The butler : a novel
(Book)

"The moment the plane touched down at Ministro Pistorini Airport in Buenos Aires, Joachim von Hartmann knew in every fiber of his being that he was home. It was almost as if his heart and soul, and even his body, knew it. He had left as a boy of seventeen, twenty-five years before, when he moved to France with his mother, and new French stepfather. Eight years later, he went to England on a lark, which turned into a worthy career for the past seventeen years. His roots are now firmly planted in Europe, but he realized as he breathed the air of Buenos Aires that his heart had remained here"--

When Joachim von Hartmann moved from Buenos Aires to Paris with his mother in his late teens, his twin stayed behind... and entered a dark world. Fascinated by the precision and intense demands of training to be a butler, Joachim went on to work in some of the grandest homes in England. His brother never reappeared. Olivia White has given ten years of her life to her failed magazine, and has come to Paris to reinvent herself. Joachim takes a job working for Olivia as a lark and enjoys the whimsy of a different life. Then he learns the family history he never knew: a criminal grandfather who died in prison, the wealthy father who abandoned him, and the dangerous criminal his twin has become. Stripped of their old roles, Olivia and Joachim are first employer and employee, then friends... then a man and woman who reach a place where the past doesn't matter and only what they are living now is true. -- adapted from jacket