Project: Runaway Heiress

by Heidi Betts

  “That’s wonderful,” Lily told her, meaning it. She didn’t know Bella well, wasn’t even sure how long she and Zoe had been friends, but she’d never heard her sister speak a bad word about her, and she seemed perfectly nice.

  “You’re working on the latest collection, then?” she asked, nodding her head to indicate all of the fourth-floor workrooms.

  Bella gave a jerky nod, her gaze skating away again for the briefest of moments. “I don’t really have much to do with it. I’m just sort of a cog in the wheel, doing a little here and a little there. Whatever needs to be done.”

  “Hey, you have to start somewhere,” Lily said with a pleasant smile, knowing the truth of that better than anyone. “I’m sure it will be great. All of Ashdown Abbey’s designs are exceptional. You should be proud to be a part of it.”

  That was true, too, even if it pained her to say so. Especially since she was still smarting from their use of her great designs for their California Collection.

  She thought about trying to wheedle information from Bella—about the California Collection, or Nigel, or maybe just Ashdown Abbey itself. It was possible she knew something important without even being aware of it. But after blurting out her real identity when she was supposed to be undercover, she was afraid of coming across as too curious and giving herself away even further, so she kept her mouth shut. She could always come back later to pick Bella’s brain if she needed to.

  It also crossed her mind that—being a friend of Zoe’s and having been in their studio in the past—Bella might have had something to do with the theft of her designs. She didn’t want to believe that a friend of her sister’s—especially one who’d roomed with Zoe for four years straight—would do such a thing, but made a mental note to look into it anyway. At least cursorily, just in case.

  “Do you know where Mr. Franklin is?” she asked instead of beginning an impromptu interrogation right there in the hallway.

  Bella glanced back over her shoulder. “Um...he should be here somewhere. Try workroom B. He’s been working pretty closely with that team this week.”

  “Great, thank you.”

  “Do you want me to take you?” Bella offered, finally making eye contact.

  “No, thanks. I can find it, and I’m sure you have work to do,” Lily said. “It was nice to see you, though. I’ll tell Zoe you said hi.”

  After saying their goodbyes, Bella headed in one direction while Lily retraced her path toward the elevator. She went more slowly this time, figuring she had a valid excuse for poking her head into each room to see who was there and what was going on. So what if workroom B was one of the last rooms she’d pass?

  She caught glimpses of the color palette and fabrics that were being used for this particular collection, as well as a few of the designs themselves being pieced together on dress forms. Lily liked what she saw, and so far, at least, she hadn’t spotted anything that set off alarm bells in her head. Nothing that looked eerily similar to her own design aesthetic.

  It was a relief, but also a touch disappointing, since it got her no closer to finding out how her designs had been stolen in the first place.

  Since she didn’t see anyone in the other workrooms who seemed to be in charge, she decided to wait until she reached workroom B to ask after Mr. Franklin. She could always backtrack later if she needed to.

  Reaching workroom B, she stepped inside, taking in the two women bent over a cutting table, heads together in discussion, and another woman over by a dress form, talking with a short, squat man while they fingered pieces of a pattern already attached to the form, moving them around and trying to decide on the best placement.

  She might have been jumping to conclusions, but Lily assumed the man was Mr. Franklin. Sidling just a few feet more into the room, she leaned against one of the cutting tables and studied some of the patterns and sketches laid out there while she waited for them to conclude their business so she could get Nigel’s update and report back to him before he sent out a search party.

  * * *

  The next week went by in such a blur, Lily could barely keep up. Nigel kept her running, skipping and hopping nearly twenty-four/seven.

  Even once she clocked out and dragged herself to her home away from home, she had enough energy only to wash her face, change into pajamas and fall into bed for as much sleep as she could manage before the alarm went off and demanded she start all over again. Which left very little time for snooping and research.

  She was gaining a whole new respect for secretaries, receptionists and personal assistants, to be sure.

  And even though she was often left scrambling or faking her way through certain tasks, Nigel seemed pleased with her performance. So she supposed if the “design thing”—as her father sometimes called it—didn’t work out, she could always fall back on this.

  But she wasn’t here to work hard and see that Ashdown Abbey’s CEO looked good so the company could advance. She was here to save and avenge her company, and she was becoming increasingly frustrated with her inability to do that.

  More determined than ever to find a moment or two to poke around for her own benefit, Lily stalked out of the elevator first thing that Monday morning and went straight to her desk. She’d arrived a tad early, and with luck, Nigel would run late this morning so she could dig into the California Collection files without fear of getting caught.

  There had to be something somewhere that would lead her to the culprit she sought. She was especially interested in finding the original sketches that the California Collection was based off of. They should give her more of an indication of what inspired the collection than the later, more cleaned-up versions she’d already printed. They might even give her some hint of how someone got ahold of her designs in the first place to mimic them.

  Of course, her lack of progress with her private little investigation wasn’t the only dilemma she was facing. She also had a real private investigator breathing down her neck.

  Reid McCormack had called to ask where she was and what she was up to. She’d found the question and his tone of voice peculiar, since he was the one who was supposed to be working for her.

