Lawman (13 page)

Sorely tempted to find out, Gabriel leaned
closer into the doorway. The darkened vestibule of some Chinaman's
restaurant was hardly the place to indulge his curiosity about a
wanted man's daughter. But despite that fact, he felt himself drawn
to touch the petal softness of Megan's mouth, to linger a little
longer in the shadows with her, to sample the pleasures he might
find with her...and to pleasure her, in return.

All of which were, no doubt, exactly the
distractions she'd meant to engender, he realized. He'd neatly
stepped in tune with another of her double-edged maneuverings.

Damnation. It was almost enough to make him
wish she'd come out with it straight, and wallop him in the shins
again.

Almost.

Determined to fall for no more of her
tricks, Gabriel straightened. He fisted his hand on his hat brim
and said, "It was more gentlemanly than you know."

"Hmmph. I suppose you expect me to thank you
for that?"

Her arched brows and skeptical expression
said the desert would turn to snowdrifts before she'd thank him for
anything—least of all holding her captive on their shared hotel
room bed.

"Thank me?" Leisurely, Gabriel took in the
fit of her fussy brown dress—still slightly rumpled, despite her
attempts to smooth it—and the subtle disarray of her upswept hair,
only half-tamed by her hat. Both reminded him of how close he'd
come to abandoning the principles that had guided him all these
long years on the Pinkerton trail.

"Yes, you should," he said, and felt it to
be true. He frowned. "I didn't have to let you out of that bed at
all."

Thrusting her nose in the air, Megan planted
her hand beside his on the door. She pushed it a little wider open.
"Never mind the courtesy. I didn't realize it came with a
price."

"Everything does."

It was a fact he lived with. A fact he'd
never had cause to regret. But watching Megan sashay alone into
Hop Kee's Celestial Restaurant
, bustle swaying and chin held
high as though she owned the place, Gabriel did have regrets.

He wanted her. His need for her was as real
as the red-papered walls, statuary, and ornate paper lanterns
surrounding him. Worse, it grew with every moment they spent
together, made itself known with every shared breath they took.

But the price of having Megan would be his
job. And Gabriel had no intention of paying a price so high.

Not ever.

Plainly put, he couldn't serve justice and
at the same time dally with his prime suspect's daughter. He
couldn't track the truth while feeding her lies. But he could—
he
must
—use whatever information Megan could give him.

The trick lay in not taking advantage of her
while he did.

His reputation, his livelihood, and his
future all relied on tracking down the man who'd committed the
robbery at Kearney station. Surely he could do that without
compromise. Although Megan might doubt he possessed the morals to
do so, Gabriel knew no such uncertainties. He'd proven himself time
and again.

Winter brings in the right man at the
right time
.

The sooner he got on with it, the better. He
spied Megan at the outskirts of the bustling dining room, hands
clasped at her skirts, gazing with rapt interest at the painted
menu board nailed to the wall. Was she waiting for the proprietor?
Or waiting for Gabriel to join her before proceeding into the sea
of customer-filled tables?

Despite himself, he liked the notion of a
woman waiting for him. Liked the notion of
Megan
waiting for
him. With a hopefulness more foolish than he wanted to consider,
Gabriel made his way toward her.

All around him exotic spices perfumed the
air, pungent with spicy-sweet ginger and fresh-brewed green tea.
Cutlery clattered against plates; tea poured into cups with greedy
swirls of sound. As he passed further into the dining room, the
steady murmur of chattering voices grew louder, a mixture of
ambling western speech and staccato Chinese.

For an instant, the sound threw him home to
the narrow, hilly streets of San Francisco, to the Chinatown in its
midst. Gabriel waited for homesickness to strike, waited for some
sign he was ready to go back there...and felt nothing.

Had he been on the trail as a Pinkerton man
for so long that the need for home couldn't touch him? Or was the
emptiness he felt only natural for a man fully grown, with no
family of his own to hold him in place?

Something told him it wasn't. He trusted
that sense even less than he did the motives behind Megan's
upturned, suddenly smiling face when she spied him approaching her.
Another plan had formed between those bejeweled ears of hers. The
open-armed greeting she gave him did nothing to convince Gabriel
otherwise.

