Project: Runaway Heiress Read Free Page B

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