Lawman Page 17

  She stared. Was he serious? She’d labeled him as coldhearted herself, upon meeting him, Megan recalled with a sense of sadness. Perhaps he recognized that lonely coldness within himself.

  Perhaps he regretted it, too.

  Did she, as well?

  Looking at him now, she thought she might. There had been too much solitude in her own life for her to overlook signs of it in another. Suddenly, Megan wanted nothing so much as to fill Gabriel’s life with more of the laughter she’d glimpsed in him…to crawl inside his chilly soul and warm him with all the caring she hadn’t dared unleash with anyone until now.

  Surely, she’d gone daft to be thinking such softhearted absurdities about Gabriel Winter.

  Abandoning her meal, she drew herself straighter in her chair. “You can’t possibly mean you were cold,” Megan protested. “Not when you had the company of all those Maiden Lane ladies last night. Why, the corset forms some of them wear are so well-padded, a man could use one for a fine pair of earmuffs!”

  “Really?” For a moment, he seemed distracted…and disarmingly interested. Then Gabriel leaned forward and gave her a measuring look. “I thought you said you didn’t follow me last night.”

  Too late, she remembered her denial in the darkened alleyway. “I didn’t follow you.”

  “No? Then how do you…?” His gaze dipped to her perfectly respectable shirred navy bodice, then lifted. He chose another course. “I’d say your knowledge of those ‘ear muffs’ does not come from personal experience, darlin’.”

  Was he suggesting she needed padding? Needed the kind of subterfuge a painted lady employed for the sake of attractiveness? Hating the sense of disappointment that welled within her at the thought, Megan wadded her linen napkin and hurled it to the table.

  “I’ll have you know, that my knowledge of…of that—” Why was she floundering so? Her voice had turned squeaky as a shotgun groom’s vows. “—owes itself to my dressmaking abilities. I certainly haven’t any desire to employ such a device with my own—”

  “Good.”

  His blunt appraisal stopped her cold. “Wh—what?”

  “Good. There’s nothing I dislike more in a woman than deception.”

  His assessing gaze told her he spoke of more than padded corset forms. It warned her that he suspected a greater deception on her part…and warned her further to take care.

  “Besides,” Gabriel went on, “you seem perfectly well-padded to me already.”

  She wanted to be offended. Surely she ought to be. But the devilish edge to his smile stole away whatever insult Megan might have taken from his words. She’d never seen such hot appreciation in a man’s eyes before. Now that she had, she found she didn’t have the will to refuse it.

  Beneath his regard, her breasts grew warm, tingling much as they had this morning upon awakening with his arm cradling her so near. The sensation was entirely too pleasant to have been engendered by a rascal like Gabriel, but she couldn’t seem to stop it. She prayed he couldn’t tell. Judging by the rapt attention he continued to pay her, by the heavy-lidded slant to his gaze, Megan feared terribly that he could.

  Her breath shortened. Fighting the urge to stare down at her bosom and see whatever it was he found so fascinating there, Megan finished her last sip of coffee. It gave her exactly the distance she needed to gaze back at him—this time, without the schoolgirl silliness she’d found herself ensnared in last night at Hop Kee’s Celestial Kitchen.

  “Coming from you, I suppose that’s a compliment,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Coming from you, I suppose that’s an acceptance. You’re welcome.”

  Gabriel’s smile widened. Suddenly bedazzled by its effect on her, Megan realized exactly how personal their conversation had become. At this rate, she’d be giving over the key to the stage station strongbox without so much as a qualm, confessing all she knew about her papa’s customary trips to town…maybe even inviting Gabriel to kiss her again.

  Soon.

  She stared at his mouth, imagining the hot, hungry pressure of his lips covering hers. Anticipating the expert stroke of his tongue…needing the pressure of his fingers holding her steady for the pleasure they would share. His kiss yesterday had set her atremble with a kind of wanting she’d never known. Now that she’d tasted it once, Megan had hoped her curiosity would be assuaged.

  Instead, it seemed more aroused than ever.

  Hoping to return to familiarly embattled ground, she brought her chin up and did her best to appear unaffected by their closeness.

