Keeping Christmas Read online

  Beauregard Bonner had aged since Chance had last seen him. His blond hair had grayed and the lines around his eyes had deepened. But the booming drawl was that of the filthy rich oilman Chance remembered only too well.

  “Guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here,” Bonner said after downing half of his drink.

  Chance stared down into his beer, waiting. A Christmas song was playing on the jukebox and the back bar glittered with multicolored lights. There was a Christmas tree decorated with beer cans at the other end of the bar and a large Santa doll with a beer bottle tucked in his sack.

  “It’s my daughter,” Bonner said.

  Chance’s head shot up. “Rebecca?” Last he’d heard, Rebecca had married some hotshot lawyer from back east who’d gone to work for her father. They lived in a big house near Houston and had three kids.

  “Not Rebecca.” Bonner made a face. “Dixie.”

  “Dixie?” Rebecca’s little sister? Chance recalled freckles, lots of them, braces and pigtails, an impish little kid who’d been a real pain in the neck the whole time he’d been dating Rebecca.

  “Dixie might be in some trouble,” Bonner said as he scowled down at his drink.

  Chance could not for the life of him imagine what that had to do with him and said as much.

  “I want to hire you to find her.”

  Chance pulled back, even more surprised. “They don’t have private investigators in Texas?”

  “She’s not in Texas. She’s in Montana. At least, it’s where the last kidnapper’s call came from.”

  Chance swore. “Kidnapper?”

  “I need you to find her. I’m worried this time because the ransom demand is a million dollars.”

  “This time? What was it last time?” Chance asked, half joking.

  “When Dixie was three, it was a hundred dollars. Then a hundred thousand in high school. Five hundred grand in college. I figured Dixie was too smart to ever ask for a million, but damned if she didn’t.”

  Chance couldn’t believe this. “Have you contacted the police? The FBI? Shouldn’t someone be looking for her?”

  “There’s something you have to understand about Dixie. The last time she had herself kidnapped in college, I had cut off her money over a little dispute between us. The FBI got involved. It was ugly. She was dating some loser…” He drained his drink and signaled the bartender for another.

  Chance motioned that he was fine. “Loser?” he repeated, remembering when Bonner had called him the same thing. It was about the time he’d started dating Dixie’s older sister Rebecca. Chance supposed Bonner would still consider him just that, a loser. So why come all this way to hire him?

  Rubbing a hand over his face, Chance asked, “So you’re saying that Dixie hasn’t really been kidnapped. You’re sure about that?”

  “I can’t be sure of anything with Dixie.” Bonner tipped up his glass and swallowed. “That’s why I want you to find her. I trust you more than I do the police or the FBI, and you can do it with more discretion.”

  Chance shook his head. “For starters, I don’t have the resources of either of those agencies and I’m not working right now. I’m taking the holidays off.”

  Bonner nodded. “Heard about you getting shot.” He smiled at Chance’s reaction. “I’ve kept my eye on you over the years.”

  Nothing could have surprised Chance more, but he did his best to hide it. “Then you know that I’m not taking any cases right now.”

  “I know you almost got killed, but that the guy who shot you is dead and won’t be hurting anyone else thanks to you,” Bonner said.

  “Don’t try to make killing a man a virtue, all right?”

  “You had no other choice,” Bonner said. “I saw the police report. Also, I know that your shoulder is as good as new.” He smiled again, a twinkle in his eye. “Money talks…”

  Chance swore under his breath. Bonner hadn’t changed a bit. He believed he could buy anything—and most of the time he could. Bonner’s was a famous Texas story. Raised on a chicken-scratch farm, poor as a church mouse, Beauregard Bonner had become filthy rich overnight when oil had been discovered on the place his old man had left him.

  Ever since, Bonner had used his money to control as many people as possible. And vice versa if what he was saying about his youngest daughter was true.

  “Go to the authorities,” Chance said irritably. “You’ve come to the wrong man for this one.”

