by B. J Daniels
“Have you gotten any more calls from the kidnapper?” Chance asked, a little surprised Bonner wasn’t asking the kinds of questions a father might ask when there was even a possibility that his daughter had been kidnapped.
“No. No more calls. Obviously, it was just a prank.”
Chance frowned. “You think Dixie sent her locket to you?”
“Has she said anything?”
Anything? “Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Bonner said. “Dixie’s always had a very active imagination. Who knows what story she’ll make up to sway your opinion of her?”
“Well, she didn’t imagine all the men you hired to bring her back to Texas.”
Bonner either didn’t hear what Chance said or ignored it. “Dixie can be very persuasive. Believe me, she’ll try to con you in some way before this is over.”
“Yeah? And what exactly is this?”
“Just a little family disagreement,” Bonner said.
“Right.”
“I’m just glad that Dixie is all right.”
Whatever was going on, Dixie didn’t seem all right. And Bonner seemed worried about what Dixie might tell him.
“By the way, have you gone over to her house?” Chance asked. “She says it was ransacked.”
“Really? I can send someone over to check.”
“Why don’t you go yourself?” Chance suggested. “Maybe it will clear some things up.”
“Things are clear enough,” Bonner said. “Your job is to just make sure she’s at the plane. There’s a bonus in it for you if you get her there without any problems.”
“I can’t imagine why I’d have any problems, can you?” Chance asked facetiously.
“She’s my daughter. That should tell you something.” Bonner hung up before Chance could respond to that.
When he turned, he saw Dixie standing in the middle of the room. If looks could kill, he would have been dead as a doornail before he hit the floor.
“You called my father while I was in the shower,” she said, her voice low and furious. But what cut him to the quick was her betrayed expression.
“It didn’t really matter what I was going to tell you, did it?” she said, advancing on him. “You’d already made up your mind that you were going to help ship me back to Texas one way or the other because that’s what Daddy’s paying you to do.”
“Dixie, I wanted to let your father know you were all right.”
She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “I heard you make arrangements for a jet.”
“The plane isn’t coming for forty-eight hours.”
“How much is he paying you?” She raised a brow. “Knowing Daddy, he’s even promised you a bonus, right?” She smiled as she must have seen the answer in his face. “How much?” she asked as she stepped to him, her body brushing against his in a way that told him what was coming next.
She smelled good. Her skin was flushed from her shower, her hair pulled up to expose her long slender neck. “Dixie—”
“I don’t have as much money as my father, but now that we both know you can be bought, let’s decide exactly what your price is,” she said as she shoved him backward. He stumbled and dropped into one of the overstuffed chairs.
She bent over him.
“Don’t.” The word didn’t come out with as much force as he’d hoped. “You don’t want to do this.”
She raised a brow. “You think this is worse than selling out to Beauregard Bonner?” She laughed and shook her head. “This is child’s play compared to that.”
“Dixie.” A single lock of her hair brushed across his cheek as she bent closer, the movement emitting the sweet scent of her. Eyes locked with his, she brushed her lips over his. Just a promise of a kiss. It had been so long and his pain so deep, he’d thought no woman could ever arouse desire in him again.
He was wrong.
“Come on, Chance. What’s it going to be?” she asked in a soft whisper near his ear, her warm breath caressing his neck.
It would have been so easy to let her seduce him. So easy. He grabbed her shoulders a little harder than he meant to and held her away as he pushed up from the chair, driving her back until they both stumbled into the living room wall.
He was breathing hard and one look in her eyes told him that she knew the effect she’d had on him. There was triumph in all that blue and yet he could feel her body trembling under his palms.
His gaze traveled over her face, lighting on her lips. How easy it would have been to kiss her. Not a light, teasing kiss like the one she’d just given him but a real honest-to-goodness kiss.
The thought shocked him because he wanted to kiss her senseless. He wanted to bury his fingers in her hair and to pull her to him until his body…
He let go of her, turning away, trying to hide the conflicted emotions that boiled up inside him. She wasn’t just a job, she was Rebecca’s little sister.
“I’m not my sister, Chance,” she said, as if she knew what he was thinking, what he was feeling. “I know you,” she said, stepping in front of him to block his escape.
He shook his head. “I’m not the man you think I am.”
She cocked a brow at him. “You think putting me in a private jet and sending me back to Texas is any different from what the other men my father hired would do to me?”
“Dixie—”
“No, if that’s what you want to do, then you’re right. You aren’t the man I knew. Or one I want to know.”
“Your father believes that the only place you’re going to be safe is Texas.”
“Then you should listen to my father,” she said, eyes blazing with anger before she spun around and headed out the deck door, slamming it behind her.
He swore as he watched her walk to the edge of the railing, her back to him. The light breeze stirred her hair. He could see her breath coming out in small white puffs. Forty-eight hours. Hadn’t Bonner warned him not to let Dixie get to him? Just find her and take her to the plane. Period. Bonner had said it was a family matter. Let them work it out. It had nothing to do with him. Hell, what were the chances that anyone was really trying to kill her anyway?
