Free Project: Runaway Heiress by Heidi Betts Page B

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