Conning the CEO: My Stand-In Rules

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He hired me to play the stand-in for the first love who walked out on him. In the novel, I'm the doormat he uses up and throws away. So I rewrote my part. Now I run him.

You can't even seduce me. And you think you're going to seduce her?

You want me to fill in for her? Then send me a shirtless photo. Let's start with the abs.

Chapter 1

I got dropped into an abuse novel as the doormat. In the original, I'm the girl the billionaire keeps on the side, wrings dry, and throws out the moment his first love comes home, and then I die of cancer, alone, in a bed he can't be bothered to visit. He feels terrible about it. Too late, of course. I decided to run him instead.

Here's the role they wrote for me. Move into his house as the live-in stand-in for the woman who walked out on him. Cook for him. Keep his place. Warm his bed. Smile while his friends call me his little knockoff.

I lose my life. He loses the love of his. Not what I'd call an even split.

I'm not doing a single line of it.

The story's barely started. Roman Ashford has just offered me forty grand a month to be his stand-in girlfriend.

He is, credit where it's due, everything the genre orders off the menu. Tall. Cold. So used to the world rearranging itself around what he wants that he's stopped noticing it does.

"You'll live here," he said. "You'll look after the place. You'll be here when I get home."

"I have class."

"Drop out."

Just like that. A one-word verdict from a man who has never once had to hear no.

In the novel, the doormat does drop out. Hands over her whole life to keep his house, until there's no degree, no money, no exit that isn't him.

Hard pass.

"Mr. Ashford," I said. "I did some homework. You picked me because I look like Delphine Hale. The one you supposedly can't get over."

His hand was already moving to my waist, easing me back into the couch like it was a done deal.

"If you love her that much, why rent a look-alike? Isn't that a little insulting to the great love of your life?"

The hand stopped.

"That's not your concern."

"She left. She didn't die," I said. "One day she comes back. And she finds out you kept a paid double warming her side of the bed. Sit with how that lands."

I let it breathe.

"Here's the part men in your chair always skip. That loyalty you'd want from her someday? Try holding your own self to it first. Right now you're the one with the record."

His jaw shifted.

"One more thing, as a courtesy." I kept my voice pleasant. "You just slid a woman cash and asked for sex. There's a word for that. It has a statute number attached. Bad look for the personal brand. Worse for the share price."

He gave me a long, flat look. Then he stood and let go of me, slow and deliberate, like a man recalculating a number he thought he already knew.

"You took the money quick enough," he said.

"Because I'm here to save you." I recrossed my legs. "I've got the one face you'd burn the world to see again. I can be a balm for that poor broken heart. I just won't be doing it on my back."

"You won't be my mistress. So how do you plan to... soothe me?"

"I'll teach you to chase her."

The book says I look the most like her when I tip my face up at a man. Useful.

"Stop treating me like a substitute. Commit to it. As of right now, I'm Delphine." I let my voice go soft, let my eyes go warm. "She's sitting right here. What do you do?"

He pulled on his cigarette, eyes going unfocused. "...She's never been here."

A grown man pining over a woman who never even walked through his door. Tragic.

"Well," I said, sweet as anything, tilting my head. "I'm here now. So. What are you going to do about me?"

He looked at me like the dim lamplight had melted my face into hers.

Then he leaned in, his mouth turning toward mine.

Chapter 2

I knocked him back with the flat of my hand.

"Kissing a woman who never said yes. That's assault. Look it up."

The slap still hung in the air between us. Pure shock on his face.

My chin lifted. My voice went low and even.

"Bathroom. Wet the shirt. Show me the abs."

He was still stuck two seconds in the past, at the moment my palm met his cheek. I pulled him up by the arm, marched him to the bathroom, and took the shot myself.

I styled him first. One button done up wrong. Wet cotton clinging to him. That cut of muscle running down under a black belt. Dress slacks, black shoes. Buttoned-up and obscene in the same breath.

Even I had to give it a nod. Delphine would too.

I tossed the phone back against his chest. "Send it to her."

His eyes slid off mine. "...I can't."

"You've never chased a woman in your life, have you. Never had one normal relationship."

Something cornered and angry moved through his face.

I touched my tongue to the corner of my mouth.

"New arrangement. I'll be your private practice girlfriend. I'll play Delphine, run the drills with you, tell you exactly what makes a woman go soft. You get the technique. You get the reps. So the day you finally say it to her, you won't stand there like a man who forgot his own language."

