CHAPTER ONE

      SHE TRADED YOU FOR A CAR. A shiny red Mustang—that’s all you ever meant to that little lady. Now, why would you want a mother like that?

      “I don’t,” Gillian said to the door she stood facing. One of two double doors, twelve feet tall, carved from some golden wood varnished to gleaming perfection. They barred an entrance almost wide enough to admit a Mustang car, shiny red or otherwise. She clenched her hand to knock, but her arm stayed straight at her side. I don’t want her, she’d told the lawyer—a horrible little man—nearly two years ago. I want the facts. My facts.

      Like the name of her father. Whether she had any brothers or sisters or grandparents. Whether she might be deathly allergic to anything else besides bee stings. Facts that it seemed, some days, the whole world was conspiring to hide from her.

      The people who’d raised and loved her, the doctor who’d delivered her, the lawyer who’d arranged her adoption, the woman who’d borne her almost twenty-eight years ago—every one of them had lied or twisted or forgotten or lost or hidden her facts. Or simply refused to give them.

      Her facts lay behind this door and she’d come to steal them, since asking politely had gotten her nowhere.

      Had gotten her much worse than nowhere. Her letter of shy and hopeful inquiry last year had earned her a stinging, contemptuous response: “If I didn’t want you when you were born why would I want you now, Sarah, if that’s who you really are? So go get a life! And stay the hell out of mine!”

      And so I will, Mother. Just as soon as I have my facts. Gillian Sarah Scott Mahler raised her fist, held her breath and knocked, then noticed the doorbell and jabbed that, too.

      But of course a woman who owned a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, a millionaire by marriage and a queen of television soap opera in her own right, didn’t open her own front door. How idiotic to have expected it. Gillian blinked at the frowning older woman who swung back the door. “I...” She swallowed and tried again. “I have a ten o’clock appointment with Mrs. Corday. About the job. I’m Gillian Mahler.”

      “And just how did you get in here? Nobody buzzed the front gates,” declared the woman.

      Must be a member of the household rather than a maid, Gillian guessed, if she felt free to quiz visitors. She might even be a relative, an aunt or cousin, though Gillian could see nothing of herself in the dour and freckled face, the short square body, of her inquisitor. “I walked in,” she said as the woman tapped one foot impatiently. “Someone was driving out as I arrived, and waved me through.”

      “Those kids!” The woman glared over Gillian’s shoulder toward the massive iron gates at the end of the driveway, although the couple, a blond young man and woman in a Range Rover, were long gone.

      “I really do have an appointment,” Gillian insisted. She didn’t care if she’d broken some unwritten rule of the household. No one was turning her back now, not when she was this close.

      “Well, come on, then.” Leaving her to shut the door herself, the woman marched away.

      Gillian hurried after her, dimly aware of high, high ceilings, cool marble that clacked underfoot, a grand staircase that swept up to the floors above. Her mother’s house. Assuming Lara Corday—Lara Leigh to her adoring fans—was really her mother. And she is. Same birth date. Same high-school photo. Of course she is.

      So why wouldn’t she acknowledge her own daughter?

      Traded you for a car and never looked back, the lawyer