  “All this, from a man who claims not to have a speck of blarney in his nature?” Smiling, she twisted sideways to unhook her parasol from the back of her chair. If she were to find her father—and her nest egg money—before the Webster’s patience gave out, she had to get started again soon.

  “I’m amazed, agent Winter,” she continued in a voice rich with disbelief. “The way you carry on, a person would think you hadn’t come here determined to ruin my papa’s life—and my own.”

  “That person would be right.”

  Megan raised her eyebrows, not bothering to hide the skepticism she felt. “I don’t see how.”

  “I’ve come to find the truth—”

  “You’ve come to hunt down my papa.”

  “—something you don’t seem to take to, much.” Gabriel pulled a folded quantity of money from his suit coat pocket, counted out enough to pay for their meal, and tossed it beside McMarlin’s untouched plate of pancakes. “The truth, that is. I never mentioned being at Maiden Lane last night. Not to McMarlin. Not to you.”

  Scooping up his hat from the table’s edge, he stood and offered her his hand.

  Automatically, Megan took it. His warm, strong fingers closed around hers and at his touch, a deceptive, alluring sense of being cared for washed through her. Was this what it felt like to be noticed, to be wanted, to be beloved?

  If so, she could almost understand why women succumbed to marriage.

  Worse, she could almost understand why her mama had abandoned her family for the sake of it.

  Her thoughts raced as Gabriel helped her to her feet, then escorted her between the dining room tables to the doorway that led to the hotel lobby. Surely the Pinkerton man had let slip his plans to visit Doña Carlotta’s house and the others’ at some point during their acquaintance.

  Hadn’t he?

  If he hadn’t, Megan had no one but herself to blame for letting the truth of her midnight investigations slip out. She’d felt betrayed last night, knowing Gabriel had gone roving with the ladies at Maiden Lane. This morning, she’d let her sense of unreasonable betrayal goad her into commenting on it.

  Drat the man and his indefatigable memory!

  He preceded her to the hotel’s wide front door, and opened it on a comforting wash of familiar territorial sights and sounds. Across the street, Zeckendorf’s general store competed as usual with Tully and Ochoa’s. In the distance, the cottonwood trees at Levin’s Park rose in a haze of green over the whitewashed presidio shops clustered around it. Along the street fronting the Cosmopolitan, dust-strewn wagons clattered past, their beds piled with vegetables or hay—or packed with children, wide-eyed at the sights of town.

  With a gallantry that was doubtless as false as the smile he gave her to go with it, Gabriel held the hotel door ajar and motioned for her to go before him. Megan tamped down a sudden urge to haul up her skirts and run instead for whatever safety she could find. His watchful eyes told her he hadn’t forgotten the lie he had accused her of…and neither had he given up on awaiting a response from her.

  “You didn’t have to mention your visit to Maiden Lane to me,” she bluffed, raising her skirts to sail past him onto the narrow hotel porch beyond. “I simply assumed you’d go there. Being a man, as you are. And ah, especially one so, so….”

  Tongue-tied, she turned to watch him pass through the doorway behind her. The breeze ruffled his thick, dark hair, lending him a boyish quality. A gathering of travelers
parted to make way as he came toward her, and it struck her that in Tucson, Gabriel’s citified clothes seemed about as at home as a brass button in a barrel of sugar.

  It was just as she’d guessed. The Pinkerton man was unused to life in the rough-and-tumble Arizona Territory. His unfamiliarity could only be counted in Megan’s favor, she figured. Despite that fact, she felt strangely at a disadvantage as she watched him approach.

  Perhaps it was because of the way he moved—with a sense of surety that should have been out of place with his powerful, rangy man’s body…but wasn’t.

  Especially one so very masculine, she finished silently. So very charming. So blasted good-looking. No, she couldn’t say any of those things.

  At the porch pillar beside her, Gabriel stopped and smiled. “Especially one so…what?”

  Leaning his shoulder against the pillar with a casualness she envied, he paused to put on his flat-brimmed black hat. Beneath its shadow, his face took on a coaxing expression that was surely meant to slip free all her secrets…and all her defenses, too.

