Taylor Maid
by Tara Lain
Blurb:
He’ll marry the maid to get $50 million but a secret could queer the deal.
Taylor Fitzgerald needs a last-minute bride.
On the eve of his twenty-fifth birthday, the billionaire’s son discovers that despite being gay, he must marry a woman before midnight or lose a fifty-million-dollar inheritance. So he hightails it to Las Vegas… where he meets the beautiful maid Ally May.
There’s just one rather significant problem: Ally is actually Alessandro Macias, son of a tough Brazilian hotel magnate. But if Ally keeps pretending to be a girl for a little while longer, is there a chance they might discover this marriage is tailor-made?
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Cross-Dressing in Literature and Life
Hi and welcome! I’m Tara Lain and today I’m introducing my new book, Taylor Maid. This is a champagne cocktail of a book, full of fun and tropes. A dominant theme in the book is cross-dressing. One of my heroes dresses as a woman in order to hide from his father who wants to marry him off. And, of course, all kinds of mistaken identity and hijinks ensue.
In this theme, the book falls into a long-standing tradition. Cross-dressing has been an important part of history, both in literature and life. Most frequently, women dress as men in order to participate in the greater freedom that men have enjoyed throughout the years. We all know stories of women who passed as boys in order to fight in wars. The American west tradition included many so-called men who were discovered to be female on their deathbeds. In literature, no one loved cross-dressing more than Shakespeare, and fully one fifth of his plays like Cymbeline, The Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night include female characters dressed as men. In As You Like It, he goes so far as to have his woman pretending to be a man dress up as a woman to help a friend.
Men cross-dressed as women are less frequent but still prominent in history. Odysseus’s mother dressed him as a girl to prevent his having to fight for the Greek army, though he was eventually uncovered by Achilles. In the Mahabharata, Arjuna in exile disguises himself as a women and becomes a dance teacher. Men sometimes dress as women with seduction on their minds. Odin dressed as a female healer in order to seduce Rindr and Lord Byron’s Don Juan masqueraded as female to enter a harem. Men have dressed as women to be spies as in the true story of M. Butterfly, and as part of religious traditions.
As for me, I find cross-dressing fascinating and have introduced in into my books several times for different purposes from being a drag queen to spying – in Hearts and Flour, Genetic Celebrity, Canning the Center, Sinders and Ash, Wolf in Gucci Loafers, and now in Taylor Maid. I figure if Shakespeare could have his girls realistically confused for boys, turnabout is fair play!
I hope you enjoy Taylor Maid with all its fun themes – marriage of convenience, mistaken identity, “must marry or lose the inheritance”, and, of course, boy dressed as girl.
By the time Taylor pulled into the parking garage at his condominium, his skin felt too tight in a lot of places, most of them below the belt. Ally had spent the whole drive alternately stretching out his long legs in their heels and pulling them up under him, showing off yards of bare, smooth, hard man flesh from ankle to hip. Taylor had never known he liked men in drag, but Jesus, his tastes seemed to form around everything Alessandro. The guy simply turned him on. He’d done it as a woman, and now, as a man in woman’s clothing, he made Taylor want to commit lewd acts in public places—like the side of the freeway. And he seemed oblivious to his effect on Taylor, which only added to the allure.
Watching those same long legs striding down the hall in front of him made Taylor seriously glad he had a coat to cover the telephone pole in his pants. Ally waited at the door for Taylor to open it. He needed to get him a key.
As Ally walked in, he glanced back. “How soon do they want to do the questioning?”
Taylor closed the door. Could he take off his coat, or would the fire stick still show? “Smith just said ‘soon.’ If I know Laughton, he wants to give us as little time to prepare as possible.”
“So we better start practicing.” Ally unwrapped the belt and slipped Taylor’s coat off his shoulders. As Taylor hung it in the hall closet, Ally walked into the open living room, ass swaying in the clingy knit.
Blast off. Taylor’s cock leaped, and his brain fried. “Ally?”
“Yes?” He looked over his shoulder in a move so unconsciously flirtatious, he should have been spanked, and that sounded like way too good an idea.
“Are you gay?”
That deep, sultry laugh rumbled through his padded chest. “Are you kidding?”
“So your father wants you to marry—”
“A woman. Wealthy and influential. The type who can do good for the family and persuade his son out of his perversion at the same time.”
“No wonder you ran.”
“Yes. Can you imagine living such a life? Not only married to a member of the wrong sex, but one you don’t even know or like?” He shuddered.
“You didn’t know me.”
His lips curved. “True. But I was desperate—”
Taylor’s stomach sank.
“And I liked you immediately. Instinctively.” He kicked off his shoes, sighed, and picked them up. “Besides, I thought you were hot.” With a twitch of that infernal butt, he walked down the hall.
Taylor gasped for breath. Hot? He thinks I’m hot? Ripping at his tie and unbuttoning his shirt at the same time, he ran to his room, threw his clothes on the bed, and pulled on the sweats and T-shirt he liked to sleep in. Hot. He thinks I’m hot.
Okay, get some control.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth. In through the—bullshit!
About the Author
Tara Lain writes the Beautiful Boys of Romance in LGBT erotic romance novels that star her unique, charismatic heroes. Her first novel was published in January of 2011 and she’s now somewhere around book 23. Her bestselling novels have garnered awards for Best Series, Best Contemporary Romance, Best Ménage, Best LGBT Romance, Best Gay Characters, and Tara has been named Best Writer of the Year in the LRC Awards. In her other job, Tara owns an advertising and public relations firm. She often does workshops on both author promotion and writing craft. She lives with her soulmate husband and her soulmate dog in Laguna Beach, California, a pretty seaside town where she sets a lot of her books. Passionate about diversity, justice, and new experiences, Tara says on her tombstone it will say “Yes”!
You can find Tara at
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I haven’t got the chance to read this but a friend of mine had and liked it; so am adding this to my shelves.
Congrats on the new release, Tara!
Thank you dtorini! I hope you love it! : )
This book is wonderful, loved all of the characters, except for Taylor’s dad.
Thank you, dear. He is a pretty nasty dad! : )
Thank you for the interesting post involving cross dressing.
Thank you H.B. I loved the trope — and the fact of cross dressing. One reader said it was hard for her to believe that Taylor didn’t guess Ally was a guy for so long, but there are many documented cases of both men and women going through entire lives and only being discovered to be the opposite gender on their death beds! : )
The book sounds amazing!
Thank you, Sabrina! : )
Thank you so much to Love Bytes for helping me launch Taylor Maid. Delighted to be here! : )
I am amazed by cross dressers. My partner is no longer surprised when I show him a picture of a gorgeous girl and it is actually a guy. Occasionally the opposite. I am especially impressed with some Japanese cosplayers and Kpop stars that look stunning and very convincing dressed as the opposite sex. I find there is a lot of prejudice against people who just like wearing clothes typically assigned to the opposite sex when it is not for a performance. It is a shame people can’t just wear what they feel comfortable or special in.