Keeping Christmas - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,35

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

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