  His brogue deepened. “Come out with it, Megan. It’s plain you meant to say something more.”

  “You must have misheard me.” A half-cooked excuse if ever she’d served one. Would he swallow it?

  Gabriel shook his head. “I heard you. I’m a listening kind of man.” He straightened away from the pillar. Waited. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t see plainly, too. I’ve got to tell you, sugar—what I see right now has got me listening harder than ever.”

  “Bosh.” She raised her parasol against the glare of the early morning sun, then chanced another look at him from beneath its protection. Despite her best efforts to ignore it, her curiosity about what he’d said proved too much for her. “What do you see?”

  “When I came through that doorway just now—” he jerked his head toward the Cosmopolitan Hotel “—you looked at me like a girl eyeballing butterscotch sticks in a general store window.” He lingered over the notion. Smiled like a man with a winning hand of poker. Then he said, “You’re doing it still.”

  Butterscotch sticks, indeed! With despair—and a mounting sense of panic—Megan realized he was right. She did feel like that girl he’d imagined. Felt just as though she’d sampled her first morsel of candy…and wanted another lick of sweetness to tide her over between tastings. But how had Gabriel guessed?

  Perhaps he felt the same. Hungry for…something.

  “It’s got me understandably curious,” he went on. “Especially one so…what?”

  Afraid her feelings would show on her face, Megan turned her gaze toward the hard-packed dirt length of the street facing them. She watched the freight wagons and buggies pass by in a blur of motion, felt the warm September breeze on her face—worked hard to come up with an answer to a question she could barely remember.

  How did he affect her so strongly?

  Before she could speak, though, Gabriel leaned closer. His shoulder brushed past the starched blue cotton of her dress sleeve, then his smooth-shaved cheek touched her ear.

  “You don’t really have to say,” he murmured, “so long as you keep doing it. I like your looking at me like that—like you’re wanting to hold me still, then lick me up one side and down the other.”

  She gasped, but he went on. His deep, intimate voice wound its way past every barrier of propriety, past every doubt she might have harbored, past every defense she’d ever possessed.

  Gabriel’s lips touched her ear. “Makes a man feel downright…sweet, like rock candy.” His breath whispered past the place he’d kissed, calling forth shivers in its wake. “You’re a dangerous woman, Megan Kearney. Don’t imagine I’ll be forgetting it.”

  How could she? A sigh escaped her. She couldn’t help it. Even if—when—the Pinkerton man forgot her, Megan knew she would never fail to remember him. How did a woman forget the first man who had actually made her knees go weak?

  Feeling wobbly, she looked up…straight into the astonished face of Mrs. Prudie Webster. The woman who held the key to Megan’s future gaped up from beside the hotel’s hitching rail at a sight she must never have expected to witness.

  Kearney Station’s most famous spinster, being courted by a man. And a spectacularly good-looking one, at that.

  “M—Miss Kearney?” Prudie’s thin nose narrowed still further, and she squinted as though unable to believe her eyes. “Is that you?”

  Perhaps she could pretend not to hear, Megan thought desperately, but Prudie’s shrill repetition of her question put an end to that hope. Fighting an urge to duck behind the Pinkerton man’s broad shoulders, Megan held her ground. Mrs. Webster did, too, her mouth working like a trout on a line. In an instant, the sight returned to Megan all the realization of her circumstances she’d lost track of.

  Gabriel Winter didn’t want her. He wanted her papa. In jail. And the better she remembered that hard truth, the better she’d fare.

  Needing to put some distance between them, Megan rose on tiptoes. She put her mouth beside his ear and whispered, “I’m sorry to disappoint you, agent Winter. But I have a terrible habit of crunching right through my candies.”

  He flinched.

  She couldn’t allow herself to care. Trembling with nervousness, Megan planted her heels against the plank porch floorboards once more and addressed Prudie Webster.

