Page 44 of The Billionaire and the Maid

She nods and climbs down. “Wow.” She spins around again and grins at me. “Thanks for showing me this. It’s cool.”

“You’re welcome. Feel free to borrow any books you want.”

“Really?” she asks as her fingers trail over the spines of the books nearest her.

“Of course.”

“Holy shit, you have all the original Nancy Drew books?” she asks as she pulls one off a shelf.

“I guess. My grandmother loved that series,” I explain because I’d completely forgotten about it until now.

“I’m going to borrow this. If that’s OK,” she adds as she holds it up.

“Sure.”

She sits down on a wingback chair by the windows and looks up at me. I set the plates down on the nearest desk and lean against a shelf.

“We’ll be fine,” I assure her, already knowing what she’s going to say.

“But…what if someone finds out?” she asks.

“They won’t, and in two more weeks, it won’t matter anyway,” I point out.

“If you say so, I just don’t like it,” she says as she twirls a piece of her blonde hair around her finger, a motion she’d done when we were kids.

“Ella, it’ll be fine.”

She looks up at me and her eyes look a little misty. I lean down and place my hands on the arms of the chair.

“But what if Nancy ruins things? She hates me,” Ella says, her bottom lip quivering.

“I won’t let her.”

“Y-you don’t know her, Chase. She’s evil,” Ella says as she wipes at her eyes.

I place a hand on her cheek and look into her eyes.

“It’ll be fine. I promise you. Itwillbe fine,” I say, mostly to reassure her but also to reassure myself. We’re so close to the board voting. I just need a few more days. And then…well, we’ll see what happens. I don’t want to let Ella go, but I know I can’t keep her, at least not right now.

CHAPTERSEVENTEEN

Ella

I scrubbed Mr. Lambert’s tub for twenty minutes straight yesterday before I realized what I was doing. Why do I care if Chase’s plan falls apart? He won’t rat me out. Plus, the replica vase he found is identical. I’m fine. Right? I can trust him. I think. No, I can. Because Chase is Ace. And I’d trust Ace with my life. I mean, he literally saved it once.

I tug on an old pair of riding boots that Greta gave me a few days ago. Well, I’m pretty sure it was her. I found them on the landing outside my door. She won’t fess up to it, but who else would gift me riding boots?

I still need to talk to her about her Lorenzo relationship thing. I walk to Elisha’s café so I can get a coffee before meeting Chase to go see Lorenzo at his stables. Maybe I can sneakily ask him about Greta?

“The usual?” Elisha asks as I walk up to the counter.

“Yep,” I reply as I drop some cash on the counter. She slides it back to me.

“It’s your fifth cup this month. It’s free,” she says.

I give her a pointed look because we both know I already got my free fifth cup last week. She shrugs and walks over to the cappuccino maker. I look around the café. It’s pretty empty at the moment, so I take a seat at the small bar area at the end of the counter and wait for my drink.

“Greta’s seeing Lorenzo,” I burst out not able to withhold the information any longer.

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