And the jewels. He saw the tiara and the choker, glittering atop her head and around the glowing skin of her slender neck.

They looked as if they belonged on Ashley. But Barky had always known they would.

He picked up the magazine and with steady, callused hands opened to the inside article.

“Achh,” he muttered in disgust when he saw the picture of himself. He’d never liked having his picture taken, for this very reason.

For thirty years, he’d dreaded this moment. Known, one day, it would come.

Others would see Ashley. The jewels. Himself. And they would have to act. Like him, they now had no choice.

5

The phones at Touchstone Communications had begun to ring. Reporters called. Photographers, magazine editors, advertisers, single men, quacks—they wanted Ashley for everything from endorsing a new line of eye makeup to modeling swimsuits in Bermuda to having dinner on Saturday night. She finally gave up on trying to get any work done and went home.

Nothing, she thought, ever seemed to penetrate the quietly regal streets of Beacon Hill. Even the flats, closer to Storrow Drive and the river, gave off the air of being wholly immune to the goings-on in the rest of Boston—or, for that matter, the world. Ashley had always loved this part of the city. When she’d been a student at Boston University, she used to like to wander the narrow streets of Beacon Hill, especially in the evening, when she could peek into the brightly lit windows. She had never been jealous of how the people lived inside the understated town houses. She hadn’t desperately wanted to have what they had. She had simply been curious.

She groaned when she saw the group of reporters gathered on her steps. Cameras began clicking, and they fired a flurry of questions at her.

“Ms. Wakefield, a few minutes....”

“Tell us how you feel about being a mystery heiress. Haven’t you wondered who made you rich?”

“Were those jewels real?”

“Any ideas who your secret benefactor is?”

“What about your family? What do they think?”

Pasting a smile on her face, Ashley dug out her keys and waltzed past them with apologies and assurances that anything she’d had to say was already in the pages of You.

She gave them a dazzling smile as she unlocked her door. “And if you all aren’t off my steps in five minutes, I’ll be forced to call the police. Have a pleasant evening.”

Grumbling, she trudged upstairs.

In keeping with the period of the house, the furnishings of her duplex were generally high style, many of them English as well as American antiques. She had recently begun to collect art: a Winslow Homer seascape hung above the marble fireplace. Ever since she’d bought it at her first art auction, Evan Parrington had been harassing Ashley to invest in a security system for her apartment. So far she had resisted.

She wondered if all this publicity would change that. Would she have to get an unlisted number? Invest in alarms, new and tougher locks? Maybe even move?