Project: Runaway Heiress

by Heidi Betts

  Lillian chuckled, returning her attention to the tea service. “You said it, I didn’t,” she replied, handing him the cup and saucer.

  “To be safe, I went online and researched how to make a cup of true English tea. I make absolutely no promises that I’ve done it right, but I do hope you’ll at least give me points for trying.”

  Gesturing to the other items on the tray, she said, “Milk, sugar and lemon.”

  The real thing, he noticed. Milk—not cream, which so many Americans assumed should be added just because they used it in their coffee—the sugar cubed and the lemon cut into wedges.

  “I wasn’t sure which, if any, you preferred.”

  “If this tastes as good as it looks, I may even give you a bonus,” he told her. “For future reference, though, I take it black, so all the rest isn’t really necessary.”

  She blinked, looking at him as though he’d said he wasn’t actually British, it was all just a cruel hoax.

  “Then why do you have a full tea service in the kitchenette? I bought all of this specifically so you could have tea just the way you like it and wouldn’t be disappointed.”

  He bit back a grin, but had the dignity to flush at her chastisement. “Truthfully, it came that way, as a set. My mother has used a full tea service from the time I was a lad, so I suppose it never occurred to me that I really only needed the pot, cups and saucers.”

  With a huff, she dropped into one of the soft leather chairs opposite his desk and crossed one leg over the other. Her skirt shifted, revealing inches more of stocking-clad skin that he shouldn’t be staring at. But he couldn’t seem to drag his gaze away until he’d looked his fill.

  Licking suddenly dry lips, he swallowed and drew his attention—reluctantly—to her face.

  “I apologize for misleading you.”

  “But I worked really hard on getting this right, and now I find out I could have just dropped a tea bag into a cup of hot water and been done with it,” she said, still sounding put out.

  He inclined his head, acknowledging her upset. “I understand. My fault entirely. Feel free to do exactly that from now on. It may not be my preference, but it’s no less than I deserve.”

  She studied him for a moment, blue eyes locked on his. Then she leaned back, almost deflating into her chair.

  “You’re not what I expected, you know,” she said finally, surprising him with her boldness.

  He cocked a brow. “Oh? How so?”

  “I thought you would be a bit more demanding. Dictatorial, even. Like that chef on the cooking show who yells all the time and calls the contestants names.”

  Nigel couldn’t help but chuckle. He knew exactly who she was talking about. “Actually, I believe he’s Scottish, not British. And I don’t recall ever calling anyone a donkey, no matter how angry I might have been.”

  “Good thing,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I don’t think you’d appreciate my reaction if you used a term like that with me.”

  “I can imagine.” He could, and it wasn’t pretty. Of course, he’d never been one to get red in the face and start slinging invectives when he lost his temper, so she had nothing to worry about on that score.

  “You’re not at all what I expected, either,” he confessed.

  He regretted the words as soon as they passed his lips. It was a bit too much sharing for their short acquaintance, not to mention entirely out of character for him.

  Of course, she’d heard him, so it wasn’t as though he could pretend he hadn’t said it.

  She tipped her head to one side, glancing at him curiously. “You mean you thought I’d be quieter, more tractable, eager to please.”

  Nigel chuckled aloud at that description. Despite the fact that she had, indeed, seemed eager to please her new boss in the two days she’d been in his employ, something told him that wasn’t entirely usual for her, and that the rest didn’t suit her by half.

  Quiet? Not if by that she meant meek.

  Tractable? He couldn’t imagine any such thing.

  “No,” he answered, giving his head a rather decisive shake. “Not at all. Given the past assistants I’ve had here in the U.S., I was expecting you to be...a few biscuits short of a tin, if you understand my meaning.”

  “You’re in the habit of hiring mentally unstable personal assistants?” she teased, brow raised.

  “Not unstable, thank goodness,” he responded, “but young, and not a lot going on above the neck, other than good grooming and dreams of becoming either a supermodel or the next fashion designer to become an overnight success. Not only could they not make a decent cup of tea, but they couldn’t keep their minds on their responsibilities long enough to accomplish what they’d actually been hired to do.”

  She thought about that for a moment, then inclined her head and her gaze toward the cup still resting on the desk in front of him.

  “You haven’t even tasted the tea yet. How do you know I can make a decent cup?”

  He didn’t bother to answer, simply lifted the cup to his mouth and took a long, hearty swallow. Setting the cup back down, he said, “Excellent. It would have been better if I’d started drinking it while it was still piping hot, but really—quite excellent.”

  “Well, you have only yourself to blame for that, don’t you?” she quipped.

  Without a hint of remorse or fear of speaking in such a manner to her employer. And not just any employer, but the CEO of the whole bloody company.

  Why did that amuse him so damn much? Amuse, as well as arouse.

  The sight of her, the thought of her, the knowledge that she would be seated just outside his office door for eight hours each day, was enough to send his blood to the boiling point.

  Even now, he wanted to stand up, round his desk, lean down and kiss her just for the hell of it.

