ログインI walked across the room like a man in a dream and sat on the edge of my mother's bed, and she took Lucien Ashford's face in both hands and looked at me for a long time."There you are," Hana Vale said softly.My throat closed. I could not speak."I do not know how," she said. "I do not know why. I only know that my daughter's eyes are in the wrong face, and the girl standing by the window has a face I helped make, with someone else behind it." She smiled, and her thumbs brushed my cheekbones. "Mothers know, sweetheart. We do not need a reason."Behind us, something clattered. Lucien had dropped the lilies."How," he said, in my voice, "did you know?""Young man, you are holding flowers upside down." Mama did not look away from me. "My daughter has never in her life held anything upside down. She counts the bread slices before she toasts them.""That is true," I admitted, in Lucien's deep voice, and burst into tears.It was not elegant. It was the ugly, shuddering kind of crying that
Kissing yourself is not as romantic as it sounds.I jerked backward so fast that I slammed into the elevator wall. Lucien, in my body, shrieked and slammed into the opposite one. We stared at each other across four feet of polished brass, both breathing like we had run a marathon."You were leaning," Lucien said."I was not.""You were leaning in my own face!""It is my face! I mean, it was your face. It was my face. It is confusing!""It did not count," he said, pressing a hand to his chest. My chest. "Tell me it did not count.""It did not count.""Good.""Good.""Because I was not in the mood.""You were certainly in the mood.""I was in the mood for you," he said, then went red from my collar to my ponytail. "I mean, for your face. In your own body. When it was your body. Which it is not."The elevator gave a small jolt and began to move again. Neither of us spoke. Somewhere above the twentieth floor, Lucien began to hum, very quietly, out of tune, and I wanted to die. I looked at
Lucien Ashford stood at the head of the boardroom, in his own body, holding a gold pen, with absolutely no idea what he was doing.And I was a maid in a chair, in my own body, with a cold coffee cup in front of me, and I knew exactly what he was about to ruin."Lucien," Victor said slowly. "Are you unwell?""Of course not, Father." Lucien's smile appeared like a light switching on. It was the old smile, the magazine smile, bright and careless. "I am wonderful. I am only taking a moment.""For what?""For drama."Twelve board members stared at him. A tiny part of me almost laughed. It was the first time I had seen Lucien Ashford in his own skin since the night of the gala, and he looked unbearably handsome, and completely, hopelessly lost.I had two choices. I could stay silent like a good maid and watch him sink. Or I could break a rule I had followed for two years.I picked up my coffee cup, very carefully, and knocked it off the table.It hit the floor with a splash and a clatter. E
A maid was about to sit at the Ashford boardroom table. The maid, unfortunately, was a billionaire."Absolutely not," Victor said.Twelve heads turned toward him. The small figure in the doorway, my own body with Lucien Ashford wearing it like an itchy coat, went very still. The coffee cups on her tray began to rattle."A servant," Victor continued, "does not sit at the Ashford board table.""She does not need to sit for long," Darius said pleasantly. "Only until we sign. It is a small condition.""It is an absurd condition.""It is the only condition.""Why?""Because I am superstitious," Darius said, with a perfectly straight face. "Lucien told me last night that she is the lucky charm behind his new ideas. I do not sign anything without a lucky charm."Mr. Albright coughed. Mr. Grieve looked down at his notes. Nobody wanted to be the first to speak.Then Mrs. Ferrand, the one who always spoke last, set down her pen."I would like to hear what the girl thinks," she said.Victor's ey
We dropped each other's hands so fast that two potatoes rolled off the crate. "Camille," I said, in a voice far too high for Lucien's chest. "It is not what it looks like." "It looks like my fiancé is holding a maid's hand in a pantry at five in the morning." "He was choking," Lucien said. Everyone turned to look at him. "On a potato," he added. "A raw potato?" said Camille. "It was a very small raw potato." "And you were holding his hand." "For the Heimlich," Lucien said, with the face of a man who had never been so proud of a lie. "It is a hand technique. It is taught in maid school." "There is no maid school." "There is a very good one in Switzerland." Camille's gaze moved slowly from Lucien to me. I did the only thing a trained professional could do. I coughed. Loudly. With great pain. "See?" Lucien said. "He is still recovering." Camille's lips thinned. Pretzel growled at Lucien's shoes. Then she did something that frightened me far more than any scream. She smiled.
At one in the morning, in the pantry of a billionaire's penthouse, a maid and a playboy declared war on a stack of paper."This is four hundred pages," Lucien whispered."Four hundred and twelve.""Who reads four hundred and twelve pages?""Apparently you do." I dropped the Ashford Hotels quarterly report on the flour shelf. It landed with a thump, sending a jar of olives rolling off the edge. "In seven hours and fifty minutes."We chose the pantry because it had a door, no windows, and a very thin wall between us and the master bedroom, where Camille slept in a French nightgown, with a dog named Pretzel guarding her feet. A single lamp lit the room. Lucien sat on an overturned bucket in my maid's uniform with a mug of coffee in both hands. I sat on a crate of potatoes, still damp from the bathtub, in a dry sweater I had stolen from his closet."Start from the beginning," Lucien said. "Page one.""Page one is a table of contents.""Read me the table of contents.""Why?""Because you c







