Something Different

Chapter 8

The next morning I woke up in the spooning position with my finance, god how weird does that sound. I'm engaged to Joseph Anthony Morelli. When we were younger, Mary Lou and I had joked about one day become Mrs. Joseph Morelli, but neither of us had ever dreamed that it would come true for the other.

I was laying there enjoying Joe's warm breath tickling the back of my neck, when a wave a nausea washed over me. Throwing back the covers, I grabbed a shirt off the floor and bolted to the bathroom.

5 minutes later I came out to find the bed empty and the door joining our rooms open.

"Joe" I called out. Not receiving answer, I shrugged, wondering where he was, I started to pick up my clothes, which were strewn all over the room from last nights "activities". Finding a pair of shorts, I put them on.

"You know, you looked really cute in my shirt. Until you put your shorts on" I heard from behind me. Spinning around, I stuck out my tongue, I was feeling rather immature this morning. I really must have looked good, because Joe had a rather impressive tent going in his boxers, but then again, that didn't take much.

"Where did you go?" I asked

"I heard you run to the bathroom and puke your guts out, and well, that made me feel about squeamish, so I went to the bathroom in my room, and puked as well."

I grinned. "That's sweet Joe. You're having sympathy pains."

He grimaced, and flopped down on the bed. He covered his eyes with his arm. I sat on the edge of the bed.

"Ahh, poor baby. Anything I can do to make it better?"

He lifted his arm and wiggled his eyebrows at me.

I laughed, "In your dreams Morelli!" He made a face.

"Well after I'd finished puking *my* guts out I went and got you this out of my bag." He said, holding out a small velvet box.

"Want is it?" I asked

"Open it and you'll find out" he said

Slowly I lifted the lid, inside was a small diamond ring.

"Joe it's beautiful, how could you afford this?"

"It was my grandmothers, no not Bella," he said quickly, seeing the panic in my eyes, "my other grandmother, she gave it to me before she died" Joe took to box out of my hand and took the ring out of the box. Taking my left hand in his, he said "you realise now that there is no going back, this is forever"

"I know, you can't get rid of me that easily" I replied.

The ring slid on perfectly. I took a long look at it, it was a simple ring, silver with a small diamond in it.

I kissed Joe "It's perfect"

Joe kissed me back, and started to play with the button on my (his) shirt, within seconds the shirt was off and so were my shorts and Joe's boxers.

3 (busy) hours later we were packing our bags for Incline Village.

"How long are we going to stay in Incline Village?" I asked Joe

"I thought we could stay there for a couple of weeks, instead of coming back here. Why?"

"Well, the prize I won was for 3 weeks, so we still have another week here. And I was thinking, this chain of hotels is all over the US, so maybe they'll let us transfer the rest of this prize to another one of their hotels. It will be our honeymoon. It's either that or take a week or two to drive back to Trenton as our honeymoon. What do you think?"

"I don't know, I think the idea of driving back to Trenton is rather appealing" Joe came up behind me, kissing the back of my neck. "Stopping when we want, taking as long as we want…"

The idea appealed to me too. "But Joe, if we get a hotel room, we'll be comfortable and we'll only have to leave the room to go back to Trenton"

"Convinced me", he said quickly, "Where do you want to go?" Joe asked

"Where ever we can get" I replied

"I've finished packing, so why don't I go down stairs to organise it, and you can finish packing, and I'll meet you down stairs in 20 minutes."

"Okay"

Kissing me once more as he left the room, he said "This is gonna be great"

20 minutes later we were on our way to the airport to pick up our car.

"Did the hotel organise a new room?" I asked

"Yeah, the hotel in Philadelphia have the honeymoon suite free, so its ours for 2 weeks, plus the hotel is going to pay for our airline tickets from Reno to Philadelphia"

"How'd you swing that?" I asked

Joe gave me a "don't ask, don't tell" look. So I shut up.

In hindsight, had I known that I would spend the next six hours throwing up everything I had eaten for my entire life, I probably would have asked Joe if we could fly to Reno, then drive to Carson City, but no, me being Little- Miss-Burg and all, didn't realise that we would have to travel over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and on top of that I have to pee every 1/2 an hour. The trip that we thought would be really romantic, was everything but.

