Natalie didn’t know why she laughed at that, but she did. More out of commiseration than anything else, as if they really were the same person. And how strange that she almost felt as if they were. “It’s going to be a terrific couple of months all around, then. Mr. Casilieris is in rare form. He’s putting together a particularly dramatic deal and it’s not going his way and he...isn’t used to that. So that’s me working twenty-two-hour days instead of my usual twenty for the foreseeable future, which is even more fun when he’s cranky and snarling.”
“It can’t possibly be worse than having to smile politely while your future husband lectures you about the absurd expectation of fidelity in what is essentially an arranged marriage for hours on end. The absurdity is that he might be expected to curb his impulses for a year or so, in case you wondered. The expectations for me apparently involve quietly and chastely finding fulfillment in philanthropic works, like his sainted absentee mother who everyone knows manufactured a supposed health crisis so she could live out her days in peaceful seclusion. It’s easy to be philanthropically fulfilled while living in isolation in Bavaria.”
Natalie smiled. “Try biting your tongue while your famously short-tempered boss rages at you for no reason, for the hundredth time in an hour, because he pays you to stand there and take it without wilting or crying or selling whinging stories about him to the press.”
Valentina’s smile was a perfect match. “Or the hours and hours of grim palace-vetted pre-wedding press interviews in the company of a pack of advisors who will censor everything I say and inevitably make me sound like a bit of animated treacle, as out of touch with reality as the average overly sweet dessert.”
“Speaking of treats, I also have to deal with the board of directors Mr. Casilieris treats like irritating schoolchildren, his packs of furious ex-lovers each with her own vendetta, all his terrified employees who need to be coached through meetings with him and treated for PTSD after, and every last member of his staff in every one of his households, who like me to be the one to ask him the questions they know will set him off on one of his scorch-the-earth rages.”
They’d moved a little bit closer then, leaning toward each other like friends. Or sisters, a little voice whispered. It should have concerned Natalie like everything else about this. And like everything else, it did and it didn’t. Either way, she didn’t step back. She didn’t insist upon her personal space. She was almost tempted to imagine her body knew something about this mirror image version of her that her brain was still desperately trying to question.
Natalie thought of the way Mr. Casilieris had bitten her head off earlier, and her realization that if she didn’t escape him now she never would. And how this stranger with her face seemed, oddly enough, to understand.
“I was thinking of quitting, to be honest,” she whispered. Making it real. “Today.”
“I can’t quit, I’m afraid,” the impossibly glamorous princess said then, her green eyes alight with something a little more frank than plain mischief. “But I have a better idea. Let’s switch places. For a month, say. Six weeks at the most. Just for a little break.”
“That’s crazy,” Natalie said.
“Insane,” Valentina agreed. “But you might find royal protocol exciting! And I’ve always wanted to do the things everyone else in the world does. Like go to a real job.”
“People can’t switch places.” Natalie was frowning. “And certainly not with a princess.”
“You could think about whether or not you really want to quit,” Valentina pointed out. “It would be a lovely holiday for you. Where will Achilles Casilieris be in six weeks’ time?”
“He’s never gone from London for too long,” Natalie heard herself say, as if she was considering it.
Valentina smiled. “Then in six weeks we’ll meet in London. We’ll text in the meantime with all the necessary details about our lives, and on the appointed day we’ll just meet up and switch back and no one will ever be the wiser. Doesn’t that sound like fun?” Her gaze met Natalie’s with something like compassion. “And I hope you won’t mind my saying this, but you do look as if you could use a little fun.”
“It would never work.” Natalie realized after she spoke that she still hadn’t said no. “No one will ever believe I’m you.”
Valentina waved a hand between them. “How would anyone know the difference? I can barely tell myself.”
“People will take one look at me and know I’m not you,” Natalie insisted, as if that was the key issue here. “You look like a princess.”
If Valentina noticed the derisive spin she put on that last word out of habit, she appeared to ignore it.
“You too can look like a princess. This princess, anyway. You already do.”
“There’s a lifetime to back it up. You’re elegant. Poised. You’ve had years of training, presumably. How to be a diplomat. How to be polite in every possible situation. Which fork to use at dinner, for God’s sake.”
“Achilles Casilieris is one of the wealthiest men alive. He dines with as many kings as I do. I suspect that as his personal assistant, Natalie, you have, too. And have likely learned how to navigate the cutlery.”
“No one will believe it,” Natalie whispered, but there was no heat in it.
Because maybe she was the one who couldn’t believe it. And maybe, if she was entirely honest, there was a part of her that wanted this. The princess life and everything that went with it. The kind of ease she’d never known—and a castle besides. And only for a little while. Six short weeks. Scarcely more than a daydream.
Surely even Natalie deserved a daydream. Just this once.
Valentina’s smile widened as if she could scent capitulation in the air. She tugged off the enormous, eye-gouging ring on her left hand and placed it down on the counter between them. It made an audible clink against the marble surface.
“Try it on. I dare you. It’s an heirloom from Prince Rodolfo’s extensive treasury of such items, dating back to the dawn of time, more or less.” She inclined her head in that regal way of hers. “If it doesn’t fit we’ll never speak of switching places again.”
