“Mr. Casilieris,” she said, lacing her voice with gentle reprove, “I work for you. I don’t understand why you appear to be quite so interested in what you think is happening inside my head today. Especially when you are so mistaken.”
“Am I?”
“Entirely.” She raised her brows at him. “If I could suggest that we concentrate more on matters of business than fictional representations of what might or might not be going on inside my mind, I think we might be more productive.”
“As productive as we were on the flight over?” His voice was a lazy sort of lash, as amused as it was on target.
Valentina only smiled, hoping she looked enigmatic and strategic rather than at a loss.
“Are you lost?” she asked him after a moment, because neither one of them had moved from the great entry that bled into the spacious living room, then soared up two stories, a quiet testament to his wealth and power.
“Careful, Miss Monette,” Achilles said with a certain dark precision. “As delightful as I have found today’s descent into insubordination, I have a limit. It would be in your best interests not to push me there too quickly.”
Valentina had made a study out of humbly accepting all kinds of news she didn’t wish to hear over the years. She bent her head, let her lips curve a bit—but not enough to be called a smile, only enough to show she was feeling...something. Then she simply stood there quietly. It was amazing how many unpleasant moments she’d managed to get through that way.
So she had no earthly idea why there was a part of her that wanted nothing more than to look Achilles straight in his dark eyes and ask him, Or what?
Somehow, thankfully, she refrained.
Servants came in behind them with luggage—some of which Valentina assumed must be Natalie’s and thus hers—but Achilles did not appear to notice them. He kept his attention trained directly on her.
A lesser woman would have been disconcerted, Valentina thought. Someone unused to being the focus of attention, for example. Someone who hadn’t spent a part of every day since she turned eighteen having cameras in her face to record every flutter of her eyelashes and rip apart every facet of whatever she happened to be wearing and how she’d done her hair. Every expression that crossed her face was a headline.
What was a cranky billionaire next to that?
“There’s no need to repair to our chambers after the flight, I think,” he said softly, and Valentina had that odd notion again. That he could see right through her. That he knew things he couldn’t possibly know. “We can get right to it.”
And there was no reason that that should feel almost...dirty. As if he was suggesting—
But, of course, that was absurd, Valentina told herself staunchly. He was Achilles Casilieris. He was renowned almost as much for his prowess in the sheets as he was for his dominance in the boardroom. In some circles, more.
He tended toward the sort of well-heeled women who were mainstays on various charity circuits. Not for him the actresses or models whom so many other men of his stature preferred. That, apparently, was not good enough for Achilles Casilieris. Valentina had found herself with some time on the plane to research it herself, after Achilles had finished the final call she’d failed entirely to set up to his liking and had sat a while, a fulminating stare fixed on her. Then he’d taken himself off to one of the jet’s finely appointed staterooms, and she’d breathed a bit easier.
A bit.
She’d looked around for a good book to read, preferably a paperback romance because who didn’t like hope and happiness with a bit of sex thrown in to make it spicy, but there had been nothing of the sort. Achilles apparently preferred dreary economic magazines that trumpeted out recession and doom from all quarters. Valentina had kicked off her shoes, tucked her legs beneath her on the smooth leather chair she’d claimed for the flight, and indulged herself with a descent into the tabloid and gossip sites she normally avoided. Because she knew how many lies they told about her, so why would she believe anything she read about anyone else?
Still, they were a great way to get a sense of the kind of coverage a man like Achilles suffered, which would surely tell her...something. But the answer was...not much. He was featured in shots from charity events where other celebrities gathered like cows at a trough, but was otherwise not really a tabloid staple. Possibly because he was so sullen and scowling, she thought.
His taste in bedmates, however, was clear even without being splashed across screeching front pages all over the world. Achilles tended toward women who were less celebrated for their faces and more for their actions. Which wasn’t to say they weren’t all beautiful, of course. That seemed to be a requirement. But they couldn’t only be beautiful.
This one was a civil rights attorney of some renown. That one was a journalist who spent most of her time in terrifying war zones. This one had started a charity to benefit a specific cancer that had taken her younger sister. That one was a former Olympic athlete who had dedicated her post-competition life to running a lauded program for at-risk teenagers.
He clearly had a type. Accomplished, beautiful women who did good in the world and who also happened to be wealthy enough all on their own. The uncharitable part of her suspected that last part was because he knew a woman of independent means would not be as interested in his fortune as a woman who had nothing. No gold diggers need apply, clearly.
But the point was, she knew she was mistaken about his potentially suggestive words. Because “assistant to billionaire” was not the kind of profession that would appeal to a man like Achilles. It saved no lives. It bettered nothing.
Valentina found herself glaring at his back as he led her into a lavish office suite on the first level of his expansive penthouse. When she stood in the center of the room, awaiting further instructions, he only crooked a brow. He leaned back against the large desk that stretched across one wall and regarded her with that hot sort of focus that made everything inside her seem to shift hard to the left.
