Throughout Texas, however, Sarah was known more for being a beautiful and seductive heiress than a savvy businesswoman. Golden haired and golden eyed, she had a tiny waist and full, heavy breasts that she rarely showed off to any perceived advantage. She wore high collars and buttoned all but the top button of her crisp shirts. In business, big breasts were not an asset.

Andrew Balaton greeted his daughter warmly and invited her to sit on the long black leather couch facing the length of his large office. Darker in skin tone, hair and eyes than Sarah, he had her flawless skin that, despite his sixty-five years, was virtually without wrinkles. He was wiry, physically fit from daily exercise sessions, never overweight. His fine hands were manicured every week. Since he’d divorced his third wife twelve years ago, he’d had many women. Some were younger than his daughter.

Sarah tucked her ankles to one side, in an attempt to appear demure. Her father sat in a matching chair. “You work very hard, Sarah,” he said. His deep voice was quiet, emotionless. Thirty years ago, when he’d fled his native Hungary as a dispossessed count, he’d anglicized his name from András, and now he retained his aristocratic formality, but little of his Hungarian accent. He smiled. “Too hard.”

She lowered her eyes. They’d had this conversation before—too many times. She did work hard. She wanted to. And, as she pointed out ceaselessly, she worked no harder than he did. She was following in her father’s footsteps. But Andrew Balaton refused to see it that way, at least not yet. Now he could see his daughter only as violating the precise code of ethics under which he operated. He was an aristocratic man, bound by form and duty, and all the pain he had witnessed, all he himself had experienced, had not shaken him free from the external rules that guided him. He never lost his temper, he never cursed, he never cried. And he no longer loved.

“Why did you want to see me?” he asked.

She handed him her copy of You. “I wondered if you’d seen this.”

He looked at the smiling face of Ashley Wakefield and shrugged. “Is she a friend of yours?”

“No—we’ve never met.” She leaned forward slightly. “Father, don’t you recognize the jewels she’s wearing?”

“I don’t, no.” He handed the magazine back to her. “Do you?”

She uncrossed her ankles and pushed back her hair. Fidgety moves. She was annoyed with herself, but maintained direct eye contact with her father. “I’m positive they’re the tiara and choker from the Balaton collection.”

Andrew Balaton rubbed one finger across his mouth, then sighed, as he always did when he was disappointed in her. “Oh, Sarah, I’ve told you: the Balaton jewels are a myth.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. I am the last Count András Balaton. If anyone would know, it’s I.”

She looked away. “I see.”

Her words were barely audible. In 1956, following the failed Hungarian uprising against the Soviet Union’s domination of its national affairs, her father had fled the country of his birth. He was a handsome, educated aristocrat, but utterly penniless. He had escaped with nothing but his not inconsiderable pride.