13

Jeremy felt like a sleaze, but when Ashley dashed off to Touchstone, he took his mug of coffee and wandered around her duplex. He wanted to get a sense of the woman...and maybe find some indication of whether her uncle had contacted her.

The first floor consisted of a living room, study and small foyer in the front, and a kitchen, dining room and half bathroom in the back. The rooms were all small, coolly elegant. Upstairs there were two bedrooms, two full bathrooms and a messy den. A narrow, steep staircase in the den led to a rooftop deck with a spectacular view of the Charles River and Cambridge to the west and to the southwest the skyline of Back Bay.

He began with the living room. In minutes, he discovered the house was as filled with as many intriguing contradictions as the woman who lived there. Ashley Wakefield was unpredictable, sharp, sexy and beautiful, but also, as far as he could see, peculiar.

She had an original Homer seascape, pricey Kosta Boda glassware, Persian rugs, antiques mixed in with expensive contemporary pieces, a stunning collection of aquatic photography. But she also had a ragged bathrobe hanging in her closet, an array of dirty sneakers, a cupboard in her kitchen crammed with old mayonnaise and peanut butter jars, a pickle jar filled with buttons and a freezer stuffed with plastic bags of home-frozen vegetables.

She saved plastic bags from the supermarket and washed used pieces of aluminum foil.

In her study, he found stubby pencils, notes scrawled on used envelopes, outdated stationery torn up for scrap paper, a vase of dead flowers and no computer. There were pictures of eels, dolphins, whales and penguins on her bulletin board.

A waste-not, want-not heiress. Jeremy didn’t know many of those.

He thought of Susie and their failed marriage. She was definitely not waste-not, want-not, although very rich, beautiful and intelligent. But Susie was intense, tenacious. He had been drawn to that aura of toughness about her, only to discover, too late, that it was just an outer shell, a persona she liked to present to the world. Inside, Susie was vulnerable and insecure. Her current husband liked that: it made him feel needed, secure, masculine. Jeremy had felt only guilt: he could never have loved Susie as much as she had pretended, even to herself, that she loved him.

No, not love, he thought. Obsession. It was a different beast altogether.

Finding nothing of interest in the apartment except Ashley Wakefield herself, Jeremy called a cab. Outside on her front stoop, he smiled big for any cameras, and when the cab arrived, he said loudly, “Touchstone Communications.”

Just in case Ashley threw him out on his ass, he’d have witnesses—and a bit of revenge. He could see the gossip columns in the morning: “Mystery man visits mystery heiress.”

Ashley studied the aquatic photographs arranged on a plain white wall of her office. They reminded her of peace and tranquility and, at the same time, the unpredictability of the sea, and of life.