Caroline grunted dubiously. “If there is one. You might just find your ass bumping down the rapids, with nothing to grab on to.”

4

On a bright, clear, gorgeous Friday morning, more than two weeks after her interview with You, Ashley walked up Charles Street and through the Common, joining scores of other Bostonians who had decided it was too nice a day to drive. There weren’t that many pleasant days left. The weather had begun to cool noticeably, and even in Boston, the brightest colors of autumn were sparkling in the trees. Vibrant reds, iridescent oranges.

It was a difficult day to nurse a bad mood, and Ashley noticed the bounce in her step. She had bought a half dozen apricot-filled croissants for her and her Touchstone staff. Work had been proceeding with all too much haste and efficiency of late; they needed to relax a bit, make up an extra pot of coffee, consume some extra calories. It would be invigorating and perhaps forestall premature burnout.

“Life as you know it,” Ashley mumbled to herself, “is beginning to return to normal.”

She had finally immersed herself, once again, in her routines. Today she would work on her column for the winter issue of Currents, to be devoted entirely to new trends in marine archaeological research and exploration; meet a client for lunch; lead a staff meeting; perform all the other varied duties the president of a small company was required, by default, to perform.

Wasn’t life good? she asked herself as she grinned up at the gold dome atop the Massachusetts State House.

She wasn’t thinking anymore about mysterious jewels or sleazy photographers or unnamed benefactors. It was time to be serious. Time to get down to work and forget about questions she would never get answered.

Tonight, after work, she was having her hair done and then going to dinner and the theater with a man who was very good-looking and successful, but also dull and traditional and sometimes annoying. But it was preferable to staying home and staring at a diamond-and-pearl tiara and choker, wondering who had crafted them, owned them and put them in the vaults of Piccard Cie of Geneva, Switzerland.

And preferable, she thought, to wondering just how uninteresting Sybil Morgenstern had decided Ashley Wakefield was after hearing the report from Pat Oberlin. Ashley wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted that she hadn’t been in either of the next two issues of You magazine.

But she was in the third.

She was passing the Park Street station on the Common, and there she was, stacked twelve deep at the newsstand. She was smiling. Her eyes were ridiculously blue, her teeth impossibly white. She had the glittering tiara on her head, the choker around her neck.

In big bold letters were the words “ASHLEY WAKEFIELD, MYSTERY HEIRESS AND DOLPHIN RESCUER.”

They’d put her on the cover.

MacGregor Stevens peered through the open door of Jeremy Carruthers’s eggshell-colored office and noted his younger colleague’s look of profound relaxation. Thirty-six, green-eyed and a good-looking devil, Jeremy had his feet up on his desk, his ankles crossed, and was reading a magazine. Mac expected nothing less. It was a warm, sunny Friday morning in San Diego, not yet eight o’clock. Jeremy rarely got going before eleven.