It was about 6pm when we finally go to Carson City and the Court House was closed for the night. Which meant that we couldn't get our license until the morning. Lake Tahoe would just have to wait until tomorrow, and to be honest, it didn't bother me one bit.

We found the Nugget, and snagged the last room they had available. When we checked in, they gave us coupons for dinner at the all-you-can-eat buffet table, and a message that Joe's friend John wasn't working that night.

Entering the room, we were disappointed to see it had 2 single beds, bolted to the floor.

"We could always squeeze in together" Joe suggested

"Or we could not, I'd kinda like to have a good nights sleep, after all today was rather tiring, and tomorrow will be another big day" I said kissing him lightly on the lips. "I'm going to have a shower. Why don't you ring your friend and tell him we're here, then you can organise things for tomorrow. After all you're organising this"

Joe made a poutty face. "But I want to have a shower too, can't I have a shower with you?"

"No" I said, trying to get some conviction behind it, especially when I thought of a wet, soapy and naked Joe Morelli... shit, I was going to have to have a cold shower.

Joe grinned at me, hands in pockets, rocking back on his heels, like he knew exactly what I was thinking about. I hate it when he goes psychic on me.

"I'll be out in a minute" I said as I walked into the bathroom. "You stay here, unless you want to risk the wrath of a naked, pregnant lady."

I stripped off my clothes and turned the water on. I looked down at my stomach, I couldn't really tell if I was starting to get fat. I turned sideways and looked at myself again in the mirror. I was only 12 weeks pregnant, Mary Lou started to show between 10 and 13 weeks with her pregnancies. Oh, well, I guess only time will tell.

After standing under the blasting water for a couple of minutes, I had just start to unwind, when I felt a cold breeze on my back and a second warm body joined me in the shower.

"I thought I said no" I said trying to sound really angry, but it was rather difficult with a naked and wet Joe Morelli standing behind me.

"Well, you didn't sound like you meant it, and its too late now, I'm all wet" he said between placing kisses on the back of my neck. He turned me around to face him and I took his hand and placed it on my stomach.

"That's our baby in there Joe"

"I know" he replied bending his head down to kiss my stomach and then my lips.

A wet and soapy hour later we got out of the shower (only because we had run out of hot water) and got dressed. Snapping up my jeans, I noticed that for the first time in the pregnancy, the top snap of my jeans wouldn't do up. Oh shit, I'm fatter than I though. Thank god for elastic waste bands.

"Hey Joe, do I look any fatter to you? I asked, coming out of the bathroom

"No" said Joe, who was sitting on the bed, doing up his boots.

"You didn't even look"

"Didn't have to, I can see you up here anytime I want" he said, tapping his head

"What that large, hollow thing on your shoulder, with the one track mind?"

"Smart arse" he said finally looking up. "You look beautiful, you hungry?"

I looked at him, "well, duh, lets see, I haven't eaten in a few hours, and I've thrown up everything I've ever eaten, plus, there was an hour of exercise just before"

"Come on then, the buffet is only open for another 1/2 hour" he said grabbing my hand and he walked past me to the door.

We walked the short distance to the dining room where the buffet was, in the parking lot, I saw a black SVU, hummmm.

Joe doing the nice man polite thing, opened the door for me, I walked into the dinning room, this was not what I had been expecting. It kinda reminded me of the cafeteria in high school. You know, lots of people, cafeteria tables, fluorescent bright lights, cottage cheese, jello salad, fried chicken, prunes, really yellow mac and cheese, plus the added bonus of a Keno Runner ever 15 minutes. Truly very romantic.

After I well and truly stuffed my face, making up for all the food I lost during the day, we made our way back to our room.

Once back in the room, I had a queasy feeling again, dam, I've eaten too much. I headed off to the bathroom, much to Joe's disgust, I'm positive that he didn't want to hear me throwing up again.

Closing the bathroom door, I noticed a radio in the corner, I flicked it on so Joe wouldn't have to hear me.

15 minutes later I came out of the bathroom, to find Joe sitting up on his bed, leaning against the back board, asleep in front of the television, watching some strange sport. I think the commentators called it Aussie Rules, I don't know, two teams, one in brown and yellow the other in red and black. I stood there looking at the screen for a while, amazed at the number of hot guys were on the brown and yellow team, man I'm going to Australia one day.

