Flash

was already being hailed as a magnificent talent." Olivia shrugged. "He overwhelmed her for a few weeks."
    Jasper's gaze was very steady. "They had an affair?"
    "Yes. I found out about it almost immediately, thanks to Uncle Rollie."
    Jasper frowned. "How did Rollie find out about it?"
    She smiled. "My uncle always seemed to know stuff before anyone else. It was one of the things that made him a good businessman. He always claimed that information was power."
    "I see." Jasper's voice was suddenly very neutral in tone.
    "When I confronted Logan about his relationship with Nina, he was too arrogant and too obsessed with her to bother to deny it."
    "What did you do?"
    "It was the last straw. I told him that I intended to file for divorce. I don't think he believed me."
    "Is that what made him take off for Pamplona?"
    Olivia hesitated. "No. As I said, I don't think it ever occurred to Logan that I might actually leave him. He assumed that I was as invested in his career as he was."
    "So what sent him to Pamplona?"
    "My cousin Nina came to her senses and ended the affair."
    "Ah."
    Olivia looked at the canvas in front of her. "Logan was still deep in the throes of his obsession with her. I think he went a little crazy. He said he had to get out of the country for a while."
    "So he left for Spain, and the Dane family blamed you."
    "That pretty much sums it up," Olivia said. "They were grief-stricken. Logan's brother, Sean, took the news very hard. Logan was his older brother. He had idolized him. They all needed to place the guilt on someone. I was the obvious target."
    "And you let them place it squarely on you," Jasper muttered. "For Nina's sake."
    He sounded irritated, Olivia thought, surprised. apparently he did not think highly of her decision. On the other hand, she had the strange feeling that he empathized. It was as if he understood what she had gone through when she made her decision three years ago.
    "There's not much else to tell," she continued. "Except that, a few months ago, Nina fell in love, really in love, with Sean. But she feels so guilty about what happened three years ago that she can't let herself be happy. She thinks that if Sean and his family learn that she was Logan's so-called Dark Muse, they'll all turn against her."
    "Is that true?"
    Olivia recalled the look in the eyes of the Dane family at the funeral. "Probably."
    "Hell. The blackmailer threatened to reveal the affair, didn't he?"
    "Yes." She reached up to massage the tight muscles at the base of her neck. "That's it in a nutshell."
    Jasper pondered that. "But he threatened you, not Nina. He obviously knows that you've kept quiet about the past in order to protect her. Hell, you even let Crawford Lee Wilder print that garbage about you without making a protest. The blackmailer figures you'll be willing to pay to go on maintaining the silence."
    "He's probably also concluded that I'm a richer target than Nina. I've got deeper pockets, thanks to my half-ownership in Glow."
    "Forty-nine percent," Jasper corrected absently.
    Olivia almost smiled, in spite of the mood. "I beg your pardon, my
forty-nine-percent
ownership. Either way, it's obvious that I can afford more blackmail than Nina could."
    Jasper's eyes darkened. "Someone knows a great deal about you, Olivia."
    "Too much." She stopped rubbing her neck. She folded her arms tightly beneath her breasts instead. "The thing is, until I got that note, I was positive that I was the only other person, besides Nina, who knew about the affair. I just don't understand how the blackmailer could have discovered it."
    "Maybe Nina confided in someone?"
    Olivia shook her head quickly. "No, I'm sure that she has never told a soul. Her greatest fear is that the secret will come out. It's eating her up inside. She thinks I'm the only one who knows about it."
    "Can you think of anyone else besides you and Nina who could possibly have known about the affair at the time it occurred?"
    Olivia looked at him. "There was one other person, of course. But he's dead."
    Jasper's eyes narrowed. "Your uncle?"
    "As I said, Uncle Rollie was the one who told me about it"
    Jasper glanced around the echoing exhibition hall. He took Olivia's hand. "Let's get out of here."

    He couldn't think of a great place to talk about dead men and blackmail so he took her to the closest place, instead. Myrtle Edwards Park on the waterfront. He chose the path labeled "heels." The one that ran parallel to it was labeled "wheels."
    He studied