  “I can’t,” Bonner said, looking down into his drink again. “They wouldn’t take it seriously. Why should they, given that she’s pulled this stunt before and there is no evidence that she’s been abducted?”

  “What about the ransom demand and the fact that she’s missing? There was a ransom demand, right?”

  “Just a male voice over the phone demanding a million dollars before I even knew she was missing,” Bonner said. “I thought it was a joke. The call came from a pay phone in Billings, Montana.”

  Chance studied the older man for a long moment. “What is it you aren’t telling me?”

  Bonner sighed. “Just that I need her found as quietly as possible. I’m involved in some deals right now that are sensitive, which I’m sure is why she’s doing this now.”

  Chance stared at the man. “You’re telling me your business deal is more important than your daughter?”

  “Don’t be an ass, of course not,” Bonner snapped. “Don’t you think I pulled a few strings to find out what I could? All the recent charges on Dixie’s credit cards have what they say is her signature. From the pattern of use it would appear that she’s up to her old tricks.”

  Chance groaned. “She’s kidnapped herself?” Again. Why did she have to pick Montana this time, though? “Why don’t you just give her the million? Hell, she’s going to inherit a lot more than that someday anyway, right?”

  Bonner looked over at him and shook his head. “She’d just give it all away. To save some small country somewhere. Or a bunch of damned whales. Or maybe free some political prisoners. She’s like my brother Carl. I swear it’s almost as if they feel guilty that we have money and want to give it all away.”

  “Generosity, yeah, that’s a real bad trait. No wonder you’re so worried.”

  Bonner ignored the jab. “You don’t know Dixie.”

  No, he didn’t. Or at least he hadn’t since she was twelve. Nor was he planning to get to know the grown-up version.

  He pushed away his beer and stood, Beauregard the dog getting quickly to his feet—no doubt remembering the promise of a treat once they got to the cabin. “Sorry, but you’ll have to get someone else. When you came in, I was just closing up my office for the rest of the holidays and going to my cabin.”

  “The one on the lake,” Bonner said without looking at him.

  Chance tried to tamp down his annoyance. Clearly Bonner had been doing more than just keeping track of him all these years. Just how much had he dug up on him? Chance hated to think.

  “I know about the cabin you built there,” Bonner said, his gaze on his drink, his voice calm, but a muscle flexed in his jaw belying his composure. “I also know you need money.” He turned then to look at Chance. “For your medical bills. And your daughter’s.”

  Chance felt all the air rush out of him. He picked up the beer he’d pushed away and took a drink to give himself time to get his temper under control.

  It didn’t work. “You wouldn’t really consider using my daughter to get me to do what you want, would you?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  Bonner met his gaze, but something softened in his expression. “Dixie is a hellion and probably payback for what a bastard I’ve been all of my life, but she’s my daughter, Chance. My flesh and blood, and I’m scared that this time she really is in trouble.”

  Chapter Two

  Chance drove to his cabin, Beauregard sitting next to him on the pickup’s bench seat, panting and drooling as he stared expectantly out at the blizzard.

  On the seat between him and the
dog was the manila envelope Beauregard Bonner had forced on him. Chance hadn’t opened it, had barely touched it—still didn’t want to.

  Snow whirled through the air, blinding and hypnotic, the flakes growing larger and thicker as the storm settled in. He drove the road along the edge of the lake, getting only glimpses of the row of summer cabins boarded up for the season until he came to the narrow private road that led to his cabin.

  His cabin was at the end of the road. He shifted into four-wheel drive, bucking the snow that had already filled the narrow road. Although mostly sheltered in pines, his cabin had one hell of a view of the lake. That’s why he’d picked the lot. For the view. And the isolation. There were no other cabins nearby. Just him and the lake and the pines stuck back into the mountainside.

  He was still mentally kicking himself as he pulled up behind the cabin and cut the engine. He wasn’t sure who he was angrier at, himself or Beauregard Bonner. He couldn’t believe he’d taken the job. The last person on earth he wanted to work for was Bonner—not for any amount of money.