  Well, for the hell of it, and also to discover if she tasted as good as he thought she would. That was something he suddenly wanted to know. Very, very badly.

  In an attempt to cool the heat rising in his body and bringing small beads of perspiration to dot his brow, he raised the tea back to his lips and drained the cup dry. It didn’t cool him off as much as he’d hoped.

  “So,” he commented to fill the increasingly awkward silence. “You can make a fine cup of tea, and you know your way about the design business—at least judging by last night’s conversation. I think it’s safe to say you’ve already surpassed the skills of all of my other assistants here in the States put together.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she replied, giving him a bright smile that Nigel believed could only be genuine.

  So he responded with one of his own. “As you should. It was intended as one.”

  “I can expect that bonus to be reflected in my first paycheck, then?”

  She made it a question. Loaded and dangerous.

  Narrowing his eyes, he answered carefully. “We’ll see. Keep up the good work, and I’ll have no problem rewarding your efforts monetarily. But you’ve only been here two days. I need to see you in action awhile longer than that before I make any promises.”

  She shrugged one slim shoulder. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”

  With a laugh, Nigel emptied the rest of the tea into his cup, then sat back, linking his hands in front of him. “Certainly not. And you may just earn yourself some extra perks yet. Especially if you bring me another pot of tea before running down to the fourth floor to see how things are going. We’ve got a special runway show coming up in two weeks, and I want to be sure we’re on track.”

  Lillian sat up in a suddenly more serious, alert manner. “I’ll be happy to, but isn’t that something you should do yourself? I’m not sure I’ll know enough to judge how well things are going.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Nigel assured her. “The head of the design team should be able to tell you what’s been done so far and what still needs to be taken care of. Then you can report to me, and if I think anything is out of sorts, I’ll go down and put the fear o
f unemployment into them.”

  “Very stealthy of you,” she said. Then, taking a deep breath, she pushed to her feet. “I’ll do my best. It will be fun to visit the design-room floor. I’ve never been on one before.”

  Her gaze darted away and she shifted from one leg to the other. Peculiar, to say the least.

  Ignoring the odd behavior, Nigel said, “Take your time down there. It really is quite fascinating to watch the designers work.”

  She nodded, collecting the china cup from the center of the desk and adding it to the other items on the tea-service tray. Gathering it all, she headed for the door.

  “Tea first,” she said over her shoulder, “then I’ll go down and spy on your happy little elves.”

  He watched her disappear out into the reception area, enjoying the sway of her hips and straight line of her back. It wasn’t until he heard her returning with a second cup of tea several minutes later that he realized he hadn’t moved a muscle since she’d walked away.

  Which was not a good sign. Not good at all.

  Six

  Lily knew better than to make rash judgments about people. First impressions often made you think somebody was wonderful, friendly, trustworthy...and then later you discovered they were none of those things. Other times, the opposite was true. You met someone and didn’t care for them at all, only to discover hidden aspects of their personality later that caused you to end up becoming close friends.

  So the fact that she was finding Nigel Statham more handsome, more charming and more enticing the longer she knew him—even after only two short days—could go either way. She’d started out certain he was a thief with questionable business ethics. Could she have been completely and totally wrong about that? Or was she letting his intense good looks and honeyed accent blind her to the truth?

  She’d expected to come to Los Angeles, go to work for the big, bad CEO of the U.S. branch of his family’s company and immediately begin finding evidence to shore up her arguments about his involvement in the theft of her designs.

  Instead, she’d found nothing. None of her poking around in his files—or his former personal assistants’ files, at any rate—had turned up a single thing or question mark. If anything, she was less convinced of his involvement.

  But the theft had occurred, so there had to be evidence somewhere. A thread she could find, pick at and follow back to its source.

  The elevator she was riding down to the fourth floor stopped with a small jolt and she straightened, pushing away from the rear wall where she’d been leaning to wait for the doors to open.

  She’d lied to Nigel when she’d told him she’d never visited a design-room floor before. Sometimes she felt as though she lived on one, especially when she and both of her sisters were in their home studio together, all working in tandem.

  Which was probably why she was so looking forward to visiting the one here. Not only was she curious to see how things worked at a company of this size, but it would be comforting to be back in the thick of the creative side of the fashion business again. Even temporarily.

  As she stepped off the elevator, the click of her heels on the slick polished floor mixed with the sound of voices and the hum of sewing machines. Not a dozen running all at once, but one here, one there, being used as needed, much the way they were in her shop.

  She loved it. A noise that would probably grate on anyone else’s nerves after a while soothed hers and helped her to take her first deep, comfortable breath since leaving New York.

  She was smiling as she made her way down the main hall. This floor was made up of large, open-area rooms filled with long tables, dress forms, sewing equipment and plenty of fabrics and supplies. And most of the rooms she passed had their doors open so she could see the people working inside. Design teams, most likely, each assigned a different look or aspect of whatever collection they were currently putting together.

  What Lily wouldn’t give for this kind of setup. Not only the work space—which was like comparing a football field to a foosball table—but the employees. Extra creative minds, extra hands, twice or probably even quadruple the work accomplished in half the time.

