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.