Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 300

Chapter 290.Bridal Shopping.

SEDONA

The bridal shops my mother had selected was, predictably, the most well-reviewed one in Seattle, and she had, equally predictably, scheduled three hours for what I had assumed would take one.

“You’ll need the time,” she said, with the specific confidence of a woman who had already decided exactly how the appointment would unfold. “For both you and Lucian’s eventual dress and suit, since I assume he’ll want input on something for the ceremony, and we should establish a baseline aesthetic now so the two weddings complement rather than compete.”

“Mum, the weddings are months apart and at completely different venues.”

“Aesthetic continuity matters regardless of timing,” she said, already flipping through a binder of her own that bore a striking, slightly alarming resemblance to Lake’s.

Rachel arrived twenty minutes into the appointment. Slightly breathless. Baby Enzo Junior was on her hip, and two-year-old Molly was attached firmly to her other hand.

Molly was already narrating everything in sight. The door. The chairs. The other people. The way toddlers do when they’ve just discovered that words can describe the whole world and feel strongly that every single thing deserves one.

“Sorry. Enzo had a work call, the babysitter cancelled, and I refused to miss this.” Rachel said, manoeuvring Molly through the doorway

Molly, sweetheart, we use inside voices in here.”

“BIG DRESS,” Molly announced, at full volume, pointing at a mannequin near the entrance.

“That’s an inside voice attempt,” Rachel said, apologetic. “She’s working on it.”

My mother absorbed the chaos of Rachel’s arrival the way she absorbed all chaos – by immediately finding a productive role for everyone involved.

“Rachel, sit, you look exhausted. Molly can help me with the binder. Sedona, go try on the first three the consultant pulled.”

“I don’t need help with a binder,” I said, watching my mother already settling Molly onto her lap with a stack of fabric swatches.

“Not you,” my mother said. “Molly. She has excellent instincts, I can already tell.”

Molly, delighted at being handed an entire stack of swatches to handle, immediately began sorting them by what appeared to be no discernible system, narrating each choice with total conviction. “This one. Not this one. SPARKLY one.”

“She’s not wrong about the sparkly one,” my mother said, examining the swatch Molly had just declared superior. “Good instincts, like I said.”

Htried on the first dress, clean lines, simple, exactly the kind of unfussy elegance I’d described to the consultant during the initial consultation.

I stepped out onto the small platform. The room went quiet. The specific way rooms go quiet when something actually lands.

“Oh,” my mother said. Her hand pressed briefly to her chest.

“Mum.”

“I’m not crying yet. I’m just appreciating it properly, she said, clearly already crying.

Rachel, from the couch, had a similar expression, Enzo Junior squirming happily on her lap. “You look incredible, Sedona. Genuinely.”

“Pretty,” Molly announced, abandoning the swatches entirely to point at me with total authority. “Pretty lady spinney dress.”

“She wants you to spin,” Rachel translated, unnecessarily.

I spun.

Molly shrieked with delight. He was everywhere with the joy of a toddler who had just witnessed something genuinely remarkable.

“This is the one,” my mother said. The particular certainty she reserved for decisions she considered already settled.

“I knew it the moment you stepped out.”

We don’t need to see any others.”

“We have an hour and forty minutes left on the appointment,” I said.

‘We’ll use it for accessories,” my mother said, already flagging down the consultant. “And for Lucian’s options, since I assume Cameron will want pictures to show him, given how busy he’s been with the trust restructuring this week.”

I caught Rachel’s eye, both of us fighting matching smiles at my mother’s relentless efficiency.

“How’s it feels?” Rachel asked while the consultant helped me out of the first dress and into something my mother had already pre-selected as a “strong second option, just for comparison purposes.”

“Good,” I said. “Really good, actually. I keep waiting for it to feel complicated, the way so much of the last few years has felt complicated, and it just doesn’t. It’s just, good. Simply good.”

“You’ve earned simply good,” Rachel said. “Genuinely. After everything.”

Molly, having abandoned the swatches entirely now, had found her way to the mirror, staring at her own reflection with the same intense fascination she’d directed at my dress.

“Baby,” she announced to the mirror, pointing at Enzo Junior, who gurgled happily on Rachel’s lap.

“That’s your brother, Rachel confirmed. “Yes.”

“BIG sister, Molly said, with enormous pride, apparently recalling this fact for the first time in several minutes and finding it newly thrilling each time.

