Page 3 of Stuck With the Billionaire Grump

“Hey, Lucy,” Elijah says when he enters the room. “Don’t tell me Josie coerced you into packing all her books for her!”

“I was helping!” Josie protests before I can answer. She lets go of her fiancé, albeit reluctantly, and returns to the shelves to continue packing.

With Josie occupied with her task, my hands go back to my hips as I round on Elijah.

“You,” I begin.

He freezes, his dark eyes growing wide with innocence. “Me?”

Josie whispers something that sounds a lot likeMaidzillain warning.

“You have the wedding bands?” I ask him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And your tuxedo? You picked it up from the tailor?”

“Indeed.”

“And your best man? Harry? He’s landing in Boston on Wednesday?”

“At three o’clock in the afternoon, yes.”

“And he knows what to do? He understands what’s expected of him?”

Elijah quirks a smile. “He’s been my assistant for years. I think he can handle escorting the maid of honor down the aisle and making a halfway decent toast at the reception dinner.”

I scoff. “It needs to be better than halfway decent. It needs to be perfect.”

“I’ll send him your way for a literary critique as soon as he arrives, then.”

In the background, Josie giggles. I cross my arms, unimpressed with the lighthearted sarcasm. Elijah smiles sheepishly at me.

To his credit, Elijah is a lot more receptive to my Maidzilla behavior than Josie. She obviously wants to have a lovely wedding, but Elijah is obsessed with making sure the entire event is literally her dream come true. He came to me weeks before proposing to her just to make sure that I was on board with helping him make it happen.

“Fine.” I sigh.

Elijah lets out a not-so-subtle sigh of relief that I’m done with the interrogation for now. He makes his way over to the shelves and takes my place helping Josie pack the books away. One thing that Josie doesn’t know is that Elijah has converted a room in their house into a library for her, so all of these books will have an even better home soon enough. Plus room for more. How Elijah has managed to keep the library a secret from Josie is beyond me, but I’m sure the entire town will hear her squeals of delight when it’s finally revealed.

I decide to give the happy couple a moment to themselves and go into the kitchen. It’s a mess in here, littered with tablecloth samples, cardboard color palettes, tangled streamers, and random bits of confetti. Not just because of Josie’s wedding, but because the headquarters of Montgomery Events is always a treasure trove of random party necessities.

Despite all the things on my to-do list, I’m not really sure what to do with myself. It’s too late in the evening to pester any of the wedding vendors, and Josie and Elijah now have the packing under control without me.

For the moment, I’m a little bit useless.

I fiddle with a bit of lavender silk ribbon, which I’ll need for Addie Parker’s baby shower in a couple weeks, and stare out the window past the front lawn. My gaze skates over the brightpurple fence that serves as the telltale landmark signaling Miss Maisie’s house and lands on a distant point over the treetops. Very few of the locals are lucky enough to have beachfront access, but on especially clear days, I can see a hint of the Atlantic on the horizon at just the right angle from this specific window.

Million-dollar view, my stepmother used to joke with me.

Former stepmother, that is. Still, given that my birth mother passed away when I was only five and my current stepmother has only been in my life for less than four years, Tracy is more of a mother to me than anyone else. She doesn’t live in Mermaid Shores anymore, but we keep in touch. In fact, she’s coming to the wedding.

The whole town is coming to the wedding, honestly. The people of Mermaid Shores have been yearning for the chance to celebrate the town’s most precious love story.

For locals, it’s probably the most highly anticipated event of the past decade.

And I amnotgoing to let anything—or anyone—stand in my way of making sure it is utterly flawless.

Chapter Two: Theo

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