Achilles was something else.
It was the power that seemed to emanate from him, even when he was doing nothing but sitting quietly. It was the fierce hit of his intelligence, that brooding, unmistakable cleverness that seemed to wrap around him like a cloud. It was something in the way he looked at her, as if he saw too much and too deeply and no matter that Valentina’s unreadable game face was the envy of Europe. Besides all that, there was something untamed about him. Fierce.
Something about him left her breathless. Entirely too close to reeling.
“Do you require a gold star every time you make a statement?” she asked, careful not to look at him. It was too hard to look away. She’d discovered that on the plane ride from London—and he was a lot closer now. So close she was sure she could feel the heat of his body from where she sat. “I’ll be certain to make a note to celebrate you more often. Sir.”
Valentina didn’t know what she was doing. In Natalie’s job, certainly, but also with this man in general. She’d learned one thing about powerful people—particularly men—and it was that they did not enjoy being challenged. Under any circumstances. What made her think Achilles would go against type and magically handle this well?
But she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
And the fact that she had never been one to challenge much of anything before hardly signified. Or maybe that was why she felt so unfettered, she thought. Because this wasn’t her life. This wasn’t her remote father and his endless expectations for the behavior of his only child. This was a strange little bit of role-playing that allowed her to be someone other than Princess Valentina for a moment. A few weeks, that was all. Why not challenge Achilles while she was at it? Especially if no one else ever did?
She could feel his gaze on the side of her face, that brooding dark gold, and she braced herself. Then made sure her expression was nothing but serene as she turned to face him.
It didn’t matter. There was no minimizing this man. She could feel the hit of him—like a fist—deep in her belly. And then lower.
“Are you certain you were not hit in the head?” Achilles asked, his dark voice faintly rough with the hint of his native Greek. “Perhaps in the bathroom at the airport? I fear that such places can often suffer from slippery floors. Deadly traps for the unwary.”
“It was only a bathroom,” she replied airily. “It wasn’t slippery or otherwise notable in any way.”
“Are you sure?” And something in his voice and his hard gaze prickled into her then. Making her chest feel tighter.
Valentina did not want to talk about the bathroom, much less anything that had happened there. And there was something in his gaze that worried her—but that was insane. He couldn’t have any idea that she’d run into her own twin. How could he? Valentina had been unaware that there was the faintest possibility she might have a twin until today.
Which made her think about her father and his many, many lectures about his only child in a new, unfortunate light. But Valentina thrust that aside. That was something to worry about when she was a princess again. That was a problem she could take up when she was back in Murin Castle.
Here, now, she was a secretary. An executive assistant, no more and no less.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Casilieris.” She let her smile deepen and ignored the little hum of...something deep inside her when his gaze seemed to catch fire. “Are you trying to tell me that you need a bathroom? Should I ask the driver to stop the car right here in the middle of the George Washington Bridge?”
She expected him to get angry again. Surely that was what had been going on before, back in London before the plane had taken off. She’d seen temper all over that fierce, hard face of his and gleaming hot in his gaze. More than that, she’d felt it inside her. As if the things he felt echoed within her, winding her into knots. She felt something a whole lot like a chill inch its way down her spine at that notion.
But Achilles only smiled. And that was far more dangerous than merely devastating.
“Miss Monette,” he said and shook his head, as if she amused him, when she could see that the thing that moved over that ruthless face of his was far too intense to be simple amusement. “I had no idea that beneath your officious exterior you’ve been hiding a comedienne all this time. For five years you’ve worked at my side and never let so much as a hint of this whimsical side of your personality out into the open. Whatever could have changed?”
He knows. The little voice inside her was certain—and terrified.
But it was impossible. Valentina knew it was impossible, so she made herself smile and relax against the leather seat as if she’d never in her life been so at her ease. Very much as if she was not within scant inches of a very large, very powerful, very intense male who was eyeing her the way gigantic lions and tigers and jaguars eyed their food. When they were playing with it.
She’d watched enough documentaries and made enough state visits to African countries to know firsthand.
“Perhaps I’ve always been this amusing,” she suggested, managing to tamp down her hysteria about oversize felines, none of which was particularly helpful at the moment. “Perhaps you’ve only recently allowed yourself to truly listen to me.”
“I greatly enjoy listening to you,” Achilles replied. There was a laziness in the way he sat there, sprawled out in the backseat of his car, that dark gold gaze on hers. A certain laziness, yes—but Valentina didn’t believe it for a second. “I particularly enjoy listening to you when you are doing your job perfectly. Because you know how much I admire perfection. I insist on it, in fact. Which is why I cannot understand why you failed to provide it today.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
But she knew what he meant. She’d been on the plane and she’d been the one to fail repeatedly to do what was clearly her job. She’d hung up on one conference call and failed entirely to connect another. She’d expected him to explode—if she was honest, there was a part of her that wanted him to explode, in the way that anyone might want to poke and poke and poke at some kind of blister to see if it would pop. But he hadn’t popped. He hadn’t lost his temper at all, despite the fact that it had been very clear to Valentina very quickly that she was a complete and utter disaster at doing whatever it was that Natalie did.
When Achilles had stared at her in amazement, however, she hadn’t made any excuses. She’d only gazed right back, serenely, as if she’d meant to do whatever utterly incorrect thing it was. As if it was all some kind of strategy.
She could admit that she hadn’t really thought the job part through. She been so busy fantasizing herself into some kind of normal life that it had never occurred to her that, normal or not, a life was still a whole life. She had no idea how to live any way but the way she’d been living for almost thirty years. How remarkably condescending, she’d thought up there on Achilles Casilieris’s jet, that she’d imagined she could simply step into a job—especially one as demanding as this appeared to be—and do it merely because she’d decided it was her chance at something “normal.”
Valentina had found the entire experience humbling, if she was honest, and it had been only a few hours since she’d switched places with Natalie in London. Who knew what else awaited her?
But Achilles was still sprawled there beside her, that unnerving look of his making her skin feel too small for her bones.
“Natalie, Natalie,” he murmured, and Valentina told herself it was a good thing he’d used that name. It wasn’t her name, and she needed the reminder. This wasn’t about her. It wasn’t her job to advocate for Natalie when the other woman might not wish for her to do anything like that. She was on a fast track to losing Natalie her job, and then what? Valentina