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Epilogue
THREE YEARS LATER
Nate and Kris Reynolds’ wedding was dubbed the Wedding of the Century by the press, bloggers, and gossip rags who followed every detail with breathless anticipation in the months leading up to the big event.
Five hundred of Hollywood’s biggest stars at a castle in Italy! A custom-made Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen wedding dress! A live performance by one of the world’s top music superstars!
Kris read about the wedding so much she was sick of it, and she hadn’t thought that was possible. It got to where Nate had threatened to cut off her access to the Internet if she didn’t stop grousing over everything the idiot outlets got wrong.
First of all, her wedding dress cost $85,000, not $70,000. Second of all, Riley K was definitelynoton the guest list, despite Bobbi Rayden’s protests.
In a strange twist of fate, Bobbi was now Nate’s publicist, and she seemed to have forgotten about Kris’s ill-fated summer assistantship. Either that or she overlooked it because Kris was engaged and soon-to-be-married to one of the most famous actors in the world.
Knowing Bobbi, it was the latter.
Kris didn’t begrudge the other woman. She was the one who messed up with the Sabrina Winters shoot, and Bobbi was a shark at her job. When Nate told her about his past as an escort, she’d created five different rock-solid crisis management plans depending on how the news leaked and who the source was.
Thankfully, they hadn’t had to use any of the plans yet, and after seven years, the statute of limitations for prostitution in California had long run out, so they didn’t have to worry about legal ramifications should information about Nate’s past ever leak.
“You look beautiful.” Gemma surveyed her daughter with misty eyes as she cupped Kris’s cheek with her hand. “Absolutely beautiful.”
All thoughts of Bobbi, trashy pop stars, and crisis management flew out of Kris’s head as a lump rose in her throat. “Thanks, Mom.”
The mist in Gemma’s eyes thickened.
It had taken a long time for their relationship to reach the point it was at now. Kris didn’t call Gemma “Mom” until thirteen months after she found out the truth. She’d been happy to have her mother back in her life, but when said mother was not who you thought she was and it was your first time speaking and meeting her in over twenty years…well, they’d had a lot of shit to work out.
Which they had. And now, for the first time in her life, Kris felt like she was part of a complete family.
Her parents had gotten married two years ago in a simple ceremony in the Philippines, where they’d first met. Neither set of Kris’s grandparents was alive, so besides the minister, Kris had been the sole witness, and dammit, she’d cried—tears of joy, but still. It’d been embarrassing.
Now, it appeared she might repeat her imitation of a fountain—she could already feel the pressure building behind her eyes.
“No one cry,” Olivia said on cue. “It’ll mess up your makeup and we don’t have time to retouch it before the ceremony starts.”
Thank God for Olivia Tang.
The pressure receded, and Kris straightened, her heart pounding for a whole different reason. In less than an hour, she’d officially be Mrs. Kris Reynolds, and she was both excited and nauseated. Excited, because hello, she’d hit the jackpot with a husband like Nate, and she loved him so much she wanted to scream it from the rooftops (not that she would—how uncouth). Nauseated, because she was gettingmarried,and after all these years, all the planning, it seemed surreal that she would be someone’s wife.
Kris flashed back to the summer after her junior year of college and wondered where the time had gone. She’d been so young, so brash and confident that she didn’t want or need the opposite sex. That love wasn’t for her and that men were bores, chores, man whores, you named it.
Look at her now, about to walk down the aisle and profess “till death do us part” in front of five hundred people.
Nerves shot through Kris’s veins and rendered her immobile.
“Are you okay?” Gemma asked in Tagalog.
Thanks to lessons from her mother, Kris was proficient if not fluent in the language. She didn’t learn Tagalog for practical purposes—most Filipinos spoke English, even in the Philippines, where English was an official language—but to…connect with her culture, she guessed. Kris had grown up in a wholly Americanized household, and though it’d never bothered her before, she craved a deeper connection with her cultural roots the older she got. Not just the language, but the history, the music, the customs and superstitions—though Kris could’ve done without that last one.
Now, she was paranoid about the number of stairs in any of her houses being divisible by three, which was considered bad luck. She’d had to redo the entire staircase in her and Nate’s new Beverly Hills pad because it’d had twenty-one steps.
“I’m fine,” Kris replied, also in Tagalog. She smoothed a shaky hand over the front of her wedding dress. “Just a little nervous.”
The last part she said in English.
“That’s normal,” Farrah Lin said gently. Like the rest of Kris’s bridesmaids, she wore a buttercup yellow Lela Rose dress in a cut that best suited her body shape. “Before I walked down the aisle, I was so nauseous I thought I would throw up, but when I saw Blake standing there…” A dreamy look overtook her face. “All the nerves disappear, and you only see him.”
“I hope not, because I’m not marrying Blake,” Kris quipped. “Polygamy is not my thing.”