  But while she’d hired him to see what he could find out about Ashdown Abbey’s theft of Zaccaro Fashions’ designs from his vantage point in New York, she hadn’t told him that she was planning to head for Los Angeles to do a bit of investigating on her own. She doubted he would approve, and suspected he would only try to talk her out of it.

  She was right about the disapproval part. He’d been as livid as a person could be over the phone when it wasn’t his place to tell her what to do—or what not to do—and he knew it.

  He’d wanted to know exactly where she was and exactly what she was doing. Then when she’d refused to tell him, he’d informed her that “whatever she was up to,” she obviously wasn’t doing a very good job of it because her sister—Juliet—had just come to his office asking him to track her down.

  Lily had gotten the feeling he was more put out at having to lie to one sister because the other was already a client than anything else. And maybe that he’d been blindsided, not even knowing client number one had hied off on her own until potential client number two came along wanting her sister treated like a missing person.

  Though she’d hoped Juliet and Zoe would trust her to go off on her own for a while without needing specifics, she apparently hadn’t done as efficient a job as she’d thought of making excuses, assuring her sisters she was fine and would return home soon.

  It had taken a long time and quite a bit of verbal tap dancing to finally convince Mr. McCormack to pretend to take Juliet’s case. Lily offered to compensate him for his time on both issues, if he didn’t feel comfortable taking money from Juliet for doing nothing and lying to her to boot. And it was only until she could figure out what to say to her sisters that wouldn’t send them into a tailspin. She promised to call Juliet herself as soon as she could so her family wouldn’t continue to think she was missing or in tro
uble.

  It went against McCormack’s personal code of ethics, she could tell. She could almost imagine him grinding his teeth, flexing his fingers over and over again, and generally fighting the urge to reach through the phone line to strangle her.

  Eventually, though...eventually, he agreed. About as enthusiastically as one might say, “Oh, yes—please give me a root canal without anesthetic!”

  So now that was hanging over her head, as well. She hated thinking that her sisters were worried about her, especially when she’d left a note with the sole purpose of making sure they didn’t.

  But if she called to reassure them again and let them know everything was okay, they—namely Juliet—would want to know where she was and what was going on. They would be more curious and demanding than ever. And she had no idea what to tell them.

  With a sigh, she dropped down into the chair at her desk and punched the power button on the computer. While it was booting up, she stowed her purse and tried to figure out where to begin. The sooner she could get this mess cleaned up and the mystery solved, the sooner she could go home and tell her sisters everything.

  She tapped at the keyboard, searching folder and file names, looking specifically for anything related to the California Collection while keeping one eye on the elevator down the hall.

  Though she wasn’t sure it would lead anywhere, she discovered a folder that seemed to have all kinds of documents in it related to the California Collection. As quickly as she could, she slipped a blank flash drive into the USB port and hit Copy.

  The file had just finished loading, and she was dropping the flash drive into her purse, when the door to Nigel’s office opened directly behind her.

  Her heart stopped. Literally screeched to a halt inside her chest as a lump of pure panic formed in her throat.

  “Good. You’re here,” Nigel murmured at her back.

  She knew she should respond, at least turn around and face him, but she felt glued in place, as frozen as an ice cube.

  Thankfully, rather than getting upset or reprimanding her for her seeming lack of respect, he came to the edge of her desk. When the dark blue pinstripe of his dress slacks came into her peripheral vision, she finally managed to swallow, turn her head and lift her gaze to that of her boss.

  As always, the sight of him made her mouth go dry. She’d thought that after working with him for a while, getting used to his quiet confidence and startling good looks, it would get easier to be around him. That she would suffer less and less of a lurch to her solar plexus each time they came in contact—which was more often, even, than she caught her own reflection in the restroom mirror.

  Heart beating again—though not in any pattern a cardiologist would approve of—she licked her lips and made herself meet his eyes.

  “Good morning,” she said, glad her voice sounded almost human. “I didn’t think you were in yet.”

  Understatement. She’d been watching the elevator like a mouse on the lookout for the cat of the house. Meanwhile, he’d been in his office the entire time. If he’d been a cat and she a mouse, she was pretty sure she’d be lunch by now.

  “I was waiting for you to arrive,” he said by way of answer.

  Pushing aside a few items on the corner of her desk, he sat down, letting one leg dangle. A nicely muscled leg, encased in fabric that tightened across his upper thigh.

  Once again dragging her gaze to his face, she tried to take slow, shallow breaths until her internal temperature stopped climbing toward heatstroke levels.

  “We need to talk about next week’s show,” he continued.

  “All right.” He’d sent her down to speak with Michael Franklin several more times, but to the best of her knowledge, everything was still running smoothly and on schedule.

  “As you know, the show is in Miami.”

  She had known that, though she hadn’t paid much attention one way or the other to the show’s location.

  “I have to be there, of course,” he said in that slow, calm British way of his. Whatever point he was trying to make, he was taking his time getting there.

