The Billionaire's Secret Princess

He thought there was a subtle rebuke in that, no matter how softly she’d said it, and that, too, was new. And unacceptable no matter how prettily she’d voiced it.

Her copper-colored hair gleamed. Her skin glowed as she moved her hands in her lap, which struck him as odd, because Natalie never sat there with her hands folded in her lap like some kind of diffident Catholic schoolgirl. She was always in motion, because she was always working. But tonight, Natalie appeared to be sitting there like some kind of regal Madonna, hands folded in her lap, long, silky legs crossed at the ankles, and an inappropriately serene smile on her face.

If it wasn’t impossible, he would have thought that she really was someone else entirely. Because she looked exactly the same save for all that gold that seemed to wrap itself around her and him, too, making him unduly fascinated with the pulse he could see beating at her throat—except he’d never, ever noticed her that way before.

Achilles did not have time for this, whatever it was. There was entirely too much going on with his businesses at the moment, like the hotel deal he’d been trying to put together for the better part of the last year that was by no means assured. He hadn’t become one of the most feared and fearsome billionaires in the world because he took time off from running his businesses to pretend to care about the personal lives of his employees.

But Natalie wasn’t just any employee. She was the one he’d actually come to rely on. The only person he relied on in the world, to be specific.

“Is there anything you need to tell me?” he asked.

He watched her, perhaps too carefully. It was impossible not to notice the way she flushed slightly at that. That was strange, too. He couldn’t remember a single instance Natalie had ever flushed in response to anything he’d done. And the truth was he’d done a lot. He didn’t hide his flashes of irritation or spend too much time worrying about anyone else’s feelings. Why should he? The Casilieris Company was about profit—and it was about Achilles. Who else’s feelings should matter? One of the things he’d long prized about his assistant was that she never, ever reacted to anything that he did or said or shouted. She just did her job.

But today Natalie had spots of red, high on her elegant cheekbones, and she’d been sitting across from him for whole minutes now without doing a single thing that could be construed as her job.

Elegant? demanded an incredulous voice inside him. Cheekbones?

Since when had Achilles ever noticed anything of the kind? He didn’t pay that much attention to the mistresses he took to his bed—which he deigned to do in the first place only after they passed through all the levels of his application process and signed strict confidentiality agreements. And the women who made it through were in no doubt as to why they were there. It was to please him, not render him disoriented enough to be focusing on their bloody cheekbones.

“Like what, for example?” She asked the question and then she smiled at him, that curve of her mouth that was suddenly wired to the hardest part of him, and echoed inside him like heat. Heat he didn’t want. “I’ll be happy to tell you anything you wish to hear, Mr. Casilieris. That is, after all, my job.”

“Is that your job?” He smiled, and he doubted it echoed much of anywhere. Or was anything but edgy and a little but harsh. “I had started to doubt that you remembered you had one.”

“Because I kept you waiting? That was unusual, it’s true.”

“You’ve never done so before. You’ve never dared.” He tilted his head slightly as he gazed at her, not understanding why everything was different when nothing was. He could see that she was exactly the same as she always was, down to that single freckle centered on her left cheekbone that he wasn’t even aware he’d noticed before now. “Again, has some tragedy befallen you? Were you hit over the head?” He did nothing to hide the warning or the menace in his voice. “You do not appear to be yourself.”

But if he thought he’d managed to discomfit her, he saw in the next moment that was not to be. The flush faded from her porcelain cheeks, and all she did was smile at him again. With that maddeningly enigmatic curve of her lips.

Lips, he noticed with entirely too much of his body, that were remarkably lush.

This was insupportable.

“I am desolated to disappoint you,” she murmured as the plane began to move, bumping gently along the tarmac. “But there was no tragedy.” Something glinted in her green gaze, though her smile never dimmed. “Though I must confess in the spirit of full disclosure that I was thinking of quitting.”

Achilles only watched her idly, as if she hadn’t just said that. Because she couldn’t possibly have just said that.

“I beg your pardon,” he said after a moment passed and there was still that spike of something dark and furious in his chest. “I must have misheard you. You do not mean that you plan to quit this job. That you wish to leave me.”