My mother, meanwhite, had pulled out her phone and was apparently already texting Lucian directly, bypassing Cameron entirely.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Securing his appointment time,” she said. Tuesday, ideally, so we maintain momentum. I’ve found that engagement enthusiasm has a window, and I don’t intend to let either wedding lose steam.”

“Mum, nobody’s losing steam. We’ve been engaged for less than a year, total, across both couples.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Which is precisely the window I’m referring to.”

I tried on three more dresses over the following hour, mostly to satisfy my mother’s insistence on “comparison purposes,” though we both already knew, by the third one, that the first dress remained unbeaten. Molly provided running commentary throughout, pretty, not pretty, sparkly delivered with escalating enthusiasm regardless of the actual dress’s sparkle content, while Rachel alternated between nursing Enzo Junior and offering genuinely useful opinions about veil length.

By the end of the appointment, my mother had successfully scheduled Lucian’s consultation for Tuesday, acquired a tentative agreement from the shop to coordinate “aesthetic continuity” between both weddings despite the venues being entirely different, and convinced Molly that the swatch she’d originally declared superior should, in fact, become the official ribbon color for both ceremonies.

“That’s a lot of decisions for one two-year-old to influence,” I said, as we finally gathered everyone’s things to leave.

“She has good instincts,” my mother repeated, unbothered. “I trust her judgment completely.”

Outside the shop, Rachel hugged me carefully around Enzo Junior, who had fallen asleep against her shoulder, while Molly clung to her leg, suddenly shy now that the excitement of the appointment had worn off into actual tiredness.

“This is going to be a good year,” Rachel said. “Two weddings. A whole family, finally, completely settled. I’m so happy for you, Sedona. I mean that.”

“Thank you for coming,” I said. “Even with the chaos. Especially with the chaos, honestly.”

I looked at him for a long moment. He had his serious face on, the one he used for things that actually mattered, not the polite serious face he used for company he didn’t particularly enjoy.

“Is this because of what happened with Nick’s dad?” I asked. “Cameron explained some of that to me. About how grown-ups have to make sure kids are protected with paperwork, not just with feelings.”

Grandpa Parker was quiet for a second.

“Partly,” he admitted. “Watching what almost happened to Nick taught all of us something important. Love isn’t enough on its own, not when it comes to protecting a child’s actual future. You need both, the love and the paperwork that backs it up completely. I want you to have both, Lake. Completely. No half-measures.”

“Okay,” I said, considering this fully settled. “Can I tell Drew?”

“You can tell Drew,” Lucian said. “Though I’d ask you to keep the company specifics private for now, since it’s still being finalized. Just the general idea that Grandpa Parker considers you his grandson, officially, in every way.”

“He already knew that,” I said. “I’ve known that for a while. This is just the paperwork catching up.”

Grandpa Parker laughed at that, a real laugh, surprised out of him, the specific warm sound he didn’t make often but always meant completely when he did.

“That’s exactly right,” he said. “The paperwork is catching up.”

That evening, I found Drew in his room with his bird notebook and told him the whole thing, leaving out the parts Lucian had asked me to keep private, which I considered myself very responsible for managing successfully.

“So you’re like, officially official now,” Drew said, processing it the way he processed everything, slowly and carefully. “Not just informally, Grandpa Parker’s grandson.”

“Both kinds now,” I said. “Informal and formal. I think that’s better than just one kind.”

“Definitely better,” Drew agreed. “More secure.”

He thought about it for a while. His pencil still on the page bore him.

“Do you think they’d ever do the same kind of paperwork for me?” he asked calmly. Not jealous exactly,

The Hest

just genuinely curious, the way Drew was curious about most things.

“I don’t know, but I bet if you asked, they’d think about it really seriously, “I said.

Grandpa Parker doesn’t do anything halfway. He told me that himself basically.”

Drew nodded slowly, satisfied with that answer, and went back to his sketch.

I lay in bed that night thinking about boardrooms and trusts. And the specific weight of being someone’s official grandson on paper, not just in the regular, everyday way I’d already been one for years.

It didn’t feel that different, honestly. I still wasn’t allowed to touch the model ships without asking. I still wasn’t allowed to fire anyone, apparently, regardless of how reasonable my parameters had been.

But it felt important anyway. Like a promise that had been there the whole time, finally written down somewhere permanent, somewhere nobody could ever argue with or take back.

I fell asleep thinking about what I’d do with the company, someday, decades from now, when I was old enough for actual firing parameters to apply.

I had some very good ideas already.

I’d start a binder.