Caitlin Crews - The Billionaire's Secret Princess

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 didn’t have to worry about her employment prospects, but she had no idea what the market was like for billionaire’s assistants.

But maybe there was a part of her that already knew that there was no way Natalie Monette was a stranger to her. Certainly not on the genetic level. And that had implications she wasn’t prepared to examine just yet, but she did know that the woman who was in all likelihood her long-lost identical twin did not have to work for Achilles Casilieris unless she wanted to.

How arrogant of you, a voice inside her said quietly. Her Royal Highness, making unilateral decisions for others’ lives without their input.

The voice sounded a little too much like her father’s.

“That is my name,” Valentina said to Achilles, in case there had been any doubt. Perhaps with a little too much force.

But she had the strangest notion that he was...tasting the name as he said it. As if he’d never said it before. Did he call Natalie by her first name? Valentina rather thought not, given that he’d called her Miss Monette when she’d met him—but that was neither here nor there, she told herself. And no matter that she was a woman who happened to know the power of titles. She had many of her own. And her life was marked by those who used the different versions of her titles, not to mention the few who actually called her by her first name.

“I cannot tolerate this behavior,” he said, but it wasn’t in that same infuriated tone he’d used earlier. If anything, he sounded almost...indulgent. But surely that was impossible. “It borders on open rebellion, and I cannot have that. This is not a democracy, I’m afraid. This is a dictatorship. If I want your opinion, I’ll tell you what it is.”

There was no reason her heart should have been kicking at her like that, her pulse so loud in her ears she was sure he must be able to hear it himself.

“What an interesting way to foster employee loyalty,” she murmured. “Really more of a scorch-the-earth approach. Do you find it gets you the results you want?”

“I do not need to breed employee loyalty,” Achilles told her, sounding even lazier than before, those dark eyes of his on hers. “People are loyal to me or they are fired. You seem to have forgotten reality today, Natalie. Allow me to remind you that I pay you so much money that I own your loyalty, just as I own everything else.”

“Perhaps,” and her voice was a little too rough then. A little too shaky, when what could this possibly have to do with her? She was a visitor. Natalie’s loyalty was no concern of hers. “I have no wish to be owned. Does anyone? I think you’ll find that they do not.”

Achilles shrugged. “Whether you wish it or do not, that is how it is.”

“That is why I was considering quitting,” she heard herself say. And she was no longer looking at him. That was still far too dangerous, too disconcerting. She found herself staring down at her hands, folded in her lap. She could feel that she was frowning, when she learned a long, long time ago never to show her feelings in public. “It’s all very well and good for you, of course. I imagine it’s quite pleasant to have minions. But for me, there’s more to life than blind loyalty. There’s more to life than work.” She blinked back a strange heat. “I may not have experienced it myself, but I know there must be.”

“And what do you think is out there?” He shifted in the seat beside her, but Valentina still refused to look back at him, no matter how she seemed almost physically compelled to do just that. “What do you think you’re missing? Is it worth what you are throwing away here today, with this aggressive attitude and the childish pretense that you don’t know your own job?”

“It’s only those who are bored of the world, or jaded, who are so certain no one else could possibly wish to see it.”

“No one is keeping you from roaming about the planet at will,” he told her in a low voice. Too low. So low it danced along her skin and seemed to insinuate itself beneath her flesh. “But you seem to wish to burn down the world you know in order to see the one you don’t. That is not what I would call wise. Would you?”

Valentina didn’t understand why his words seemed to beat beneath her own skin. But she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. And her eyes seemed entirely too full, almost scratchy, with an emotion she couldn’t begin to name.

She was aware of too many things. Of the car as it slid through the Manhattan streets. Of Achilles himself, too big and too masculine in the seat beside her, and much too close besides. And most of all, that oddly weighted thing within her, rolling around and around until she couldn’t tell the difference between sensation and reaction.

And him right there in the middle of it, confusing her all the more.

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