The Little Maid Pretends to Be a Tycoon’s Heiress [The Nineties]

Next book: Conjugate Moonlight

Gentle, devoted heroine vs. aloof hero with strong boundaries

Blurb:

Lin Qiao was abandoned at a train station when she was six. Her mother left with her older half-sister and never came back.

She grew up with her alcoholic, gambling father. At sixteen, she moved to the city and became a maid for the Feng family, the richest family around.

The Fengs weren't cruel to their servants, but the father and sons were a little strange.

Feng Yue would sometimes gaze at her with a shadow in his eyes, as if looking through her at someone else.

The eldest son, Feng Zheng, was cold and distant, yet always mocked her for being uneducated and good for nothing but working as a maid.

Only the younger son, Feng Rui, treated her differently.

He brought her snacks from the city, gave her warm water when she had a fever, and spoke and joked with her gently.

Completely unguarded, Lin Qiao fell for him like a fool.

She didn't know that his singular tenderness had been an act from beginning to end.

She was a target Feng Rui had deliberately put in the spotlight, all to protect the woman he loved.

Later, on a rainy night, Feng Rui got dead drunk. She helped him to his room, but he pinned her down on the bed.

He took her relentlessly that night, whispering countless sweet nothings in her ear.

Lin Qiao thought her wish had finally come true. But when morning came, Feng Rui's eyes held nothing but cold disgust. "Don't get any foolish ideas. How could I ever like you? It was just an act. Who do you think you are?"

He didn't spare her another glance. He left the country with the woman he loved to study abroad, leaving Lin Qiao behind at the Fengs' to endure their scorn and gossip.

Lin Qiao told herself to accept her fate. A country girl like her had no business dreaming of marrying into a wealthy family.

Until one day...

She was kneeling on the floor, scrubbing it, when she looked up and saw a middle-aged lady with her arm linked through that of a beautiful girl about her age.

She had seen that face countless times in her dreams. Her mother.

Oh, so her mother was Feng Yue's cherished first love, and her sister was the daughter she'd had with Feng Yue.

Her mother, the lost love the richest man had found again, even refused to acknowledge her.

Lin Qiao looked at her fingers, bleached white from the disinfectant. So what did that make her?

A daughter hated from the moment she was born? Someone fated to spend her whole life as a maid, tricked out of her heart and her body by a rich city boy?

When Lin Qiao opened her eyes again, she was back at sixteen, holding the high school acceptance letter she'd thrown in the trash in her previous life.

Two people she'd hated most in that life came to mind: her mother, who abandoned her, and Feng Rui, who deceived her.

Suddenly, Lin Qiao saw the way forward. She took the train to the provincial capital and applied for a job at the Fengs' once more.

As the richest man stared at her, lost in thought of his cherished first love, her mother, Lin Qiao chose that moment to "reveal" who she was:

"Dad, actually, I'm the daughter you lost all those years ago."

Didn't her mother favor her older sister?

Then Lin Qiao would borrow her precious daughter's identity for a while, move openly into the Feng home, go to school, and enjoy life as the richest man's daughter.

As for Feng Rui... she could let his father play dad to her for a few years. Being his "older sister" in name should be pretty interesting, right?

*The male lead is the eldest brother, Feng Zheng.

Rebellious, defiant, soft on the outside but resilient within (a faux delicate flower) vs. a deep-thinking, intensely possessive male lead.

The romance begins after the heroine comes of age and their sibling relationship ends.

Theme: A mother's love and self-redemption