Page 41 of Billionaire's Fake Bride

Epilogue

Tammy

Are those bells?I halted in my tracks and gazed out over the roads, businesses, homes and landscaping, searching for the source of the bells.

“Are you coming?” Nate’s deep voice called to me from a few steps ahead on the sidewalk where he had stopped to wait for his distracted wife. “My arms are a little full here.”

“Sorry!” I joined him, reaching out to lift one of our two-year-old twin daughters from his arms so we could each focus on a little blonde-headed girl a piece. “Did you hear the bells?”

“It’s Sunday. There are bound to be bells from the church down the street.”

“I know, but…” I let that thought trail off with a smile. I knew the bells came from the joy in my heart. “It’ll be our little secret, huh?” I murmured to Emma, holding a doll as we followed Daddy and Ella into the Hamptons Peak.

Every week, the employees oohed and aahed over our girls who today were dressed in matching pink dresses with matching hair bows as we walked the familiar path to the Wisteria Room. Our family had become a common sight over the past year since we had started doing brunch every Sunday with Zeke, Claudia, Riker, Elena and their families, including Eilene. The men still had their Thursday evenings to themselves, but we had all agreed that we needed a day for us all to meet, catch up and renew our unbreakable friendships.

Today, our family was the last to arrive, and as good friends must, they teased us about it. “Oh please, you all know how hard it can be to get kids ready to go somewhere.”

Nods of agreement approved my words. “Oh yeah, so true,” Elena agreed. “But I think all the kids love Sunday brunch.” Childish laughter from the balcony outside filtered into the room, along with the air from a rare pleasantly cool August morning.

I giggled and chatted with Elena until our hearty breakfast of orange juice, coffee, fruit, pancakes, eggs, ham, turkey bacon, biscuits and cereal and milk for particularly picky kids arrived. It looked like an insurmountable mountain of food, but all three of our families had a knack for overcoming the insurmountable. So I knew we would be up to the challenge presented by plates piled high and full bowls served family-style to our group.

I was right. We sat around the table, talking, laughing and passing food around until almost everything was gone.

Almost everything. “Come on,” I cajoled, placing half a slice of banana into a plump hand. Emma tossed it on the floor, squealing and giggling like this was the best game ever. “No, you eat it, silly!” Then I demonstrated by cutting another slice in half, popping half into my mouth and trying to hand her the other slice. That one joined the other on the floor. “Nope? Okay. How about you?” I turned to Ella and offered her a piece. She giggled and did the same thing. I sighed to hearty laughter from everyone around the table. “I swear they love bananas, you guys,” I told my chuckling friends.

“That’s what you get when you get pregnant on birth control,” Riker pointed out with a sparkle in his eyes. “Twin headaches!”

Everyone laughed at that, but no one laughed harder than me. The irony would never cease to fill me with wonder, and I would never stop feeling lucky for that tiny, tiny birth control chance of failure that had secured me a wonderful life.

“Oh well, they ate enough.” I picked the girls up one by one and set them on the safely fenced balcony to play. The other kids ran outside, too, leaving us adults to chat.

After a moment, though, Eilene stood up with pride in her eyes and a smile on her face. “Claudia, do you have anything to say?”

Claudia grinned widely and hugged her mother as she stood up too. “I do! Both of us do.” She took Zeke’s hand and the two stood together. “So,” she began, looking to Zeke for approval, “we sold our condo in Paris.”

Every single person sat stunned, thoroughly taken aback. Everyone shared my confused glances around the table. How was this good news?

“We sold the condo,” Zeke continued, “because the Moore brand has been so successful that Claudia and I no longer need to keep a residence in France. We’re moving back to the Hamptons… permanently.”

The room erupted into cheers. The kids had no idea what had sparked the happiness but participated merrily, jumping up and down and racing around like whirlwinds.

“No more missed Thursdays,” Riker exclaimed, giving Zeke a back-clapping embrace as Nate shook Zeke’s hand. I hugged Claudia and Elena both at once, all of us squealing with joy and bouncing off-beat.

I broke free from the hug, wiping my mussed hair and a few stray tears out of my eyes. Nate and I had a full time nanny that allowed us both to work in the Hamptons, me as a wedding planner and him in real estate with his friend Clinton. Riker bought out the competition to his security company last year, and Elena was a stay-at-home mom. Since Claudia and Zeke had finally managed to move back to the Hamptons as well, that meant…

“We’re all together,” I summed up my thoughts aloud.

A moment passed as we all took that in. “Yes,” Eilene agreed for everyone, and I knew that the pride in her eyes was for all of us.

“A toast,” Riker said, standing with his glass of orange juice. A flurry of activity followed as everyone rose to join him, grabbing their glasses of whatever they were drinking. He surveyed the room, his eyes drifting across each and every one of us before he began. “It was a long and hard journey, but everyone around this table made it. Those kids out there-” Riker pointed to the balcony. “Those kids are proof of that. So, a toast to the best friends a man could ever have and their wonderful families.”

I raised sparkling water to my lips, tasting love, success and unbreakable bonds in the single, simple sip.

Riker glanced at his chair and started to sit down, but something stopped him. A smile started at the corners of his eyes and soon took over his lips in a contagious expression of mirth that I looked to see mirrored on my husband’s face. “Nate, Zeke, look at us. Who would have ever believed a few years ago that our group of grumpy, playboy billionaires would all be sitting around married to beautiful women with a bunch of kids?”

I glanced at Nate as everyone around the table burst into more laughter, ready for his joking or sarcastic response. Instead, I spotted a single tear clinging to his eyelashes as he watched the people he cared most about in this world celebrating.

I wanted to wipe the tear away, but I couldn’t bear to change a single thing about this beautiful moment.

So many memorable moments had come and gone over the period of time I had lived in the Hamptons. Some were real and some were fake. This moment today was very, very real, and I felt so blessed to be a part of a group of friends who had carved out our own identity as a kind and loving group among the Hamptons filthy rich.