“Oh, Ash.”

“Not about the jewels...I didn’t—well, she never even asked. If she had, I don’t know. I’d probably have gone ahead and told her.”

But Pat Oberlin hadn’t questioned her about the tiara and choker. In addition to the hefty annual payments, the trust specified that Ashley and David were to be given access to a safe-deposit box at Piccard Cie. Two days after their twenty-fifth birthday, they’d flown to Geneva, found the bank on Georges-Favon Boulevard and presented themselves to their bank officer. He’d opened the box. In a private, secured room, they’d examined the contents: the tiara and choker, a diamond-and-emerald bracelet, a ring of one giant emerald surrounded by diamonds and an emerald necklace, each large perfect stone set in gold.

It had been an astounding day. And, in their shock, Ashley and David had agreed to leave the jewels in the vault. They were just too much for them to handle. They were more tangible than money. Someone had put them into the safe-deposit box, touched them the way they were now touching them. Had they been handled by human hands months ago? Years? Decades? They didn’t even have a clue as to when the trust had been set up.

But looking at the jewels, feeling the coolness of the genuine stones, they had concluded that, despite all his protestations of ignorance, their uncle had to know more than he was admitting. Barky had insisted he knew nothing whatever about Liechtenstein trusts, certainly nothing about theirs, and that they should look to their own lives for clues, not his. But that seemed impossible. There was no one—no one!—who could or would leave them such an enormous amount of money in their circle of friends and acquaintances.

Barky had to be protecting someone, they’d decided on that warm day in Switzerland. Himself, their parents, a friend. Them. They had no idea. And obviously Barky didn’t want them to get any ideas, and neither did the person who had set up the trust.

And so for four years, they had left well enough alone.

Caroline sighed. “Feel better?”

“Actually—” Ashley paced across the cluttered office of her tireless partner in business. “Actually, I think I do. Maybe it’s better this way.”

“How? Yesterday you wouldn’t tell a soul about your money. Today you’ve told the whole world. Don’t you believe in easing into this kind of thing?”

Ashley stopped shaking and stood up straight, shoulders back. “I did ease into it. It’s been four years, Caroline. I’ve been working up to today. And anyway, it’s not all that interesting a story. Maybe we’ve been making too much of this anonymous trust thing and it really is no big deal. Maybe Pat Oberlin and Sybil Morgenstern will put their heads together and decide no one will give a hot damn how Ashley Wakefield got her money.”

“Bull,” Caroline said.

“Probably You will stick this story in the back pages with the hair tonics and sexy underwear. If not—” Ashley paused. “Well, I’ll just cross that bridge when I come to it.”