Following a hunch, she called a friend at the library. The other woman was a former client Ash had helped to get into night school and eventually into a position as a reference librarian for a small town west of Boston. She asked the librarian to do a microfilm search on newspaper articles with her family's name in them around the time of her birth.
Two hours later, her friend called back with news that rocked Ash's world right off its axis.
Ash wasn't surprised to find her mother in her office on a Saturday afternoon, but she was surprised to see her.
She stood up from her desk, a smile of welcome curving her lips. "Ashlyn, what are you doing here?"
"I came to ask why you lied to me."
"Lied to you?" Her pale blue eyes narrowed warily. "About what?"
"What's the matter? Are there so many lies between us that you can't guess which one I'm angry about?" she asked scathingly.
"I told Nikos not to mention the business deal. I knew it would only upset you."
"I don't care about the business deal between you two sharks."
"You don't?"
"No."
"So, you're going to marry him anyway?"
"Never!"
Rachel Hemsworth seemed to shrink, looking older than her fifty-two years. "I thought…"
"Whatever you thought, you were wrong. But I'm not here to discuss Nikos, or the almost disaster I narrowly avoided in marrying him."
"You aren't?"
"I'm here to discuss her." Ellie threw a picture on the desk.
It was one in which her sister's lover was difficult to recognize. Ash had no doubt that her mother would start looking for her sister, but the fact that she'd stopped looking at all and filed her lost daughter away with other bad business made her determined not to make it easy for her. She was perfectly capable of finding the other woman, or at least as capable of hiring a good detective agency as she was.
Her mom stared down at the picture and turned gray. "Where did this come from?"
"Ask Nikos."
Her head snapped up. "What does Nikos have to do with it?"
"He thinks I cheated on him."
"But I told him you were in Spain."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"There are stalking laws in this state. Call off your security detail, or I will invoke them."
"Damn it, Ashlyn, you know I can't do that. It's not safe."
"You mean like she was safe?"
If anything, her complexion turned more pasty. "There was nothing I could do once she was gone. No leads to follow."
"You gave up."
"It was the only way to maintain my sanity." She made a visible effort to swallow. "How did you find out about her?"
"Certainly not from you."
She flinched, but said nothing.
"I played a hunch and had a newspaper search done of the time near my birth. The kidnapping made the papers."
"By the time it did, there was no hope left."
"Why didn't you tell me about her? I had a right to know."
"What would have been the use? By the time you were old enough to understand, I knew we would never see her again. Knowing about her would only have hurt you."
"Since when did you ever care whether or not I was hurt? You didn't tell me about my sister because you didn't want me to keep after you to find her. You knew I would. I'm stubborn that way about the people I love."
"I couldn't stand it. It hurt too much," the admission came out in a low, tortured voice.
"What hurt exactly? Writing your daughter off like bad business?"
"I didn't write her off. There was nothing to go on," she practically shouted, surging to her feet behind the desk.
"Who said I was talking about her?" Ash asked, then turned and left her office.
She called her name, but she ignored the plea in her voice, just as she had ignored her pleas for affection for twenty-three years.