  “The runway show itself is for charity, but buyers for many of our biggest accounts will be there, and we’ll be taking orders for the designs throughout the event.”

  She nodded in understanding.

  “I was hoping you might be willing to go along, as well.”

  Lily’s eyes widened and she sat back in her seat, more than a little surprised by the request. They’d been discussing the show on and off since her arrival, but he’d never once hinted that he might want her to travel across the country with him.

  “Do your personal assistants normally travel with you for this sort of thing?” she wanted to know.

  He inclined his head. “Quite often.”

  “Then you’re telling me I’ll be going along, not asking if I’d like to,” she said, making it more of a statement than a question.

  “Not at all,” he replied quickly, shifting on the corner of her desk. “I’d very much like you to accompany me, and it will be work-related, but I’ll certainly understand if you have other plans.”

  She thought about it, trying to weigh the pros and cons and mentally map out the best plan of action where her true purpose for working at Ashdown Abbey was concerned.

  On the one hand, she would probably make more progress and have more privacy to really dig around if she stayed behind while Nigel flew to Miami.

  On the other, she really wanted to go. The idea of traveling with Nigel—no doubt first-class all the way—was intriguing enough. But the true thrill would be the up-close-and-personal experience of a live show with numerous famous designers sending their latest creations down the runway.

  She could really benefit from watching how the organizers pulled it together and getting to see how such a large-scale event worked behind the scenes. Watching the clothes walk down the runway on professional and likely very sought-after supermodels. Rubbing elbows with some of the biggest names in the business—designers, buyers and the media alike. People who might one day take an interest in her own designs and help Zaccaro Fashions go national and then international.

  Granted, she wouldn’t be able to let any of them know who she really was or talk up her own work, but still... The contacts she might make, even under the guise of acting as Nigel’s personal assistant, could serve her well down the road.

  “It will be an overnight stay,” Nigel added, breaking into her thoughts to give her even more to consider. “Through the weekend, actually. We’d fly out Thursday and return late Sunday night.”

  It was a substantial amount of time to be away from the Ashdown Abbey offices and attempt to carry out her pretense in public, but was she really going to say no? Pass up such an amazing opportunity? She would never be able to live with herself if she did, despite the fact that it would set back her “investigation” by that much longer.

  “I’d love to go,” she said after a minute of deep thought, relieved when the words came out normally instead of sounding like those of a kid standing outside a bouncy castle.

  “Brilliant,” he exclaimed, slapping the palms of his hands against the tops of both thighs.

  Then he rose and headed back toward his office. “You can check my schedule for the specific itinerary and the promotional materials for the show to get an idea of what you might like to pack. We’ll work out the rest of the details later.”

  With that, he disappeared behind the solid wooden door separating their two work areas, leaving her alone once again.

  Knowing he was there meant she couldn’t risk doing any more snooping. Especially since she’d learned the scary way that he could pop out at any moment rather than relying on the phone or intercom to address her.

  She should have been annoyed, but was suddenly too excited. Now she had Miami to look forward to.

  It was a detour, and would definitely put her behind on the whole find-the-thief-and-get-the-heck-back-to-New York thing. But it was Miami, for heaven�
��s sake.

  Not just Miami the city. She’d been there several times before, as well as Key West and one ill-fated trip to Daytona Beach that her parents still didn’t know about. And with luck, they never, ever would.

  No, it was Miami during the event of the season—at least one of them, as far as the fashion world was concerned. A number of labels, not just Ashdown Abbey, would be flaunting their latest designs during what had become a very high-profile annual show.

  The show itself—Fashion for a Cause—raised money for a different charity each year. This time, it was for a children’s hospital. But the one-of-a-kind fashions that were shown at the event were then mass-produced and began to show up in retail outlets across the country and even around the world, depending on orders received during and soon after their debuts at the show.

  Lily and her sisters were nowhere near the level one needed to achieve to participate in this type of event. She’d never even attended, though it had always been a distant, hopeful dream.

  Now she had the chance to go. Not just as a member of the audience twelve rows back, but as Nigel Statham’s girl Friday.

  It was kind of a thrill. One that could quickly turn into a nightmare, if her true identity was discovered, but she was pretty sure it was worth the risk. Even after bumping into Bella Landry, no one had looked at her differently or started asking pointed questions about her presence, so she still seemed to be safe.

  In fact, during a bit of digging into Bella’s association with Ashdown Abbey, she’d actually learned that the young woman had just requested a bit of personal time from work. Lily intended to look into that, see if there was any more to it than sick days or a short vacation, but hadn’t yet had the chance.

  But with luck, her obscurity at the company would continue.

  And she was almost giddy with anticipation about the charity show, so...yeah, she was going to take the chance. Wear giant sunglasses, introduce herself under her assumed name and hope for the best.

  Too excited to simply sit there, she accessed Nigel’s daily schedule and zipped ahead to the dates of the Miami trip. It looked as though they would be gone four days and three nights. Flying on the corporate jet. Staying in the luxury suites of the Royal Crown Hotel, one of the most expensive hotel chains on the East Coast.