pulse stuttered. “You’ve noticed my legs?”
“It’s hard not to.”
Unsure whether he meant the comment as praise or mere observation, Scarlett headed toward his SUV without replying. Logan was an enigma. Most of the time he acted as if every second in her company taxed his patience, then suddenly he’d behave as if he was actually worried about her. To further confuse her, he had developed a distracting fondness for kissing her whenever the mood struck him.
He didn’t like her. He certainly didn’t respect her as a businesswoman. On the other hand, she wasn’t his responsibility, so he didn’t have to worry about her safety as much as he did. And his kisses...his amazing, confusing, contrary kisses. They certainly weren’t the sort a man planted on a woman he was trying to seduce. What was his angle?
Scarlett studied him as he drove back to the hotel. He wasn’t classically handsome. More the rough-and-rugged type. Brawny. Take-charge. The guy everyone else in the room deferred to because he had all the answers.
Nor was he a good choice for a woman who only felt safe with men she could wrap around her finger. Was she attracted to the danger he represented? He would break her heart in a millisecond if she gave him the chance. Damn it. It would be so easy if only she didn’t like him so much.
Logan glanced her way and caught her staring at him. “What?”
“I was just thinking what a heartbreaker you are.”
He snorted. “I think you have us confused.”
“I flirt, but I never commit. No one’s heart actually gets engaged. You are completely sincere. You could make a woman fall in love with you without even trying.” She angled her body toward him. “Why haven’t you gotten married?”
“If this is another one of your games...”
“No game. I’m insatiably curious. I think that’s why Tiberius left his files to me.” “Knowledge is power,” he’d been fond of saying. “Did the right girl never come along?”
“I was engaged once.”
Rather than prompt him to continue, she let silence hang between them.
Logan scowled. “She broke it off.”
Scarlett shifted her gaze away from his stony expression, wishing she’d left well enough alone. No wonder he was such a hard man to get to know. He’d been hurt by the person who should have loved him best. That wasn’t something Logan would let go of easily. Scarlett pitied the women who tried to get close to him. They would find his defenses as impenetrable as the security systems his company was famous for.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was ten years ago.” He said it as though the pain was a distant memory, but she suspected his wound wasn’t all that well healed.
“That doesn’t mean it stops hurting.”
He greeted her attempt at sympathy with cold silence. At the hotel, per her request he stopped the SUV outside the employee entrance. When he tried to hand the key to her, she shook her head. “Find whatever it is you’re looking for.”
“Why do you think I’m after something?”
“You don’t really expect me to believe you came along tonight because you enjoy my company.” Managing a lighthearted smile despite the heaviness in her chest, Scarlett exited the vehicle and lifted the box containing her family’s files from the backseat.
“Scarlett...”
“Keep in touch, Logan.”
Then, before she could make the mistake of asking him up to her suite, she shut the car door and headed toward the hotel’s employee entrance.
A 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
