CHAPTER THREE
LIYAH WATCHED HER father from the distance of the cavernous lobby.
If she wasn’t sneaking in unnecessary glimpses of the emir, Liyah was straining for yet another impression of Gene Chatsfield. It was ridiculous.
Unable to deal with her attraction to Sayed in any other way than to avoid direct contact, she was no closer to coming to terms with the reality of her father, either.
And she felt like a coward.
Hena Amari had always been vocal in her praise of what she considered her daughter’s intrepid and determined nature. Neither of which were at the forefront of Liyah’s actions right now.
She needed to get her first meeting with Gene Chatsfield over with. If for no other reason than to tell him of her mother’s death.
She sincerely doubted anyone else had done so. It wasn’t something that human resources would have mentioned to the owner of the entire hotel chain.
The Chatsfield San Francisco had sent a beautiful bouquet of purple irises to the funeral; however, these were probably organized by Stephanie Carter and that was no indication their proprietor knew of his chambermaid’s death.
Liyah watched as Gene stepped onto the elevator, no doubt headed to the penthouse-level suite he always occupied when he was in London.
The empty suite. Because his fiancée was out shopping and not expected back until after teatime.
Now would be the perfect time for Liyah to make herself known to him. Things with the hotel were running smoothly; there had been no further complications with the sheikh’s visit.
And what was Liyah doing here if it wasn’t to fulfill her mother’s final request?
Unlike her half sister Lucilla Chatsfield, Liyah didn’t want to make her career at the family hotel and certainly not simply to please her father. He hadn’t exactly been supportive of Lucilla’s career, his one child who had made it clear she was not only interested in the welfare of the hotels, but worked hard for the Chatsfield. Instead, her father had hired a man with a ruthless reputation and, if the rumors were true, Giatrakos was extending his own personal brand of punishment not only to Lucilla, but to the remaining Chatsfield siblings. The man was a dinosaur when it came to workplace ideals.
Besides, Liyah had no fantasies that Gene Chatsfield would publicly acknowledge her. Not after a lifetime of him not doing so.
Theirs would always have to be a private relationship. The Chatsfield name had spent enough time in the tabloids. Gene would never willingly be party to dragging it through the red ink of more media scrutiny.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t interested in meeting his twenty-six-year-old daughter.
His payment of support, as modest as it had been, all the way through her college years indicated he felt something toward Liyah. If only obligation.
Just like her obligation to Hena’s memory.
Right. It was time.
Taking a breath to calm her suddenly racing heartbeat, Liyah untucked her mother’s locket from beneath her blouse. She’d worn it every day since Hena had given it to Liyah on her deathbed.
Curling her fingers around the metal warmed by her skin, Liyah took courage from the love and memories that it would always evoke and keyed the elevator for the penthouse level.
A few minutes later, Gene Chatsfield opened his suite’s door, holding a mobile phone against his chest and wearing a puzzled expression on his features. “Yes, Amari?”
Something cold slithered down her spine at her father’s use of her last name. But what else was he supposed to call her? He probably didn’t even know her first name.
That would change in the next hour.
Dismissing the inevitable nerves, Liyah schooled her features into her most comfortable mask of unruffled dignity. “Mr. Chatsfield, I would appreciate a few moments of your time.”
“If this is about your employment here, I have to tell you I trust my human resource and senior housekeeping staff implicitly. It’s no use you looking for special favors from the proprietor and, quite frankly, in very poor taste.”
“It’s nothing like that. Please, Mr. Chatsfield.”
For a moment, Gene Chatsfield looked torn. “Come in,” he said, “and sit down. I just need two minutes.” After the briefest of gestures to the sofa in the lounge area, Gene hovered in the doorway to the room beyond.
“I’m sick of it, Lucca.”
Faintly embarrassed and very uncomfortable to be present for such a clearly personal conversation between Gene and his son, Liyah looked around the room. Beside a large, comfortable chair was a side table that held a glass of what looked like whiskey and a newspaper. The headline screamed across the room. Lucca Chatsfield Does It Again!
What might have once been the amusing antics of a world-renowned playboy—a stranger to her—it now sickened her to know that these scandalous exploits were from her own flesh and blood. She had unfollowed @LuccaChatsfield, wanting no more distractions or information about her family.
“Just keep it off the internet, and for all our sakes, stay the hell away from Twitter,” Gene growled into the phone before cutting the call dead and turning his attention back to Liyah.
If anything, his frown turned more severe, clearly ready to tackle what he saw as another problem. “While I’m aware I must have a certain reputation among the chambermaids, my days of dallying in that direction are years in the past.”
Liyah couldn’t hide the revulsion even the thought of what he was implying caused. “That is not why I’m here.”
Inexplicably, he smiled. “I’m glad to hear it. My fiancée is a possessive woman.”
And he was a former lothario with a past he no doubt wanted to keep exactly where it was. Buried.
“You know, this was a bad idea. I’m sorry I bothered you.” She couldn’t promise it wouldn’t happen again, but she was leaning toward the idea that maybe...really, it wouldn’t.
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 assured the monetary stipend would not have been negligible.”
She stood, her legs shaky—though she wasn’t about to let him know it―her heart a rock in her chest. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I won’t do so again.”
“See that you don’t. Your regret would far outweigh anything you might hope to gain.” He rose, as well, towering over her, despite the slight stooping of age. “If you attempt to cash in on our supposed connection in any way, I won’t hesitate to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”
She reeled back, feeling as if he’d struck her. “My mother was wrong.”
“She certainly was to send you on this wild errand. Is she even dead? I doubt it?”
“Yes, the only parent that will ever matter to me died four months ago.”
“And it took you this long to come find your supposed father? More like you worked out how to cash in on some convenient coincidences.”
Drawing on the brittle exterior she’d had to show to the world too much in her life, Liyah lifted her head and looked at Gene Chatsfield like the worm he was. “The only convenience is the fact your hotel paid for my trip here.”
“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.