She nodded as Morgan answered the phone. “Hello, Alisha,” he said. “I’m glad you called. We’ve been worried about you.”
It took all of Delilah’s will and self-control not to snatch the phone from his hand so she could speak with her daughter.
“I’m in room 415 at the Westin,” Morgan was saying. “You can come directly to the room when you get here, or I can meet you somewhere. Whatever you want.”
Delilah breathed a sigh of relief. Alisha was coming here, so she would get to see her child soon.
“Okay,” Morgan said. “I’ll see you in about an hour.” Then he hung up.
“What did she say?” Delilah asked.
“She wants to come over and talk.” He shrugged. “She’ll be here in about an hour. That’s all she said.”
“That’s a long time to wait,” Delilah said. “It’s going to seem even longer.”
Tommy reached for her hand. “We can’t be here when she arrives, Delilah. She wants to speak with Morgan. We have to give them this time.”
“But—” Delilah began.
“This is what Alisha needs, Delilah,” Tommy said. “She’ll come to you when she’s ready. Don’t push her.”
“He’s right, Delilah,” Morgan said. “You have to let her come to you. I’ll encourage her to do that sooner rather than later. I trusted you and Rocky with her for all of her life. Now I’m asking you to trust me with her for a couple of hours. Can you do that?”
Tears welled in Delilah’s eyes. “I don’t know. You’re asking too much.”
“You can do it,” Tommy said. “You can do it because you’re her mother and you love her. You’ll do it because it’s best for her.”
Chapter 51
Alisha stood with Jeff outside the door of Morgan’s suite. She looked up at him. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said.
He smiled down at her. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to go in with me?”
He tapped her on her nose. “I wish I could go in for you, but I can’t. This is something you have to do for yourself.”
She nodded. Then she took a deep breath and knocked on the door. Morgan opened it as Jeff headed for the elevator. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he said back. “Come on in.”
Alisha took in the suite. It was impressive. She’d almost forgotten that this man, her biological father, was the Morgan Sampson. Of course, he’d be in a suite. He could certainly afford one.
“Do you want something to eat or drink?” he asked. “I took the liberty of having room service bring up some lunch.”
She shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
“Thirsty?”
“Water is fine.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
“For what?” she asked.
He chuckled. “For giving me something to do to work off this nervous energy.”
His confession made her relax a bit. “You’re nervous too?”
“Of course I am. This is one of the most important moments in my life, and I don’t want to blow it.”
She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t respond. She looked around the suite. “This is a really nice room,” she said, feeling even more tongue-tied than she’d been when she first met him at the ASCAP conference.
He handed her a glass of water. “I’ve spent so much time in hotels that they all look the same.” He nodded toward the couch. “Take a seat.”
She took a sip of water as she did what he asked. “So you’ve traveled a lot,” she said, searching for something to talk about.
“I’ve done my share,” he said. “I only stay in hotels when working. When I’m vacationing, I much prefer leasing a house or condo. Hotels remind me too much of work.”
Alisha nodded. His mention of home made her think of his family. “You said you had a son and daughter.”
He leaned forward and pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket. “Both are younger than you, of course. Paige is twenty-four, just graduated from Stanford, in business, and Morgan Jr. is twenty-two. He fancies himself a producer like his old man.”
Alicia scanned the wallet-sized pictures, looking for some hint of herself in them. Seeing none, she searched Morgan’s face for the same. “He looks like you,” she said. “She doesn’t.”
He closed his wallet, smiling as he did so. “Like you, she got her good looks from her mother. You’re both lucky in that regard.”
Alisha didn’t have a suitable response to that comment, so she asked, “What do they think about me?”
He put his wallet back in his pocket. “I’d be lying if I said they welcomed the news. I’m just glad that they’ve now accepted it.”
She lifted a skeptical brow. “I’m not sure I believe you.”
He rolled his fingers around the top of his glass. “To be honest, it’s been a little easier for Morgan Jr. than for his sister. You and your brother have your love of music in common. Paige is of a different breed. Her interests fall on the business side of the music industry.”
It was strange for Alisha to hear him talking about her in the same breath as he spoke of his other children, the children he had raised. “So is Paige worried about her inheritance?”
Morgan laughed. It was a rich laugh. “Let’s just say it crossed her mind.”
Alisha smiled, appreciating his honesty. “I don’t blame her,” she said. “You really don’t have to include me in your will, Morgan. You don’t owe me anything.”
He put down his glass and leaned toward her. “I owe you more than I can give you. But you’re not in my will because I owe you. You’re in my will because you’re my child and I love you. My estate belongs as much to you as it does to Paige and Morgan Jr.”
The forcefulness and sincerity of his words caught Alisha off-guard. “It doesn’t,” she said. “You don’t even know me. I’m your daughter by biology only. It doesn’t have to matter. Rocky was my father. He’ll always be my father.”