And Natalie felt possessed by a force she didn’t understand. She knew better. Of course she did. This was a ridiculous game and it could only make this bizarre situation worse, and she was certainly no Cinderella. She knew that much for sure.
But she slipped the ring onto her finger anyway, and it fit perfectly, gleaming on her finger like every dream she’d ever had as a little girl. Not that she could live a magical life, filled with talismans that shone the way this ring did, because that was the sort of impracticality her mother had abhorred. But that she could have a home the way everyone else did. That she could belong to a man, to a country, to the sweep of a long history, the way this ring hugged her finger. As if it was meant to be.
The ring had nothing to do with her. She knew that. But it felt like a promise, even so.
And it all seemed to snowball from there. They each kicked off their shoes and stood barefoot on the surprisingly plush carpet. Then Valentina shimmied out of her sleek, deceptively simple sheath dress with the unselfconsciousness of a woman used to being dressed by attendants. She lifted her brows with all the imperiousness of her station, and Natalie found herself retreating into the stall with the dress—since she was not, in fact, used to being tended to by packs of fawning courtiers and therefore all but naked with an audience. She climbed out of her own clothes, handing her pencil skirt, blouse and wrap sweater out to Valentina through the crack she left open in the door. Then she tugged the princess’s dress on, expecting it to snag or pull against her obviously peasant body.
But like the ring, the dress fit as if it had been tailored to her body. As if it was hers.
She walked out slowly, blinking when she saw...herself waiting for her. The very same view she’d seen in the mirror this morning when she’d dressed in the room Mr. Casilieris kept for her in the basement of his London town house because her own small f
lat was too far away to be to-ing and fro-ing at odd hours, according to him, and it was easier to acquiesce than fight. Not that it had kept him from firing away at her. But she shoved that aside because Valentina was laughing at the sight of Natalie in obvious astonishment, as if she was having the same literal out-of-body experience.
Natalie walked back to the counter and climbed into the princess’s absurd shoes, very carefully. Her knees protested beneath her as she tried to stand tall in them and she had to reach out to grip the marble counter.
“Put your weight on your heels,” Valentina advised. She was already wearing Natalie’s wedges, because apparently even their feet were the same, and of course she had no trouble standing in them as if she’d picked them out herself. “Everyone always wants to lean forward and tiptoe in heels like that, and nothing looks worse. Lean back and you own the shoe, not the other way around.” She eyed Natalie. “Will your glasses give me a headache, do you suppose?”
Natalie pulled them from her face and handed them over. “They’re clear glass. I was getting a little too much attention from some of the men Mr. Casilieris works with, and it annoyed him. I didn’t want to lose my job, so I started wearing my hair up and these glasses. It worked like a charm.”
“I refuse to believe men are so idiotic.”
Natalie grinned as Valentina took the glasses and slid them onto her nose. “The men we’re talking about weren’t exactly paying me attention because they found me enthralling. It was a diversionary tactic during negotiations and yes, you’d be surprised how many men fail to see a woman who looks smart.”
She tugged her hair tie from her ponytail and shook out her hair, then handed the elastic to Valentina. The princess swept her hair back and into the same ponytail Natalie had been sporting only seconds before.
And it was like magic.
Ordinary Natalie Monette, renowned for her fierce work ethic, attention to detail and her total lack of anything resembling a personal life—which was how she’d become the executive assistant to one of the world’s most ferocious and feared billionaires straight out of college and now had absolutely no life to call her own—became Her Royal Highness, Princess Valentina of Murin in an instant. And vice versa. Just like that.
“This is crazy,” Natalie whispered.
The real Princess Valentina only smiled, looking every inch the smooth, super competent right hand of a man as feared as he was respected. Looking the way Natalie had always hoped she looked, if she was honest. Serenely capable. Did this mean...she always had?
More than that, they looked like twins. They had to be twins. There was no possibility that they could be anything but.
Natalie didn’t want to think about the number of lies her mother had to have told her if that was true. She didn’t want to think about all the implications. She couldn’t.
“We have to switch places now,” Valentina said softly, though there was a catch in her voice. It was the catch that made Natalie focus on her rather than the mystery that was her mother. “I’ve always wanted to be...someone else. Someone normal. Just for a little while.”
Their gazes caught at that, both the exact same shade of green, just as their hair was that unusual shade of copper many tried to replicate in the salon, yet couldn’t. The only difference was that Valentina’s was highlighted with streaks of blond that Natalia suspected came from long, lazy days on the decks of yachts or taking in the sunshine from the comfort of her very own island kingdom.
If you’re really twins—if you’re sisters—it’s your island, too, a little voice inside whispered. But Natalie couldn’t handle that. Not here. Not now. Not while she was all dressed up in princess clothes.
“Is that what princesses dream of?” Natalie asked. She wanted to smile, but the moment felt too precarious. Ripe and swollen with emotions she couldn’t have named, though she understood them as they moved through her. “Because I think most other little girls imagine they’re you.”
Not her, of course. Never her.
Something shone a little too brightly in Valentina’s gaze then, and it made Natalie’s chest ache.