He said nothing.

"All on paper. Strictly business. No feelings. No hands. Your spotless little record stays spotless."

He considered it. "Fine."

"Good. Now drive me home."

"What?"

I checked my watch. "It's eleven. Too late for a girl to get home on her own. You'll take me." I smiled at him. "And I'm Delphine tonight. You don't hand me off to a driver."

He stared at my face for a long moment. Then he picked up his keys and drove me back to campus himself.

I set my thread to look just like Delphine's and sent him one line.

Me: [Good boy today.]

Roman: [Goodnight.]

Trash men are trained, not born.

Pour everything into one and throw your heart in after it, and he files you under cheap.

Set the rules in your own favor, hold the line, take his money with a clear conscience, and all at once the man has manners.

He'll even thank you for the privilege.

Next morning I sent the good morning first. He wrote back, then asked me to lunch.

I took my time getting ready and dropped into his Bentley right on time.

"You did well today," I said, looking him over. "Quick replies. You made the plan yourself. The car flatters me. Only thing is..."

"Is what?"

"Your hair's due for a cut." I held the look one beat past polite, then slid my eyes off him like I was doing him a kindness.

First time in his life Roman Ashford had been looked at like that. Measured. Priced. Found a hair short of the number. He touched his own hair, thrown, and spent the rest of the drive stealing glances at the rearview, hunting for whatever it was I'd seen.

A look is a kind of power.

Men aim it at women all day long. Their eyes set the terms. What gets called pretty. What gets called sexy. What a woman's worth at a glance.

I was only handing it back. Letting him sit in it. Letting him wonder which one of us was setting the terms now.

I kept it going at the table.

"Beautiful restaurant. Food's wonderful. You're a perfect gentleman." I propped my chin on my hand. "You're just not much good at making a girl laugh. Were you this quiet with Delphine too?"

Chapter 3

Roman cleared his throat, a little tense. "I don't really know what to talk to a woman about."

"Compliment me." I leaned in and held his eyes.

He blanked, color creeping up his face. "...You look nice today."

"Keep going."

He turned his head away. "Your outfit's simple. Wholesome."

"A little detail. Better than something generic. What else?"

He strained for a long moment. "Your lipstick shade is a good pick."

He'd clearly scraped the bottom of the barrel. I looked down and cut into my steak. "Busy this morning?"

"It was fine."

"Tell me something about the company. I really want to know. You're the only CEO I've ever met." I propped my chin in my hand and looked at him like I meant every word.

Roman started in on work. I steered and I praised, and before he clocked it, he'd told me a great deal.

"See that?" I said when he wound down. "You get the other person talking about themselves, then you keep praising. They open up. You learn each other. That's the whole trick."

He turned it right back on me. "And what were you doing this morning?"

"Thinking about you." Didn't miss a beat.

His eyes flickered. He looked away to cover it, that handsome face going faintly red.

I dropped my gaze and went back to my steak, unbothered. "Just a little technique."

In the novel, this stand-in never once got taken out. Not one proper meal across a table from him. Which was never about whether he loved me. It was about whether I counted as a person to him at all. Whether I was worth taking seriously.

So I made him carry my bag, and worked in a few remarks about how he had no eye for what a woman needs.

A billionaire hauling my canvas tote around. He wore it well, I'll give him that.

Back at the dorm, Sienna Ashford threw a glass of water in my face the second she laid eyes on me. "Marlowe Vance. Word is you got your claws into my brother. You really have no shame at all, do you."

Sienna is Roman's sister.

Every doormat heroine comes with one. The precious baby sister-in-law who helps big brother grind her down.

Delphine was their childhood friend, the girl next door. Me, I wasn't in their weight class. Not on paper.

In her eyes I'd climbed way above my station, reaching for her brother. In the novel she slaps me and humiliates me over nothing.

"You think looking like Delphine actually gets you somewhere? You're a stand-in. You'll be a cheap little stand-in your whole life."

I wiped the water off my face and called Roman.

No tears. No scene. I just asked if he was free tonight.

"I am. Where do you want to eat?"

"A restaurant's got no heart in it." I licked a drop of water off my lip and said it right in front of Sienna. "I'll come to your place tonight. You cook for me."

Then I hung up.

Sienna cracked, shrieking like a kettle at a full boil. "Why would my brother let you into his house? Cook for you? Has he lost his mind? Who do you think you are?"

I curved my mouth into a smile. "Guess."

