No matter what Hena had wanted.
“Nonsense. You’ve interrupted my afternoon for a reason. Come in.” He stepped back and indicated with an imperious wave of his hand that she should enter.
“Are you sure you’re not the emir around here?” she muttered under her breath as she did as he bid.
Apparently, he heard her, because he laughed, the sound startled. “You are no shrinking violet, I’ll give you that, Amari.”
“My name is Aaliyah, though I usually go by Liyah.” It sounded more American, even if the spelling was pure Middle Eastern.
“We are not on a first-name basis,” he replied with a return to his superior, if wary, demeanor of earlier.
She nodded acknowledgment even if she couldn’t give verbal agreement. He was her father; they should be on a first-name basis.
He led her into a posh living room with cream furniture, the walls the same saffron as a great deal of the hotel. Recessed lighting glowed down from the arched ceiling and a fire burned in the ornate white marble fireplace.
“Please, sit down.” He indicated one of the armchairs near the fire before taking the one opposite.
She settled into the chair, her hands fisting against her skirt-covered thighs nervously. “I’m not sure how to start.”
“The beginning is usually the best place.”
She nodded and then had a thought. Taking the locket from around her throat she handed it to him.
“This is a lovely, antique piece of jewelry. Are you hoping to sell it?” he asked, sounding confused rather than offended by that prospect.
“No. Please open it and look at the pictures inside.” One was of Liyah on her sixteenth birthday and the other was of Hena Amari at the same age.
She wouldn’t have looked appreciably different at eighteen, the age she was when she had her short affair with Gene Chatsfield.
He looked at the pictures, his puzzled brow not smoothing. “You were a lovely girl and your sister, as well, but I’m not sure what else I’m looking at.”
“The other woman isn’t my sister. She was my mother.”
He looked up then. “She’s dead?”
Liyah nodded, holding back emotion that was still too raw.
“I am very sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you. She didn’t tell me about you until just before she died.”
He frowned, his expression growing less confused and more cautious. “Perhaps you should tell me who she is and why she would presumably have told you about me.”
“You don’t recognize her?” Even after having time to really look at the picture?
It was small, but the likeness was a good one.
“No.”
“That’s...” She wanted to say obscene, but stopped herself. “Disappointing.”
“I imagine, if you are here for the reason I believe you are.”
“You know why I’m here?” she asked, a tiny bud of relief trying to unfurl inside her.
“It’s not the first time this has happened.”
“What exactly?”
“You’re about to claim I am your father, are you not?”
“That happens to you a lot?” she demanded, both shocked and appalled. “How many innocent chambermaids did you seduce?”
“That is none of your business.”
No, really, it wasn’t.
Eyes narrowed, Liyah nevertheless nodded. “While I find it deplorable you apparently never even bothered to find out my first name from Mom, don’t try pretending you didn’t know of my existence. She told me about the support payments.”
“Your mother’s name?” he demanded in a voice icier than she’d ever managed.
“Hena Amari.” There, that should at least clarify things. Though how he hadn’t already made the connection with her last name, Liyah couldn’t figure out.
“And I supposedly had a fruitful tryst with this Hena Amari. Did she work for one of my hotels, too? She must have, I kept my extramarital activities close to home in those days.”
“She was your chambermaid at the Chatsfield San Francisco.”
“What year?” he demanded.
She told him.
He shook his head. “While I am not proud of my behavior during that time in my life, neither am I going to roll over for blackmail.”
“I’m not trying to blackmail you!”
“You mentioned support payments.”
“That you made until I graduated from university. They weren’t large, but they were consistent.”
“Ah, so now we are getting somewhere.”
“We are?” Liyah was more confused than her father had seemed when she first arrived.
“You’re looking for money.”
“I am not.”
“Then why mention the support payments?”
“Because they’re proof you knew about me,” she said slowly and succinctly, as if speaking to a small child.
Either he was being deliberately obtuse, or something here was not as she believed it to be. The prospect of that truth made Liyah pull the familiar cold dignity around her more tightly.
“I never made any such payments.”
“What? No, that’s not possible.” Liyah shook her head decisively. He was lying. He had to be. “Mom told me you weren’t a bad man, just a man in a bad situation.”
Hena had refused to name Liyah’s father while living, but she’d done her best to give her daughter a positive impression of the absentee parent.
As positive as she could in the face of undeniable facts. The man had been much older and married. Hena had been a complete innocent, in America for the first time and too-easy prey.
“She said the support proved you cared about me even if you couldn’t be in my life.” Though that had been his choice, hadn’t it?
He’d kept his affairs secret; he could have kept a minimal relationship with his illegitimate daughter just as heavily under wraps.
“It sounds to me like your mother said a great deal, much of it fabricated.” He sounded unimpressed and too matter-of-fact to be prevaricating.
Sick realization washed over Liyah in a cold, unstoppable wave that made her feel like she was drowning. She was breathing, but couldn’t get enough air. Betrayal choked her.
Her mother had lied to her.
The one person in her life Liyah had always trusted. Her only family that mattered.
Something inside Liyah shattered, loosening feelings and entrenched beliefs like flotsam in the miasma of her emotional storm.
Liyah’s entire reasoning behind following through on Hena’s last wish was false. Her father didn’t know about Liyah, wanted nothing to do with her and never would.
“I can only repeat, I never made any such payments.” There was no compassion, no understanding, in his cold blue eyes. “If you really were my child and I had elected to help support raising you, you can rest