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work.”
    Caryn’s heart sank. Was she really about to be fired? It wasn’t just humiliating, it shook her confidence to the core. The only other job Caryn had had, before starting her design business, was an internship that her stepfather got her at his studio’s New York offices, where the staff treated her with kid gloves and refused to assign her any tasks more challenging than proofing interoffice memos. She’d received only rave reviews from every teacher, colleague, and employee she’d ever had, and she was proud of the business she had built with her hard work. But she never forgot that it was her stepfather’s money that had paid to launch the business, and her mother’s friends who’d supported her by buying her early collections. Even though she’d repaid Randall’s loan within two years, and had customers all over the globe, she’d never shaken the feeling that she’d been handed the job instead of working for it. Without Georgia and Randall’s help, she’d still be struggling.
    Deep in her heart, Caryn had always wondered who she would have been without their help. Well, now she was getting a chance to find out—and she’d failed almost before she’d started.
    After the sleepless night, the long flight, and the exhausting shift, what Caryn really wanted to do was sink to the floor and have a good cry. But this was supposed to be a journey of discovery.
    For most of her life, the thought of her biological father had filled Caryn with a complicated mixture of anger and longing. Only now that she was thirty years old had she begun to understand just how much his absence had affected her.
    Being the stepdaughter of a movie star had its compensations, but it had its drawbacks, too, especially since she wasn’t the extrovert her mother was. Georgia never tired of the attention showered on her by the paparazzi and the press, even now, a decade after her divorce from Randall. She had parlayed her fame and generous settlement into a philanthropic empire, and no one enjoyed the social whirl that went along with her life more than she did.
    Georgia hadn’t been a bad mother, but she certainly hadn’t been a conventional one, either. Caryn’s earliest memories were of her mother dressing her up to go out in Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Even as a little girl, Caryn understood that the well-dressed men who paid attention to her mother factored in their future. A relationship with a minor soap opera star led to an introduction to a European director who in turn introduced Georgia to a famous, if decades-older, film actor. By the time Caryn was in grade school, Georgia’s relentless social climbing had finally paid off, and she hit the big time.
    Randall Carver in person was not the brooding, handsome screen hero that the rest of America knew. To Georgia he was a ticket to the life she’d always wanted for herself and her daughter; to Caryn he was, finally, a man she could start to think of as “Dad.” He came to her recitals and softball games when he was in town; he paid for her to switch from public school to an exclusive private academy. Even after he left Georgia for a twenty-two-year-old swimsuit model (she had been only two years older than Caryn) he continued to take her to lunch every few weeks. She received tickets to all of his premiers and invitations to every holiday at the home he now shared with his young wife and infant twins. And of course he paid for her college tuition and arranged a trust into which he had transferred enough money that she would never have to work unless she wanted to.
    But as time went on, the inevitable happened: their lunches became less frequent, and she was not invited to be part of her stepfather’s children’s lives. Any dreams Caryn secretly had of siblings and big family Thanksgiving dinners dried up. When Georgia moved to New York, Caryn moved too, and by the time she had designed her first collection, her stepfather sent flowers and a note apologizing that