Project: Runaway Heiress. Heidi Betts
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door to Nigel Statham’s stately, expansive office clicked shut and she was alone—blessedly, blissfully alone—Lily rushed on weak legs to the plush office chair behind her large, executive secretary’s desk and dropped into it like a sack of lead.
She was shaking from head to toe, her heart both racing and pounding at the same time. It felt as though an angry gorilla was trapped inside her chest, rattling her rib cage to get out.
And her stomach…her stomach was pitching and rolling so badly, she thought she must surely know how it felt to be on a ship that was going down in a storm-tossed sea. If she didn’t lose her quickly scarfed-down breakfast in the next ten seconds, it would be a miracle.
To keep that from happening, she leaned forward, tucking her head over her knees. Over them, because it was nearly impossible to get between them in the slim, tailored skirt she’d chosen for her first day of working undercover and with a false identity.
Lillian. Blech. It was the best name she’d been able to come up with that she thought she would answer to naturally, the blending of her first and middle names—Lily and Ann.
And as a last name, she’d gone with something simple and also easily identifiable, at least to her. George—what she and her sisters had called their first pet. A lazy, good-natured basset hound their father had found wandering around the parking lot where he worked.
Her mother had been furious right up until the moment she’d realized George woofed at the top of his lungs the minute anyone stepped foot on their property. From that point on, he’d been her “very best guard dog” and had gotten his own place setting of people food on the floor beside the dining-room table whenever they sat down to eat.
So Lillian George it was. Even though being referred to as Lillian made her feel like a matronly, middle-aged librarian.
Then again, she sort of looked like a librarian.
Her usual style, and definitely her own designs, leaned very strongly toward the bright, bold and carefree. She loved color and prints, anything vibrant and flirty and fun.
But for her position at Ashdown Abbey, she’d needed to be much more prim and proper. Not to mention doing as much as she could to disguise her identity and avoid being recognized or linked in any way to Zaccaro Fashions.
She could only hope that the change of name and switch to a wardrobe drawn entirely from Ashdown Abbey’s own line of business attire, coupled with the glasses and darkening of her normally light blond hair would be enough to keep anyone at the company from figuring out who she really was.
It helped, too, that Zaccaro Fashions was only moderately successful. She and her sisters weren’t exactly media darlings. They’d been photographed here or there, appeared in magazines or society pages upon occasion, but mostly in relation to their father and their family’s monetary worth. But she would be surprised if most people—even those familiar with the industry—would recognize any one of them if they passed on the street. Although Zoe was doing her level best to change that by going out on the town and getting caught behaving badly on a more and more regular basis.
After a couple of minutes, Lily’s pulse, the spinning of her head and the lurching in her stomach all began to slow. She’d made it this far. She’d made it past human resources with her creatively worded but fairly accurate résumé and her apparently not-so-rusty-after-all interview skills. Then she’d stood in front of corporate CEO Nigel Statham himself without being found out or dragged away in handcuffs.
He also hadn’t followed her out of his office, shaking a finger at her deceit, or instructed security to meet her at her desk. Everything was quiet, calm, completely normal, as far as she could tell.
Ashdown Abbey certainly didn’t have the hum of voices and sewing machines in the background the way the Zaccaro Fashions offices did. But, then, Zaccaro Fashions wasn’t a major, multimillion-dollar operation the way Ashdown Abbey was, either. They hadn’t yet reached the point where their corporate offices and manufacturing area were two separate entities.
Frankly, Lily thought she could use the mechanical buzz of a sewing machine or her sisters’ laughter as she worked with her cell phone pressed to her ear right about now. Sometimes silence was entirely overrated. Times like these, when all she could hear was her own rapid breathing and the panicked voices in her head telling her she was crazy and sure to get caught.
To keep those voices from getting any louder and leading her in the wrong direction, she started to recite one of the simple, meaningless poems she’d been forced to memorize in grade school, then slowly sat up.
Tiny stars flashed in front of her eyes, but only for a second. She blinked and they were gone, leaving her with clear vision and a clear—or clearer, anyway—head.
Nigel Statham believed she was his new personal assistant, so maybe she should go back to acting like one.
Rolling her chair up to the desk, she pulled out her computer’s keyboard and mouse, and started clicking away. She’d familiarized herself with the computer’s operating system just a bit before going into Nigel’s office, but was sure there was much more to learn.
His daily schedule, for instance. Something she was apparently going to have to stay on top of or risk not knowing what she was supposed to be doing from one hour to the next.
She felt a small stab of guilt as she bypassed the email program, wondering if her sisters had found her note yet and honored her wishes by not telling anyone about her sudden disappearance or trying to track her down themselves.
She’d told them she had some personal business to attend to. Something she couldn’t discuss just yet, but needed some time away to deal with. She assured them she would be fine and wasn’t in any danger, and asked them to trust her to get in touch as soon as she could.
She didn’t want them to worry about her, but she wasn’t ready to tell them what was really going on, either. One day…one day she would fill them in on everything. She would tell them the entire story over a bottle of wine, and chances were they would have a good laugh about it.
But not until it was resolved and there was a happily-ever-after to report. When the threat to their company was gone and there were no fears or rumors left to spread like wildfire if anyone else got wind of it.
Before she left, she’d also met with Reid McCormack of McCormack Investigations about running comprehensive background checks on everyone under Zaccaro Fashions’ employ. Lily honestly didn’t believe he would find anything incriminating, but better safe than sorry.
And she’d informed him that she would be out of town for a while, so she would call in weekly for updates. It seemed easier than having him leave messages at the apartment, where her sisters might overhear or access them, or having him call her on her cell phone at an inconvenient moment while she was still in Los Angeles.
Frankly, she hoped he never had anything negative to report, or that if he did, it would turn out to be completely unrelated to Zaccaro Fashions—an employee with an unpaid speeding ticket or college-age drunk-and-disorderly charges that had eventually been dropped.
But until her first scheduled check-in, she needed all of her energy and brain power focused on her new job and attempts at stealth investigations.
Studying Nigel’s schedule for the day, she was somewhat relieved to see that it didn’t seem to be a—quote, unquote—heavy day for him. It looked as though he would be in his office most of the time. He had a lunch appointment and a conference call in the afternoon, but nothing so far that would require her to go out with him—and hope not to be recognized or to do something she wasn’t ready or properly trained for.
She glanced at the schedule for the rest of the week, making a mental note to check again in a couple of hours. Just to be safe until it all became second nature to her for as long as she was here.
She took a few minutes to investigate some of the other programs and files on the system, but hoped she wouldn’t be expected to do too much with them too soon. Either that, or that the company provided tutorials