  Of course, in order to put something like this into effect, she would also need a lot more money. And that would mean either asking her parents for another, more substantial loan, or winning the lottery.

  But a girl could dream, couldn’t she? And one day, Zaccaro Fashions would be this big, this efficient. They would be a huge, world-renowned brand name in their own right, and she wouldn’t need her future inheritance to make it happen.

  She wanted to stop at each doorway and take a good, long peek inside. She wanted to know what everyone was making, see their work, listen in on their conversations. Especially since it was possible they were once again ripping off her designs.

  There wasn’t a lot of time for poking around, though. She was supposed to find a man named Michael Franklin, the head designer for this particular collection, and get a progress report for Nigel.

  Despite his comment that she should take her time, she didn’t trust him not to come looking for her. He was a big, corporate bigwig who didn’t even make his own coffee or tea. What were the chances he could get through an hour or two without needing her for something?

  And he was quite obviously a man who expected his assistant to come running the minute he called...even if she was three floors away. So the less time she spent away from her desk the better, at least until she’d been at the company a little longer and had a better handle on his routine.

  Strolling down the hall, she took in the activities of each room peripherally as she passed, heading straight for the office at the end, where Nigel had told her she would most likely find Mr. Franklin. Or at least it was a place to start.

  “Office” was a bit of a misnomer. It was actually a glass-fronted version of the other design areas, but in addition to equipment and a cutting table that doubled as a sketching and design surface, there was a cluttered desk and file cabinets.

  Mr. Franklin’s name was etched on the closed door, but no one was inside. Chewing the inside of her lip for a second, she tapped her foot and tried to decide what to do next. Her only option, she supposed, was to go back the way she’d come and pop her head into each room after all. Surely someone would have an idea of where she could find Mr. Franklin.

  She was spinning on her heel to do just that when she nearly ran into another woman coming toward her.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  Their simultaneous apologies were followed by amused chuckles.

  “Sorry about that,” the woman said again. “I saw you standing outside Mr. Franklin’s office and was just coming to ask if I could help you with anything.”

  “I’m looking for Mr. Franklin, actually,” Lily said. And then she stopped, tipping her head and narrowing her eyes as she concentrated more intently on the other woman.

  “Wait a minute. Don’t I know you?” She wracked her brain, positive the young woman looked familiar.

  “Oh, my gosh,” she exclaimed as it finally came to her. “You’re Bella, aren’t you? I’m sorry, I can’t think of your last name off the top of my head, but you’re Zoe’s friend, aren’t you? Her roommate from college.”

  “It’s Landry,” the other woman, who was a petite brunette, supplied. And then she widened her cornflower-blue eyes. “Do you mean Zoe Zaccaro?”

  Lily nodded.

  “I haven’t seen Zoe in ages, but we definitely spent our college years together. How do you know her?”

  “I’m Lily, Zoe’s sister. We met briefly the last time you visited Zoe in New York.”

  She wasn’t surprised at Bella’s lack of recognition. Normally, she and her sisters looked enough alike—with their long, blond hair and similar facial features—that they were often mistaken for one another. But with her hair both darkened and pulled up in an out-of-character twist, and unfamiliar glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, she’d done a pretty good job of muting all o
f the things that made her stand out as a Zaccaro by looks alone.

  Not to mention that she hadn’t seen Bella in years—and had only met her a couple of times before that, when they had visited Zoe on campus or Zoe had brought Bella home with her for the odd holiday break.

  “Oh, yes. Wow, small world. It’s great to see you again. And how is Zoe?” Bella asked.

  “Great,” Lily told her. “Same as usual.”

  They both laughed at that, aware of exactly what Zoe’s “usual” was.

  “So what are you doing here?” Bella wanted to know.

  The question stopped Lily cold, slapping the smile right off her face. Uh-oh. Until then, she’d forgotten she was supposed to be keeping a low profile and definitely remaining anonymous to everyone who worked at Ashdown Abbey. She had forgotten while exchanging pleasantries with a friend of her sister’s whom she’d run into out of the blue.

  Mind racing, she tried to figure out how to cover her mistake and come up with a plausible reason for her presence here in Los Angeles.

  “The three of us are, um...taking a little time off from designing, working to establish the store and brand as they are now. So while Zoe and Juliet are running things back home, I decided to come out here and intern with Ashdown Abbey for a while.”

  That sounded okay, didn’t it? She very pointedly didn’t mention that she was working as the big kahuna’s assistant. And she hoped Bella didn’t find out, because then she would have to explain why she was going by a different name and pray they never ran into one another while Nigel was around.

  “Cool,” Bella replied, apparently accepting Lily’s explanation at face value.

  “How about you?” Lily asked, eager to turn the younger woman’s attention away from her and on to something, anything else.

  “Oh, I’m, um...” Bella stammered, glancing down at the toes of her pointy, leopard-print shoes before returning her gaze to Lily, but not quite meeting her eyes. “I’m an associate designer for the company,” she said finally. “I’ve been here for almost three years now.”