I turned down the sound on the TV, and grabbed the blanket from the end of Joe's bed to cover him with it. Was this what my life was going to be reduced to, waking in the middle of the night to find Joe asleep in front of the TV downstairs, and covering with a blanket, before going back to bed. I paused for a second, long enough for Joe to wake and pull me into him for a kiss.

"Night cupcake" he said, trying undo my jeans.

"Night Joe" I said trying to resist him. "No, not tonight Joe, I'm to tired, and so are you"

"I'm not anymore"

"I don't care, not tonight" I said kissing him one more time, before crawling into my pyjamas and my own bed.

At about 1am that morning I woke up feeling lonely, I looked at Joe and wondered if he would mind if I got in with him, he'd probably take it as an invitation to sex. Deciding against it, I went back to sleep.

I woke up with the sun streaming in though the curtains and the smell of doughnuts, I looked at the clock radio beside me, 9:00, time to get up. I looked around the room to find Joe gazing intently at me

"Holy crap, Joe. How long have you been looking awake?"

"Long enough. I called John, he and his wife will be here in 1/2 an hour. You and Lynn's are going shopping for a dress and John and I are going to take care of men's business, then your going to meet us in Incline Village, so your going to have to pack as well, we won't be coming back here.

"Your giving me 1/2 and hour to dress and pack?"

"Yep" he said chucking

I reached behind me, grabbing the pillow and pitched across the room at him. Joe just laughed.

I got out of bed, and went over to the mirror. Yuck, I though, I've looked better.

I got some clothes out of my bags and went to have a shower. This time, I locked the door!!

15 minutes later I was appropriately dressed, made up and hair done.

I came out of the bathroom, to find Joe gone and a woman sitting at the table.

"You must be Lynn" I said introducing myself "I'm Stephanie, I wasn't expecting you guys for a little longer"

"Yeah I know, sorry. Though, it's nice to finally meet you. Joe had been telling John about you for months now, it nice to put a face to the name."

I looked at her in shock, Joe had been talking about me?

She must have seen the look a shock on my face, "Don't worry it was nothing bad. Lets get you packed, we only have 5 hours to get you packed dressed and to Incline Village, for the ceremony which is at 2:30."

"Are we going to be shopping here, or at Incline Village?"

"Here, they have better shops."

"Have Joe and John gone to get the license?"

"No, they can't, the two of you need to get it together."

"Shit, I'll go call Joe"

10 minutes later Joe and I were waiting in line ten deep at the court house, in the basement no less.

"I can't believe we nearly forgot to pick up the license" I said hugging Joe. "We might have had to wait another day and night for our wedding night."

"We still might, the minister is expecting us in 3 hours, where not going to make it today."

"I suppose that's ok, I was getting excited" I said. Whispering in his ear "I was starting to think about things to do on our wedding night, including what I would wear. I saw a Victoria's Secret on the way here" I felt Joe stiffen in my arms, ha I knew that would get him.

"Maybe you could buy several, and show me tonight?"

"Nah, I think I'll make you wait until tomorrow night."

"That's teasing"

"I know" I said

1/2 an hour later we had our license, and were out the front with John and Lynn, I looked around, I don't know why, but I had the feeling that someone was watching me. Then I saw a black SUV, could it be the same one?

"Steph, Steph, you ok?" asked Joe

"Yeah" I said shacking my head "I'm fine" I felt Joe's arm tighten about me. God this felt so natural.

"So what are you two going to do now?" asked John

I looked at Joe "You're the ideas man"

"Well, we could all drive up to Incline Village today, that way were already there, and Steph and I can get married tomorrow."

"Sounds like a plan, why don't Steph and I meet you two up there later, we've got some shopping to do" suggested Lynn.

"I like that idea" I said

"Ok, meet you guys at the Nugget in 20 minutes" Joe said

30 minutes later I was still in our room waiting for Lynn. Joe and John had left 10 minutes later, John telling me that Lynn was still at home packing her bags, and she would be around soon.

I was sitting on the sofa, when I heard a knock at the door, I went over and threw it open.

"I thought you would never arrive…" I said, before I noticed who was at the door.

Ranger.