by B. J Daniels
She pulled the barrette from her hair she’d used to tie it back earlier. It took her a few minutes but to his amazement, she picked the lock and slipped in.
She was going swimming?
He hurried down the hallway only to find the door locked again. He’d never been great at lock picking, but he was hell on wheels when it came to fence climbing. Backtracking he circled around the rear of the lodge to come out at the fence along the dark side of the pool.
Steam rose off the surface, dissipating into the cold darkness. For a moment he didn’t see her and thought she’d given him the slip. But then he spotted her discarded clothing piled on one of the chairs near the deep end, a towel lying on top.
At the sound of a splash, he saw her surface halfway down the pool in a cloud of steam and was surprised how relieved he was. She hadn’t tried to get away. She’d just wanted to go for a swim. He smiled, shaking his head. Would this woman ever quit surprising him?
She dove back under the water and he quickly climbed the wooden fence, moving to the edge of the pool as she surfaced.
He remembered that she’d been part fish back in Texas, always in her family pool. Always calling, “Hey, Chance, watch this.” Even back then she’d loved attention. And had known no fear, diving off the highest thing she could find if it would shock him. He realized she hadn’t changed.
He’d expected to surprise her, but if he did, she hid it well.
“Hello, Chance,” she said with a grin.
“The pool is closed, Dixie. Also, I believe swimsuits are required.”
Her grin broadened. “Why would anyone swim in a suit if she didn’t have to? And close a pool on a night like this?” She looked up, her face softening. “Look at those stars. I had no idea there were so many.” Her breath came out on a puff of frosty December air.
He saw that her hair was starting to freeze. Frost glistened on her eyelashes. A snow angel. Her beauty took his breath away.
She must have seen his expression because her gaze heated as it met his. Her smile widened. Oh, that mouth. Incredible full lips that arched up in a perfect bow that any man would have been a fool not to want to kiss.
She laughed and ducked under the water, disappearing beneath the steam—but not before he’d glimpsed her sleek naked body moving through the water.
Chance swore and glanced toward the lodge and the rooms that faced in this direction. Several of the blinds were open, lights out, but he’d bet Dixie had an audience and unless he missed his guess, she knew it and was enjoying it. “Damn it, Dixie.”
As she surfaced, her laugh filled the air. “You should see your expression.”
“You like shocking people.”
She turned serious. “You’re wrong. I just like swimming naked on a night like this.”
Clouds scudded across the stars and with a suddenness that pretty much summed up Montana weather, it began to snow. The flakes were huge and, like delicate white feathers, drifted lazily down. Dixie laughed, the delight of a child, and leaned back to catch one in her mouth.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” she said, looking at him again through the steam rising up off the surface of the pool. He got the feeling she wasn’t talking about swimming.
She cocked her head at him. “Sure you don’t want to join me?”
“Positive.” His voice sounded odd to him and he knew she’d heard it.
“I won’t look if you’re shy.” She chuckled then turned her back, daring him to strip and join her.
He’d been tempted plenty times in his life, but this one topped the list.
“Scared?” she asked in that Texas drawl of hers.
“Aren’t you worried your killers will find you? You are rather…exposed.”
She turned back to give him a disappointed look. “You aren’t going to spoil this for me, Chance Walker.”
Her words hit him like stones. He hated that he’d even tried. But damn it, his job was to keep her safe. And he hadn’t wanted this job. He should have been at his cabin with his dog and a roaring fire, not standing out here in the cold watching the damned woman swim naked in a closed pool.
Hell, if there had been a sign that said, No Diving, she would have been doing a jackknife off the side right now.
He reminded himself who she was. Not just a Bonner, which was bad enough, but Rebecca’s little sister. Unfortunately that didn’t help. Rebecca had been a lifetime ago.
He turned his back and listened to her swim, fighting the ache inside him. There’d been something about Dixie Bonner at twelve that had been likeable even though a lot of the time she was an impossible noisy little brat.
But the grown-up version was everything that had made Dixie unique at twelve—and a whole hell of a lot more.
After a while, he heard her climb out, listened to her pull on the jeans and T-shirt.
“You can turn around now.”
He did.
She stood, her head cocked to one side, looking at him through a wet wall of dark hair. She brushed her hair back from her face and grinned, no doubt at his expression. She’d dried with the towel she’d carried under her arm from the room, and had put her clothing on over her damp body. The T-shirt clung to her breasts, leaving little to his imagination. There was no way she wasn’t aware of that, as well.
“Your hair is starting to freeze,” he said, mad at himself, mad at her. It was all he could do to keep from tossing her into the pool, clothes and all—and jumping in after her.
And that, he realized, is what really had him upset. He wished now that he’d gone in the pool with her, for he feared that when he was a very old man this would be his one regret in life.
“Let’s get you back to the room,” he said, taking off his jacket to put it around her.
She let out an amused laugh. “I never knew you were such a prude. You should have come into the pool,” she said as she wrapped her long hair in the towel, her back to him. “You have no idea what you missed.”
