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"Joe," he said in way of greeting as he neared her.
"What's going on, Eric?" she asked, shooting nervous glances towards the men grinning hugely at her side and the large crowd gathering around them.
"The guys wanted to give you a proper sendoff," he explained.
"And you?" she asked, hating the way her voice trembled.
With that bad boy smile that she loved, Eric dropped down to one knee in front of her and pulled out a small velvet box. "Wanted to know if you would marry me?"
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. She swallowed and tried again, but the only sound that came out was a little sob. Mortified, she tried to hold the next one back, but it broke free the second she realized that hot liquid was running down her cheeks.
Not hot liquid, she realized with dread, but tears. She was crying, she thought with disgust. She never cried, no matter what. It was a useless waste of energy and something she never allowed, but now in front of all the guys she'd worked with for twelve years and half the town by the looks of it she was crying.
"Oh shit," one of the men breathed, "he broke Joe."
Joe ignored him and rest of the comments as she struggled to break free and hide her face as the damn burst. She hadn't cried in years, not since she was a little girl and now it seemed that all those tears she'd saved up wanted out. It was so embarrassing.
"Shhh, Joe, shhhh. It's okay, baby," Eric said softly as he stood up and cupped her face, gently wiping her tears away with his thumbs, but that only cleared the way for more to come.
"Don't cry, Joe," he said, sounding like his heart was breaking.
"I'm not crying!" she snapped, but she was. Oh god, she was crying and people were taking pictures! She would never live this down.
"Then what would you call the tears running down your beautiful face?" he asked, cracking a smile as he brushed his lips against hers.
"Rain?" she suggested.
That earned a chuckle from him as he kissed her again. "Are you planning on putting me out of my misery anytime soon?"
"What?" she asked, wishing that she could shut off the damn tears, but there didn't seem to be a shut off valve.
"I asked you to marry me, Joe," he said, smiling sheepishly. "In front of all these people and you're leaving me hanging here."
She sniffled, further adding to her humiliation. "Untie me and I'll give you an answer."
He pursed his lips up in thought and looked like he was thinking it over. "No, I'm sorry. That's just not going to work for me, Joe. I'm afraid I'm going to need an answer."
"What if I give you the wrong answer?" she asked, feeling her lips twitch.
"Then I guess I'll just have to keep you strapped to that board until you give me the right one," he said, cupping her face in his hands.
"Oh? And what's the right answer?"
"That you'll marry me and make me whole, Joe," he said on a reverent whisper.
"And if I don't?" she asked, her voice breaking as joy like nothing she'd ever known before surged through her body.
He shrugged even as he brushed his lips against hers. "Then I'll just have to stuff worms down your shirt until you say yes."
"I'll just make you eat them," she pointed out, smiling even as more embarrassing tears streamed down her face.
He chuckled softly against her mouth. "Marry me or I'll have my big brother beat you up."
"He's a pushover," she felt obligated to point out.
"Fine," he said, smiling. "Marry me and I'll finally get you that steak dinner I promised you."
She pretended to think it over for a minute before asking, "Can I have an appetizer with it?"
"Will you give me children?"
"Maybe," she said coyly, trying not to grin hugely at the thought of having his babies.
"Then mabye," he conceded slowly.
"And dessert?"
He sighed heavily as he pulled back to look in her eyes. "Will you put out at least five times a week if I do?"
She nodded. "I'll put out twenty times a week if I can have ice cream with it."
"Then you can have ice cream, you little gold digger," he said with a putout sigh.
"Then my answer is yes," she said, not even caring that she was crying anymore as he leaned in and kissed her. She was happy, but more importantly she was his.
Epilogue
Four years later.......
"He's going to kill her," Joe felt obligated to point out as they watched in fascination as Nathan's eyes darted from his butter knife to the latest harpy Alice tried to set him up with.
"But it will entertain us and really that's all that matters," he said as Emily, their two year old rambunctious daughter, climbed onto his lap.
Eric adjusted her on his lap so that she was sitting on his knee and close enough to steal his dessert without falling. He kept one hand pressed against his little girl's tummy as he returned his arm to lie across the back of Joe's chair. She shifted uncomfortably on the chair as she rubbed her large stomach.
"Are you okay?" he asked for probably the hundredth time since he got off work and picked her and Emily up.
"I'm fine," she said, giving him a tight smile.
He moved his arm from the back of her chair to place his hand on her stomach. "Is he giving you problems?" he asked, rubbing his hand soothingly over her stomach, chuckling when his little boy decided to follow the moves with little kicks that his mother probably didn't appreciate.
"He's just really active today," she said, pushing her plate of triple fudge cake towards Emily only to have it snatched up.
Eric watched in amusement as his brother dug into the cake. "I need it more than she does," Nathan grumbled and Eric couldn't agree more. The woman was an annoying pain in the ass and Eric had to wonder where the hell his mother kept finding these women. Seriously, after all these years she should have run out of available annoying woman, but not yet.
Of course he also knew that if their mother didn't have a strict no drinking policy when Emily was in the house that Nathan would probably be drunk off his ass by now.
"What is it that you said you did again?" the woman, whom he didn't even bother learning her name, demanded suddenly.
It wasn't until he looked away from his brother pouting that he realized that she was speaking to him. She was a beautiful woman, of course she had nothing on his Joe, but she was stuck up and rude in his opinion at least. She hadn't felt the need to acknowledge him or Joe with more than a murmured hello two hours ago. Instead she spent the entire time giving Nathan as much attitude as she could muster while their mother fretted around the kitchen nervously.