She froze. And then she could have stood there for hours, for all she knew, as surely as if he’d caught her and held her fast in his fists.
“When you are ready, Miss Monette, feel free to take your seat.” His voice was razor sharp, cut through with that same rough darkness that she found crept through her limbs. Lighting her up and making her feel something like sluggish. She didn’t understand it. “Though I do love being kept waiting.”
More chastened than she wanted to admit, Valentina moved to one of the seats set around a table to the right of the desk, at the foot of towering bookshelves stuffed full of serious-looking books, and settled herself in it. When he continued to stare at her as if she was deliberately keeping him waiting, she reached into the bag—Natalie’s bag, which she’d liberated from the bathroom when she’d left the airport with Achilles—until she found a tablet.
A few texts with her double had given her the passwords she needed and some advice.
Just write down everything he says. He likes to forget he said certain things, and it’s always good to have a record. One of my jobs is to function as his memory.
Valentina had wanted to text back her thoughts on that, but had refrained. Natalie might have wanted to quit this job, but that was up to her, not the woman taking her place for a few weeks.
“Anything else?” Achilles’s voice had a dark edge. “Would you like to have a snack? Perhaps a brief nap? Tell me, is there any way that I can make you more comfortable, Miss Monette, such that you might actually take it upon yourself to do a little work today?”
And Valentina didn’t know what came over her. Because she wanted to argue. She, who had made a virtue out of remaining quiet and cordial under any circumstances, wanted to fight. She didn’t understand it. She knew it was Achilles. That there was something in him that made her want to do or say anything to get some kind of reaction. It didn�
�t matter that it was madness. It was something about that look in his eyes. Something about that hard, amused mouth of his.
It was something about him.
But Valentina reminded herself that this was not her life.
This was not her life and this was not her job, and none of this was hers to ruin. She was the steward of Natalie’s life for a little while, nothing more. She imagined that Natalie would be doing the same for her. Maybe breathing a little bit of new life into the tired old royal nonsense she’d find waiting for her at Murin Castle, but that was all. Neither one of them was out to wreck what they found.
And she’d never had any trouble whatsoever keeping to the party line. Doing her father’s bidding, behaving appropriately, being exactly the princess whom everyone imagined she was. She felt that responsibility—to her people, to her bloodline, to her family’s history—deeply. She’d never acted out the way so many of her friends had. She’d never fought against her own responsibilities. It wasn’t that she was afraid to do any of those things, but simply that it had never occurred to her to try. Valentina had always known exactly who she was and what her life would hold, from her earliest days.
So she didn’t recognize this thing in her that wanted nothing more than to cause a commotion. To stand up and throw the tablet she held at Achilles’s remarkably attractive head. To kick over the chair she was sitting in and, while she was at it, that desk of his, too, all brash steel and uncompromising masculinity, just like its owner.
She wanted to do something. Anything. She could feel it humming through her veins, bubbling in her blood. As if something about this normal life she’d tried on for size had infected her. Changed her. When it had only been a few hours.
He’s a ruthless man, something reckless inside her whispered. He can take it.
But this wasn’t her life. She had to protect it, not destroy it, no matter what was moving in her, poking at her, tempting her to act out for the first time in her life.
So Valentina smiled up at Achilles, forced herself to remain serene the way she always did, and got to work.
* * *
It was late into the New York night when Achilles finally stopped torturing his deceitful princess.
He made her go over byzantine contracts that rendered his attorneys babbling idiots. He questioned her on clauses he only vaguely understood himself, and certainly couldn’t expect her to be conversant on. He demanded she prepare memos he had no intention of sending. He questioned her about events he knew she could not possibly know anything about, and the truth was that he enjoyed himself more than he could remember enjoying anything else for quite some time.
When Demetria had bustled in with food, Achilles had waved Valentina’s away.
“My assistant does not like to eat while she works,” he told his housekeeper, but he’d kept his gaze on Valentina while he’d said it.
“I don’t,” she’d agreed merrily enough. “I consider it a weakness.” She’d smiled at him. “But you go right ahead.”
Point to the princess, he’d thought.
The most amazing thing was that Princess Valentina never backed down. Her ability to brazen her way through the things she didn’t know, in fact, was nothing short of astounding. Impressive in the extreme. Achilles might have admired it if he hadn’t been the one she was trying to fool.
“It is late,” he said finally, when he thought her eyes might glaze over at last. Though he would cast himself out his own window to the Manhattan streets below before he’d admit his might, too. “And while there is always more to do, I think it is perhaps wise if we take this as a natural stopping place.”
Valentina smiled at him, tucked up in that chair of hers that she had long since claimed as her own in a way he couldn’t remember the real Natalie had ever done, her green eyes sparkling.
“I understand if you need a rest,” she said sweetly. Too sweetly. “Sir.”
Achilles had been standing at the windows, his back to the mad gleam of Manhattan. But at that, he let himself lean back, his body shifting into something...looser. More dangerous.
And much, much hotter than contracts.
