"Right,” Kari said. "That's him. Usually front and center.” I stared back at her without blinking. The last domino had hit the ground.

CHAPTER 4

My heart pounded so hard I could hear nothing else. I had to get away. I couldn’t look at Kari. I stood up, leaving my plate on the coffee table. For a moment I felt dizzy; my voice sounded detached, even to me. "I think I’m going to talk to my mother about this whole thing. Maybe we can work something out.”

Ms. Pomeroy saw me heading to the front door and called, "You can step into my bedroom to use the phone.”

I shook my head. I wasn't having this conversation over a phone, not when my mother was somewhere in the hotel. "I’ll be right back," I said.

I’m sure Kari wouldn't have approved of my walk as I went down the hallway. It had no finesse, no strut, just a lot of resentment.

The elevator took me to the basement. I marched down the hall to the housekeeping office. I half expected Mom to not be there. She spends a lot of time checking the rooms, but when I went through the door, I saw her standing by her desk, talking with Don. The whir of the washing machines and dryers muted but didn't cover their words.

"I’m positive,” he said. "She was in the room with that ditzy singer—the one who looks like her."

"Kari Kingsley," I said. "Her name is Kari Kingsley.”

They turned and saw me. My anger must have been evident. Mom said to Don, "I’ll talk with you later,” and he left.

I stared at her, emotion biting into the back of my throat. "Alex Kingsley is my father, isn’t he?”

The color drained from my mother’s face. She sank into her chair.

I always thought I’d be happy when I found out my father’s identity, but instead I churned with a rage I didn't understand. “I can't believe you didn’t tell me," I said. "You knew Kari and I looked alike because she was my sister, and you never told me.’’

Mom’s eyes registered shock. "She knows? She told you?” And that hurt too — that Mom admitted the truth so easily now, when I’d never been able to pry it out of her before. I was not about to answer her question.

Tears pushed against my eyes. "All this time, we had pictures of him in the house,” I said. "I thought you hadn't shown me any pictures because you didn't have them. I thought it would be hard to track him down. But I saw him and heard him all the time, and I didn’t even know it!”

"Lexi—" she said, but I didn't let her finish.

“Don’t call me Lexi!" I yelled. "You named me Alexia. You named me after him, didn’t you? How could you do that? You gave me his name and then made sure I had nothing else from him—not knowing who he was, not even knowing what he looked like. You could have just pointed him out on the CD covers.”

She had always known how badly I wanted to know what my father looked like. Every time I dreamed about him finding me and couldn’t picture his face—every time I scanned a crowd and saw a blue-eyed man with sandy blond hair, I had wondered about him and felt empty inside.

“Does he know anything about me?” I asked. "I want the truth this time. All of it.”

She let out a ragged breath, then looked away. I thought she wouldn't answer, but she did—in a voice so calm I knew she’d rehearsed this speech. "When I was your age, I was obsessed with Alex Kingsley—you knew that already. He came to a concert in Charleston the end of my senior year, and I drove there to see him. He picked me out of the crowd and pulled me up on stage with him. Then when the song ended, he asked if I’d wait backstage for him. I already felt like we were destined to be together, and this was proof I was right.”

Her gaze flickered back to mine, and she shook her head. "I loved him so much, and when you feel that way, your mind stops thinking. I know you can’t understand this. You’ve always been so sensible, but I wasn't like you that way. I was headstrong, impulsive."

I'd never thought of my mother as being impulsive. She went to work every day and to class three nights a week. She did the dishes, paid the bills, and hardly ever lost her temper. I couldn’t imagine her even being my age, let alone my age and starstruck.

"Alex said he'd picked me out of the crowd because I looked so much like his late wife. She’d died eight months before from a brain aneurysm. Kari had only been a year old when it happened, just a baby. Alex was out on the road at the time and blamed himself for not being there. He could have gotten her to the hospital in time if he'd been home. We talked a lot after the concert, and he told me things he’d never told another person. I believed him about that; I don't think it was just a line he used. He was hurting, and I wanted to make him feel better so badly."

She kept her gaze on the desk. "I gave him my phone number, and he said he'd call me, but he never did, which stung. I was still thinking about our destiny together. In my mind I could see myself stepping in and being a mother for his daughter, that’s how crazy in love I was. I didn’t realize then that celebrities only care about people who are as rich and famous as they are.”

She pushed out a breath, and her gaze finally returned to me. "I also didn't realize I was going to be the mother of his daughter after all. When I found out I was pregnant, I tried to call him. I got as far as his manager. I told him why I needed to talk to Alex, and he called me a gold digger and”—she paused and lowered her voice—"a few less flattering things. He told me to leave Alex alone and hung up on me. So the truth is, I never knew whether Alex found out or not."

"Why didn't you keep trying to reach him?” I asked. "You could have demanded a DNA test or something.”

She shook her head. "Your abuela wanted to hide my pregnancy, wanted to make sure no one found out.” Mom stopped for a moment, as though mentally correcting herself. "Well, it wasn't just Abuela. I didn’t want everyone from school to know. That isn’t the sort of thing you announce at your graduation party. If I'd demanded a paternity test, it would have been in the tabloids. Besides, I didn't want to take his money if he didn't care anything about me.”

So it had been because of her pride. Hadn't she ever thought I needed a father, that at least he deserved the chance to be one?

As though Mom had been able to read my mind, she said, "You have to understand, I adored him before I ever met him—that’s blind love, and it’s easy to get crushed when you have that kind of love. A daughter's love for her superstar father—that would be blind love too. If I had told you he was your father and he rejected you the same way he rejected me—I didn’t want you to get hurt. I wanted you to have a firm sense of who you were, to be grounded before you met him, so no matter how it turned out, you wouldn't be devastated.”

I wouldn’t listen to her words; I wouldn’t let them soak in. "You should have told me,” I said. "I shouldn’t have had to find out like this.”

"I didn’t mean for this to happen. If I had known Kari Kingsley would show up here . . . My mother gripped the edge of the desk, clenching it. "Does she know? Is that why she’s here?"

"No, she doesn't know. She’s here to convince me to take the job, and I’m going to."

The words made something in Mom’s expression change. She snapped back to being herself. "You can’t just drop everything and run off to California.”

"Yes I can." I turned and headed toward the door. "I guess I’m more impulsive than you thought.”

My mother followed, switching into Spanish. "Te trataran como suciedad." They’ll treat you like dirt. “Is that what you want? Is the money worth your dignity? If it is, we might as well get a lawyer and just ask for back child support."