His Forgotten One Night Bride

Chapter Two

Five years later, the gates of Ashford Mansion looked even bigger up close than they had from the bus window.

Ariana stood outside them with her bag of cleaning supplies and her one good coat, the wind cutting through it like it wasn't even there. Twenty-nine years old, and somehow she was more tired now than she'd been at twenty-four. Her mom was gone two years now. The medical bills had followed her past the funeral, the way debt always does. And the agency had told her this job paid better than anything else on their list, so here she was, staring up at a house that probably cost more than she'd earn in three lifetimes.

She pressed the buzzer before she could talk herself out of it.

A man's voice came through, clipped and businesslike. "Name?"

"Ariana Vale. I'm with the cleaning service. First day."

There was a pause, then a click, and the gate swung open slowly and heavily, like it had all the time in the world and she didn't. She walked up the long driveway trying not to gawk at the place — the fountain out front, the windows that went floor to ceiling, the whole building sitting there like it knew exactly how much it was worth.

A man was waiting for her at the side entrance. Somewhere in his thirties, neat suit, tablet in hand, the kind of face that looked permanently a little rushed.

"You're the new girl," he said. Not unkind, just efficient. "Oliver Hayes. I manage Mr. Ashford's schedule, among other things. You'll mostly be working the east wing — guest rooms, the library, the sitting rooms. Mr. Ashford keeps to his studies and the west wing, so your paths shouldn't cross much."

"That's fine by me," Ariana said, and meant it. The less she had to deal with a billionaire employer, the better.

"Good instinct," Oliver said, almost like he approved. "He's not exactly warm. Doesn't mean much by it, that's just how he is. Keep your head down, do the work, and you'll never hear a complaint out of him."

He walked her through the wing quickly — supply closet, the schedule taped inside the door, which rooms needed daily attention and which could wait. Ariana listened, nodded, filed it all away the way she filed away every job's rules in the last five years. She was good at this part. Good at disappearing into a house, doing what needed doing, and leaving no trace that she'd been there at all.

It was almost noon when she heard the voice.

She was dusting the shelves in the library, arms full of old leather-bound books nobody probably read anymore, when a door opened somewhere down the hall and a voice cut through the quiet — low, controlled, clearly annoyed.

"I don't care what Damian wants. Tell him the board meets Thursday, and if he has a problem with the agenda he can bring it up like everyone else."

She froze, book still in her hands.

It wasn't the words. It was the voice.

Something about it hit her low in the chest, familiar in a way she couldn't place, like a song she used to know the words to and had somehow forgotten. Her pulse picked up for no reason she could explain. She told herself it was nothing — a coincidence, some trick of memory, a voice that just happened to remind her of some other voice from some other life. She had learned a long time ago not to trust these little jolts. Grief did strange things to a person's memory. So did being tired all the time.

She didn't turn around. She kept dusting, kept her eyes on the shelf in front of her, and the footsteps passed the library door without stopping and faded down the hall.

By the time her shift ended, she'd almost convinced herself she'd imagined it.

Almost.

She was gathering her things in the supply closet when Oliver stuck his head in. "Mr. Ashford wants to see you before you go."

Her stomach dropped. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Doubt it. He does this with new staff sometimes. Likes to know who's in his house." Oliver shrugged, already moving on to the next thing on his tablet. "Study's down the hall, last door on the left. Don't take it personally if he doesn't say much."

She smoothed down her uniform, told herself there was nothing to be nervous about — she'd cleaned floors for plenty of powerful men before, and none of them had ever been worth more than a polite nod — and walked down the hall toward the last door on the left.

She knocked. A voice told her to come in. The same voice from the hallway, closer now, low and even.

She opened the door.

He was standing at the window with his back to her, dark suit, tie loosened, one hand braced against the frame like the view outside required his full attention. For half a second, before he turned, something in her chest went completely still — some old instinct rising up out of nowhere, whispering that she already knew the shape of those shoulders, the exact way he stood.

Then he turned around, and she got her first real look at Lucien Ashford's face.

And nothing happened. No lightning bolt of recognition. No flicker in his eyes. He looked at her the way he probably looked at every new hire — briefly, thoroughly, and without much interest — and she looked back at a stranger. A cold, handsome, unreachable stranger who happened to sign her paycheck.

Whatever she'd felt in the hallway, whatever her body had tried to tell her, it clearly meant nothing. Five years and a mansion's worth of distance stood between whoever she used to be and whoever she was now, and this man in front of her was simply not part of that story.

"Ariana Vale," he said, reading it off a folder in his hand, like her name was just one more line item in his day. "Welcome to the house. Mr. Hayes will make sure you have what you need."

"Thank you, sir," she said, and meant nothing by it either.

She left his study certain she was imagining things. She had no way of knowing that somewhere behind his controlled, unreadable face, something in Lucien Ashford had also gone very still the moment she walked in — and that neither of them had the first idea why.