is my way of answering those requests. It is an Esme POV, and the focus is on jealousy, again, but...there's a twist. :)

Please excuse me if there are any major grammar and spelling errors or the story doesn't flow well. I feel very sick right now; my throat is as sore and dry as a newborn's.

Song: She Never Lets It Go To Her Heart by Tim McGraw (yes, a country song!) .com/watch?v=5ckcjrDjAI8 It sort of goes with the story, and it's very funny!

Enjoy!

Sherwin-Williams White: A Twilight One-shot

"You look absolutely radiant today."

I smiled, looking up from the row of paint chips I had been examining. "You tell me that almost every day."

Carlisle put his hand over mine and kissed me once on the cheek. "Well, it's true every day."

"Thank you." I pulled my hand out from under his and returned the kiss, then went back to the job at hand. "Now, which color do you like best, dear?" Spreading the six choices out on my hand, I waited for the predictable response.

Carlisle sighed. "Esme, you know I can't tell the difference."

"How can you not?" I demanded, waving the paint chips like a fan. "These are completely different colors!"

"They're all in the same family, aren't they?" asked my husband, eyeing the samples with something bordering on distaste. "They're all white."

"Yes, but look-this one is more of a pink, this one has more blue, and I'm rather fond of this one, the cream-white..." I trailed off at the blank look I was receiving from my listener. "Carlisle, I don't understand how you can spot the tiniest fracture in a person's leg and you can't see the difference in these paint colors."

"That," Carlisle said, laughing, "is completely different."

I laughed, too.

There was a reason why Alice never let Carlisle pick his own clothes. It wasn't so much that my husband couldn't distinguish between differing hues of the same color. He was a vampire, after all, and a brilliant one at that. He just didn't care enough to learn the differences. To him, time spent on selecting clothes or paint colors was time wasted.

Which is why we made such a perfect team, I thought, setting down my least favorite sample. "We can rule the egg-shell white out, at least. It wouldn't match with the other parts of the house."

"You do realize you could paint the garage any color you want, my darling? The only one who spends any length of time in there is Rosalie."

"That's why I'm going to make sure it's painted correctly," I said firmly. "As long as any of my children go into the garage to work, I want the walls to be in harmony with the rest of our house."

"I'm seeing...fuschia." Carlisle's eyes were alight with a mischief I knew only too well. It was the mocking-mischief he brought out on special occasions such as this. "Fuschia, or perhaps magenta? I can't decide. Which would be more in harmony with the Volvo and Mercedes?"

I threw him a mock glare, trying pathetically to be intimidating. "Oh, no, you don't. You're not ruining my hard work with those repulsive colors."

"You don't like those choices?" I also knew that wide-eyed innocent look too well, from both Carlisle and Edward. Their shared mannerisms drove me crazy. Sometimes, I didn't know if I was looking at my husband or my son.

"You know very well how much I despise magenta." My wall-color sensibility was taken mostly from Frank Lloyd Wright's law: everything in a house, interior to exterior, must be in unity. Therefore, any color that clashed with white, like magenta, would never flaunt itself on any wall of my house. Carlisle would never understand, I thought in mild despair. "Just let me handle this, my love," I said with conviction, although I knew he was joking.

"I intend to." Carlisle looked curiously around us at the rest of the musty aisle, the first or second in the small local hardware store. "I should find some new drywall anchors for the Solimena," he said, already sliding away down the aisle. "I leave the daunting task of picking which white we should use in your hands, my Esme."

"My hero," I said, waving dismissively at him. "Go on, Carlisle. I'll still be here when you're ready to go."

"It shouldn't take but five minutes."

"That's fine, darling. Go on."I smiled to myself as my husband made his escape.

Carlisle: the awe-inspiring, dauntless, humanitarian surgeon... afraid of a set of paint chips. How droll. I would never admit it to him, but I bring Carlisle along on every decorating trip just to derive some sick pleasure from seeing him out of his element. This flaw in his otherwise perfect cultural sensibility endears me more to him every time I see it in play.

I was drawn from my reverie into the decision before me. Now, did I want the blue-white or the butter-white? I had gone to a store in Seattle for the rest of the house, and the choices there had been overwhelming. The choices here left something to be desired. Carlisle would take me to Seattle in a heartbeat if I asked him, of course, but he was right about one thing: it was just the garage. There was no need to make a long trip over it.

"Can I help you, Ma'am?"

My vampire ears picked up the baritone voice in high-defintion detail as I turned to face its source. A young store clerk, about twenty-five or twenty-six, was standing across the aisle from me. With his carefully groomed hair and confident stance, I sensed trouble from the moment he spoke.

I flashed him my whitest smile, hoping to deter him. "Oh, no thank you. I'm making my decision, now."

