Page 77 of Auctioned to the Billionaire Bodyguard

The End

Epilogue

Six Months Later

Jess

“And then we’ll have a sit-down dinner with three or four hundred of our closest friends and family,” Lillian St. James said.

Oh. My. God. This was a nightmare. I cast a quick glance at Byron. He was taking it in stride, as if he’d been to a million weddings as big as the one Lillian wanted us to have. I shared a look with my mom.

Her eyes were so wide, she looked like an owl. Her glasses only magnified them, making the effect even more noticeable. And she was blinking a lot.

“What do you think?” Lillian asked my mother. “Do seven courses seem like too many? Should we cut it to five?”

Mom’s mouth dropped open.

“You’re right,” Lillian said pensively. “Just five would be tacky. We’ll do seven plus the cake. We’ll have palate cleansers between courses, obviously. Have you interviewed any caterers?”

Mom looked around as if she was hoping Lillian was talking to someone else. “Me?”

“Oh, you’re right again,” Lillian nodded. “It should absolutely be someone in my area. I’ll handle the booking.” She smiled. “Now Jess, we need to have four entrée choices. Have you put thought into what you’d like?”

Byron had answered a call, or I would’ve kicked him under the table. His mother was very nice. She really was. But she’d been born into an extremely wealthy family and had never lived any other way. Even when she’d married Marcus and he’d been working to start his security firm from scratch, she’d used some her massive trust fund to help out.

She did not understand where we’d come from at all. It would’ve been like a foreign land to her. I couldn’t tell her that people in Shitty Wilkins got married three ways: down at the courthouse, at a church with a small reception in the fellowship hall, or, if you were fancy, at either the Elks Lodge or the VFW clubhouse.

The idea of a seven-course meal with four different entrée options felt as foreign to me as Mars. “Um… well, I guess chicken could be one…”

“Hmm. Chicken is so… déclassé, don’t you think?”

Mom blinked a bunch of times. “Doesn’t everyone like chicken?”

Lillian let out a bright, tinkling laugh. “You’re so funny.”

And the thing was… she wasn’t being mean. She really thought Mom was joking.

“What do you think about Guinea fowl?”

I had literally no opinion whatsoever about Guinea fowl. “Sounds nice,” I finally said.

Lillian beamed. “Fantastic! Okay, now for seafood. We can’t do lobster if we’re serving lobster bisque as the soup course… hmm. What about Chilean sea bass?”

Mom and I nodded our heads.

“And even though I think it might be done too often, Wagyu beef is always extremely popular.” We nodded as if we knew what she was talking about. I thought I’d seen a Wagyu beef competition onMaster Chefonce, but I wasn’t sure.

“And then for the vegetarian entrée, I don’t think we could go wrong with either stuffed delicata or butternut squash and sage ravioli. Which do you prefer?”

I didn’t know what delicata was, so I said I preferred the ravioli.

“Excellent choice,” Lillian said. Her watch chimed. “Oh, that will be Jacqui from Bridal Belles. She’s bringing choices from Vera, Monique, Oscar, Vivienne, Ines—all the greats—for you to try on. Of course, if you’d rather schedule fittings with the actual designers, that’s fine, too.” She glanced back down at her watch. “Oh, and then in two hours, we’ll be meeting with ten of the best bakeries around the area—they’re coming to us with samples, of course, and then…”

“Mom.”

My mom and I both jumped. We hadn’t realized Byron was off the phone and listening in.

“Yes, dear?” Lillian turned to him.