  But Bonner, true to form, had found Chance’s weakness. And Chance had been forced to swallow his pride and his anger, and think only of how the outrageous amount of money Bonner was offering him would help take care of the medical bills.

  Not that the whole thing hadn’t put him in a foul mood. And it being so close to Christmas, too.

  He sat in the pickup, listening to the ticking of the engine as it cooled, taking a moment to just stare out at his cabin, the storm and what little he could see of the frozen white expanse of lake that stretched for miles.

  Nothing settled him like this place. He’d built the cabin with his own hands, every log, every stone. His daughter had been born here on a night much like this one.

  Beauregard pawed at his arm, no doubt wondering what the hold up was on that treat. “Sorry, boy.” Chance smiled as he reached over and rubbed the dog’s big furry head. Beauregard really was the ugliest dog Chance had ever seen. A big gangly thing, the dog was covered with a mottled mass of fur in every shade of brown. But those big brown eyes broke your heart. Two pleading big brown eyes that were now focused on him.

  Chance had found him beside the road, starving and half dead. He’d seen himself in the dog—the mutt was the most pathetic thing Chance had ever laid eyes on. He’d worn no collar, had apparently been on his own for a long time, and hadn’t had the best disposition. Clearly they were two of a kind and meant to be together.

  “I know,” Chance said, opening his pickup door. “I promised a treat.” The moment he’d said the word treat, Chance knew it had been a mistake.

  Beauregard bounded over the top of him, knocking the beat-up black Stetson off Chance’s head as the dog bolted out the door and along the walkway to the deck at the front of the cabin.

  Laughing, Chance got out, as well, retrieving his Stetson and slapping the snow from it as he followed the dog. On his way, he grabbed an armful of firewood and took a moment to pause as he always did to say a prayer for his daughter.

  REBECCA BONNER LANCASTER pressed her slim body against the wall in the dark hallway, feeling nothing like the Southern belle she pretended to be.

  She could hear her husband on the phone, but was having trouble making out what he was saying.

  It was hard for her to believe that she had stooped this low. Spying on her husband. What would her friends at the country club think? Most of the time, she couldn’t have cared less what Oliver was up to.

  Everyone in Houston knew he’d had his share of affairs since they’d been married. She suspected that most wives pretended not to know because it came as relief. As long as he left her alone, it was just fine with her.

  As the daughter of Beauregard Bonner, she had her friends, her charity work, her whirlwind schedule of social obligations. That kept her plenty busy. Not to mention overseeing the nanny, the housekeepers and the household.

  Rebecca couldn’t say she was happy, but she was content. She doubted most women could even say that. No, she told herself, no matter what her husband was up to, she’d made the right decision marrying Oliver Lancaster.

  Oliver came from a family with a good name but no money, and while the Bonner’s had money, they didn’t have the pedigree. Because of that, it had been a perfect match. Oliver had opened doors that had been closed to her and her family. He was good-looking, charming and tolerant of her family and her own indiscretions.

  Of course, her money helped. That, and his prestigious job working for her father. She knew Oliver didn’t really “do” anything as legal consultant at Bonner Unlimited. The truth was he’d barely passed the bar and provided little consulting to her father. Beauregard had a team of high-paid lawyers, the best money could buy, when he really needed a lawyer.

  But Oliver didn’t seem to mind being paid to do nothing. And the title didn’t hurt in social circles either.

  “What?” she heard her husband demand to someone on the phone.

  Rebecca held her breath. For days now she’d noticed something was bothering Oliver. She’d hinted, asked, even had sex with him, but whatever it was, he was keeping it to himself.

  So, she’d gone from snooping through his suit pockets to eavesdropping on his phone conversations.

  Oliver swore. She could hear him pacing, something he only did when he was upset with her or her father.

  “What the hell did he do that for?” Oliver demanded into the phone, then lowered his voice to ask, “Where is he now?”

