B.J. Daniels - Keeping Christmas

Oliver cursed under his breath as he moved to the window to stare out at the darkness. Even though he knew the security system was on, the estate safe from intruders, he felt strangely vulnerable tonight. And it didn’t take much to figure out why.

He prized this lifestyle, which at the center was his marriage over all else. Without Beauregard Bonner’s good grace—and daughter—Oliver would be nothing but a blue blood with family name only, and he knew it.

Rebecca had all the money and that damned Beauregard, for all his country-boy, aw-shucks hick behavior, was sharp when it came to hanging on to it. Oliver had been forced to sign a prenuptial agreement. If he ever left the marriage, he’d be lucky to leave with the clothes on his back and his good name.

That meant he had to keep Rebecca happy at all costs.

Which had been easy thus far. She seemed as content as he was in their “arrangement.” He left her alone and she did the same. The perfect marriage.

Nothing had changed, right?

As he started to turn from the window, he caught his reflection in the glass. He stared at himself, surprised sometimes to realize that he was aging.

He always thought of himself as he had been in his twenties. Blond, blue-eyed, handsome by any standard. A catch. Wasn’t that how Rebecca had seen him? He didn’t kid himself why she’d dumped Chance Walker to marry him.

Now he studied himself in the glass, frowning, noticing the fine lines around his eyes, the first strands of gray mixed in with the blond, the slightly rounded line of his jaw.

He turned away from the glass and swore. So he was aging. And yet that, too, made him feel vulnerable tonight.

He glanced around the expensively furnished room almost angrily. He wasn’t giving up any of this. He’d come too far and had paid too high a price. He wouldn’t go down without a fight. Especially because of Rebecca’s damned dysfunctional family. Or some cowboy in Montana.

Weary at the thought, he headed upstairs hoping Rebecca was already asleep. Or at least pretending to be like she was normally. He couldn’t play the loving husband. Not tonight.

THE BLIZZARD was a total whiteout by the time Chance drove back into town to his office. He’d been forced to creep along in the truck, often unable to tell where the shoulder and center line was on the highway, the falling and blowing snow obliterating everything in a blur of dense suffocating white.

His office building, when he finally reached the nearly deserted town of Townsend, Montana, was dark, all the shops closed.

He let himself in, surprised when Beauregard took off running down the hall to bark anxiously at the door to the detective agency.

Chance thought about going back to his pickup for the shotgun he carried. He hadn’t carried his pistol since the last time he’d used it to kill a man, but he was almost wishing he had it as he headed down the hall.

He reminded himself that Beauregard wasn’t very discriminating when it came to being protective. There could be another mouse in the office, something that had gotten the old dog worked up on more than one occasion.

Moving quickly down the hall, Chance quieted the dog and listened at the door before he unlocked his office.

Beauregard pushed open the door and streaked in the moment he heard the lock click. As Chance flipped on the light, he tensed. Beauregard Bonner’s visit had him anxious. So did the dog’s behavior.

He could hear the dog snuffling around his desk.

Edging into the room, Chance scanned the desktop. He could see at a glance that the papers he’d left there had been gone through.

Dixie Bonner. Was it possible she was already in town? But what could she have been looking for on his desk?

It made no sense.

Then again, little about the Bonners ever had.

Unfortunately there was no doubt that someone had been here. Just the thought made him angry.

He stepped behind the desk and checked the drawers. He didn’t keep anything worth stealing, which could have been why nothing appeared to be missing.

He had a safe but it was empty. He checked to see if the intruder had found it hidden behind the print of the lower falls of the Yellowstone River he kept on the wall—the only art in the office. Moving the framed print aside, he tried to remember the safe’s combination. It had been a while.

His birthday. He had to think for a moment, then turned the dial and opened the safe. Empty and untouched as far as he could tell.

Turning, he looked around the office, trying to understand why anyone would care enough to break in. He had no ongoing cases, had nothing to steal and kept any old files on CD hidden at the cabin. He didn’t even leave a computer in the office, but brought his laptop back and forth from the cabin.

And maybe more to the point, anyone who knew him, knew all of this.

But Dixie Bonner didn’t know him.

That’s when Chance noticed the dog. Beauregard stood next to the desk, the hair standing up on the back of his neck and a low growl emitting from his throat.

Chance moved around the desk to see why the dog was acting so strangely. The desk was old. He’d picked it up at a garage sale for cheap. Because of that one of the legs was splintered. He’d had to drill a couple of screws into the oak. One screw had hit a knot and refused to go all the way in.

He stared at the head of the screw that stood out a good inch. A scrap of dark cloth clung to the screw head—a scrap of clothing that hadn’t been there earlier. Just like the blood hadn’t been there.

Chance took perverse satisfaction in the fact that his old desk had gotten a little bit of the intruder since, with a curse, he realized what was missing.

The light on the antiquated answering machine was no longer flashing and he could tell even before he opened it that the tape would be gone.

It was.

Chance woke to Christmas music on the radio and sunshine. Through the window, he could see that it was one of those incredible Montana winter days when the sky is so blue it’s blinding.

He could also see that it had snowed most of the night, leaving a good foot on the level. He dug out early, knowing it was going to be a long day as he cleared off the deck, then started shoveling his way to his pickup.

The moment Chance had opened the door, Beauregard bounded outside to race around in the powder. Half the time the dog had his head stuck down in it, coming up covered with snow, making Chance smile. All he could think as he shoveled was that his daughter would have loved this.

Once he had a path to the pickup, he loaded Beauregard in the front seat—against his better judgment. Sure enough, the first thing the darned dog did was shake. Snow and chunks of ice and water droplets flew everywhere.

Chance swore, brushed off his seat and climbed in after the dog. The pickup already smelled like wet dog and he knew it wasn’t going to get better as he started the engine, shifted into four-wheel drive for the ride out and turned on the heater.

Beauregard, worn out by all the fun he’d been having, curled up in the corner of the seat and fell asleep instantly.

Chance turned his attention to navigating the road out of the cabin—and thinking about Dixie Bonner. Last night, after finding his office had been broken into, he’d checked his Caller ID. He recognized all but one of the calls that had come in—a long-distance number with an area code he didn’t recognize. There had been eight calls from that number.

Dixie?

When he checked with the operator, she informed him that the area code was from a cell phone out of Texas. He was betting it was Dixie Bonner. But if she had a cell phone number, why hadn’t her father given it to him?