At Odds with the Heiress(57)
“Why not? No reason to draw things out when it’s so obvious that you blame me for Madison heading to L.A. I realize now that I’m always going to be doing something you disapprove of. And I need someone who has faith in me.” She was trying to sound calm, but he could hear the emotion in her tone.
She stopped speaking and offered him a chance to respond. The violent rush of blood through his veins made his ears ring. She was giving him an opportunity to take back his accusations and abandon his disapproval of her past. Her silence pulled at him, but he couldn’t form the words she wanted to hear.
“I have to go,” Scarlett said. “I’ve got something important waiting for me. I’ll call you if I hear from Bobby or Madison. Goodbye, Logan.”
And then she was gone, leaving him to curse that he’d treated her badly when all she wanted to do was help. And thanks to his stubbornness, he’d lost her.
Overwhelmed by a whole new set of worries, Logan sat down at his kitchen table and tried to push his conversation with Scarlett out of his mind. First things first. He had to find Madison before she got into trouble.
Once that was accomplished, he could figure out what to do about Scarlett.
* * *
Unsure how she’d gone from walking on clouds this morning to trudging through mud this evening, Scarlett turned back to the photos Grady had uncovered. She’d sent the man home to shower, eat and sleep an hour ago. He hadn’t gone without protest. Grady’s passion for Las Vegas history was boundless. It’s why she’d hired him to develop her Mob Experience exhibit. Days of sifting through Tiberius’s files had yielded many things of interest, but little that Grady didn’t already know. This recent discovery was something completely new and not wholly related to Las Vegas.
She should drop it. Preston Rhodes was not the sort of man you accused of criminal activities without a whole lot of solid evidence. And she had none.
Scarlett slipped everything into the folder marked George Barnes. A business card had been stapled to the manila file. It belonged to an L.A. reporter by the name of Charity Rimes. On a whim, Scarlett pocketed the card. Just because Tiberius’s killer had been caught didn’t mean she had to drop the mystery of Preston Rhodes and George Barnes.
After that, Scarlett left the storage room. Her fight with Logan moved to the forefront of her mind as she walked to her car. What was she thinking to push him away like she had? Sure, he’d taken his frustration out on her, but it wasn’t the first time. Now, thanks to her impulsiveness, it would probably be the last. What had she done?
But she couldn’t just blame herself. It stung that he continued to throw her lack of a formal education in her face. Granted, a business degree would have helped her when she’d first taken over Fontaine Richesse, but she’d always been a quick study and had mastered her responsibilities faster than anyone expected.
Why couldn’t he appreciate that she was better at thinking outside the box than either of her sisters? Street smarts had to count for something. She understood how people’s greedy nature could get the best of them and made sure her marketing appealed to their desire for fun and profit. Granted, she might not pull in Violet’s younger sophisticated crowd or Harper’s überwealthy clientele, but her casino was always packed and always bringing in huge profits.
On her way back to the hotel, she worried over the fact that she had too few answers and too many questions. Madison. Logan. Tiberius’s files. Her thoughts spun like a hamster on a wheel, going faster and faster but getting nowhere.
Instead of heading straight for Fontaine Richesse, she drove to Violet’s hotel for a liberal dose of her sister’s optimism.
She found Violet in the middle of Fontaine Chic’s casino, with her long dark hair pulled back into a smooth ponytail. Violet’s evening style was like her hotel, elegant, sleek and cosmopolitan. Dark eye shadow made her eyes pop in her pale face. Crystal chandelier earrings swung from her earlobes. Her form-hugging black dress showed off her lean lines and toned legs.
“Got a second?” Scarlett asked as she approached. “I need to talk to you. I really blew it with Logan and I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Come with me while I check on things at Baccarat.” She was referring to the stylish lobby bar that overlooked the strip. “We can sit down and you can tell me what happened.”
Scarlett settled in a quiet corner of the bar while Violet went to speak with her bartender. He seemed more animated than usual and their conversation stretched out for longer than Scarlett expected. While she waited for Violet’s return, her gaze drifted over the crowd. As usual, the young and beautiful occupied the sofas and chairs. Violet’s hotel attracted a twenty-something clientele from L.A., New York and Miami. They liked to party more than gamble, but when they did hit the casino, they spent more than a dozen of Scarlett’s customers combined.