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.”
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