He shook his head. He couldn’t let himself get caught up in this little rich girl’s fantasies. She was running a scam on her father. Upping the stakes to a million and a half. No wonder Bonner wanted Dixie stopped. He’d been through this with her before.
Not that any of that rationale helped the situation right now because Chance was caught in the middle, feeling guilty when it wasn’t his fault that Dixie had purposely involved him by coming to Montana.
He groaned. Come to Montana because she’d said she thought he was the one person she could trust to help her.
He looked out on the deck. The sun had dipped behind the Big Belt Mountains. He swore and opened the deck door. Cold darkness had settled in the pines, the shadows growing long and black beneath them in the snow.
Quietly opening the deck door, he stepped out, joining her at the railing. He knew she had to be cold. She stood, her arms wrapped around her. As he looked over, he saw that her eyes were closed and she seemed to be breathing in the cold evening air as if gasping for breath. As he watched, two tears rolled down her cheek.
She seemed to sense him standing there. Her blue eyes came open. She turned away, brushed at the tears and took a moment before she looked at him.
He saw that she was embarrassed that he’d caught her with her defenses down. The men chasing her were enough to scare anyone. He leaned against the railing next to her and looked out at the snowy land. Ice crystals danced in the air like glitter.
“I should have told you I was going to call your father,” he said quietly.
She made an angry sound. “Is it true you haven’t married because you never got over Rebecca?”
His gaze flew to her. “Where did that come from?”
“Is it?”
“No.” He looked back out at the valley. “I just haven’t found anyone I wanted to marry.
Do you always ask such personal questions?”
“Yes.”
He realized she preferred seeing him off balance than the other way around. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Why aren’t you married?”
“I’m too young.” She grinned, her cocky attitude back.
“You’re what? Thirty?”
“Twenty-nine and you know it.” She shivered, wrapping her arms tighter around her. “It’s cold out here.” She started to turn to go back inside.
On impulse he grabbed her arm to stop her. “It’s okay to be scared. It would help if I knew what you had to be afraid of, though.”
She met his gaze and held it. “Yes, it would help, wouldn’t it? But then you said you weren’t interested. Your job was just to get me to that jet back to Texas.” She pulled free and strode into the lodge, hips swinging, head high, the door slamming behind her.
Chance watched her go, cursing under his breath. Bonner had warned him that Dixie would play him. So what if she told him her side of the story? That didn’t mean she’d tell him the truth.
But even as he thought it, he knew he’d let her get to him.
Chapter Eight
As Dixie heard Chance come in from the deck, there was a knock at the door. She’d told herself she wasn’t hungry, but the smell of food made her stomach rumble as a young man from the lodge served what they called the Montana Special.
“Food,” Chance said, as if offering an olive branch after the young man left.
She was still furious with him, but the food smelled too good and she caught sight of what looked like pie. She did love pie. And he knew it.
They consumed buffalo burgers, cattleman fries and moose-tracks chocolate milkshakes in silence.
“I thought you might like this,” Chance said, handing her a piece of the pie. “It’s huckleberry. A local favorite.”
She took a bite. The food had taken the edge off her anger. That and the fact that Chance seemed to be trying to placate her.
“Bring your pie in here,” he said, and got up to go into the living room area to sit in one of the plush recliners. His dog plopped down at Chance’s feet to sleep off the two burgers he’d devoured. “So tell me what’s going on, really,” Chance said when she joined him.
She forked a bite of pie and ate it.
He leaned back, all his attention on her. “Dixie, talk to me. Why is someone trying to kill you?”
She told herself, why bother telling him? Even if he believed her, he was getting paid to take her to a jet in forty-eight hours because her father apparently was bound and determined to get her back to Texas—one way or another.
She looked into Chance’s handsome face and feared she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life.
But at least it would be her last mistake.
CHANCE WAITED, remembering how stubborn she’d been as a kid. She hadn’t changed that much, he realized. She was furious with him. Not that he could blame her.
“Let me make it easy for you,” he said. “Who was the guy chasing us on the highway?”
She bit at her lower lip for a moment. “Roy Bob Jackson. He works for my father.”
“And? Come on, I know there’s more to it. He seemed to want to talk to you about something.”
She glanced away and sighed. “He probably just wants his engagement ring back.”
Chance let out an oath. “He’s your fiancé? And you didn’t think to mention that while the guy was chasing us?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I bet it is,” Chance said with a shake of his head. “So much so that you forgot to mention you were getting married.”
“I’m not marrying the bastard.”
“He gave you a ring!”
“No, he put it in my Christmas stocking.”
Chance frowned. “You already looked in your stocking?”
Dixie mugged a face at him. “You know I could never wait until Christmas Day.”
