Echoes at Dawn (KGI #5)(94)

“Do you think we can do this one day?” he whispered.

She cocked her head to the side and eyed him with one raised eyebrow. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

“Maybe,” he hedged. He looked almost nervous. “If I were, what would you say?”

She smiled. “Well, hypothetically speaking, if you were to, I don’t know, propose to me, I’d probably have to think about it for a while, but since this is all hypothetical, it’s hard to know exactly what I’d do.”

He frowned at her. “You just like to torture me, don’t you? You know damn well I’m asking you to marry me.”

He glanced around. At all the love, the unconditional love and support of the Kelly family. “I want this,” he said in a quiet voice. “I want what they have. I want us to be family, Grace. You, me and Elizabeth. Nathan and Shea. I want our kids to grow up playing together. I want to know that if something ever happens to me, you’ll have them to lean on.

“I know what I’m asking is a lot. You’d give up a lot. I’ll always be overprotective of you and Elizabeth and any other children we have. We’ll live in isolation in my home in Belize, where it’s a veritable prison. You’ve had to become a different person, and you won’t be able to just pop over to your sister’s for a visit whenever you

want. But no one will ever love you more than I do. I’ll spend the rest of my life loving and protecting you with every breath I have.”

Tears filled Grace’s beautiful blue eyes. She reached up to touch his face and then leaned in to kiss him, uncaring of what was going on around them or that her sister was in the act of getting married.

“Yes, I’ll marry you, Eduardo Bezerra. And no one will ever love you more than I do.”

“I already know that,” he said gruffly. “You nearly died for me and don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”

“But you also gave me a reason to live,” she said in a quiet voice. “You came to me when I was at my lowest point and you wont and yuldn’t let me give up. You saved me, Rio. You made me stronger.”

He kissed her back, long and sweet. “I love you, Grace. I already love Elizabeth. I feel as though she’s my own. But I’ll also want to give her a few brothers and sisters down the road.”

Grace smiled. “I’d like that. I think you’d be a whiz at changing diapers.”

He grinned then. “Bet your ass I would.”