  Rebecca frowned, wondering who Oliver was talking about.

  “That son of a bitch,” Oliver swore again.

  There was only one person Oliver referred to in that tone and in those exact words. Her father. What had Daddy done now? She closed her eyes, relieved there was nothing more to it than Oliver finding fault with her father.

  “Montana?” Oliver said.

  Rebecca’s eyes flew open.

  “What the hell is he doing in Montana?”

  Daddy was in Montana?

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. That damned Dixie.”

  Dixie?

  Her husband had moved to the other end of the room now, his voice muffled. She slipped along the wall silent as a cat, knowing it would be ugly if she got caught. And Oliver hated ugly scenes.

  She could hear him talking, but still couldn’t make out most of the words. Then she heard a name that stopped her cold.

  Chance Walker.

  Daddy was in Montana and it had something to do with her sister Dixie and Chance Walker?

  All the breath rushed out of her. She hadn’t heard Chance’s name in years. She’d completely forgotten about him. Well, maybe not completely. But she had been sure her father had.

  What possible reason would Daddy and Dixie have for going to Montana—let alone that it involved Chance Walker?

  “Don’t worry, I will. As long as nothing holds up the deal. I told you, you can count on me. No, no, I believe you. As long as you say it isn’t going to be a problem. All right. If you’re sure.”

  Rebecca was shaking so hard she could barely catch a breath. Chance Walker. She’d thought she’d never hear that name again. But now that she had, she felt sick as it brought back the memory of the choice she’d made so many years ago—and why.

  As Oliver hung up the phone, Rebecca retreated down the hall as quickly and quietly as possible. He was the last person she wanted to see right now.

  AFTER CHANCE HAD a big roaring fire going in the stone fireplace, he spotted the manila envelope where he’d tossed it on the table. It wasn’t too late to call Bonner to tell him he’d changed his mind.

  Every instinct told him that Bonner was holding out on him. He hadn’t been telling him the truth. Or at the very least, the whole truth.

  Cursing himself and Bonner, he picked up the envelope and pulled out Dixie Bonner’s most recent credit card records. It amazed him what money could buy. Confidential records being probably the least of it.

  Shoving away thought
s of Beauregard Bonner, he concentrated on the records. If Dixie wanted her kidnapping to appear real, why would she use and sign her own credit cards?

  Unless someone was forcing her to use them.

  He focused on the charges for a moment. They made no sense. No car needed gas as often as she’d used her cards. Unless she was crazy—or stupid—she had to know she was leaving a trail any fool could follow.

  According to this, Dixie had bought gas at the most southeastern part of the state, then begun what appeared to be a zigzag path across Montana.

  Beauregard let out a bark, startling him. He looked up from the report to see the dog staring at him, recrimination in those big brown eyes now.

  “Sorry.” He tossed the credit card report aside and headed for the kitchen where he melted half a stick of butter in a large cast-iron skillet until it was lightly browned, then dropped in two large rib-eye steaks.

  As they began to sizzle, he stabbed a big white potato a couple of times with a fork and tossed it into the microwave to cook. He considered a second vegetable but instead pulled out a Montana map and spread it out on the table. Retrieving Dixie Bonner’s credit card reports, he traced a line from town to town across the state.

  Alzada. Glendive. Wolf Point. Jordan. Roundup. Lewistown. Big Sandy. Fort Benton. Belt.

  Chance heard the steaks sizzling and turned to see that Beauregard was keeping watch over them from his spot in front of the stove. Chance stepped to the stove to flip the steaks, opened the microwave to turn the potato, dug out sour cream, chopped up some green onions and found the bottle of steak sauce in the back of the fridge—all the time wondering what the hell Dixie Bonner’s kidnappers were doing.

  If there even were kidnappers.

  Either way, zigzagging across Montana made no sense. Why not light somewhere? Any small Montana town would do. Or any spot in between where there was a motel or a cabin in the woods—if a person wanted to hide.