He’d forgotten how she was always snooping around the tree, shaking packages. “So the guy left a ring and a note asking you to marry him? Romantic.”
“He couldn’t look me in the eye and do it.”
“So you never told him your answer?”
“My life got a little complicated right after that.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “Now you won’t even talk to him?”
“He works for my father. He lied to me. I’m sure Daddy set him on me, deciding I needed a husband,” she said, looking away as if embarrassed that she’d been played the fool.
Bonner just never learned. Is this what was going on between father and daughter?
“Where is the engagement ring now?”
“In my purse.”
He raised a brow. “You just happen to have it? You must have been at least thinking about accepting it.”
“I’d planned to throw it in his face.”
“If you’d have told me, I could have stopped the pickup.”
“For all I know my father sent Roy Bob to try to convince me to forget all this.”
“This?” Chance said. “The two men who jumped you in the parking garage?”
She nodded. “I was at the library doing research.”
“Research? You mean, like for a job?”
She sighed. “You know it really ticks me off that you think I’m just a younger version of my sister. I work for a newspaper.”
“I didn’t know Beauregard owned a paper.” He quickly laughed and held up his hands. “Just joking.”
She looked over at him with murder in her eye. “It so happens that I majored in journalism and I’m one hell of an investigative reporter. I’ve won awards, damn you.”
Her outburst seemed to amuse him.
“You just assume that I couldn’t get a job unless my father got it for me?”
“I’m sorry, okay? Tell me about your research. Was it for something you were working on at the paper? Maybe that’s why you were attacked.”
“No. It was personal research.”
He raised a brow and she could already see the doubt in his eyes. She hesitated. But wasn’t there the remote chance that she could convince him she was telling the truth? Otherwise, Chance Walker, her hero since she was twelve, would just be another man who’d let her down.
And she couldn’t bear that.
Chance had tried to hide his surprise at hearing that Dixie had a real job. But from what Bonner had told him about his youngest daughter, who could blame him?
Why hadn’t Bonner mentioned that Dixie was an investigative reporter? Obviously there was more to Dixie Bonner than he’d been led to believe. She’d been a mouthy, tough kid. Now she was a woman with one hell of a fiery temper and a lot more grit than he would have expected given the family money and social status.
“I recently found out that I had family I knew nothing about,” she said.
He nodded. “And?”
“And it’s going to get me killed unless I can convince you to help me.”
He shook his head to clear it. “Wait a minute.” He scratched his head. He’d been hoping it would be the kind of investigative reporting that would explain her story about the abduction in the parking garage. “Okay, let me get this straight. This has something to do with genealogy?”
“I should have known you wouldn’t understand,” she snapped, and got up to go to the window.
“I’m sorry. I’m trying to understand.”
She turned from the window. “The men who attacked me were after my research and the photographs.”
“Photographs?”
“They’re what started it,” Dixie said with an impatient sigh. “I found three old photographs in a jewelry box that Uncle Carl gave me when I turned sixteen. He said he found it, but I knew it had belonged to my mother from the way my father reacted when he saw it.” She sounded close to tears. “It’s the only thing I had of my mother’s.”
Chance held his breath as
Dixie went to her purse, opened it and took out a small envelope. From it, she withdrew three black-and-white snapshots.
“The men who abducted you didn’t get the photographs?” He couldn’t help sounding skeptical.
“They left my purse in the car when they went into the house for the rest of my research materials,” she said and, with obvious reluctance, held out the photographs to him.
He took them, treating them as she had, as if they might disintegrate.
“The photographs were hidden beneath the velvet liner of the jewelry box. I would never have found them if I hadn’t bumped against the box and seen a corner of a photo sticking out.”
He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck as he looked down at the first photograph. It was of a woman and a baby. He turned it over. On the back in a small delicate script were the words “Glendora and nephew Junior.”
He set the photo on the coffee table. The next was of the woman Glendora and another older woman who resembled her. Both were standing at graveside. It was raining, the day dark. Both women wore black veils, their faces in shadow, but he recognized the Glendora woman by her shape. He turned the photo over. “Junior’s funeral.”
The third photograph was of a baby being held by the woman identified as Glendora. On the back, it read “Rebecca and Aunt Glendora.”
He felt his heart do a little dip and flipped the snapshot back over to stare down at the baby, then at Dixie.
She nodded. “It seems Rebecca and I have an Aunt Glendora.”
“You showed these to your father?” he guessed.
She nodded. “He said the jewelry box wasn’t my mother’s, he’d never seen the people in the photographs before and that it was just a coincidence that the baby’s name was Rebecca.”
“Quite the coincidence,” Chance agreed.
Dixie took a breath and let it out slowly. “My father swears there never was a Beauregard Junior. Nor did my mother have a sister.”
“Maybe that’s the case.”
Dixie shook her head. “I believed that, too, until he insisted on getting rid of the photographs for me. When I refused to give them to him, he became upset. I knew then that he was lying.”
