week went by before Logan admitted defeat regarding Tiberius’s files. Scarlett had been right. Someone could spend decades going through the fragments of data. The hotel and casino owner had accumulated thousands of interesting tidbits throughout the years, some of it newspaper articles, some rumors, many firsthand accounts of events that had never become public knowledge.
The problem was, there was so much information, most of it random, that connecting the dots would take forever. Logan had neither the time nor the patience to locate the needle in the haystack. If he’d had some idea what he was looking for, he might have been able to ferret out Tiberius’s killer. But although the files held a lot of smoking guns, many of the people who’d once held them were long dead.
Nor were the cops interested in looking through the files. They were looking at the wife of a local businessman. Apparently the woman had been having an affair and after finding a file on her at his office, the police had a theory that Tiberius was blackmailing her. Logan didn’t believe it. Tiberius collected information on people, but he didn’t appear to use it. If he had, the casino owner wouldn’t have been nearly bankrupt when he died.
Despite having no luck, giving up the hunt was the last thing he wanted to do, but Scarlett was eager to have her historian comb through the files in search of material they could use in her Mob Experience exhibit, which was due to open in a few weeks. He could have given the key to one of his guys to return. In fact, that would have made a lot more sense. He was hip-deep in the data Lucas had sent to him from Dubai. They needed to have a proposal done in the next couple days and he’d lost a lot of time in his search through the storage unit.
Instead of leaving the key with Scarlett’s assistant, a stunning blonde woman with an MBA from Harvard, he tracked Scarlett herself down on the casino floor. He found her chatting with one of the pit bosses. With her hair cascading down the back of her sleeveless bronze sheath, she looked every inch a successful hotel executive. His chest tightened as he watched her smile. Seven days away from her should have diminished his troublesome attraction. Instead, he’d found his thoughts filled with her at the most inopportune times.
Desiring her had been his Achilles’ heel for some time now, but he’d been able to keep his head in the game by remembering that she was first and foremost an actress and a woman who enjoyed manipulating men. Until last week, however, he’d never spent an extended time alone with her. He’d been working off assumptions he’d made from their infrequent encounters.
He now knew she was more than the manipulative man-eater he’d first dubbed her as. Not that this made her any less dangerous. Quite the contrary. His fascination with her had ratcheted up significantly. And not all of it was sexual. He’d enjoyed her company at dinner. She was provocative and took great pleasure in testing his boundaries, but she was also very well-read and had surprised him with her knowledge of Las Vegas past and present.
She was more clever and insightful than he’d thus far given her credit for. She knew her limitations and had a knack for hiring people who were experts in their field. It’s why her hotel was so well run, he’d decided after eight days of listening to Madison go on and on about how smart Scarlett was. For the first couple of days his niece’s hero worship had worried him. But Madison hadn’t mentioned L.A. once in the past several days, and he was happy to let her praise Scarlett’s virtues if it meant his niece was going to give college a try.
“Hello, Logan.” Scarlett had finished her business with the pit boss and caught sight of him. “Are you looking for Madison?”
“No.” He held his ground against the onslaught of sensation that battered him as she drew close enough for him to smell her perfume and see the gold shards sparking in her green eyes. “I came to return this.” He handed her an envelope containing the storage key.
“You’re done with it, then?” She slid the envelope into the black leather folder that contained her daily notes. “Did you find what you needed?”
“I looked through our client’s files and removed anything of interest.” He paused before saying more. Lucas would be angry with him for spilling even that much. “I also found a number of secrets that should never see the light of day.”
“Then they won’t.”
“You can’t guarantee that.”
“Some of those files have been hidden for over fifty years,” she reminded him. “What makes you think they can’t stay that way for another fifty?”
“Because Tiberius was killed for something he knew.”
“That hasn’t yet been determined. Besides, no one but you and I know I have the files.”
“You forget about John Malcolm.”
“Attorney-client privilege. He’s not going to say anything.”
“I’d feel better if the files were destroyed.”
“I can’t do that. Grady can’t wait to get started on them.”
Logan could hear the determination in her tone and knew he was wasting his breath. He could only hope he and Lucas were wrong about the connection between the files and Tiberius’s death. Yet Logan couldn’t shake the sense that something bad was going to happen.
“Do you have time for a cup of tea?” Her offer came at him out of the blue. “I got some of that green stuff you and Violet drink.”
He opened his mouth to refuse, thinking she was flirting with him as always, but then saw her expression was serious. “Sure.”
“Can I invite you up to my suite without you getting the wrong impression?”
“Unlikely.”
“What a naughty mind you have.” Amusement flared in her eyes and was gone just as fast. “I really could use your advice.” She looped her arm through his and turned him in the direction of the elevators.
A week ago he might have assumed she had a nefarious purpose for luring him upstairs. That was before Tiberius’s files had come to light. And Scarlett was radiating an apprehensive vibe, not a seductive one.
“My advice on what?”
“I discovered something in the files I took from the storage unit, and I’m not sure how to handle it.”
Logan felt his anxiety kick in. Had she possessed the answer to Tiberius’s murder all along?
“Which ones?”
She frowned. “The ones on my family.”
So her concern was for Violet or Harper. His agitation diminished slightly.
“I took my father’s file because I was curious about a man my mother rarely talked about,” she continued. “It was a pretty thick file and took me three days to get through it all. He had affairs with a lot of women. I don’t know how Harper’s mother stood it.”
“The way I understand it, she split all her time between New York City, the Hamptons and their winter place in Boca Raton. I don’t know how often she came to Las Vegas.”
“That’s what I gathered from her file.” Scarlett paused as they neared the elevator. Other people were waiting within earshot and she obviously didn’t want them to overhear her, so she changed the subject. “How was your week? Successful?”
He knew she was referring to his search of the storage unit and shook his head. “Not at all. Your friend is going to have his work cut out for him. There’s a lot of history.”
“He’ll be delighted.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call this week.” The apology came out before he knew what he was saying. “It was a hectic few days.”
Surprise fogged her expression for a moment. “It’s okay. I had a lot on my plate, as well.”
“Lucas and I are developing a security system for a sheikh in Dubai. He has an extensive art collection that he wants to display and the