Keeping Christmas Part 11

"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?" 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? 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 h.e.l.l of an investigative reporter. I've won awards, d.a.m.n you."

Her outburst seemed to amuse him.

"You just a.s.sume 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 h.e.l.l 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? 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 trying to understand." 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 b.u.mped 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."

Or at least had something to hide, Chance thought as he looked at the snapshots again, then at Dixie. "So that's when you decided to dig into your family history."

She nodded. "You know me so well."

Didn't he, though. He'd thought this woman would be a stranger to him, that she would have changed so much he wouldn't know her. He'd been wrong about that. He wondered what else he might be wrong about.

"So you've been trying to find evidence of the people in the photographs."

She nodded and sat across from him.

"And you believe the two men who attacked you were after your genealogy research," he said carefully, trying not to make her mad again but hoping to point out how foolish that sounded.

"When the men were ransacking my house, they were looking for my research materials-and my journal."

He recalled that she'd always kept a journal from the time she was little. Rebecca had teased her about it.

It's a journal about my life-not a diary about which boy said I was cute, Dixie snapped.

Oh, please, Rebecca said. What does a twelve-year-old have to write about?

"Did they find your journal?" he asked.

"I would a.s.sume so. I always kept the original photographs with me in my purse. But I also made copies."

Smart woman. "Did your journal have information about this in it?"

She nodded, her gaze almost pleading for him to believe her. "Nearly everything I'd found out was in the journal."

"Nearly everything?" he repeated. everything?" he repeated.

She didn't seem to hear him. "How much do you know about my mother, Sarah Worth Bonner?"

"Not much. She died when you were a baby."

"Thirteen months old. Rebecca was five. I think I remember Mother, but I'm not sure it isn't just something I made up, you know?"

He did. His parents had died when he was nineteen and he still wasn't sure a lot of the memories weren't ones he wished had happened.

"Over the years I've asked my father, but he always said he didn't like talking about her because it was too painful. For that reason supposedly, he kept no photographs of her."

Chance thought of his own daughter and the few cherished photographs he had of her. He wouldn't have parted with them for anything in this world.

"I started by trying to find out what I could about my mother through the usual sources, birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, social security," Dixie said, as if warming to her subject. "I found a marriage license and a death certificate, but no birth certificate. Social security had no record of her."

"Maybe she never worked," he suggested.

"Everyone has a social security card, but even if for some reason she didn't, she would definitely have had a birth certificate. That's not all. My father had told me my mother was an orphan with no siblings."

"You think this woman in the photograph is her sister."

Dixie nodded. "I know this doesn't seem like anything anyone but me would care about, except I found a record of a Glendora Worth. She would have been older than my mother. I remember Uncle Carl once telling me that my mother had been born up north. Glendora Worth was born in Ashton, Idaho."

He nodded. "Okay."

"There's more."

"I suspected there was."

"When the two men attacked me in the parking garage they were wearing masks, like I told you before. But when they came running out of the house and into the garage as I was getting away, they'd removed their masks and hadn't bothered to put them back on in their haste to stop me. I recognized one of the men. He works for my father."

Chance sat up abruptly. "You just mention this now?"

"You didn't believe that anyone was even trying to kill me. I knew what your reaction would be if I told you my father was behind it."

"Well, if you think I believe that your father paid two hired guns to kill you so you wouldn't find out your mother had a sister-"

"See what I mean?" She let out a small bitter laugh and leaped to her feet. He grabbed her arm as she started past him, but she wrestled free and stalked over to the gla.s.s doors to the deck. "Don't you think it breaks my heart to think that my own father might be involved? But, Chance, I went to him when I found the photographs. I showed him what I'd found. He's the only person who knew."

He watched her place her forehead against the window, her breath condensing on the gla.s.s.

"Dixie, you have to admit, this sounds crazy," he said with a frustrated sigh. "It's just hard to believe that even if there was some deep, dark secret in your family, that anyone anyone would have you killed to keep it quiet." would have you killed to keep it quiet."

She didn't turn around, her voice was m.u.f.fled. "You know how my father is. He does whatever he has to. I thought you would believe me since you know him. You know what he's capable of."

"Your father isn't responsible for breaking me and Rebecca up," he said.

"No," she said, turning from the window. "But he was responsible for getting you to Montana, wasn't he? You think that first job on the ranch just happened to open when you needed it? Or that scholars.h.i.+p to Montana State University?"

He stared at her. He'd always suspected Bonner was behind it. Things had worked out a little too well. "If you're insinuating that he got rid of me-"

"I'm telling you that he sold you down the river," she said, stepping toward him, settling those big blue eyes on him. "Daddy was all for Rebecca marrying Oliver and we all know why."

"It doesn't matter. Rebecca and I would never have gotten married even if I'd stayed in Texas," he said, knowing in his heart it was true.

She nodded. "I agree. But it shows how low my father will stoop to get what he wants. He sold off Rebecca to further the Bonner name. You think he'd let anyone sully that name after everything he's done to get where he is today? Especially since he's about to throw his hat into the political ring."

Chance shook his head, not wanting to believe it. Hadn't Bonner warned him not to believe anything Dixie told him?

Dixie nodded and smiled as if sensing that even against his will he was starting to believe her. "I start digging into my family's background and now someone is trying to kill me. So, you still believe the two aren't connected and that my father isn't involved?"

Chapter Nine

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Lancaster."

Oliver was feeling better by the time he reached the club. He'd managed to put off thinking about the future. At least for tonight.

Rebecca had plans. What did it matter who they were with? He just needed to concentrate on the problem at hand-winning twenty-five thousand dollars.

"Your coat, Mr. Lancaster?"

He let the man help him out of his coat and get him a drink, thankful that men's clubs still existed, albeit underground. Otherwise some woman would protest and the next thing you knew, the place would be full of them and everything would be ruined.

"Any interesting games going on?" he asked as he took the drink. He didn't even have to tell the man what he drank. So much better than home where Rebecca was often out of his favorite.