Keeping Christmas

“Sit down.” He hadn’t raised his voice, fortunately. But she knew by his tone that he could at any moment. He had no compunction against making scenes. In fact, he seemed to enjoy them as if he never wanted to forget his poor white-trash roots. As he was fond of saying, “If Houston society don’t like it, they can kiss my cherry-red ass.”

She sat back down.

“I think she might have been kidnapped,” he said quietly, and picked up her water glass and downed it. “How do you get a drink in this place?”

Rebecca caught the waiter’s eye and mouthed Scotch neat. She didn’t have to tell the waiter to make it the best they carried. That was a given.

“What makes you think she’s been kidnapped?” she asked carefully. Bringing up Dixie’s other shenanigans would only set her father off, although she would have loved to have listed them chapter and verse.

“I got a call.” The waiter set down the drink and Beauregard snatched it up, downing it in two gulps before motioning for the waiter to bring him another. “You don’t seem all that upset about it,” he said a little too loudly.

“Because I don’t believe it,” she said, keeping her voice low by example. She could always depend on her father to embarrass her. Oh, why couldn’t she have come from old money like Pookie and her other friends?

“The ransom demand is a million dollars.”

She stared at him. “You can’t be serious?”

He gave her a deadpan look.

“How silly of me. It’s Dixie. It is only a matter of time before she’ll want it all for some foolish cause of hers.” And Daddy will give it to her, Rebecca thought angrily. Oliver had warned her that Dixie would get everything in the end, hadn’t he? “So you paid it. What’s the problem?”

“Hell no, I didn’t pay it.”

The waiter set down another drink and looked nervously at Beauregard as if, like Rebecca, afraid he might be a problem.

Rebecca watched her father take one gulp. “You haven’t paid it yet?” This did surprise her.

“I’m not paying it.”

He would. Eventually. He always caved when it came to Dixie. “So what are you doing?”

“Obviously trying to find her.”

Rebecca glanced around the restaurant. “If you’d called, I could have told you she wasn’t here, Daddy.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why do you have to be such a bitch?”

His words stung more than she thought they would. She knew he was only striking out because he was worried about his other daughter. “Why do you have to be such an ass?” she hissed back at him.

He gripped his glass, anger in every movement as he downed the last of it, and carefully put it down.

She knew she’d gone too far. But she was sick of being the other daughter. The one her father never gave a concern to. “I heard you went to Montana.” She waited, hoping he would deny it.

“Who told you I went to Montana?”

She stared at her father. “You really did go?” She hadn’t meant to sound so shocked. But she was. So she’d been right about the “son of a bitch” Oliver had been referring to.

“Isn’t that what you just— Never mind,” he said, and motioned to the waiter for another drink. “That’s where I guess she is.”

This was all too surreal, especially on top of the two strawberry daiquiris she’d consumed—and what little she’d gleaned from Oliver’s phone conversation she’d overhead last night.

“I hired your old boyfriend to find her.”

There it was. She hadn’t been mistaken. She felt light-headed. For an instant she thought about pretending ignorance and saying, “What boyfriend would that be, Daddy?”

Instead she said, “You hired Chance Walker to find Dixie?” saying his name carefully as if the words were expensive crystal that were so fragile they might break otherwise.

“He’s a private detective. Damned good.”

Was that supposed to make her feel better?

Daddy was looking at her, studying her, his eyes glazed from the alcohol, but he wasn’t drunk. Nor was he stupid. “You were a fool not to marry him.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He picked up the fresh drink the waiter left on the table and stared down into it as if it were more fascinating than her by far.

“I beg your pardon?” she said again, leaning toward him over the table, working to keep her voice down. After all, she was part of this family and no stranger to loud, ugly scenes. Just not in public.

“You, of all people, know why I married Oliver,” she said, her voice low and crackling with fury. “To give this family respectability because even with all your money, Daddy, you couldn’t buy it, could you?”

He didn’t look at her, but what she saw on his face shocked her. Shame.

She felt sick. He’d known what she’d done and why. He’d never believed that she married Oliver for love. He’d known that she had sacrificed her own happiness for the family and he hadn’t even tried to stop her.

She rose from the table, picking up her purse, glaring down at him. “As I said, I have things to do.” She turned on her heel.

Just as he hadn’t stopped her from marrying Oliver, he didn’t stop her from leaving the restaurant.

CHANCE DROVE DOWN the road to where a wide spot had been plowed at the edge of the lake and pulled over. He tried to calm down before he called Bonner again.

“Hello?” Bonner sounded asleep. Or half-drunk. Because of the hour and the bar sounds in the background, Chance surmised it was the latter.

“What the hell are you trying to pull?” He’d planned to be calm, not to tell Bonner what he thought of him. But just the sound of the oilman’s voice set Chance off.

“Chance?”

“I just met the private eye you hired from Texas. J. B. Jamison. Want to tell me what the hell that was about?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“A Texas private investigator named J. B. Jamison.”

“He said I hired him? Well, he’s mistaken. You’re the only private investigator I hired.”

Chance swore. “Mistaken? How could he mistake that?”

“Maybe someone hired him using my name, but it wasn’t me,” Bonner snapped. “I give you my word.”

For what that was worth. It was all he could do not to tell Bonner what he thought of that. Instead, Chance thought of his own daughter.

“Someone broke into my office last night,” Chance said. “From what I can tell, it wasn’t Jamison. That means there is someone else looking for Dixie.”

“Well, I didn’t hire them,” Bonner said, sounding angry. “How many times do I have to say it?”

Chance shook his head, fighting to rein in his temper. If not Jamison, then who had broken into the office and taken the answering machine tape?

“Let’s be clear on this,” Chance said. “I’ll find your daughter. That’s what you’re paying me to do. I’ll even give her a ride to the airport so she can return to Houston, if that’s what she wants. But I won’t let anyone use the kinds of methods Jamison does and hog-tie her and haul her across state lines all the way back to Texas. That’s kidnapping and I won’t be a part of it no matter what’s going on between you and Dixie.”

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