by Kendrick, Sharon; Lawrence, Kim; Crews, Caitlin; Milburne, Melanie
But that did nothing to ease the temptation.
“I think what you need is a good night’s sleep,” he told her, like some kind of absurd nurturer. Something he had certainly never tried to be for anyone else in the whole of his life. He would have doubted it was possible—and he refused to analyze that. “Perhaps it will clear your head and remind you of who you are. Jet lag can make that so very confusing, I know.”
He thought she might have scuttled from the room at that, filled with her own shame if there was any decency in the world, but he was learning that this princess was not at all who he expected her to be. She swallowed, hard. And he could still see that darkness in her eyes. But she didn’t look away from him. And she certainly didn’t scuttle anywhere.
“I know exactly who I am, Mr. Casilieris,” she said, very directly, and the lenses in her glasses made her eyes seem that much greener. “As I’m certain you do, too. Jet lag makes a person tired. It doesn’t make them someone else entirely.”
And when she turned to walk from the room then, it was with her head held high, graceful and self-contained, with no apparent second thoughts. Or anything the least bit like shame. All he could read on her as she went was that same distracting elegance that was already too far under his skin.
Achilles couldn’t seem to do a thing but watch her go.
And when the sound of her footsteps had faded away, deep into the far reaches of the penthouse, he turned back to the wild gleam of Manhattan on the other side of his windows. Frenetic and frenzied. Light in all directions, as if there was nothing more to the world tonight than this utterly mad tangle of life and traffic and people and energy and it hardly mattered what he felt so high above it. It hardly mattered at all that he’d betrayed himself. That this woman who should have been nothing to him made him act like someone he barely recognized.
And her words stayed with him. I know exactly who I am. They echoed around and around in his head until it sounded a whole lot more like an accusation.
As if she was the one playing this game, and winning it, after all.
CHAPTER FOUR
AS THE DAYS PASSED, Valentina thought that she was getting the hang of this assistant thing—especially if she endeavored to keep a minimum distance between herself and Achilles when the night got a little too dark and close. And at all other times, for that matter.
She’d chalked up those odd, breathless moments in his office that first night to the strangeness of inhabiting someone else’s life. Because it couldn’t be anything else. Since then, she hadn’t felt the need to say too much. She hadn’t defended herself—or her version of Natalie. She’d simply tried to do the job that Natalie, apparently, did so well she was seen by other employees of the Casilieris Company as superhuman.
With every day she became more accustomed to the demands of the job. She felt less as if she really ought to have taken Achilles up on his offer of a parachute and more as if this was something she could handle. Maybe not well or like superhuman Natalie, but she could handle it all the same in her own somewhat rudimentary fashion.
What she didn’t understand was why Achilles hadn’t fired her already. Because it was perfectly clear to Valentina that her version of handling things in no way lived up to Achilles’s standards.
And if she’d been any doubt about that, he was the first to tell her otherwise.
His corporate offices in Manhattan took up several floors at one of Midtown’s most esteemed addresses. There was an office suite set aside for him, naturally enough, that sprawled across the top floor and looked out over Manhattan as if to underscore the notion that Achilles Casilieris was in every way on top of the world. Valentina was settled in the immediate outer office, guarded by two separate lines of receptionist and secretarial defense should anyone make it through security. It wasn’t to protect Achilles, but to further illuminate his importance. And Natalie’s, Valentina realized quickly.
Because Natalie controlled access to Achilles. She controlled his schedule. She answered his phone and his email, and was generally held to have that all-important insight into his moods.
“What kind of day is it?” the senior vice presidents would ask her as they came in for their meetings, and the fact they smiled as they said it didn’t make them any less anxious to hear her answer.
Valentina quickly discovered that Natalie controlled a whole lot more than simple access. There was a steady line of people at her desk, coming to her to ask how best to approach Achilles with any number of issues, or plot how to avoid approaching him with the things they knew he’d hate. Over the course of her first week in New York City, Valentina found that almost everyone who worked for Achilles tried to run things past her first, or used her to gauge his reactions. Natalie was less the man’s personal assistant, she realized, and more the hub around which his businesses revolved. More than that, she thought he knew it.
“Take that up with Natalie,” he would say in the middle of a meeting, without even bothering to look over at her. Usually while cutting someone off, because even he appeared not to want to hear certain things until Natalie had assessed them first.
“Come up with those numbers and run them past Natalie,” he would tell his managers, and sometimes he’d even sound irritated while he said such things.
“Why are you acting as if you have never worked a day in my company?” he’d demanded of one of his brand managers once. “I am not the audience for your uncertain first drafts, George. How can you not know this?”
Valentina had smiled at the man in the meeting, and then had been forced to sit through a brainstorming/therapy session with him afterward, all the while hoping that the noncommittal things she’d murmured were, at the very least, not the opposite of the sort of things Natalie might have said.
Not that she texted Natalie to find out. Because that might have led to a conversation Valentina didn’t really want to have with her double about strange, tense moments in the darkness with her employer.
