Cat Schield - Las Vegas Nights - At Odds with the Heiress

Before she entered her suite, she gripped his arm. “Logan, I’m really afraid of what this is going to do to my family.”

He stared at her, a bad feeling churning in his gut. This wasn’t Scarlett being dramatic or overreacting. Genuine fear clouded her expression and thickened her voice. What could possibly have upset her to this extent?

“Tell me.”

She entered her suite and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll get the water started. The files are on the table.” Scarlett indicated a stack of neatly arranged folders on the coffee table. “I noticed something odd about my father’s business travel.”

Logan sat on the pale green couch, noting its decadent softness, and leaned forward to view the contents of the open file. Tiberius had jotted some notes about Fontaine Hotels and Resorts’s trouble with their Macao casinos. Ross had gone to investigate.

“What am I looking at?”

“See when he left? July 1980. He was gone for four months.”

Logan shook his head, not understanding what Scarlett was getting at. “What’s the significance of that?”

“Harper was born in June 1981.” She raised her voice over the scream of the teakettle. “Now look at Penelope’s file.”

Penelope was Harper’s mother. The only daughter of billionaire Merle Sutton, whose fortune revolved around chemicals and refining, her marriage to Ross Fontaine had brought an influx of cash to Fontaine Hotels and Resorts at a time when, unbeknownst to his father, Ross had bought some land without the proper environmental surveys. Ultimately, they’d been unable to develop the property and lost several million on the project.

Logan opened the file and scanned a private investigator’s report on Harper’s mother. Below it were several black-and-white photos that left little to the imagination.

“She had an affair.” He stared at the pictures and felt a stab of sympathy for the woman who’d been part of her father’s business arrangement with Ross Fontaine. “Given the man she was married to, I can’t say I blame her.”

“At first I thought Ross had ordered the investigation.” Scarlett carried two steaming cups over to the couch and set them down on the coffee table before sitting beside him. “I thought it was a little hypocritical of him to have Harper’s mom investigated when he went after anything in a skirt. But it wasn’t him.”

“You sure?” Logan glanced sideways in time to see her lips close over the edge of the cup. “How’s the tea?”

The face she made at him caused her nose to wrinkle in a charming manner. “It tastes like dead grass.” But she gamely tried a second sip. “I checked on the private investigator.” Scarlett pointed to the man’s name on the report. “He’s been dead for ten years, but his partner didn’t find Ross’s name in their list of former clients.”

“Was it Tiberius?”

Scarlett shook her head. “Of course, Ross could have been considering divorce and gone to a lawyer who contacted a PI to get evidence of Penelope’s infidelity. But once he got proof, why not start divorce proceedings? Then there’s this.” Scarlett opened a second file and showed Logan a document. “Harper’s parents were not in the same hemisphere when she was conceived.”

“She might have been conceived during a brief visit either in Macao or here in the States.”

“I agree, but coupled with the fact that Harper’s mother was having an affair during that time, it seems much more likely that this guy—” she tapped the photo “—is Harper’s father.”

* * *

Scarlett scrutinized Logan’s impassive expression while she waited for him to process her conclusion. When she’d found the damning evidence last night, she’d longed to pick up the phone and share the burden with him, but it had been three in the morning and she hadn’t wanted to wake him up.

Loneliness had never been an issue for her. In L.A. when she wasn’t busy with friends, she’d enjoyed spending time alone. It was one of the benefits of growing up an only child. But lately she’d been dreading her own company. Sharing the secret of Tiberius’s files with Logan had turned their animosity into camaraderie and their temporary break in hostility was something she wanted to make permanent.

“Which brings me back to why I invited you up here,” she said, breaking the silence when it began nibbling on her nerves. “What should I do?”

“What do you want to do?”

She decided not to answer his question directly. “If I do nothing, Harper will become the next CEO of Fontaine Hotels and Resorts.”

Logan sat back and stretched his arm across the back of the sofa. The move put his fingers very close to her bare upper arm and made her skin tingle.

“After your father died and before your grandfather came up with his contest to run the company, she was the obvious choice.”

Scarlett pondered his words. “She has the education and the training to be Grandfather’s successor. But Violet has the marketing savvy and the experience of running a Las Vegas hotel to give Harper a run for her money.”

“If you share what you know, Harper would likely be kicked out of the running and the contest would be down to you and Violet.”

“That’s not what I want.”

“You don’t want to run Fontaine Hotels?”

Could she convince Logan that having two sisters who loved her was more important than becoming CEO of a multibillion-dollar corporation?

“You and I both know I’m a distant third in the running. And even if I wasn’t, I would never want to win if it meant hurting either Harper or Violet.”

“Then you have your answer.”

“But I keep asking myself, if I was Harper would I want to know I was living a lie? When I was first contacted by Grandfather, I was angry with my mother for evading the truth about my biological father. I don’t know that it’s fair to put Harper through the same thing.”

“On the other hand, if you’d never found out, you would still be in L.A.”

“Finding out I was a Fontaine was a wonderful thing. I gained an entire family that I’d previously known nothing about.” Having two sisters was such a blessing. For the first time in her life she felt safe and content. “If I tell Harper the truth, she loses her entire family. And I know her well enough to be certain she would withdraw from the contest and give up Fontaine Ciel. And if that happened it would be my fault.”

“What if her dream isn’t running Fontaine Hotels?”

Scarlett couldn’t imagine such a thing. “It’s what she’s spent her whole life training for.”

“Just because you think your life is going to go a certain way doesn’t always mean that it’s the best thing for you.”

What was Logan trying to tell her? She’d invited him up here for advice. Was he being impartial, trying to get her to look at both sides, or was he couching his opinion as questions?

“Do you think I should tell her?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Give the problem to someone else.” She arched her eyebrows. “Feel like being the bearer of bad news?”

“I’m not going to get involved. Tiberius left the files to you.”

“And I asked you to help me make a decision.”

“You asked for my advice,” he corrected.

“Same thing.”

“Not really, but since you asked so nicely, I’ll tell you that I think being honest with Harper is the way to go. Give her the file, don’t tell her what’s in it and let her make up her own mind about what she finds.”

His advice didn’t make the weight slide off her shoulders. “I don’t want to keep anything important from Harper. And I could be jumping to conclusions. It’s completely possible that Harper is Ross’s daughter.” But deep in her heart she believed she was right and that telling her sister what she suspected would do more harm than good. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.” She set her hand on his. “Thank you.”