“Do you? She was hoping to stay with you in L.A.” He knew Madison had enough money from her birthday and from what she’d earned working for Scarlett to put herself up in a decent hotel for a week or so. Longer if she chose something on the seedier side. “Where is she going to go if you aren’t there?”
“This isn’t her first trip to L.A. I know she has friends there she kept in touch with. She’ll probably crash with one of them. Let me try calling her. I’ll let you know in a couple minutes if I get ahold of her.”
While he waited for Scarlett to call back, Logan stared out the sliding glass door at the pool where Madison loved to hang out. The sun sparkling off the water was blinding, but he stared at the turquoise rectangle until his eyes burned. Although part of him agreed with Scarlett that Madison was capable of taking care of herself, the other part recognized that he’d been tasked with a job and had failed miserably at it. Paula was going to kill him when she found out he’d lost her baby.
His cell rang after what seemed like forever, but the clock on the microwave revealed it had only been ten minutes.
“Her phone must be off. It’s rolling straight to voice mail,” Scarlett said. “So I called Bobby. He hasn’t heard from her, but he promised to call me as soon as he does.”
“Thanks.” He sounded grim.
&
nbsp; “She was determined to go to L.A., Logan. We all may have been kidding ourselves that she intended to go to college this fall. When there’s something Madison wants, she goes after it. You should all be proud of her. I wish I’d had half her confidence at her age.”
“You expect me to be proud?” he demanded, his voice an impatient whip. “She ran off without letting anyone know her plans.”
“Maybe it was the only way she could do what she wanted.”
Logan didn’t want to hear what Scarlett was trying to tell him. “What happens when this acting thing doesn’t pan out?”
“She can always go to college.”
“Like you did?”
An uncomfortable silence filled the phone’s speaker before Scarlett replied. “Madison and I grew up very differently. I started acting when I was nine. That’s all I knew. I didn’t have the opportunity to choose what I wanted to do at eighteen. By then I’d been a star with all that came with it and was on my way to becoming a has-been. Maybe if I’d grown up around normal kids, gone to school, and the only expectations put on me were to go to college and get a regular job, I might have ended up a savvy businesswoman like Violet or Harper.” Her voice took on a husky throb. “Or maybe I’d have ended up just like Madison, feeling trapped by what everyone else wanted me to be.”
“You think Madison felt trapped by her parents’ expectations?”
“And yours. You are a hard man to please, Logan.”
“Is that what you’ve been trying to do?” he questioned, infuriated by her reproach. “Please me? Because if that’s the case, you haven’t been doing a very good job.”
“It figures you’d see it that way. For a few days I thought our differences were behind us, but now I see they’ll never be.” She sounded immeasurably sad. “I knew this thing between us would be short, but it was way more fun than I could have hoped.”
Logan’s anger vanished at her declaration. He’d never imagined this phone call would lead here. “Scarlett—” Was she really ready to call it quits? Was he? “This is not the conversation we should be having right now.”
“Why not? No reason to draw things out when it’s so obvious that you blame me for Madison heading to L.A. I realize now that I’m always going to be doing something you disapprove of. And I need someone who has faith in me.” She was trying to sound calm, but he could hear the emotion in her tone.
She stopped speaking and offered him a chance to respond. The violent rush of blood through his veins made his ears ring. She was giving him an opportunity to take back his accusations and abandon his disapproval of her past. Her silence pulled at him, but he couldn’t form the words she wanted to hear.
“I have to go,” Scarlett said. “I’ve got something important waiting for me. I’ll call you if I hear from Bobby or Madison. Goodbye, Logan.”
And then she was gone, leaving him to curse that he’d treated her badly when all she wanted to do was help. And thanks to his stubbornness, he’d lost her.
Overwhelmed by a whole new set of worries, Logan sat down at his kitchen table and tried to push his conversation with Scarlett out of his mind. First things first. He had to find Madison before she got into trouble.
Once that was accomplished, he could figure out what to do about Scarlett.
* * *
Unsure how she’d gone from walking on clouds this morning to trudging through mud this evening, Scarlett turned back to the photos Grady had uncovered. She’d sent the man home to shower, eat and sleep an hour ago. He hadn’t gone without protest. Grady’s passion for Las Vegas history was boundless. It’s why she’d hired him to develop her Mob Experience exhibit. Days of sifting through Tiberius’s files had yielded many things of interest, but little that Grady didn’t already know. This recent discovery was something completely new and not wholly related to Las Vegas.
She should drop it. Preston Rhodes was not the sort of man you accused of criminal activities without a whole lot of solid evidence. And she had none.
Scarlett slipped everything into the folder marked George Barnes. A business card had been stapled to the manila file. It belonged to an L.A. reporter by the name of Charity Rimes. On a whim, Scarlett pocketed the card. Just because Tiberius’s killer had been caught didn’t mean she had to drop the mystery of Preston Rhodes and George Barnes.
After that, Scarlett left the storage room. Her fight with Logan moved to the forefront of her mind as she walked to her car. What was she thinking to push him away like she had? Sure, he’d taken his frustration out on her, but it wasn’t the first time. Now, thanks to her impulsiveness, it would probably be the last. What had she done?