She didn’t know what she was more afraid of. That Natalie had never had any kind of tension with Achilles and Valentina was messing up her entire life…or that she did. That tension was just what Achilles did.
Valentina concentrated on her first attempt at a normal life, complete with a normal job, instead. And whether Achilles was aware of it or not, Natalie had her fingers in everything.
Including his romantic life.
The first time Valentina had answered his phone to find an emotional woman on the other end, she’d been appalled.
“There’s a crying woman on the phone,” she’d told Achilles. It had taken her a day or so to realize that she wasn’t only allowed to walk in and out of his office when necessary, but encouraged to do so. That particular afternoon Achilles had been sitting on the sofa in his office, his feet up on his coffee table as he’d scowled down at his laptop. He shifted that scowl to her instead, in a way that made Valentina imagine that whatever he was looking at had something to do with her—
But that was ridiculous. There was no her in this scenario. There was only Natalie, and Valentina very much doubted Achilles spent his time looking up his assistant on the internet.
“Why are you telling me this?” he’d asked her shortly. “If I wanted to know who called me, I would answer my phones myself.”
“She’s crying about you,” Valentina had said. “I assume she’s calling to share her emotions with you, the person who caused them.”
“And I repeat—why are you telling me this.” This time it wasn’t a question, and his scowl deepened. “You are my assistant. You are responsible for fielding these calls. I’m shocked you’re even mentioning another crying female. I thought you stopped bringing them to my attention years ago.”
Valentina had blinked at that. “Aren’t you at all interested in why this woman is upset?”
“No.”
“Not at all. Not the slightest bit interested.” She studied his fierce face as if he was an alien. In moments like this, she thought he must have been. “You don’t even know which woman I’m referring to, do you?”
“Miss Monette.” He bit out that name as if the taste of it irritated him, and Valentina couldn’t have said why it put her back up when it wasn’t even her name. “I have a number of mistresses, none of whom call that line to manufacture emotional upsets. You are already aware of this.” And he’d set his laptop aside, as if he needed to concentrate fully on Valentina before him. It had made her spine prickle, from her neck to her bottom and back up again. “Please let me know exactly what agenda it is we are pursuing today, that you expect to interrupt me in order to have a discussion about nuisance calls. When I assure you, the subject does not interest me at all. Just as it did not interest me five years ago, when you vowed to stop bothering me about them.”
There was a warning in that. Valentina had heard it, plain as day. But she hadn’t been able to heed it. Much less stop herself.
“To be clear, what you’re telling me is that tears do not interest you,” she’d said instead of beating a retreat to her desk the way she should have. She’d kept her tone even and easy, but she doubted that had fooled either one of them.
“Tears interest me least of all.” She’d been sure that there was a curve in that hard mouth of his then, however small.
And what was the matter with her that she’d clung to that as if it was some kind of lifeline? As if she needed such a thing?
As if what she really wanted was his approval, when she hadn’t switched places with Natalie for him. He’d had nothing to do with it. Why couldn’t she seem to remember that?
“If this is a common occurrence for you, perhaps you need to have a think about your behavior,” she’d pointed out. “And your aversion to tears.”
There had definitely been a curve in his mouth then, and yet somehow that hadn’t made Valentina any easier.
“This conversation is over,” he’d said quietly. Though not gently. “Something I suggest you tell the enterprising actress on the phone.”
She’d thought him hideously cold, of course. Heartless, even. But the calls kept coming. And Valentina had quickly realized what she should perhaps have known from the start—that it would be impossible for Achilles to actually be out there causing harm to so many anonymous women when he never left the office. She knew this because she spent almost every hour of every day in his company. The man literally had no time to go out there smashing hearts left and right, the way she’d be tempted to believe he did if she paid attention only to the phone calls she received, laden with accusations.
“Tell him I’m falling apart,” yet another woman on the phone said on this latest morning, her voice ragged.
“Sorry, but what’s your name again?” Valentina asked, as brightly as possible. “It’s only that he’s been working rather hard, you see. As he tends to do. Which would, of course, make it extremely difficult for him to be tearing anyone apart in any real sense.”
The woman had sputtered. But Valentina had dutifully taken her name into Achilles when he next asked for his messages.
“I somewhat doubted the veracity of her claim,” Valentina murmured. “Given that you were working until well after two last night.”
Something she knew very well since that had meant she’d been working even longer than that.
Achilles laughed. He was at his desk today, which meant he was framed by the vertical thrust of Manhattan behind him. And still, that look in his dark gold gaze made the city disappear. “As well you should. I have no idea who this woman is. Or any of them.” He shrugged. “My attorneys are knee-deep in paternity suits, and I win every one of them.”
Valentino was astonished by that. Perhaps that was naive. She’d certainly had her share of admirers in her day, strange men who claimed an acquaintance or who sent rather disturbing letters to the palace—some from distant prisons in foreign countries. But she certainly never had men call up and try to pretend they had relationships with her to her.