"You cheap bitch. One call and I'll make sure you never finish this program. Try me."

The Ashfords had the money and the reach to make good on it.

Chapter 4

It didn't take long before my advisor called me in. He laid into me, righteous as a sermon.

"I took you on to do research. Instead you're out there landing a sugar daddy, making a spectacle across the whole campus. Chauffeured around in luxury cars. Is your head anywhere near your work?"

In the novel, this man helps Sienna drag my name through the mud until it sticks, until I've got no choice left but to drop out and become Roman's kept woman.

"Did I miss a deadline? Skip a data set? Name one night I wasn't in that lab past midnight." I stared him down. "That's a big hat to pin on me. Are the Ashfords' boots really that nice to lick?"

A man who holds every student's future in his hands does not get talked to like that. He went red and threw me out of the lab.

It was deep autumn and cold, and standing in the hallway I realized my clothes were still wet.

The associate professor from the next office took pity on me, steered me inside, and dug out something clean. "Put this on."

I looked at her calm, plain face and half placed her. Helena Whitfield. One of the few side characters in the novel who was ever kind to the heroine. She never got much page time. All I knew was she'd been stuck at associate professor for years, passed over again and again.

"You crossed your advisor. You might really walk out of here without the degree." She made me a coffee.

"And if I get it? A doctorate's no shield against unemployment. Hiring's brutal right now." I cupped the coffee and let my eyes drift over to her. "Plus I'm a woman. If I actually tried to build a life in this field, well. You know exactly how that tastes, Professor."

"Professor Whitfield," I said. "I've got a project on my desk. Real upside. Clients already lined up. Want to hear it?"

That evening Roman drove over to get me. "Did Sienna give you trouble?"

Sienna loves to tattle. She feeds him a version of me, and in the novel every defense I make just reads as a cover, and a cover reads as proof, until he thinks a little less of me each time.

"She leans on you. She sees you looking out for me and she can't stand sharing her brother. It's fine. Only..." I let it hang, right on cue.

"Only what?"

"She's dying to break into acting. She's not studying, she's off chasing auditions everywhere. Her grades used to be good, you know."

A few sentences, and his brow creased.

In the novel Sienna somehow ends up an award-winning actress. Top of the A-list. Clearing six figures a day. How do all the good breaks land in the Ashford lap?

I made up my mind to reroute her fate. "Girls from families like hers, in my program, they usually go abroad for grad school."

"You're right," Roman said, fully sold.

Put her on a plane, three or four years overseas, and by the time she lands back home she'll be too old for an industry that eats the young.

We swung through a grocery store, then drove out to his place beyond the city.

"Girls now are high-maintenance. Especially one like Delphine. When you finally win her, it won't be so she can cook and clean and wait on you, will it?"

"I'll hire someone for that," Roman said, easy as breathing.

I smiled on the inside, cold as a blade. Oh. Now you know to hire someone.

Funny. In the novel, I made your soup for three years.

Chapter 5

"A man who cooks is a huge plus. Reads as domestic, romantic, attentive. Romance is your weak column, since work means you're never around for the long stretches. So my professional advice is: get in the kitchen. Often."

Roman shrugged off his suit jacket and tied an apron over his white shirt. "I cooked a little when I was studying overseas. I'm rusty now."

"I can hardly wait. Let's see what those hands can do."

I settled onto a bar stool, chin in my palm, and spun myself lazily side to side while he worked.

Well, well. Look how the wheel turns.

At long last, the man was rolling up his sleeves to make me dinner. Delicious.

Roman had done his time abroad, and it showed. His cooking wasn't half bad.

I gave him his marks. "Looks good, smells good, tastes good. No real problems. All you have to do is figure out what Delphine likes and cook to it."

"She likes it spicy. Bold flavors." Something wistful moved through his eyes.

In the novel, I cook for him for three years and he never once learns my palate. The day his first love walks back in, he orders a fish drowned in chili oil and makes me eat it with him, when spice wrecks me on my period.

So it isn't a bad memory. It's that I was never worth the memory. Then again, who bothers to learn what a doormat likes on her plate.

I stirred the chicken and mushroom soup. "This isn't very healthy, though. You'll want to think harder about balance. You go heavy on the cream and cheese. How are your cholesterol numbers?"

"Huh?" He blinked.

"You work brutal hours, no time to move, all red meat and liquor. How'd your last physical look?"

Roman turned serious. "...It was okay."