It was not lost on him that he’d phrased that in a way that should have horrified him. Maybe it would at some point. But today what slapped at him was that his assistant spoke of quitting without a single hint of anything like uncertainty on her face.

And he found he couldn’t tolerate that.

“I’m considering it,” she said. Still smiling. Unaware of her own danger or the dark thing rolling in him, reminding him of how easy it was to wake that monster that slept in him. How disastrously easy.

But Achilles laughed then, understanding finally catching up with him. “If this is an attempt to wrangle more money out of me, Miss Monette, I cannot say that I admire the strategy. You’re perfectly well compensated as is. Overcompensated, one might say.”

“Might one? Perhaps.” She looked unmoved. “Then again, perhaps your rivals have noticed exactly how much you rely on me. Perhaps I’ve decided that I want more than being at the beck and call of a billionaire. Much less standing in as your favorite bit of target practice.”

“It cannot possibly have bothered you that I lost my temper earlier.”

Her smile was bland. “If you say it cannot, then I’m sure you must be right.”

“I lose my temper all the time. It’s never bothered you before. It’s part of your job to not be bothered, in point of fact.”

“I’m certain that’s it.” Her enigmatic smile seemed to deepen. “I must be the one who isn’t any good at her job.”

He had the most insane notion then. It was something about the cool challenge in her gaze, as if they were equals. As if she had every right to call him on whatever she pleased. He had no idea why he wanted to reach across the little space between their chairs and put his hands on her. Test her skin to see if it was as soft as it looked. Taste that lush mouth—

What the hell was happening to him?

Achilles shook his head, as much to clear it as anything else. “If this is your version of a negotiation, you should rethink your approach. You know perfectly well that there’s entirely too much going on right now.”

“Some might think that this is the perfect time, then, to talk about things like compensation and temper tantrums,” Natalie replied, her voice as even and unbothered as ever. There was no reason that should make him grit his teeth. “After all, when one is expected to work twenty-two hours a day and is shouted at for her trouble, one’s thoughts automatically turn to what one lacks. It’s human nature.”

“You lack nothing. You have no time to spend the money I pay you because you’re too busy traveling the world—which I also pay for.”

“If only I had more than two hours a day to enjoy these piles of money.”

“People would kill for the opportunity to spend even five minutes in my presence,” he reminded her. “Or have you forgotten who I am?”

“Come now.” She shook her head at him, and he had the astonishing sense that she was trying to chastise him. Him. “It would not kill you to be more polite, would it?”

Polite.

His own assistant had just lectured him on his manners.

To say that he was reeling hardly began to scratch the surface of Achilles’s reaction.

But then she smiled, and that reaction got more complicated. “I got on the plane anyway. I decided not to quit today.” Achilles could not possibly have missed her emphasis on that final word. “You’re welcome.”

And something began to build inside him at that. Something huge, dark, almost overwhelming. He was very much afraid it was rage.

But that, he refused. No matter what. Achilles left his demons behind him a long time ago, and he wasn’t going back. He refused.

“If you would like to leave, Miss Monette, I will not stop you,” he assured her coldly. “I cannot begin to imagine what has led you to imagine I would try. I do not beg. I could fill your position with a snap of my fingers. I might yet, simply because this conversation is intolerable.”

The assistant he’d thought he knew would have swallowed hard at that, then looked away. She would have smoothed her hands over her skirt and apologized as she did it. She had riled him only a few times over the years, and she’d talked her way out of it in exactly that way. He gazed at her expectantly.

But today, Natalie only sat there with distractingly perfect posture and gazed back at him with a certain serene confidence that made him want to...mess her up. Get his hands in that unremarkable ponytail and feel the texture of all that gleaming copper. Or beneath her snowy-white blouse. Or better yet, up beneath that skirt of hers.

He was so furious he wasn’t nearly as appalled at himself as he should have been.

“I think we both know perfectly well that while you could snap your fingers and summon crowds of candidates for my position, you’d have a very hard time filling it to your satisfaction,” she said with a certainty that...gnawed at him. “Perhaps we could dispense with the threats. You need me.”

He would sooner have her leap forward and plunge a knife into his chest.

“I need no one,” he rasped out. “And nothing.”