He cursed softly, just imagining.
She turned to grin at him. “You know I’m starting to understand why my sister didn’t marry you.”
“I was the one who broke it off with her,” he snapped, instantly regretting it.
Her brow shot up. “Very gallant of you to admit that.”
He swore under his breath. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that. Hell, why am I apologizing? Your sister was already practically engaged to some blue-blooded lawyer student by then.”
“You could have come back to Texas and put up a fight for her,” she said over her shoulder as she walked toward the door to the lodge.
“Oh, yeah, that would have done a lot of good.”
She grinned back at him. “You should have heard what she said about you. She said—”
“Don’t even.” He thought about some of the things Rebecca could have told her little sister and wished this subject had never come up.
Dixie laughed as they reached the door back into the lodge. Apparently it didn’t lock from this side. “Didn’t you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you’d stayed in Texas?”
“No,” he lied. He stepped past her and into the lodge, planning to end this conversation by doing the only thing he could—run away from it.
“Did you know she kept a diary?” Dixie asked in a whisper as she caught up to him.
Rebecca kept a diary? He continued walking. The last thing he wanted to talk about was her sister. Especially after he’d just seen her little sister swim naked. Nor did it seem the right topic for a walk in the lodge hallway in the wee hours of the morning.
Dixie was probably bluffing anyway about the diary. But now that he thought about it, Rebecca was the type who would have kept a diary. One of those little pink ones with a lock and key. And Dixie was just the type to break into it and read it.
“Would you like me to quote you chapter and verse?” She didn’t give him time to say no. “‘Oh, today was just the most awful day,’” Dixie mim
icked in a voice that was eerily like Rebecca’s. “‘Daddy forbade me to go out with that Chance Walker boy. My heart just ached and I cried throughout all of dinner but to no avail. Daddy was just impossible.’”
Chance groaned, the words sounding too much like Rebecca’s for this not to be true. He stopped, turning to glare at her. “I’m surprised your sister didn’t throttle you for reading her diary,” he whispered back.
Dixie let out a snort. “She had no idea I ever read it. Rebecca, being Rebecca, wore the key around her neck and always kept the diary locked. Have you ever seen the flimsy locks on a diary?” Dixie chuckled. “I could pick locks a lot harder than that when I was seven.”
All he could do was shake his head.
“Stop looking so shocked. I’m willing to bet you’re no slouch when it comes to lock picking,” she said as they reached their suite and she waited for him to open the door.
As he started to use the room key, he realized she’d expected him to follow her to the pool. That’s why she hadn’t even bothered to take the key. Or maybe she’d planned to pick the room lock, too.
“Only private detectives on TV pick locks,” he snapped. “It’s considered breaking and entering.” He opened the door and, following her inside, closed it after them.
“Don’t disillusion me with that legal mumbo jumbo. I’ve heard it all. Anyway, I wouldn’t believe it.” She grinned. “After reading Rebecca’s diary, I know everything about you. And I do mean everything.”
“Everything.” He grumbled under his breath. “Just like your father.” He saw the change in her expression.
“If you want to get along with me, don’t compare me to him.” She turned toward her room, her back stubborn-straight, her hips swaying from side to side in a way that could blind a man.
“Who says I want to get along with you?” he called after her. “You’re the one who came to Montana. I didn’t want this damned job to start with. I wanted nothing to do with your family.”
“That’s right,” she called back over her shoulder. “I came to Montana. Looking for you. Because I had this crazy idea that you were one of the good guys. Instead, you go to work for my father. You didn’t just sell out, Chance Walker. You broke my heart.”
He saw her hesitate at her doorway as if she hadn’t meant to add that last part. He wasn’t sure why it touched him. He didn’t even believe there were killers after her, right? Let alone that his going to work for her father had broken her heart.
“Do you still love her?”
He wasn’t sure he’d known what love was until his daughter was born. “Rebecca? No.”
“Did she break your heart?”
“No.” He hated to admit it. She’d been his first love. First loves were supposed to be ones you never got over, right?
“You were both so wrong for each other,” Dixie said, shaking her head.
He couldn’t argue that.
“You needed a woman who cared about more than what she was going to wear or whether her hair was just right or what her friends were going to say about her—and you.”
He laughed since that was Rebecca to a T. She cared more about outward appearances than anything else. He hoped she was happy with…what was his name? Oliver?
“Like you know what kind of woman I needed,” he said with a laugh, wanting to draw the subject away from Rebecca.
“Someone like…me,” Dixie said, and disappeared into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.
He laughed, thinking she had to be joking.
In his room, he stripped down to his shorts and sprawled again on the bed. He couldn’t help but think about some of the things Dixie had said. He’d let her down and that bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
He tried to push her out of his mind, but the minute he closed his eyes all he could see was Dixie Bonner swimming through fog-cloaked water like a ghost mermaid, a million stars glittering overhead on a cold December night in Montana.
Chapter Ten
Chance bolted upright out of a deathlike sleep. He looked around, at first not sure where he was. As he came fully awake, he remembered it all—including the sound that had awakened him. The closing of a door.