The toothy smile wasn't enough to set this child back, apparently, because he crossed the distance between us and came to hover beside me, looking over my shoulder at the paint chips. "So you're looking for white, huh?"

"Yes." If I ignored him, maybe he would go away. I focused on the color samples and turned my shoulder to him, my body language obvious to anyone. I made sure my wedding ring was plainly visible on the farthest paint chip.

"White's a very soothing color." I didn't answer his remark. Maybe he wasn't interested in me, I reasoned. Maybe he was just awkwardly doing his job. Maybe he was socially inept, like I used to be when I was human. "Is this color choice for a...bedroom?" asked the clerk, grossly inappropriate.

Well, there went my kind theories. "No. The garage, actually." I showed my teeth again. "I told my husband I wouldn't go with anything wild, even if it is in a room we never visit." Carlisle wouldn't mind the lie, considering the circumstances.

Wedding rings and husbands did nothing to slow the clerk down. "Oh, I see. Well, you've got some tasteful choices picked out, then."

"Thank you," I answered tersely. I wanted to add that his presence was beginning to make me think that a drive to Seattle wouldn't be so over-the-top. But I refrained, remembering that I needed to act like a civil human housewife, not an irritated vampire woman.

"I'm Andrew, by the way." The clerk turned so that he blocked most of my view, but I could still see past his head. And around his head, I saw Carlisle standing at the end of the aisle, his posture defensive. When Andrew extended his hand to me with a saccharine smile, I saw my husband's eyes narrow.

I diffused my own tension by putting on a delightedly excited face. I leaned sideways, past Andrew's head, and waved at Carlisle. "Oh, honey, come here! I think I found the matching color!"

The appearance of my husband in the flesh took the edge off of Andrew's cockiness, and as he saw Carlisle striding down the aisle, his smile went crooked. No doubt he was absorbing the inhuman beauty of the man coming toward him, who looked to be about four inches taller than him and a thousand times more good-looking. Not to mention, I noticed with a wince, three times more determined to put one little human store clerk in his place.

"That's wonderful, darling," Carlisle said, as if there had been no pause between our sentences. He bestowed upon me the most resplendent smile he was capable of producing, wrapped one arm around my waist and planted one of his chaste kisses on my cheek.

Then he turned to Andrew. I put my hand on his arm, sensing his underlying tension. "Thank you for helping my Esme with her paint choices," Carlisle said, and his smile shifted ever so slightly into something more sinister. No one but another vampire would ever notice. The spot near my heart, which no longer beat, jumped a little in my chest. The way Carlisle had said My Esme made me feel a tad faint.

"No trouble," Andrew said stiffly, his pleasant expression now turned into a cardboard cutout.

"Are you ready to go, mon coeur?" Carlisle only pulled out his French when he was excessively happy or excessively put out. I did not need a mind-reader to tell me into which instance this situation was categorized.

"Yes." I tucked my selected paint choice into my purse and patted Carlisle's arm. "But we can have Emmett and Rose get the paint when they come back from school tomorrow. I've just remembered I left the pot roast on at home."

"Then we had better go," Carlisle said, his voice admirably nonchalant as he placed another kiss on my forehead. We were both too accustomed to lying about food preparation to bat an eye at such a falsehood. I sighed with relief at having avoided conflict.

Carlisle was seldom ever jealous-I could only recall a few times in our long marriage where it was him and not me that was turning a shade of green. But when he was jealous, I couldn't but feel concerned for the well-being of the man or boy causing the jealousy. They were merely human, even if they were over-stepping their bounds and coveting another man's wife. Carlisle, however, was not human, and plenty strong enough to deal with a pesky human admirer in any way he seemed fit.

Of course in the end my husband's gentle nature overrode any fit of malice he might feel toward an interloper, no matter how threatened he felt. I was eternally grateful for my mate's innate goodness; the brutal murder of a seemingly harmless clerk in the middle of the hardware store would put a damper on our family's newfound peace in Forks.

But the vampire behind the innate goodness still couldn't resist delivering the parting word to his imaginary foe.

"Oh." As we walked past Andrew, Carlisle turned and handed something to him. It took me a moment to see what it was, and then I nearly snorted with a shocked laugh. "You might want to check those drywall hangings on Aisle Five, Andrew," Carlisle said calmly. "I think you must have gotten a bad order."

"Uh..." Andrew stared at the unrecognizable lump of metal and plastic in his hand. "Right. I'll do that...right away..."

We left then, leaving Andrew in his disappointment. Once we were nearly to the front exit, I leaned over and gave my husband a kiss that was decidedly less chaste than the ones he'd given me.

"Mon amour pour toi est éternel," Carlisle whispered, his protective arm drawing me closer.