  “Imagine meeting you here, Mrs. Webster,” she said, taking Gabriel’s arm in what she hoped seemed a companionable way. “I don’t believe you’ve met Mr. Winter. He’s my, ahh—”

  She paused, wildly seeking a way to describe Gabriel that would not reveal his true reasons for being with her. The truth of his mission would surely turn Prudie and Jedediah against completing the dressmaker’s shop sale. Megan refused to see her future ground beneath a Pinkerton man’s wrongheaded investigation.

  With an overtly curious expression, the man in question watched her fumble for an explanation. In another minute, Gabriel would concoct one of his own. Heaven only knew what he would think was suitable.

  Megan frowned at him—and a solution struck her. She squeezed his arm tighter and happily smiled at Mrs. Webster.

  “He’s my new mannequin. Did I mention to you that I also design men’s clothing?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sun dipped toward the leafy cottonwoods at the place called Levin’s Park by the time they reached it later that afternoon. In Gabriel’s opinion, they arrived not a damned moment too soon.

  Weary to the soles of his feet, he guided Megan through the dappled shade toward the low stone wall bordering a fountain. Birds scattered at their approach, then settled again at their feet as he and Megan plopped onto the cool stones beside the fountainhead. To their backs, mist dampened the air, and water spilled into the pool with a sound like so many chattering voices.

  Or maybe it only sounded that way to him. After a day packed brimful with more prattling women than Gabriel had ever hoped to encounter, he couldn’t be sure.

  Groaning, he shrugged out of his suit coat and laid it aside on the wall. He dug his fingers into his necktie to loosen its four-in-hand knot. With another low groan, he rolled the stiffness from his shoulders, inwardly cursing the hours of tea-taking and mindless chatter that had knotted his muscles.

  Christ, but he ached. Sitting on those tiny chairs women favored was enough to break a man’s back. Were feminine backsides really that much smaller than a man’s?

  Gabriel angled a glance toward Megan’s bottom. He couldn’t tell. The rounded blue bell of her bustle made it impossible to know if she possessed a backside at all, much less what it looked like.

  His imagination offered up several possibilities, all of them intriguing. All of them minus her bustle and whatever else she piled on beneath it. None of them satisfying. He returned his thoughts to the events of the afternoon, cursing again the thumbnail-sized sandwiches, the never-ending tea, the giggling and prodding…the chairs.

  He’d owned bigger boots.

  Tiredly, he ran
his hand over his gun belt, checking to be sure his weapons and ammunition were at the ready. Only a fool sat unprotected in a place as public as Levin’s Park, especially with a woman to care for.

  Not that he meant to care for Megan Kearney.

  Hell, no.

  If ever there’d been a woman who could take care of herself, it was Megan. She didn’t need him.

  And if a part of him wanted her to need him…well, that was just a man’s natural protectiveness for a woman. Nothing more.

  It didn’t mean he wanted her to look at him with more of the butterscotch-sweet hunger he’d glimpsed in her eyes—and less prickly defensiveness. Didn’t mean he could see a future where they lay down together at night without handcuffs to bond them and a battle of wills in between. Didn’t mean he could forget the job he’d come here to finish, and lose himself in wonderings about a future that could never be.

  He had to find Joseph Kearney. Every moment’s delay endangered his livelihood, and his reputation as an agent. He couldn’t start over on a past choked with failings…and he couldn’t find a new life with the one he had still unfinished.

  With wariness born of longstanding habit, Gabriel gazed across the park. From the cottonwood groves to the beer gardens to the white picket fence bordering it, the place was the picture of leisure. Luckily for him. In truth, had one of Pinkerton’s most-wanted parted from the clumps of picnicking families surrounding them, or passed by on his way to the tenpin alley just beyond, Gabriel would have been hard-pressed to stop him. He couldn’t remember when he’d spent a more wearisome day.

  It was almost enough to make him wish he’d gone back to Kearney Station himself, rather than sending McMarlin. But after having tracked his mentor to the alleyway—and the refuse pile—Megan’s knotted sheet getaway ruse had led him to, it had seemed better not to leave the two of them alone together again.

  In all, McMarlin hadn’t seemed to mind being sent away. He’d departed for Kearney Station on the mid-morning stage, carrying Gabriel’s instructions to find the missing strongbox key—and Megan’s parting surprise—with him.