The Billionaire's Secret Princess

His suddenly mysterious assistant only inclined her head, which he realized was no response at all. As if she was merely patronizing him—a notion that made every muscle in his body clench tight.

“You should worry less about your replacement and more about your job,” Achilles gritted out. “I have no idea what makes you think you can speak to me with such disrespect.”

“It is not disrespectful to speak frankly, surely,” she said. Her expression didn’t change, but her green gaze was grave—very much, he thought with dawning incredulity, as if she’d expected better of him.

Achilles could only stare back at her in arrogant astonishment. Was he now to suffer the indignity of being judged by his own assistant? And why was it she seemed wholly uncowed by his amazement?

“Unless you plan to utilize a parachute, it would appear you are stuck right here in your distasteful position for the next few hours,” Achilles growled at her when he thought he could speak without shouting. Shouting was too easy. And obscured his actual feelings. “I’d suggest you use the time to rethink your current attitude.”

He didn’t care for the brilliant smile she aimed at him then, as if she was attempting to encourage him with it. Him. He particularly didn’t like the way it seemed too bright, as if it was lighting him up from the inside out.

“What a kind offer, Mr. Casilieris,” she said in that self-possessed voice of hers that was driving him mad. “I will keep it in mind.”

The plane took off then, somersaulting into the London sky. Achilles let gravity press him back against the seat and considered the evidence before him. He had worked with this woman for five years, and she had never spoken to him like that before. Ever. He hardly knew what to make of it.

But then, there was a great deal he didn’t know what to do with, suddenly. The way his heart pounded against his ribs as if he was in a real temper, when he was not the sort of man who lost control. Of his temper or anything else. He expected nothing less than perfection from himself, first and foremost. And temper made him think of those long-ago days of his youth, and his stepfather’s hovel of a house, victim to every stray whim and temper and fist until he’d given himself over to all that rage and fury inside him and become little better than an animal himself—

Why was he allowing himself to think of such things? His youth was off-limits, even in his own head. What the hell was happening?

Achilles didn’t like that Natalie affected him. But what made him suspicious was that she’d never affected him before. He’d approved when she started to wear those glasses and put her hair up, to make herself less of a target for the less scrupulous men he dealt with who thought they could get to him through expressing their interest in her. But he hadn’t needed her to downplay her looks because he was entranced by her. He hadn’t been.

So what had changed today?

What had emboldened her and, worse, allowed her to get under his skin?

He kept circling back to that bathroom in the airport and the fact she’d walked out of it a different person from the one who’d walked in.

Of course, she wasn’t a different person. Did he imagine the real Natalie had suffered a body snatching? Did he imagine there was some elaborate hoax afoot?

The idea was absurd. But he couldn’t seem to get past it. The plane hit its cruising altitude, and he moved from his chair to the leather couch that took pride of place in the center of the cabin that was set up like one of his high-end hotel rooms. He sat back with his laptop and pretended to be looking through his email when he was watching Natalie instead. Looking for clues.

She wasn’t moving around the plane with her usual focus and energy. He thought she seemed tentative. Uncertain—and this despite the fact she seemed to walk taller than before. As if she’d changed her very posture in that bathroom. But who did something like that?

A different person would have different posture.

It was crazy. He knew that. And Achilles knew further that he always went a little too intense when he was closing a deal, so it shouldn’t have surprised him that he was willing to consider the insane option today. Part of being the sort of unexpected, out-of-the-box thinker he’d always been was allowing his mad little flights of fancy. He never knew where they might lead.

He indulged himself as Natalie sat and started to look through her own bag as if she’d never seen it before. He pulled up the picture of her he kept in his files for security purposes and did an image search on it, because why not.

Achilles was prepared to discover a few photos of random celebrities she resembled, maybe. And then he’d have to face the fact that his favorite assistant might have gone off the deep end. She was right that replacing her would be hard—but it wouldn’t be impossible. He hadn’t overestimated his appeal—and that of his wildly successful company—to pretty much anyone and everyone. He was swamped with applicants daily, and he didn’t even have an open position.

But then none of that mattered because his image search hit gold.

There were pages and pages of pictures. All of his assistant—except it wasn’t her. He knew it from the exquisitely bespoke gowns she wore. He knew it from the jewels that flowed around her neck and covered her hands, drawing attention to things like the perfect manicure she had today—when the Natalie he knew almost never had time to care for her nails like that. And every picture he clicked on identified the woman in them not as Natalie Monette, assistant to Achilles Casilieris, but Her Royal Highness, Princess Valentina of Murin.