"You're pushing thirty. Not a kid anymore. You should start taking care of yourself."

He looked genuinely thrown, like it had never once crossed his mind that a fresh-faced grad student might call him old.

"Good news is, biotech's come a long way. You can hold the body of a twenty-five-year-old indefinitely. Very in with the Silicon Valley crowd right now. A private medical team on retainer, supplements and compounds to keep your edge up. There's a professor in my department running exactly that kind of program."

He wasn't interested at first. But I knew every one of his problems. Bad sleep. Stomach trouble. A body that flares up at everything.

So I worked him. Told him his under-eyes looked wrecked, that the vitality had drained clean out of him, that those were crow's feet starting at the corners, that his whole system was basically rusting from the inside. Then, once he was ripe, I handed him Helena Whitfield.

Our department was the black hole of underfunded STEM, first pit of the four. Helena did compound research, and she sent him home with a few supplements to try.

He felt great on them. So she built him a private team, physician plus nutritionist, tracking his body and his stress by the day, feeding him his regimen.

I stayed busy too. Registered the company, housed it under the department, pulled the student-founder grant, used the school's name to walk every permit through.

By the time Roman and Helena signed their contract, I was already co-founder of Aeon Biosciences.

Chapter 6

"I really do feel like a different man lately." Roman looked at me, practically glowing. "Sleeping well. Sharp when I wake up. My focus is up, work's easier, and I still carve out time to train every day."

I smiled at him. "Told you. Professor Whitfield knows her stuff."

"So what's the actual cost?" He turned to Helena.

"Two million." Helena let the corner of her mouth curl, slow. "Two million a year."

After we closed the first deal, Helena and I booked a table to celebrate.

"Your advisor threw a fit when he heard we'd gone into business together," she told me.

"Did he now. Funny, he called me today asking me to come back to class."

Word had reached my advisor that I'd started a company and landed the Ashford account, and his whole attitude swung a hundred and eighty degrees. Warm, easy, accommodating in a way I'd never once seen out of him. He even hinted, more than once, that I really should have come to him.

So I told him straight. "When it comes to building a company, I only partner with women. Women are careful. Meticulous. High emotional intelligence. Actual empathy."

This is the man who once told me to my face that he'd stop admitting women the year after. They all just go find rich men to bankroll them anyway, he said. From then on he'd only take men.

"You planning to go back?" Helena asked.

I shook my head. "School was always just the road to a job. I've got the job now. I've got a company to run. He can strike my enrollment for all I care."

Helena looked mildly surprised, then laughed. "Even if he agreed, the department never would. They still want you giving the commencement speech."

"And here's to you making full professor soon."

We touched glasses.

The truth is, what I do now is no different from the novel. I take care of Roman. I keep him comfortable, keep the worries off his plate.

The difference is that in the novel I did it myself, on my knees in his kitchen.

Now I hired a team to do it, billed him two million for the trouble, and turned into the department's golden girl along the way. No more tragic little dropout clinging to a man's sleeve.

A mother's kind of sacrifice is worth nothing on the open market. It will not make a man love you.

Wrap feeling around it and he simply decides the devotion is proof of his own charm. He earned it. You're the fool.

I never understood why the doormat heroine spends her whole life mothering a man. There's an old script buried in it. Love someone, become his mother. And somewhere down the line we got told that was a virtue.

If it were really a virtue, why don't men practice it? Why doesn't he stay home and play the good little wife while I go conquer the world and keep a string of pretty young things of my own?

I respect the women who can do it. I can't. I don't like taking care of people, men least of all. What is a man to me. I've got no interest in burning myself down to the wick so someone else can read by the light.

My time is expensive too. So I chose to want exactly what they want. Money. Power. A little youth and beauty on my arm.

My whole life, when you get down to it, is one grubby scramble up the social ladder.

I just decided I'd rather scramble up it than kneel at the bottom.

Chapter 7

When the month was up, Roman wired me the money. I turned it down.

"I was joking, Mr. Ashford. You're Sienna's brother, you seem like a decent guy, I just wanted to be friends. As if I'd actually take your money."

Sweet little pushover Marlowe could sell herself into being his mistress at that price, no complaints, and walk away at the end without a cent of his. She'd wear the whore label for it too, and get nothing back.

I don't work like that.

I take his money and I run it through a company's books in broad daylight, and I scrub the words stand-in mistress off me for good.

I turned his forty grand into a Harley and sent the bike back to him. He lit up like a kid, delighted, something flickering in the way he looked at me.

