I get up before it’s light and dress in a decent shirt and skirt. I debate a long time what to wear. I want to look confident and respectable and avoid looking like a dive bum or trashy bimbo. The perfectly perfect receptionists aren’t going to just let me into Jonas’s office. I’ve devised a plan. Maybe not a great one, but the best I can do. Several times I pick up my phone to call Liesa.

That shocks the hell out of me. I’ve never asked fashion advice from anyone except Mom. I watched the girls at the sorority house exchange clothes, and dress each other for everything from a first date to formal dinners to regular classes. It always irritated me the way they giggled and passed clothes around and made it seem like the most important thing in the world. And here I am, wishing I had someone to give me an opinion. Not just anyone, I specifically think of Liesa.

She’s not your friend.

Guard your heart.

All of my clothes come from the thrift store, or at best Target or Old Navy. Nothing that smacks of taste and money. I finally settle on a black knit skirt and short-sleeved top and hope it will do.

It’ll never do.

I catch an early bus with several cleaning people and service workers. No one speaks in the predawn darkness as the bus stops and takes on people, then starts to dispel them when we make our way into downtown. I step off the bus with two other women and we split off, heading to different office buildings.

It isn’t difficult to skirt around the guard at the parking garage entrance. He slouches in his chair watching a small television and I sneak under his window and into the garage. I wander around the cavernous place until I find the reserved spots. Jonas will park in one of these. I find a low concrete wall and settle in to wait for him.

From where I sit I witness the sunrise through a narrow opening running around the top of the garage.

Zach, are watching the same sunrise?

My nerves jangle in time with my tapping feet. Mom hadn’t wanted me to know about Jonas. She’d kept me ignorant of him. Was it so she’d never have to share me? Was it shame? He’d be glad to know me, wouldn’t he? I was beyond the tough years when he’d have to worry about raising me. Blake’s words tumble in my head. But he’s wrong. What kind of man wouldn’t claim his own daughter?

With each second my heart pounds harder. Not long after sunrise, people start arriving for work. The BMW’s, Mercedes, and Audis with their sparkling clean exteriors expel equally shiny financial workers, in their expensive suits and dresses, their faces hard and full of drive. I watch each car enter the parking level, focusing on spotting a driver with dark hair and distinctive nose. Finally, when the young ambitious workers with something to prove taper off, Jonas buzzes into the garage in his black Ferrari. His wheels squeal as he whips into a prime slot and shuts off the engine.

He pops out and with his usual energy and bounces toward the elevator.

My father.

I don’t know how I manage to move, let alone speak. My mind turns to automatic which allows my voice to sound almost natural. “Jonas Knightly.”

He barely turns, as if people coming up to him in a parking garage happens every day. “Yeah.”

I hurry to intercept him before he gets to the elevator. “I don’t know if you remember me.”

He scrutinizes me a moment and frowns. “Sure. You asked me for a job. Did you speak to HR?”

“No. I….”

He steps around me, like a halfback zagging through the defensive line. “I’m not going to play this game. You’ve got spunk and ingenuity to seek me out personally. Yeah, yeah. So have a dozen other young people. Getting a job with me isn’t a matter of impressing me by how you can break the rules.”

I chase after him. “I’m not here for a job.”

He doesn’t slow his progress.

I inhale deeply and settle myself so the words will come out strong. “I’m here because you’re my father.”

I guess I expected him to freeze. I thought the words would ring through the quiet garage. He’d slowly lift his eyes to mine and study me. From there, I hadn’t thought too far. Maybe tears would form in his eyes. Maybe he’d ask for proof. Whatever I thought might happen, I don’t expect this.

He keeps walking toward the elevator. He reaches out and pushes the button.

I squeeze around him to stand between him and door. “Did you hear me?”

He huffs out an irritated breath and steps back, as if resigning himself to having to deal with me. “Yes. I heard you.”

What? I don’t know if I heard him right. “I’m your daughter.”

His head tips to the side and a look of boredom covers his features. “That’s how it works if I’m your father.”

“You know about me?”

The elevator dings behind me and the doors slide open with a whoosh but I don’t turn around. Jonas glances at his escape then back at me. “More or less.”

I can’t find my voice and can only squeak. “How? When?”

He shifts impatiently. “Let’s see. The first time? Maybe a few months after you were conceived. Then when you were born. When you broke your arm in the second grade. After your mother lost her job as a secretary at the law firm.”

He knew? All along, he knew.

“Or do you mean when you showed up in my office all wide-eyed and tongue-tied and gave me a stupid lie about wanting a job?”

“You knew I was lying?”

He smiles. “You look so much like your mother. At least, how she looked when I knew her. An idiot could figure out who you are. And I’m not idiot.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

He waves me off. “Why should I? With any luck, you’d lose your nerve and scoot on home and save us both an unpleasant incident like the one we’re having right now.”

My jaw unhinges and I try to put it together. “Mom contacted you?”

He gives a contemptuous chuckle. “Why not? Jonas Knightly and his millions could certainly afford to help out a poor woman and her daughter.”

My stomach twists. “But you didn’t help, did you?”

A hard glint enters his eyes. “I tried. When she told me she was pregnant, I offered to send her to a very nice clinic. A resort, really. She’d have had a procedure, spent several weeks at their spa getting pampered, and gone on with her life.”

Clinic.

He’d wanted her to have an abortion.

To get rid of me.

I feel sick. “You wanted her to have an abortion?”

He retreats a few steps, probably giving up on the idea of getting to his office soon. “Look, I liked your mother. She was fun and smart. We both loved to dive and loved to fuck.”

That last seems to be stuck in there for shock value. It works. I can barely breathe.

He shrugs. “Sorry, but it’s true. I had just gotten married. I doubt your mother knew that, but I never promised her anything except a good time for as long as we were both in Cayman.”

“But…” I don’t know what I plan to say after that.

He plows through my hesitation. “When she decided to go ahead with having the baby—” He stops and assesses me. “you, apparently, I told her she’d have to do it on her own. I’ve got a wife and we’d planned to have a family. I couldn’t afford to have any embarrassing issues from my past creeping up.” He glares at me. “Sort of like you’re doing now.”

My throat aches with what I can’t say. “But I’m your daughter.” I hold out the DNA report.

He doesn’t even look at it. “Because of one determined sperm?” He laughs. “My responsibility ended when your mother chose not to have the abortion I offered to pay for.”

He steps around me and pushes the elevator button again.

I hear the desperation in my voice. “I’ll go to your wife. Show her the DNA report.”

He looks at the light marking the progress of the elevator. “It’s harder to get to her than it is to me, but it can be done. Especially by one as resourceful as yourself. But you aren’t the first one to try this. She doesn’t like to hear it and it usually costs me diamonds and vacations to help her get over the shock, but she loves me—or at least loves the lifestyle I provide—so she forgives me.”

“I’ll go…”

“To the press? They don’t care. I’m not a celebrity, you know. I’m just a rich guy. And rich guys get to do what they want.”

The elevator door opens and he places a hand on my arm to move me out of the way.

I stumble and watch him step inside. He doesn’t look at me as the doors slide shut and the light gives me the indifferent accounting of his climb to the top of the building.