Her hands were trembling. Every breath was painful. What had she expected Ashley Wakefield to say? Here, take the jewels. No. Nothing was ever that simple.

She opened the scrapbook. Pasted on the first page was a black-and-white publicity glossy of a legend. The cheekbones were prominent, stunning, the eyes heavy lashed and intense, the smile at once elegant, innocent, mischievous.

When people remembered Judith Land, they remembered her smile.

The photograph had been taken when the actress was just twenty-one and already famous, a woman with the wit of Katharine Hepburn, the ice of Grace Kelly, the fire of Marilyn Monroe.

Stiffening her hands to still their incessant trembling, Sarah flipped several pages, to the center of the scrapbook, then back a page. At the top left corner was a small clipping from a short-lived Paris gossip magazine. It was a photograph, in black-and-white, of two women at a Christmas ball in Vienna, two friends, two heiresses, one a famous actress, the other a neophyte journalist.

Judith Land and Lillian Parker.

They were dressed in the most expensive, the most stylish gowns of the day, and they were smiling, not gay smiles, not carefree smiles, but the smiles of two young women who had suddenly found themselves launched into adulthood. Poised, certain, not so innocent.

In what the caption said, in French, was a stroke of sheer audacity, Judith Land was wearing a tiara, her shining dark hair woven into the complicated pattern of diamonds and pearls. On her alabaster neck was a matching choker, its center a large, perfect ruby.

Sarah positioned the cover of You next to the rare Paris photograph.

The pieces were the same. She would stake her life on it.

She shut the scrapbook in her desk and took the elevator three flights up, to the offices of the president and chief executive officer of Crockett Industries. Andrew Balaton. Her father. His position with the company should have been an asset for his only child, but it wasn’t. Andrew Balaton believed a woman born to wealth, beauty and social status—such as his daughter—shouldn’t involve herself in the messy world of corporate empires.

But Sarah was determined to prove him wrong and to dispel his stubborn prejudice. She sensed that, deep down, her father wanted her to succeed in business and was secretly pleased with all she had accomplished while he had stood back, observing, offering no help. What Sarah Balaton had done, she had done on her own merits. One day she hoped her father would congratulate her on her hard work, dedication and honesty.

Nothing, she thought, was going to stop her from reaching that day, when her father would notice her for her abilities. Nothing. Not her love life, not the prejudices toward her looks and sex, not the gossip about her relationship with Andrew Balaton, not even her disgust with the waste, mismanagement and corruption she saw every day in business. She believed a principled, intelligent and committed person could excel.