for the better.
Clearing his throat, he said carefully, “You wouldn’t happen to be an actress, would you?” He resisted the urge to use the term aspiring, but only barely.
A slight frown drew her light brows together. “No, sir.”
“What about modeling? Any interest in that?”
That question brought out a short chuckle. “Definitely not.”
He thought back to some of the bullet points from her résumé. She hadn’t simply wandered in from the street, that was for certain. Her background was in both business and design, with a degree in the former and a few very strong courses in the latter.
On paper she was rather ideal, but he knew as well as anyone that everybody became a bit of a fiction writer when it came to cooking up a résumé.
“And your interest in the fashion industry is…” He trailed off, leaving her to fill in the blank on her own.
For the blink of an eye, she seemed to consider what response he might be looking for. Then she replied in a firm tone, “Strictly business. And the opportunity to get my hands on fresh designs sooner than the rest of the world. I’m a bit of a clotheshorse, I’m afraid.” She ended with a guileless half grin that brought out the tiniest hint of dimple in the center of her right cheek.
Almost in spite of himself, he caught his own lips turning upward. “Well, then, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Employees get a discount at our company store, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” she said slowly, and he could have sworn he saw a sparkle of devilment in her eye.
“Excellent,” he murmured, feeling better about her employment already.
He hadn’t exactly seen her in action, but she had, as they say, passed the first hurdle. At the very least, she hadn’t walked in with a wide smile and an IQ equal to her age.
“If you haven’t already, please familiarize yourself with my daily schedule and appointments for the week. There may be a few meetings and events to which I’ll need you to accompany me, so watch for those notations. And be sure to review the schedule frequently, as I tend to change or update it regularly and without warning.”
Picking up his coffee, he took a sip, surprised to find it quite tasty. Almost the exact ratio of cream to coffee that he preferred.
“Yes, sir. Not a problem.”
“Thank you. That will be all for now,” he told her.
Once again, she turned for the door. And once again, he stopped her just before she stepped out of his office.
“Oh, and, Lillian?”
“Yes, sir?” she intoned, tipping her head in his direction.
“Excellent coffee. I hope you can make an equally satisfying cup of tea.”
“I’ll certainly try.”
With that, she closed the door behind her, leaving Nigel with a strangely unexpected smile on his face.
As soon as the 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