Then again, would anyone have told her if they had? That sat on her a bit uneasily, though she couldn’t have said why. She only knew that his gaze was like a touch, and that, too, seemed to settle on her like a weight.
“It’s amazing how many unhinged women seem to think that if they claim they’re dating you, you might go along with it,” she said before she could think better of it.
That dark gold gaze of his lit with a gleam she couldn’t name then. And it sparked something deep inside her, making her fight to draw in a breath. Making her feel unsteady in the serviceable low heels that Natalie favored. Making her wish she’d worn something more substantial than a nice jacket over another pencil skirt. Like a suit of armor. Or her very own brick wall.
“There are always unhinged women hanging about,” Achilles said in that quietly devastating way of his. “Trying to convince me that they have relationships with me that they adamantly do not. Why do you imagine that is, Miss Monette?”
She told herself he couldn’t possibly know that she was one of those women, no matter how his gaze seemed to pin her where she stood. No matter the edge in his voice, or the sharp emphasis he’d put on Miss Monette.
Even if he suspected something was different with his assistant, he couldn’t know. Because no one could know. Because Valentina herself hadn’t known Natalie existed until she’d walked into that bathroom. And that meant all sorts of things, such as the fact that everything she’d been told about her childhood and her birth was a lie. Not to mention her mother.
But there was no way Achilles could know any of that.
“Perhaps it’s you,” she murmured in response. She smiled when his brows rose in that expression of sheer arrogance that never failed to make her feel the slightest bit dizzy. “I only mean that you’re a public figure and people imagine you a certain way based on the kind of press coverage you allow. Unless you plan to actively get out there and reclaim your public narrative, I don’t think there’s any likelihood that it will change.”
“I am not a public figure. I have never courted the public in any way.”
Valentina checked a sigh. “You’re a very wealthy man. Whether you like it or not, the public is fascinated by you.”
Achilles studied her until she was forced to order herself not to fidget beneath the weight of that heavy, intense stare.
“I’m intrigued that you think the very existence of public fascination must create an obligation in me to cater to it,” he said quietly. “It does not. In fact, it has the opposite effect. In me. But how interesting that you imagine you owe something to the faceless masses who admire you.”
Valentina’s lips felt numb. “No masses, faceless or otherwise, admire me, Mr. Casilieris. They have no idea I exist. I’m an assistant, nothing more.”
His hard mouth didn’t shift into one of those hard curves, but his dark gold eyes gleamed, and somehow that made the floor beneath her seem to tilt, then roll.
“Of course you are,” he said, his voice a quiet menace that echoed in her like a warning. Like something far more dangerous than a simple warning. “My mistake.”
Later that night, still feeling as off balance as if the floor really wasn’t steady beneath her feet, Valentina found herself alone with Achilles long after everyone else in the office had gone home.
It had been an extraordinarily long couple of days, something Valentina might have thought was business as usual for the Casilieris Company if so many of the other employees hadn’t muttered about how grueling it was. Beneath their breath and when they thought she couldn’t hear them, that was. The deal that Achilles was so determined to push through had turned out to have more tangles and turns than anyone had expected—especially, it seemed, Achilles. What that meant was long hour after long ho
ur well into the tiny hours of the night, hunched over tables and conference rooms, arguing with fleets of attorneys and representatives from the other side over take-out food from fine New York restaurants and stale coffee.
Valentina was deep into one of the contracts Achilles had slid her way, demanding a fresh set of eyes on a clause that annoyed him, when she noticed that they were the only ones there. The Casilieris Company had a significant presence all over the planet, so there were usually people coming and going at all conceivable hours to be available to different workdays in distant places. Something Valentina had witnessed herself after spending so much time in these offices since she’d arrived in New York.
But when she looked up from the dense and confusing contract language for a moment to give her ever-impending headache a break, she could see from the long conference room table where she sat straight through the glass walls that allowed her to see all the way across the office floor. And there was no one there. No bustling secretaries, no ambitious VPs putting in ostentatiously late hours where the boss could see their vigilance and commitment. No overzealous interns making busy work for themselves in the cubicles. No late-night cleaning crews, who did their jobs in the dark so as not to bother the workers by day. There wasn’t a soul. Anywhere.
Something caught in her chest as she realized that it was only the two of them. Just Valentina and the man across the table from her, whom she was trying very hard not to look at too closely.
It was an extraordinarily unimportant thing to notice, she chastised herself, frowning back down at the contract. They were always alone, really. In his car, on his plane, in his penthouse. Valentina had spent more time with this man, she thought, than with any other save her father.
Her gaze rose from the contract of its own accord. Achilles sat across from her in the quiet of the otherwise empty office, his laptop cracked open before him and a pile of contracts next to the sleek machine. He looked the way he always did at the end of these long days. Entirely too good, something in her whispered—though she shoved that aside as best she could. It did no good to concentrate on things like that, she’d decided during her tenure with him. The man’s appearance was a fact, and it was something she needed to come to terms with, but she certainly didn’t have to ogle him.