Morgan sat back in his chair. “I know that,” he said. “I don’t want to take Rocky’s place. I know that’s impossible. I can’t be a father to you because you don’t need one, but I can be a mentor, and I can give you a brother and another sister. Those are the things I can do for you. I won’t even try to replace Rocky. I know that would be impossible.”
Alisha stared down at her glass of water. Why was he making this so easy for her? Didn’t he want anything from her? “And what do you want in return?”
He shrugged. “What I want is the impossible, so I won’t even go there. What would make me happy would be for you to find some joy in having a brother and sister and maybe some joy in sharing your music with me. That would be enough.”
Alisha wasn’t sure she could give him that.
“What do you think?” he asked, when she didn’t respond.
“I’m not sure,” she said, meeting his eyes. She wanted him to see the uncertainty she felt. He’d been honest with her, so she wanted to be honest with him. “This is all so new to me. I still can’t quite believe it. It’s as though my world has turned sideways. I don’t know what to say or how to react.”
“That’s fine, Alisha,” he said. “I won’t pressure you.”
But you’re dying, she thought. “You’re sick,” she said.
He nodded. “Cancer. I’m fighting it, but the odds aren’t good. You need to know that too.”
Alisha swallowed. “How long?”
“Long enough for you to take the time you need. My health shouldn’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
She looked at him. How can it not? she thought. “So you still want to be my mentor?” she said.
“Of course,” he told her. “Everything I told you about your music was true. You’re very talented. You can have a long career in this business, if you want it.”
Oh, she wanted it all right. She just wasn’t sure she could trust his instincts when it came to her. “I’m not sure I believe
you,” she said. “I keep thinking you’re telling me what you think I want to hear because I’m your dau—— . . . because you’re my biological father.”
Morgan chuckled. “After you get to know me, you’ll find I’m very straightforward. It would be cruel of me to tell you that you have talent if you didn’t. Instead of lying to you, I’d be looking for an easy way to tell you to consider another profession. No, you have the it that is necessary for success in the music business.”
She didn’t say anything, so he added, “I have a suggestion,” he said.
She looked up at him. “What is it?”
“Why don’t we try this? Why don’t we put our biological relationship on the back burner for now and focus on our professional mentor-mentee relationship? That will allow us to get to know each other.”
“I can’t pretend I don’t know who you are.”
“And I don’t want you to. All I’m asking is that you don’t let the biological relationship color the professional one. You were excited to be working with me before you found out who I am to you. Is it possible we can get that back?”
“I don’t know,” she said, wanting to keep things between them honest. “I’m sorry if that’s not what you want to hear.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “We’ve dropped a lot on you. So where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know,” she said, wishing she did.
“I’ve offered my professional suggestion. Now let me offer a personal one. Talk to your mother. You know she loves you. And you have to know how much it hurts her that you aren’t speaking with her. The same with your sisters. You need each other now, Alisha, more than ever. If you want to punish someone, punish me, but don’t punish them. Delilah cared about me, but she always loved Rocky. I knew that, but it didn’t stop me from falling in love with her.”
“But she was married, and so were you.”
He nodded. “Yes, we were, and we were wrong. But it happened, and we can’t take it back. We wouldn’t take it back. To take it back would be to not have you, and neither Delilah nor me, nor Rocky would want to give you up. What we did was wrong, but everything about you was right. Your birth gave Rocky and Delilah another chance. My marriage survived because, even though I didn’t tell my wife what had happened, I made a promise to myself to be the best husband that I could be. In the process, I fell back in love with my wife.”
Alisha thought about the things Morgan was saying and the things Jeff had said last night and earlier this morning. Maybe there was hope for her and Morgan. “Do you really think I have talent?” she asked.
He smiled at her. “Finish that demo and I’ll prove it to you.”
Chapter 52
Dexter sat in his car outside Delilah’s house, gathering his courage and his wits. He’d need both to face his wife and the in-laws who had never really accepted him. He took a deep breath, got out of the car, walked up to the door, and rang the bell.
Roxanne opened the door. Before he could speak, she said, “What are you doing here?”
Dexter walked past her and into the house. “I’m looking for my wife,” he said. “Where is she?”
“You’ve got some nerve, Dexter,” she said. “Why would you want to keep Veronica from her family? I don’t get it.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “I know about the deleted voice-mail messages and what you told Veronica about our not attending the party you had for her. You didn’t even invite us!”
Dexter felt all the disdain he usually felt from Veronica’s sisters flowing toward him. “Look, Roxanne,” he said, “I’m not going to argue with you. I want to see my wife.”
She made a noise that sounded like a snort. “At the rate you’re going, she may not be your wife for long.”
“That’s enough, Roxanne,” Veronica said, causing Dexter to turn around and face her. His immediate thought was that she looked completely relaxed and at ease, a complete contrast to the unrest he felt inside. “You’re looking for me, Dexter?”
He nodded. “We need to talk.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Okay, talk.”