“I worry my hearing has failed me. Because it sounded very much as if you were impugning my manhood.”
“Only if your manhood is so fragile that you can’t imagine it requires a rest,” she said, and aimed a sunny smile at him as if that would take away the sting of her words. “But you are Achilles Casilieris. You have made yourself a monument to manhood, clearly. No fragility allowed.”
“It is almost as if you think debating me like this is some kind of strategy,” he said softly, making no attempt to ratchet back the ruthlessness in his voice. Much less do something about the fire he could feel storming through him everywhere else. “Let me warn you, again, it is only a strategy if your goal is to find yourself without a job and without a recommendation. To say nothing of the black mark I will happily put beside your name.”
Valentina waved a hand in the air, airily, dismissing him. And her possible firing, black marks—all of it. Something else he very likely would have found impressive if he’d been watching her do it to someone else.
“So many threats.” She shook her head. “I understand that this is how you run your business and you’re very successful, but really. It’s exhausting. Imagine how many more bees you could get with honey.”
He didn’t want to think about honey. Not when there were only the two of them here, in this office cushioned by the night outside and the rest of the penthouse. No shared walls on these floors he owned. This late, none of the staff would be up. It was only Achilles and this princess pretending to be his assistant, and the buttery light of the few lamps they’d switched on, making the night feel thick and textured everywhere the light failed to reach.
Like inside him.
“Come here.”
Valentina blinked, but her green gaze was unreadable then. She only looked at him for a moment, as if she’d forgotten that she was playing this game. And that in it, she was his subordinate.
“Come here,” he said again. “Do not make me repeat myself, I beg you. You will not like my response.”
She stood the way she did everything else, with an easy grace. With that offhanded elegance that did things to him he preferred not to examine. And he knew she had no desire to come any closer to him. He could feel it. Her wariness hung between them like some kind of smoke, and it ignited that need inside him. And for a moment he thought she might disobey him. That she might balk—and it was in that moment he thought she’d stay where she was, across the room, that he had understood how very much he wanted her.
In a thousand ways he shouldn’t, because Achilles was a man who did not want. He took. Wanting was a weakness that led only to darkness—though it didn’t feel like a weakness tonight. It felt like the opposite.
But he’d underestimated his princess. Her shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly. And then she glided toward him, head high like some kind of prima ballerina, her face set in the sort of pleasant expression he now knew she could summon and dispatch at will. He admired that, too.
And he’d thrown out that summons because he could. Because he wanted to. And he was experimenting with this new wanting, no matter how little he liked it.
Still, there was no denying the way his body responded as he watched her walk toward him. There was no denying the rich, layered tension that seemed to fill the room. And him, making his pulse a living thing as his blood seemed to heat in his veins.
Something gleamed in that green gaze of hers, but she kept coming. She didn’t stop until she was directly beside him, so close that if she breathed too heavily he thought her shoulder might brush his. He shifted so that he stood slightly behind her, and jutted his chin toward the city laid out before them.
“What do you see when you look out the window
?”
He felt more than saw the glance she darted at him. But then she kept her eyes on the window before them. On the ropes of light stretching out in all hectic directions possible below.
“Is that a trick question? I see Manhattan.”
“I grew up in squalor.” His voice was harsher than he’d intended, but Achilles did nothing to temper it. “It is common, I realize, for successful men to tell stories of their humble beginnings. Americans in particular find these stories inspiring. It allows them to fantasize that they, too, might better themselves against any odds. But the truth is more of a gray area, is it not? Beginnings are never quite so humble as they sound when rich men claim them. But me?” He felt her gaze on him then, instead of the mess of lights outside. “When I use the word squalor, that’s an upgrade.”
Her swallow was audible. Or perhaps he was paying her too close attention. Either way, he didn’t back away.
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”
“When you look through this window you see a city. A place filled with people going about their lives, traffic and isolation.” He shifted so he could look down at her. “I see hope. I see vindication. I see all the despair and all the pain and all the loss that went into creating the man you see before you tonight. Creating this.” And he moved his chin to indicate the penthouse. And the Casilieris Company while he was at it. “And there is nothing that I wouldn’t do to protect it.”
And he didn’t know what had happened to him while he was speaking. He’d been playing a game, and then suddenly it seemed as if the game had started to play him—and it wasn’t finished. Something clutched at him, as if he was caught in the grip of some massive fist.
It was almost as if he wanted this princess, this woman who believed she was tricking him—deceiving him—to understand him.
This, too, was unbearable.
But he couldn’t seem to stop.
“Do you think people become driven by accident, Miss Monette?” he asked, and he couldn’t have said why that thing gripping him seemed to clench harder. Making him sound far more intense than he thought he should have felt. Risking the truth about himself he carried inside and shared with no one. But he still didn’t stop. “Ambition, desire, focus and drive—do you think these things grow on trees? But then, perhaps I’m asking the wrong person. Have you not told me a thousand times that you are not personally ambitious?”
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