Her gloved hands squeezed his shoulders with
a trace too much enthusiasm. "There you are! I thought you'd left
me here alone."

If he hadn't known better, he might have
believed the quaver in her smile. He might have believed she spoke
truly, and felt sorry for letting her precede him into the
restaurant without an escort. But after this morning, Gabriel knew
better than to believe so readily.

"And stop short of finding out what it is
you think I need from this place?" He shook his head and gave her a
wry twist of his lips that might have passed for a smile. "Not this
Pinkerton man, darlin'. I'm not one to pass up any clues—even the
nonsensical ones."

Color brightened her smooth freckled cheeks.
She fluttered her eyelashes downward and, looking wounded, examined
the tips of her shoes with a remarkably realistic air of betrayal.
"I didn't bring you here to help you make your case against my
father."

"At least not intentionally."

"Not at all!" Her head came up. This time,
those lonesome brown eyes of hers flashed with more than enough ire
to back up her words. "This just goes to show how much you needed
to come here with me, agent Winter—"

"Gabriel."

"—
and
how much you need that
sweetness I told you about!"

Considering all things sweet—and better
savored slowly—he skimmed his gaze over her. Damn, but she looked
pretty. Too freckled and square-jawed for classic beauty, but with
a vitality and softness that appealed to him strongly, all the
same.

"Oh, I need sweetness, all right," Gabriel
said, with a smile turned genuine. "You've got me pegged there,
Miss Megan."

"I'm pleased you agree."

Her curt reply seemed to close their
conversation. She tapped her gloved fingers over her hair to
straighten it, adjusted her hat, then drew a deep breath and sent
her gaze searching over the dining room beyond them. Gabriel
watched her, and couldn't help wanting more of an answer than she'd
given him. Was she being deliberately coy? Or did she really not
understand their differing versions of sweet and sour...and
salvation?

He'd wager she understood him well
enough.

If not now, then soon.

He looked down to find her too-contemplative
gaze transferred from their surroundings to him. Ominously, Megan
added, "If it's not already too late, that is."

"Too late for what?"

"You."

With that cryptic explanation, she rose on
tiptoes and waved to someone over Gabriel's shoulder. He turned to
see a neatly dressed Chinese man approach, wiping his hands on the
apron tied around his waist, and call out to Megan.

"Miss Kearney! These old eyes must deceive
me. That can't really be you, come back to Hop Kee's place after
all these years."

"It is me, Mr. Kee. I haven't grown and
changed all that much, have I?" Smiling, Megan fluffed out her
skirts and stood straighter, as though to help bring about the
answer she hoped for.

Gabriel stared in amazement. Was she really
so unsure as her actions suggested? It had to be another ruse, he
reasoned...until he noticed the way she'd drawn her lower lip
between her teeth, waiting for the older man's reply.

Her obvious unease was almost enough to make
him wish he hadn't mussed her dress and hair, hadn't criticized her
choice of restaurants and set her on guard with jibes about how
she'd brought him there to find more clues.

I thought you'd left me here
alone
.

For an instant, he thought of how she'd
seemed to him just moments ago, with her wobbly smile and fingers
clenched tight against her skirts. To his eyes, she'd seemed
genuinely afraid he had abandoned her. But the rest of him knew
that notion flew in the face of everything Gabriel had experienced
since meeting her. Brave, deceptively clever Megan, afraid?
Never.

But now she wore that same expression while
she waited for Hop Kee, as though expecting he'd find her
appearance lacking. Find
her
lacking. And recognizing that
fear in her struck Gabriel deeply.

Which was the true Megan? The
no-holds-barred, conniving lady sharper he'd come to know? Or the
woman poised on the edge of heartbreak he saw now?

Frowning, he stepped closer to her and
turned to face Hop Kee as he came closer. With his shoulders nearly
blocking her view, Gabriel would be ready to shield her from Kee's
disapproval. He'd be ready to soften its impact before it could
touch her...before it could steal the eagerness from her eyes and
the lightness from her step.