“Not like this,” he said. He glanced at Roxanne, and then he said, “We need to talk alone.”
Veronica turned to her sister. “Do you mind?”
Roxanne looked from her to Dexter. “I just want to know why he lied. Tell me that and I’ll leave.”
“Leave now, Roxanne,” Veronica said. “This is between me and Dexter.”
Mumbling something under her breath, Roxanne left the room.
Dexter sat on the couch. “Your sisters can be rude at times.”
“Please, Dexter,” Veronica said. “You did lie. It’s not rude when someone calls you a liar because you’ve lied about them or to them.”
This conversation wasn’t going the way Dexter had planned. “Look, I didn’t come here to talk about that. When are you coming back to Atlanta?”
Veronica looked away. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’m not coming back.”
“What are you saying?” Dexter said, but he was afraid he knew exactly what she meant. “Of course you’re coming back. That’s where our life is now.”
She turned back to him. “I’m not sure it’s the life I want anymore.”
He came and stood next to her, not liking what he was hearing from her. “You don’t mean that. We’re living our dream.”
“Sometimes it seems more like a nightmare,” she murmured.
“You don’t mean that either,” he said, praying she didn’t. “We’ve had some rough patches, but we didn’t expect it to be easy, did we? We knew it was going to take a lot out of us. We can do this. Together, we can do anything.”
She looked at him, seeming unmoved by his words. “But I didn’t know it would cost me my family.”
“It doesn’t have to,” he said. “We can work through this.”
“How, Dexter?” she asked. “Tell me, how do we work through this? Forget Legends and Atlanta. I’m talking about you and me now. Do you realize that you’ve been lying to me since before we went to Atlanta? That’s foul, and it gets more foul each day I think about it. The man I married wouldn’t have done what you did. I don’t know what’s happened to you.”
Dexter rubbed his hand across his head, trying not to show his frustration. “Nothing’s happened to me,” he said. “Maybe you’re the one who’s changed. Legends is offering you everything you said you wanted. Have you decided it’s too much work for you? That it’s too hard?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” she asked. “Legends is the last thing on my mind. I’m worried about our family, you, me, my sisters, and my mother. That’s my family, Dexter. I don’t think you see it that way.”
“I had hoped we were starting our own family,” he said. “You and me.”
“But I shouldn’t have to give up my momma and sisters in order for us to have a family. Why does our family have to exclude them? I have enough love for you and them. It’s not a competition.”
It sure feels like one, Dexter thought. “Your mom and sisters don’t like me, Veronica. They tolerate me, but they don’t like me. They never have. I’m not stupid.”
“It goes both ways, Dexter,” she said. “You put up so many walls that they can’t get to know you. I wish they could see the parts of you that I fell in love with, but you keep those parts hidden behind a stuffy and aloof facade of academic and intellectual superiority. You say my folks don’t accept you—well, it goes both ways, because you don’t respect them and you’ve never appreciated their talent.”
“I love you,” he said, needing to change the subject and remind her of the most important truths between them. “I trust you. I don’t trust them.”
“And that’s a problem for me. They haven’t given you any reason to not trust them. You, on the other hand, have given them every reason to not trust you.”
“You shouldn’t have told them,” he said. “That was be
tween you and me. You don’t have to tell them everything. That’s part of the problem.”
She frowned. “There have been too many secrets and lies in this family. I wasn’t going to add to them. I want them to love you, but I’m not going to start lying and covering up for you. The things you did were foul, but I know my family. If you seek their forgiveness, they’ll give it.”
“Forgiveness? Me seek it? What about them? Your mother has never accepted me as a son-in-law. When is that going to happen? And it’s apparent your sisters don’t think I’m good enough for you. When is that going to change? I came here to convince you to come back to work, to Legends, to Atlanta, but maybe I should be asking you to come back to me. Do you fight for me with your family the way you’re fighting for them with me?”
Without giving her a chance to respond, he said, “I know the answer. We both know the answer. Maybe the answer is why I’m threatened by your relationship with them. You’ve made it clear to me how important they are to you, but you haven’t been as clear with them about how important I am to you.”
“Now you’re talking crazy,” she said, recalling the numerous times she’d defended him and their relationship to her family. “Of course, I’ve been clear to them about how important you are to me. I married you, Dexter, despite the reservations of my family. They thought we were rushing into marriage too soon after Daddy’s death, but I convinced them that the love between us was real and time wouldn’t change it. Now I’m not so sure.”
“That makes two of us,” he said. Then he stood. “I’ve checked into the Sheraton. I’ll be there for a couple of days before I go back to Atlanta. If you want to see me, you know where to find me.”
With those words, Dexter strode to the door. As he stalked to his car, he had the sinking feeling that he had lost a very important argument.
Chapter 53
Delilah sat on the swing in Tommy’s backyard. “She’s not coming,” she said to him. “I love you for planning this family picnic, but she’s not coming. I know she’s not.”
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