The next day, a wall of luxury landed on my doorstep. A new-season Dior bag. A Chanel necklace. A Bvlgari cuff.

Not bad. All those lessons on how a man learns to be generous, paying off.

Sweet little Marlowe was plain and thrifty. Which is to say she didn't cost much. Now he'd learned to spend on me.

In the vulgar game of status, everyone carries a price. What you are decides the grade of gift you're worth and the treatment you get.

I sent him a voice note. "I sent you a gift because you're one of our biggest clients. What's all this, then?"

"Congratulations on the launch." His voice had lost the frost it started with.

"Then I'll graciously accept. This weekend I'm taking you to break in a new car."

I was out tearing around with him when we ran into one of his friends.

"Well, who's this? Your little side piece? God, she really does look like Delphine."

Roman went visibly stiff.

I stayed easy, slid a card out of my bag, and handed it over. "Marlowe Vance, Aeon Biosciences. And you are?"

His buddy clocked the founder title under my name and put out a hand of his own. "Brice. Brice Merrick."

Ah. Another idiot love interest from the supporting cast. Roman's oldest friend.

The type who thinks Roman and Delphine were a tragedy, that Marlowe wormed her way in on a broken man, that she's beneath his best friend in every possible way. And that since she signed up to be the kept woman, anything that goes sideways in Roman's life is her fault, and she can be barked at like the help. They get drunk on a night out and call her to come collect them.

"Since when do you ride?" Brice asked Roman.

Roman glanced at me. "Marlowe gave me the Harley."

Right. With your money. I kept that to myself and smiled, prim and gracious. "He never does anything for fun. Just work. I thought he was wound a little too tight. Wanted him to try a bit of speed and adrenaline."

Brice let out a low whistle. "Would you look at that. How come no gorgeous woman ever bought me a bike? You lucky dog. She's loaded, this one."

I did my best startled face. "Mr. Ashford and I aren't like that. We just do business together."

Brice kept darting those beady little eyes between us. "What business? Can I get in on it?"

"High-end medical." I smiled. "If you're interested, Mr. Merrick, I'll have my assistant send over the company deck and the project brief."

Chapter 8

The word assistant did it. Brice bought in, and the smirk slid off his face.

He could bark at Roman's mistress all he liked, because a mistress is a toy. A young founder with no romantic entanglement and a business worth courting was another matter entirely. Everyone here came up the same way. Men read the table and serve accordingly.

The whole group had brought dates. I was dressed as sharp as any of them, draped in the same labels, and still a clean line ran between us and them.

Clearest at dinner, when Brice raised a toast to me and poured two fingers of something top-shelf.

"I don't drink," I said, and waved it off.

I do drink. A bottle of the good stuff wouldn't touch me. But I won't swallow a single drop for a man. What are any of them to me.

"Allow me." Roman stood, took the glass from him, and knocked it back in one to a chorus of cheering.

"Look at the gentleman on you."

"I had a good teacher," Roman said, pleased with himself.

I sat beside him, and it made him look like a king.

Afterward I did hand Brice the brief and the company deck. "This is the same package Mr. Ashford's on. Take a look. Ask him how he's finding it."

Brice is a deeply lecherous man, so I put it delicately. We could guarantee his performance in the bedroom would be something to remember. He was thrilled. Signed on the spot.

I went out with Roman's circle a few more times and turned every last one of them into a client.

Here's one more thing I could never get about doormat heroines. She finally has her hands on the resources of the moneyed world, and she does nothing with them but wait around to be hurt.

Everyone already believes you're in it for the money. So go on. Bleed them for it. Bleed them hard. Why on earth be polite about it.

Year-end payouts came in, and I bought a full-floor place downtown. On moving day I made a point of inviting Roman over for dinner and walking him through every room.

"Fresh out of school and you can already afford a unit in The Whitmore. You've got to be the best of your whole class." His eyes were full of approval.

I smiled and said nothing.

How did I know this building was good? Because he was the one who picked it, originally. Around this point in the novel, Roman installs the doormat here. Three years later his first love comes home, and the doormat walks out with a single suitcase, leaving the whole gorgeous place behind, nothing in her heart but a dead love story.

She never once stops to grieve the three years she buried in him. At the very least, walk away with the apartment.

I dropped the deed on the coffee table and looked out through the floor-to-ceiling glass at the river blazing below.

In the last of the sunset, Roman insisted on pouring me a champagne.

