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1
Laney
I’m completely invisible.
That was all I could think as I weaved my way through the enormous ballroom at the Connery mansion, balancing a silver serving tray in one hand. When I quietly offered canapés to the impossibly-chic guests in their gorgeous gowns and suits, they either snatched them from the tray without even looking at me, let alone uttering a word of thanks, or they ignored me and the tray completely. Sometimes I was fortunate enough to receive a brusque wave to let me know they weren’t interested, but that was it. Beyond that, I might as well not exist.
I couldn’t say I was surprised. The mansion stood on an estate on the outskirts of Royal Falls, New Hampshire’s wealthiest and most opulent town, and I wasn’t exactly what anyone would call Royal Falls material. Nope, I was just a fill-in maid for the glitzy party Charles Connery had decided to throw tonight at his ancestral home.
Home probably wasn’t the right word for the place, though. Palace was far more apt.
It was a grand beige limestone mansion with three stories, soaring turrets and chimneys, mullioned windows, and carved embellishments above the tall doors and windows. Even the driveway was grandiose, stretching for over a mile before sweeping into a wide circle in front of the mansion with a towering fountain in the middle.
The inside was no different in its lavishness, speaking volumes about the wealth of its owners and their love for beautiful things. Glittering chandeliers hung from the high ceilings, the floors were made from smooth marble, and the wood-paneled walls were trimmed with gold—real gold, I presumed. Every carved molding was accented in the same way.
Overall, the place was huge and ostentatious to the point of intimidation, which I suspected was exactly the point. The citizens of Royal Falls wanted to intimidate. They wanted everyone else in the state—all those supposedly below them in society—to look upon their houses with a mixture of wonderment and nervous discomfort. As if by simply gazing upon the massive buildings, they were being smugly told by the universe: You aren’t good enough. Not like the people who live here. Otherwise you’d be living here too.
A girl like me didn’t belong in a place like this unless I was serving others, because I was nothing more than a struggling student from Silvercreek with a checkered past and an overdue electricity bill.
It wasn’t a sob story. Just the truth. My mom and I barely had two pennies to rub together, but we tried our best to make ends meet each month anyway. Silvercreek—a dreary industrial town about thirty minutes down the road from Royal Falls—was all we could afford.
There was a very obvious divide between the two towns in question. Royal Falls was for people with money and status. It was filled with old money pretension on one side, new money extravagance on the other, and bloated egos throughout.
As for Silvercreek… well, it was mostly for the help.
At least two thirds of my hometown’s population made the half-hour drive to Royal Falls every day to bus tables, serve customers, scrub floors, or spray expensive perfumes in every bathroom so that the wealthy inhabitants of the town could swan around acting like their shit didn’t stink. Meanwhile, people from Royal Falls avoided Silvercreek like the plague. It was beneath them. Tacky-looking, dirty, and worst of all, poor. As if that was honestly the worst thing a town or person could be in this world.
I forced a smile and kept heading through the party, stopping every few seconds to offer the canapé tray to guests I hadn’t served yet. A gaggle of beautifully-dressed teenage girls with glossy hair and sparkling jewels around their necks curled their lips into smirks and then giggled behind their hands as they watched me pass. While my logical side told me they were probably just laughing at a silly inside joke, I couldn’t shake the insidious feeling that they might be mocking me. After all, we were around the same age, and here I was waiting on them while they enjoyed their glamorous life of leisure.
My smile faltered, but I kept going, refusing to let any of the snobs get to me. I had to make enough cash to get that electricity bill paid, and working this party was the only way to make it happen. My weekend diner job back in Silvercreek simply didn’t have enough hours for me at the moment, and my mom was busy at her late-night office cleaning job in the business district of Royal Falls, so she couldn’t take the party job.
She worked at this mansion three days a week as a maid, but Charles Connery often asked her and his other staff members to work his parties at short notice. He always paid extra for the inconvenience, which was great, and snobbery aside, it was an easy gig. Unfortunately, due to the clash with the cleaning job, which couldn’t be helped, Mom almost missed out on tonight’s extra work. Knowing we had the bills piling up, I offered to fill in for her, and Mr. Connery told her it was all fine.
And now, here I was, gulping down anxious breaths with every step I took, silently praying that I wouldn’t lose my balance and drop the tray. Even though the feeling of invisibility in this place made me feel horribly out-of-place, it was also a protective shield. I would only get noticed if I messed up, and that wasn’t a good thing.
“Take a break, Laney,” another maid told me as I finally returned to the kitchen with my now-empty tray. “You’ve been running around for three hours. You’re sweating like a pig.”
“I’m fine,” I said, wiping the beads of perspiration from my hairline with the back of my hand.
She smiled. “I know you feel that way now, honey, but trust me—you need a break. Your feet will thank you tomorrow.”
“Okay. I’ll just get the empty glasses from the drinks table first,” I replied. “They’re piling up pretty fast, and no one else has grabbed them yet.”
She lifted one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “Okay, sure. Oh, and when you finally sit down, make sure you have something to drink. At the last party, some dumbass girl thought she could impress all these rich guys by looking as skinny as possible, like she might actually convince them she was a runway model or something. She didn’t have any water all night in case it bloated her, and she ended up passing out right in the middle of the ballroom from dehydration.”
“Yikes.” I grimaced and headed back out to the main party room. Back to invisibility.
Only I wasn’t so invisible now.
There was a guy at the edge of the room, standing with his head cocked to one side as he swept his eyes over the party. A storm brewed on his face as he watched the revelry, and his top lip was pulled back in a sneer. He appeared to be disliking tonight’s event about as much as I was… until he spotted me. A small smile curved his lips then, and he arched a thick brow.
I almost had a heart attack right then and there. Tall, dark and handsome was an old cliché, but holy shit, this guy totally epitomized it.
He was beyond gorgeous with tousled dark hair, piercing blue eyes, a square jaw shadowed with stubble, and full, expressive lips. Tall and broad-shouldered, he wore his shirt like he was a model, and he looked like he knew it too.
A droplet of sweat rolled down my back as I met his gaze for a split-second before dropping my head in embarrassment. I licked my lips and tasted salt and blood, and I realized I’d just bitten a tiny chunk out of my cheek from sheer nervousness.
Don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip,I begged myself as I kept heading toward the table. I finally reached it and stood stock-still as I caught my breath, pretending I didn’t notice the guy still staring at me from across the room. Pretending my heart wasn’t racing at the mere thought of his eyes on my face.
