Free At Odds with the Heiress by Cat Schield Page B

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