Only he was pretty sure it was a neighboring door he’d heard from another unit.
Still, he jumped up and rushed into the living area. Dixie’s door to her bedroom was standing open, her bed made. Had she even gone to bed last night?
In a panic, he checked her room, not sure what he thought he’d find. She’d had no luggage—just the clothing on her back, which he was pretty sure she’d taken with her. The room was empty. Dixie was gone.
Cursing, he stormed to the door and looked down the hallway. Empty. He glanced at his watch, then through a crack in the blinds on the deck doors. It was barely light out.
He felt foggy. He’d obviously drifted off at some point in the night, but didn’t feel as if he’d gotten any rest. Who could blame him, knowing that Dixie Bonner was in the next room?
Or at least had been.
Where had she gone? He couldn’t believe this. The woman was driving him crazy. Maybe that had been the plan all along.
Unless everything she’d told him had been a lie…
Or maybe she hadn’t trusted him. Maybe she thought him no better than the others her father had hired to find her.
That thought grounded him like a crashed plane.
He rushed back into his room, threw on the rest of his clothing and hurried down to the lodge lobby, hoping she’d just gotten hungry and gone to breakfast.
“Have you seen the woman I had with me?” he asked the young man behind the desk who’d brought up their food. From the man’s expression, he had. “Where did she go?”
“Said she wanted to take a walk.” He pointed toward the window.
A walk? Chance turned to look out. The day was bright, the sky clear blue, the rising sun blinding on the snow, the temperature hovering around freezing. Was she crazy? Of course she was. She was a Bonner.
He could see a packed snowmobile trail that led out into the trees. “Is that the way she went?”
The young man nodded.
It hadn’t been daylight long. She couldn’t be that far ahead of him.
“It’s an easy trail,” the male clerk called after him as Chance ran for the door. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
Chance wished he could be sure of that. What had Dixie been thinking? Outside, he saw his friend who’d given them the suite for the night. “I need to borrow a snowmobile.”
Two minutes later, Chance was roaring up the trail as it wound through the darkness of the trees, then rose up over a hill and into the faint morning sunlight. No sign of Dixie.
He should have caught up to her by now. What if the clerk was wrong? What if she’d taken another trail? Or what if she’d been right and his calling her father had the killers waiting outside—
He slowed and spotted her tracks in some soft snow that had fallen from a pine bough into the packed trail. She was running. From what?
Gunning the snowmobile, he raced up the trail as it curved and dipped in and out of the snowcapped pines. The cold winter morning air burned his face and lungs.
As he came around a curve in the trail, suddenly there she was. She’d heard the snowmobile coming and had stepped off the track.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded as he shut off his machine and grabbed her, pulling her close as he drew his weapon. Hurriedly he searched the cold, dark shadows. The trees were dense here in the creek bottom, visibility poor.
“Nothing,” she said, pulling free. “I just came out for a run.”
He glanced over at her. “A run?”
“I like to run. It clears my head.”
He stared at her as he slowly holstered his weapon and tried to still his thundering pulse. “Did you ever think that going for a run when there are so many people after you might be a bad idea?”
“No one knows we’re here, right?”
Her
reasoning was pushing him over the edge. “You’re the one who said my call yesterday would have your father and his men breaking down our doors last night.”
“I guess the lodge is harder to find than I thought,” she shot back with a grin.
“What’s so damned funny?”
“You. As you recently said to me, you can’t have it both ways. Either you believe my life is in danger. Or you don’t. Obviously, you do.”
“You scared the hell out of me.” It was out before he could call it back.
She cocked her head at him. “Admit it. You believe that someone wants me dead.”
“Anyone who’s ever met you probably wants to kill you,” he said, his pulse finally dropping back to normal. Ice crystals glistened in the morning sunlight. The air smelled of pine and snow. And Dixie looked great.
“Whatever,” she said with a little shake of her head just as she’d done when she was a kid and he’d wanted to turn her over his knee.
Some things just didn’t change.
Beauregard Bonner had known where they were, but no hit men had shown up to take her out. That had to be one hell of a relief for her. She’d been wrong about her father.
“Ever been on a snowmobile?” he asked.
She shook her head, eyes wide and bright, her face suddenly alive with excitement.
He grinned. “Hop on.”
The gunshot came out of nowhere. A tree just past Dixie’s head splintered, the sound a loud crack that echoed across the mountainside. As he lunged for her, he heard the second shot. It whistled past his head as he tackled Dixie and took her down hard behind the snowmobile.
“You believe me now?” There were tears in her eyes. “I knew it. I knew it.”
He cursed himself, his own stupidity. He shouldn’t have made the call yesterday from the lodge phone. But he’d been so convinced that her father only had her best interests at heart. What the hell had he been thinking?
“Stay here and stay down,” he ordered, pulling his weapon as he crouched behind the snowmobile, then made a run for it, dodging in and out of the trees, shielding himself as he moved quickly in the direction of the gunfire.