“Sure.”
“Are you staying for dinner?” he asked. Despite his protests that he was feeling fine, he looked pale.
“Of course,” Harper said. She kissed his cheek and followed Scarlett from the room.
“He looks better than I expected.”
Scarlett linked her arm through Harper’s and guided her toward the den. “You probably thought he’d be in bed.”
“I did.”
Inside the comfortable room, Violet, JT and Logan awaited her. Feeling very much like a fifth wheel, Harper sat down in a chair and waited until everyone else had been seated before she broke the silence.
“You all look so grim. What’s going on?”
“How did your trip to South Africa turn out?” Violet began.
Sensing they were warming up to the difficult topic, Harper decided to play along. “It’s a lovely country. I told Grandfather we should look at putting a hotel there.”
“And what did he think of that?” Again Violet.
Scarlett rolled her eyes. “Stop dancing around what we want to know.” Her tone was exasperated. “Did you meet your father?”
“Yes.”
“How did it go?”
“No worse than you’d imagine. Being confronted by a twenty-nine-year-old daughter he never knew caught him by surprise.”
“Was he courteous?” Violet asked.
“He invited Ashton and me to dinner.”
Scarlet piped up. “Where is Ashton?”
“On his way to Las Vegas. The restaurant is opening in two days. I have no idea if it will go well.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Violet said. She glanced at Scarlett and then at JT, who nodded. “Logan was able to figure out who blackmailed your mother.”
In the craziness of the past week, Harper had forgotten that little tidbit. “Who?”
JT spoke. “My father. He needed money for a top-notch defense lawyer.”
“How did he come by the files?”
“It’s my fault,” Scarlett said. “If I hadn’t brought them home, I wouldn’t have lost them.”
“You didn’t lose them,” Logan reminded her, a muscle popping in his jaw. “Someone broke into your suite, knocked you out and stole them.”
“Technically,” she countered, “I opened the door thinking it was you.”
Violet stepped in. “I blame Tiberius. If he hadn’t poked his nose in where it didn’t belong there wouldn’t have been any files in the first place.”
“It was my father who went after the information my uncle had gathered on him and hired the guy who hurt Scarlett. He’s the one who blackmailed Harper’s mother,” JT chimed in.
Harper shut her eyes and let the voices wash over her. She floated in darkness until someone touched her arm and brought her back.
Logan knelt before her, his dark brown gaze confident and reassuring. “We retrieved both the information and the money.”