Delicious.

Come spring I was busy chasing investment, and at a dinner in Roman's family home, I met his mother.

Chapter 9

"You must be Ms. Vance. Roman never stops talking about you. I've been trying to get a moment with you for ages." The woman was dripping in jewels, all warmth.

I matched her, gracious for gracious. "That's on me. I meant to call on you last week, then a work thing landed and I couldn't get free."

"She was just named one of the city's top young entrepreneurs. She's been downtown all week for the summit," Roman said at her side, presenting me.

Mrs. Ashford's eyes widened a fraction. "Ro, where on earth did you find such an impressive girl? Extraordinary. And she looks so young."

"I'm Sienna's roommate. Mr. Ashford struck up a conversation with me at first because I look so much like an old friend of his. Said it put him at ease." I turned and looked right at Roman as I said it.

Roman coughed twice, fast, and shot his mother a look.

Mrs. Ashford smiled. "Oh, you mean Delphine. Delphine was our neighbor, back in the day. Flighty little thing, very much her own world. Nowhere near as steady as you. The two of you have a passing resemblance around the eyes, but with women, darling, it always comes down to bearing."

Well, well.

I thought about the novel, where this woman looks down her nose at me every time we meet and pays me to walk away from her son, and I found the whole thing very funny.

Delphine was the perfect daughter-in-law in her mind. Me, the knockoff, was a markdown.

Here's the thing she doesn't know she's doing. She's a snob to the bone, and this snob has just run the math. The girl in front of her outranks her precious Delphine on every line that counts, and there's no dismissing her. So she bows.

In the novel she spends the early days trying to shoo me off, and when I won't go she nitpicks instead. Too much salt in my cooking, unhealthy. His shirts scented wrong after I washed them, gave him a rash. I was Roman's little stepmother, she was his real one, and the real mother decided the stepmother wasn't serving well enough and itched to take over.

Every trip to the estate I was treated like the help. A house that size, and I had to watch her face just to eat two dried plums.

Call it stinginess if you like. I'd call it what it is. She grinds your dignity down on purpose, until you believe you deserve nothing.

Right now that same woman had my arm looped warmly through hers and was steering me off to one side, and it turned out the reason she'd been so desperate to find me was that Roman had talked up the longevity program to her.

She was past fifty, and her hunger to outrun age ran that much hotter for it.

"Our clients tend to be younger. High-net-worth..." Because the young don't tend to have incidents.

"But Roman and I are good friends. If this is something you want, I'll do my best to make it happen." Money that walks up to your door is money you'd be a fool to leave.

"I just can't promise results this good, and at-home care can never replace a hospital." Keep it light day to day, rush her in the second anything goes sideways, and take out a few more policies on her while we're at it.

I already had the full bespoke package mapped out in my head.

"That's fine. I want to try," she said, eager.

What could I possibly say to that? I signed her up through my tears, and because she was well past our age ceiling, I doubled the rate. Four million a year off her alone.

I forgot to mention. In the novel, the doormat doesn't just wait on Roman. She waits on his mother too, inventing new dishes for her, bringing skincare every single visit.

Her reward is that she isn't allowed upstairs.

There's an empty room in the estate that belongs to Delphine. The doormat isn't permitted a single night in it.

Their first New Year together, she works the kitchen till past midnight, and at the end his mother tells Roman that Marlowe's already drunk and gone to bed, and sends the doormat home to finish the cleanup.

She walks out alone into the sound of the New Year bells, into a wide white blur of snow.

That was the ending they wrote for me. I tore the page out.

Chapter 10

That night Mrs. Ashford invited me to stay over. I followed her upstairs and took a look at the famous second floor.

"Well? This room was made up especially for you."

I looked it over. Slowly. Carefully. I kept looking until the woman began to go tense.

"...Never mind. I think I'll head home after all."

I picked up my bag, deeply unimpressed, and turned to go.

Her face went white on the spot. I didn't like the room. I'd found it beneath me.

And I will never, as long as I live, tell her what was wrong with it.

She gets to stand there and guess, nerves fraying, exactly the way the doormat used to guess at hers.

Some time later, Mrs. Ashford came looking for me again.

I told my secretary, "Say I'm in a meeting. Put her in the reception room and let her wait."

"Of course, Ms. Vance."

No real malice in it. I just wanted her to sit a while. I didn't want to be the dog that comes running the second she calls, and every storyline that touches this woman in the novel is pure melodrama