But she would never know what her mirror image might have said next, because her name was called in a familiar growl from directly outside the door to the women’s room. Natalie didn’t think. She was dressed as someone else and she couldn’t let anyone see that—so she threw herself back into the stall where she’d changed her clothes as the door was slapped open.
“Exactly what are you doing in here?” growled a voice that Natalie knew better than her own. She’d worked for Achilles Casilieris for five years. She knew him much, much better than she knew herself. She knew, for example, that the particular tone he was using right now meant his usual grouchy mood was being rapidly taken over by his typical impatience. He’d likely had to actually take a moment and look for her, rather than her magically being at his side before he finished his thought. He hated that. And he wasn’t shy at all about expressing his feelings. “Can we leave for New York now, do you think, or do you need to fix your makeup for another hour?”
Natalie stood straighter out of habit, only to realize that her boss’s typical scowl wasn’t directed at her. She was hidden behind the cracked open door of the bathroom stall. Her boss was aiming that famous glare straight at Valentina, and he didn’t appear to notice that she wasn’t Natalie. That if she was Natalie, that would mean she’d lightened her hair in the past fifteen minutes. But she could tell that all her boss saw was his assistant. Nothing more, nothing less.
“I apologize,” Valentina murmured.
“I don’t need you to be sorry, I need you on the plane,” Achilles retorted, then turned back around to head out.
Natalie’s head spun. She had worked for this man, night and day, for half a decade. He was Achilles Casilieris, renowned for his keen insight and killer instincts in all things, and Natalie had absolutely no doubt that he had no idea that he hadn’t been speaking to her.
Maybe that was why, when Valentina reached over and took Natalie’s handbag instead of her own, Natalie didn’t push back out of the stall to stop her. She said nothing. She stood where she was. She did absolutely nothing to keep the switch from happening.
“I’ll call you,” Valentina mouthed into the mirror as she hurried to the door, and the last Natalie saw of Her Royal Highness Valentina of Murin was the suppressed excitement in her bright green eyes as she followed Achilles Casilieris out the door.
Natalie stepped out of the stall again in the sudden silence. She looked at herself in the mirror, smoothed her hair down with palms that shook only the slightest little bit, blinked at the wild sparkle of the absurd ring on her finger as she did it.
And just like that, became a fairy princess—and stepped right into a daydream.
CHAPTER TWO
CROWN PRINCE RODOLFO of the ancient and deeply, deliberately reserved principality of Tissely, tucked away in the Pyrenees between France and Spain and gifted with wealth, peace and dramatic natural borders that had kept things that way for centuries untold, was bored.
This was not his preferred state of existence, though it was not exactly surprising here on the palace grounds of Murin Castle, where he was expected to entertain the royal bride his father had finally succeeded in forcing upon him.
Not that “entertainment” was ever really on offer with the undeniably pretty, yet almost aggressively placid and unexciting Princess Valentina. His future wife. The future mother of his children. His future queen, even. Assuming he didn’t lapse into a coma before their upcoming nuptials, that was.
Rodolfo sighed and stretched out his long legs, aware he was far too big to be sitting so casually on a relic of a settee in this stuffily proper reception room that had been set aside for his use on one of his set monthly visits with his fiancée. He still felt a twinge in one thigh from the ill-advised diving trip he’d taken some months back with a group of his friends and rather too many sharks. Rodolfo rubbed at the scarred spot absently, grateful
that while his father had inevitably caught wind of the feminine talent who’d graced the private yacht off the coast of Belize, the fact an overenthusiastic shark had grazed the Crown Prince of Tissely en route to a friend’s recently caught fish had escaped both the King’s spies’ and the rabid tabloids’ breathless reports.
It was these little moments of unexpected grace, he often thought with varying degrees of irony, that made his otherwise royally pointless life worth living.
“You embarrass yourself more with each passing year,” his father had told him, stiff with fury, when Rodolfo had succumbed to the usual demands for a command appearance upon his return to Europe at the end of last summer, the salacious pictures of his “Belize Booze Cruise” still fresh in every tabloid reader’s mind. And more to the point, in his father’s.
“You possess the power to render me unembarrassing forevermore,” Rodolfo had replied easily enough. He’d almost convinced himself his father no longer got beneath his skin. Almost. “Give me something to do, Father. You have an entire kingdom at your disposal. Surely you can find a single task for your only son.”
But that was the crux of the matter they never spoke of directly, of course. Rodolfo was not the son his father had wanted as heir. He was not the son his father would have chosen to succeed him, not the son his father had planned for. He was his father’s only remaining son, and not his father’s choice.
He was not Felipe. He could never be Felipe. It was a toss-up as to which one of them hated him more for that.
“There is no place in my kingdom for a sybaritic fool whose life is little more than an extended advertisement for one of those appalling survival programs, complete with the sensationalism of the nearest gutter press,” his father had boomed from across his vast, appropriately majestic office in the palace, because it was so much easier to attack Rodolfo than address what simmered beneath it all. Not that Rodolfo helped matters with his increasingly dangerous antics, he was aware. “You stain the principality with every astonishingly bad decision you make.”
The Prince's Nine-Month Scandal Page 2