For all her scheming, squirming, and foolish
readiness to believe in her father's innocence, Megan still stood
in a Pinkerton man's care. As long as she did, Gabriel vowed, he
wouldn't allow any harm to come to her.

You could cause the most harm of all,
a part of him reminded. If Joseph Kearney turned up as guilty as
Gabriel thought he would, it would wound her far more than a
restaurant owner's rebuke. Only one of them could be right about
her father. Only one of them could win with this. Gabriel had sworn
it would be him.

Hell.

But neither he nor Megan needed to have
worried over Hop Kee. The Chinaman stopped and bowed before them
both, and Gabriel realized that this man cared nothing for her
rumpled skirts or coverlet-mussed hair. He looked beyond such
things as dresses and millinery and regal posture—or the lack of
them. The proof of his vision was in his lined face when Kee looked
at her, in his broad smile and the joyful clasp of her hands in
his.

"Not so much grown, but changed in all the
most beautiful ways," he announced, squeezing her hands gently.
Like a doting father, he took in her appearance from shoes to hat,
and sighed. "You turned out pretty fine, Miss Kearney. I always
told your papa you would."

His flattery eased Gabriel's aggressive
stance, and at the same time brought a blush to Megan's cheeks. Her
heightened color betrayed how unused she was to such
compliments—however worthy of them she might be.

"Thank you," she said quietly, "but I've
come to visit you, not to talk about me! I hope you've fared well,
over the years. You have, haven't you?"

"Yes, yes. It hasn't been so long, after
all." Kee nodded and released her hands. As though only just then
noticing Gabriel stood there, he gave him a measuring look. "Except
long enough for you to find a husband, I see?"

"Oh, no! Not a husband. No, no, no."

"No?" Kee's eyebrows vanished into his
straight, dark hair. "Are you sure?" He looked from Megan to
Gabriel, then back again. "Because the two of you seem to me
like—"

"No!"

If Megan shook her head any more vehemently,
she'd rattle the jumble of flowers and ribbons and dark-colored
laces clean off her hat. As though realizing that fact, she edged
in front of Gabriel instead, giving him a look spiked with ire when
she had to jostle him and his protective shoulders aside.

"I'll never be married, Mr. Kee," she
confided to her friend. "Especially not to a black-hearted,
blarney-tongued, citified excuse for a—"

"—friend of the family, like me," Gabriel
finished for her, grinning. Next, she'd be revealing his employment
with the Pinkerton agency, and all it entailed. Most certainly,
that had been her intention. He'd never learn anything about Joseph
Kearney's whereabouts that way.

"Friend of the family?" Megan mimicked. In
the midst of straightening her hat, she stopped to gape at him.
"
Friend of the family
?"

Apparently, she couldn't get anything more
past her lips than those same repeated words.
Thank God
.
Taking advantage of her silence, Gabriel winked at her.

"You're right, that doesn't quite describe
it, does it?" He moved nearer, letting his gun belt brush against
the rose-scented drape of her skirts. "In fact, we've been even
closer together than family, especially lately. Much,
much...
much
closer."

His reminder of their sprawled union on the
hotel room bed had the effect he'd expected...for all of two ticks
of the
Celestial Kitchen
clock on the restaurant wall behind
her. Then Megan's voice returned.

He should have known it wouldn't take
long.

Ignoring her sputter of outrage, Gabriel
leaned toward Hop Kee. He grasped the other man's hand in a steady
handshake as he introduced himself. "Gabriel Winter. I can't begin
to tell you how welcome Miss Megan has made me feel since I've
arrived here in the Territory."

"Oh, do tell, Mr. Winter." She grasped his
elbow in her gloved hands and simpered, "I wouldn't mind if the
whole wide world knew exactly how I feel about having you
here."

As though she hadn't just insulted him,
Gabriel smiled and patted the hand she'd nestled in the crook of
his arm. "Isn't she something?" he asked Hop Kee. "I've never met
anyone more willing to help her fellow man—"

"Right onto the next train out of town,"
Megan muttered from behind the gaudy fan she'd withdrawn from
wherever ladies kept such things.