I Woke Up in My Boss's Bed

I woke up with a woman's arm around my waist, and I was the one with abs.

That was the first problem.

The second problem was the voice that came out of my mouth when I whispered, "Oh no." It was deep, rough, and male.

I froze. The arm around my waist squeezed tighter.

"Mmm," a woman purred against my shoulder. "Good morning, darling."

I knew that voice. I had heard it every Friday for two years, usually yelling at me about the temperature of her coffee. Camille Dupont. International model. Lucien Ashford's on-and-off girlfriend. The woman who once told me my uniform smelled like "poverty and lemon cleaner."

And she was lying in my arms.

Slowly, I lifted my hand. It was large, tanned, and strong, with a gold watch around the wrist. Not my hand. My hands were small and rough from scrubbing floors.

I looked down at my chest. Hard muscle. Bare skin. A tiny tattoo of a compass near the ribs.

I was not in my bed. I was not in my body. I was in the king-size bed of Lucien Ashford, Crestmont's most famous playboy, the man who had spilled a glass of wine down my dress last night in front of two hundred guests.

"Darling?" Camille lifted her head. Her red lips curved. "Why are you staring at the ceiling like that? Did you sleep badly?"

"I," I said in Lucien's voice, and stopped.

What did I say? I had no idea how he talked to her. All I knew was how he talked to me. Short, cold, bored.

"Fine," I said. "I slept fine."

"Liar." She pressed a kiss to my jaw.

I leaped out of bed so fast I tripped over the sheet. My legs were too long. My feet hit the floor as if they belonged to a stranger. I stumbled across the room, caught myself on a dresser, and found myself staring into a mirror.

Lucien Ashford stared back.

Black hair. Sharp jaw. Dark eyes that always looked half amused and half bored. The same face that appeared on every magazine cover in the city. The most handsome face in Crestmont, and also the most hated by me.

I touched my cheek. The man in the mirror touched his.

"This is a nightmare," I whispered.

Last night came back in pieces.

The Ashford Group anniversary gala. The ballroom full of diamonds. Lucien standing near the champagne tower, bored, laughing at something a model said. Me carrying a tray of glasses, because he had ordered me to work the party even though it was my night off.

I had bumped his elbow. Only a little. He had turned around and poured his wine down the front of my dress.

"The help should not stand where guests can see her," he had said.

Two hundred people had laughed. I had smiled, bowed, and walked out with my face burning.

Later that night, I was cleaning his private study because he never allowed anyone else to touch it. I opened the safe to dust the shelf. Inside was a jade locket on a silver chain. It was old and beautiful, and I had never seen it before.

I picked it up. Lightning cracked outside the window. The locket glowed gold in my palm.

Then everything went white.

"Darling." Camille's voice dragged me back. "You are being very strange."

"I am tired."

"You are never tired." She sat up in the sheets, not caring that they slid. "Is it that new girl again? The one from the charity dinner?"

"What?"

"Never mind." She waved a hand and reached for her phone. "Call your maid. I want my coffee. Oat milk, no sugar. And tell her not to wear that horrible uniform in front of me. It makes me want to cry."

Something in my chest went hot.

"Her name is Seraphina," I said.

Camille stopped scrolling. She looked up slowly.

"What?"

"Her name is Seraphina Vale," I said. My voice came out low and flat. Dangerous. I barely recognized it. "She is twenty-five years old, she wakes up at five every morning, and she works harder than anyone in this building. She makes your coffee exactly how you like it, every single time. You could at least learn her name."

The silence in the room was loud.

"Since when," Camille said, in a very small voice, "do you know her name?"

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

Right. Lucien Ashford did not know my name. For two years, he had called me "you," "girl," and "the help."

"I mean," I said. "I looked at her file. Yesterday. It was in the file."

"You read a file?" Camille stared at me as if I had grown another head. "On a maid?"

"I am going to the bathroom," I said, and ran.

I locked the bathroom door, leaned against it, and breathed. My heart was pounding in a chest that was not mine.

Think, Seraphina. Think.

If I was in Lucien's body, where was Lucien?

The answer hit me like a bucket of ice. I flung the door open, dashed through the bedroom, ignored Camille calling "Darling?", and sprinted down the hallway. I took the stairs two at a time and burst through the basement door.

The staff corridor was dim and narrow. At the end of it was a tiny room with a cracked mirror and a metal cot.

My room.

The door was open. A girl stood in the middle of it, in a maid's uniform that was too tight across the chest. She was small, pale, with messy brown hair and wide, terrified eyes. She was holding her own face in both hands.

I knew that face. I saw it every morning while brushing my teeth.

She looked up.

"You!" she screamed in my voice. "You are the maid! Why do you look like me?"

I almost laughed. It was ridiculous. It was also horrifying.

"Because," I said, "I am not the maid right now. I am you. And you are me."

"That is impossible."

"Look in the mirror."

She turned slowly to the cracked glass on the wall. My reflection looked back. Brown hair, gray eyes, shadows under them from months of hard work. She poked her cheek. She lifted the uniform skirt, looked underneath, and shrieked so loudly the pipes rattled.

"Stop that!" I snapped. "That is my body!"

"Your body is horrible!" Lucien yelled back. "It is so small! It has no muscles! I tried to lift a bucket of water and almost fell over!"

"You tried to lift a bucket?"

"I was trying to find a bathroom! And the shower has no hot water! Who lives like this?"

"I live like this!"

"This is a prison!"

"This is a basement room, which costs me nothing, because I am a maid who cannot afford a prison!"

We glared at each other. Two people in the wrong bodies, breathing hard, both wanting to strangle the other.

"I am going to call my lawyers," Lucien said. "I will say you drugged me. I will say you kidnapped me."

"With what? A brain transplant?"

"I will think of something!" He stormed toward the door. I grabbed him by the arm. He was shockingly light. I almost pulled him off his feet.

"Do not shout," I hissed. "If anyone hears us, they will think we are crazy. The Ashford heir will be locked in a hospital, and the maid will be thrown out on the street. Do you want that?"

"I do not care about you."

"I know you do not. But you care about your company, your reputation, and your father."

His face changed. Even in my body, even with my gray eyes, I could see him thinking.

"My father," he said slowly.

"Yes."

"If my father finds out..." He swallowed. "He will never trust me again."

It was the first honest thing I had ever heard him say.

I let go of his arm. "Then we need a plan."

"A plan," he repeated. Then he looked at me, really looked, and his lip curled. "You are wearing my favorite robe."

"It was in the room."

"It costs four thousand dollars."

"Then it is very warm."

"And you are walking like a gorilla."

"You are walking like a drunk duck."

"Excuse me?"

A loud chime echoed above our heads.

We both froze.

It was the sound of the penthouse elevator. Someone had just arrived.

Then, from the top of the stairs, came Camille's cheerful, ringing voice.

"Darling! Come quickly! Your father is here! He brought the press! He says it is time to announce our engagement!"

Lucien's face, in my body, turned white.

"Engagement?" he whispered. "What engagement?"

I stared at him. A thousand thoughts crashed together in my head.

Somewhere above us, a dozen cameras were waiting for the man who was supposed to be Lucien Ashford.

And I was the only one who could walk upstairs and play him.