Achilles didn’t have much use for royals, or really anyone with inherited wealth, when he’d had to go to so much trouble to amass his own. He’d never been to the tiny Mediterranean kingdom of Murin, mostly because he didn’t have a yacht to dock there during a sparkling summer of endless lounging and, further, didn’t need to take advantage of the country’s famously friendly approach to taxes. But he recognized King Geoffrey of Murin on sight, and he certainly recognized the Murinese royal family’s coat of arms.

It had been splashed all over the private jet he’d seen on the same tarmac as his back in London.

There was madness, Achilles thought then, and then there was a con job that no one would ever suspect—because who could imagine that the person standing in front of them, looking like someone they already knew, was actually someone else?

If he wasn’t mistaken—and he knew he wasn’t, because there were too many things about his assistant today that didn’t make sense, and Achilles was no great believer in coincidence—Princess Valentina of Murin was trying to run a con.

On him.

Which meant a great many things. First, that his actual assistant was very likely pretending to be the princess somewhere, leaving him and her job in the hands of someone she had to know would fail to live up to Achilles’s high standards. That suggested that second, she really wasn’t all that happy in her position, as this princess had dared to throw in his face in a way he doubted Natalie ever would have. But it also suggested that third, Natalie had effectively given her notice.

Achilles didn’t like any of that. At all. But the fourth thing that occurred to him was that clearly, neither this princess nor his missing assistant expected their little switch to be noticed. Natalie, who should have known better, must honestly have believed that he wouldn’t notice an imposter in her place. Or she hadn’t cared much if he did.

That was enraging, on some level. Insulting.

But Achilles smiled as Valentina settled herself across the coffee table from him, with a certain inbred grace that whispered of palaces and comportment classes and a lifetime of genteel manners.

Because she thought she was tricking him.

Which meant he could trick her instead. A prospect his body responded to with great enthusiasm as he studied her, this woman who looked like an underling whom a man in his position could never have touched out of ethical considerations—but wasn’t.

She wasn’t his employee. He didn’t pay her salary, and she wasn’t bound to obey him in anything if she didn’t feel like it.

But she had no idea that he knew that.

Achilles almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

“Let’s get started,” he murmured, as if they’d exchanged no harsh words. He watched confusion move over her face in a blink, then disappear, because she was a royal princess and she was used to concealing her reactions. He planned to have fun with that. The possibilities were endless, and seemed to roll through him like heat. “We have so much work to do, Miss Monette. I hardly know where to begin.”

CHAPTER TWO (#u7c5cd993-b8d9-5a21-8006-d8689f5fc293)

BY THE TIME they landed in New York, Princess Valentina of Murin was second-guessing her spontaneous, impulsive decision to switch places with the perfect stranger she’d found wearing her face in the airport lounge.

Achilles Casilieris could make anyone second-guess anything, she suspected.

“You do not appear to be paying attention,” he said silkily from beside her, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. And who she was. And every dream she’d ever had since she was a girl—that was how disconcerting this man was, even lounging there beside her in the back of a luxury car doing nothing more alarming than sitting.

“I am hanging on your every word,” she assured him as calmly as she could, and then she repeated his last three sentences back to him.

But she had no idea what he was talking about. Repeating conversations she wasn’t really listening to was a skill she’d learned in the palace a long, long time ago. It came in handy at many a royal gathering. And in many longwinded lectures from her father and his staff.

You have thrown yourself into deep, deep water, she told herself now, as if that wasn’t entirely too apparent already. As if it hadn’t already occurred to her that she’d better learn how to swim, and fast.

Achilles Casilieris was a problem.

Valentina knew powerful men. Men who ruled countries. Men who came from centuries upon centuries of power and consequence and wielded it with the offhanded superiority of those who had never imagined not ruling all they surveyed.

But Achilles was in an entirely different league.

He took over the whole of the backseat of the car that had waited for them on the tarmac in the bright and sunny afternoon, looking roomy and spacious from the outside. He’d insisted she sit next to him on the plush backseat that should have been more than able to fit two people with room to spare. And yet Valentina felt crowded, as if he was pressing up against her when he wasn’t. Achilles wasn’t touching her, but still, she was entirely too aware of him.

He took up all the air. He’d done it on his plane, too.