“I will expect you to put in your notice tomorrow. I won’t have a would-be blackmailer working in my hotel.”
“I would leave right now but unlike some of the children you raised, I have a work ethic.” With that, Liyah swept from the suite on legs that barely held her up.
Not that she’d let the man in the suite see her weakness. He’d gotten the single moment of vulnerability from her she would ever give him. The moment when she’d asked him in so many words to be her father.
She was on the elevator before Liyah remembered she’d left her mother’s locket with Mr. Chatsfield. Only, when the elevator doors opened to the lobby, she found herself incapable of keying in access to the hotelier’s floor again.
She stood there in a fugue of inner turmoil as two men got on the elevator with her. Liyah should have stepped off, not ridden it with guests.
She did nothing, turned away from them as one keyed access to the presidential level.
Realizing there was no way she was returning to the suite, she managed to press the button for her concierge level, not at all sure what she was going to do when she arrived there.
She only knew one thing with certainty. Liyah wasn’t asking Gene Chatsfield for the necklace. She wasn’t ever going to ask that man for anything again.
He’d most likely see she got it back via employee channels, anyway. And if he didn’t?
Liyah would let go of the memento the same way she’d had to let go of her belief Hena Amari would never lie to her.
Her entire childhood had been influenced by the deception that her father knew and cared about her in even some minimal way. The realization he did not shouldn’t be so devastating, but shards of pain splintered through Liyah’s heart.
Only then did she realize how much it had meant to her to believe she had a father, no matter how distant and anonymous.
Liyah tried to tell herself that her life was no different today than it had been yesterday. Gene Chatsfield had never been anything more than an ephemeral dream.
So, he denied his paternity? It didn’t matter.
She wanted to believe that, but she’d never been good at lying to herself no matter how impenetrable the facade she offered the rest of the world.
Cold continued to seep through her, making her shiver as if she was standing at the bus stop in the winter’s chill. Her usually quick brain was muzzy, her hands clammy, her heart beating a strange tattoo.
If she didn’t know better, Liyah would think she was in shock.
Sounds came as if through a tunnel and colors were strangely sharp while actual details grew indistinct.
She felt like if she reached out to touch the wall, her hand would go right through it. Nothing felt real in the face of a lifetime and what amounted to a deathbed confession marred by lies.
Deceptions perpetrated by the one person she would never have looked for it from destroyed Liyah’s sense of reality, Gene Chatsfield’s denial a blow she would have never expected it to be.
Despite her inner turmoil, clipped tones managed to draw Liyah’s attention. Perhaps because they came from the one man who managed to occupy her thoughts more than her biological father.
Sayed spoke in Arabic to his personal bodyguard, the man she’d heard called Yusuf.
So furious he seemed unaware of Liyah’s presence, she realized why as the import of his conversation hit her.
Apparently, Liyah wasn’t alone in facing betrayal today. Unbelievably, the future emira of Zeena Sahra had eloped with a palace aid.
Another kind of shock echoed through Liyah. What woman would walk away from a lifetime with Sayed?
The doors whooshed open and she stepped onto the floor that had been blocked off for the harem of Sayed’s entourage, one thought paramount. The no-longer-future emira’s rooms would not be occupied. Not tomorrow, or any day thereafter for the next week.
Liyah’s overwhelming need to be completely away from the potential of prying eyes had an outlet.
She kept her eye out for anyone in the hall, but it was blessedly empty. As much as she liked Abdullah-Hasiba, Liyah felt an almost manic fear of being forced to speak with the older woman, or anyone else related to Sayed.
She was barely handling her own destructive revelations; Liyah wasn’t up to hashing out the prince’s woes with his loyal staff.
Using her pass card, she quietly let herself into the former fiancée’s room. Tears Liyah never allowed herself to shed in front of her mother for Hena’s sake, much less before strangers, were burning her throat and threatening to spill over.
Once inside the lavishly appointed suite, Liyah had no interest in the mint-green walls and elegant white accents and furniture. Her focus was entirely on the fully stocked liquor cabinet in the alcove between the suite’s sitting room and small dining area.
The request for the full accompaniment of alcohol had surprised Liyah, but it had come from Tahira herself, rather than through Sayed’s staff.
It was Liyah’s job to see that hotel guest’s requests were attended to, not determine their appropriateness.
Though considering the fact Sayed’s suite had no alcohol and neither was any requested for his support staff, Liyah had thought it wasn’t a habit he was aware his future emira indulged in.
It was pretty obvious in the face of recent events that drinking wasn’t the only thing Tahira had been hiding from her fiancé.
Liyah was on her third glass of smooth aged Scotch, without the dilution of ice, when she heard the telltale snick of a key card in the suite’s door lock.
She watched with the fascination of a rabbit facing off a snake as the heavy wooden door swung inward.
The handsome but set face of Sheikh Sayed bin Falah al Zeena showed itself, along with his imposing six-foot-two-inch body clad in his usual designer suit under the traditional black men’s abaya.
Dark eyes narrowed in shocked recognition.
SAYED KNEW EXACTLY what drove him to his former fiancée’s suite and it wasn’t any form of sentimentality.
It was for the fully stocked liquor cabinet he could indulge in without witnesses.
He’d stopped in shock at the sight that greeted his eyes once inside, his body’s instant response not as unwelcome as it would have been only two hours before.
Aaliyah Amari lounged on the sofa, a crystal glass in her hand, her emerald eyes widened in surprised befuddlement. The scent of a very good malt whiskey lingering in the air implied she’d come to Tahira’s room for the same reason he had.
To drink.
On any other day, he would have been livid, demanding an explanation for her wholly unacceptable behavior. But today all his fury was used up in response to the betrayal dealt him by his betrothed.
“She’s not here,” Aaliyah said, her words drawled out carefully.
“I am aware.”
Aaliyah blinked at him owlishly. “You’re probably wondering why I am.”
“It would appear you needed a drink and a private place to have it.”
Her expression went slack. “How did you know?”
He shrugged.
“Have you been speaking to my father?” She leaned forward, her expression turning nothing short of surly.
The