Lawman (14 page)

"—however unworthy of her assistance, and
protection, that fellow man might be," he finished
meaningfully.

Her dark-eyed glance from behind her fan
told him Megan had understood him perfectly. And didn't like it one
bit.

"Pshaw, Mr. Winter!" she said, fluttering
her fan like the greatest of coquettes. "No one should presume to
sit in judgment of another person's worthiness. I think we'd all
agree on that score."

"Would we?"

She snapped her fan closed and gave him a
stiff smile. "Of course."

"Then I must have been mistaken." Gabriel
bowed slightly. "I was under the impression you'd already formed an
opinion on my account." And it wasn't a favorable one.

"I—" Her stricken gaze, golden brown and
widened with new insight, met his. She hadn't thought of the double
standard she'd imposed. He could see it in her eyes, and in the
contrite softening of her mouth. "I—I guess I never thought of it
that way."

Hop Kee smiled, his face jovial and knowing
beneath his skull cap. "Leave it to an Irishman to turn around your
thinking. He's a persuasive one, Megan. Just like you."

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. Megan, like him?
They weren't alike at all, he told himself. To Kee, he said,
"However much I assure her we're all filled with charm and good
humor where I come from, Miss Megan seems to believe I've been sent
here to Tucson just to bedevil her."

He and the older man shared a grin. Beside
them, Megan all but stamped her foot.

"Bedevil me?" she asked. "I wish it were so
simple. Mr. Winter may be accustomed to keeping secrets, but I'm
not. The truth is, Mr. Kee, that he's come here for one thing
only."

She was putting him in an indefensible
position. Chances were good that the Chinaman knew where to find
Megan's father. The last thing Gabriel needed was to scare away a
potential source of information.

"And I don't understand why he doesn't just
come right on out with it," Megan went on serenely, "when the truth
is, he really came here to—"

"—woo her."

At Gabriel's announcement, she turned a
horrified look in his direction. "
What
?"

"Woo her and win her," he went on telling
Kee. He paused to aim an especially besotted smile at Megan. She
wouldn't do any more damage to his case, wouldn't reveal all his
plans to track down Joseph Kearney—not if he could help it. And he
damned well could. "With your blessing, of course, Mr. Kee."

"Of course!" For all appearances, Kee looked
absolutely charmed.
A romantic
, Gabriel thought. All the
luckier for him.

"Woo? Woo me?
Woo me
." Megan seemed
dumbstruck at the notion.

"And to do that," Gabriel went on, bending
to speak with Kee, "I'll need a special table. A very private, very
special table."

"I have just the one!"

A man with a mission, Kee gestured for them
to follow. He wound his way between rows of customer-filled tables,
past restaurant workers and exotic-looking statues, while Gabriel
and Megan kept pace.

Beside him, she walked with the stiffness of
a woman whose plans had gone terribly awry. "You're incorrigible,"
she whispered fiercely, keeping her gaze on Kee as he led them
toward a distant corner of the restaurant. "Lying to my friend that
way! How can I ever—"

"What makes you believe it's a lie?"

They reached their table. Upon it, evening
sunlight drew a brilliant square against a tablecloth as red as
full-bodied wine. Behind it, a door swung on double hinges, set in
constant motion by the passing of restaurant workers back and forth
from the kitchen to the
Celestial Restaurant's
bustling
dining room.

Momentarily oblivious to their surroundings,
Megan tugged off her gloves with trembling fingers. She drew them
to rest in her palm, just as she had in the stage station office,
then squared her shoulders to face him.

"Of course it's a lie!" she said, casting a
cautious glance toward Hop Kee, who was busy speaking with one of
the restaurant workers. "You couldn't possibly have meant it."

Gabriel shrugged. "Perhaps I've only just
now come to my senses, Megan, and decided to pursue you after
all."

"Pursue my father, you mean!"

"That has nothing to do with what's
happening between us." Or did it? Damn, he wished he could be sure
of it.

Apparently Megan harbored no such doubts.
"Nothing is happening between us," she snapped, tossing her gloves
onto the corner table they would share. "And nothing ever
will."

He put his hand to the curve of her waist,
meaning to guide her closer to her chair, and to calm her in the
process. Instead, the warm, supple feel of her body beneath his
fingers stayed his hand—and put a hundred doubts in his mind. Had
he meant what he'd said? Or were the words only the means to an
end, another way to solve his case?

"Are you sure about that?" Gabriel's gaze
met hers. "Even Hop Kee could see it. He could feel it."

He traced the indentation of her waist, the
alluring flare of her hip, so wonderfully round and soft beneath
his hand. He tightened his fingers, wanting to draw her closer
still—and knowing she'd likely stomp the shine from his boots if he
did.

"There is a great deal between us," he
said.

"Yes. Enmity."

"Not as much as you wish."
Not as much as
would be wise
. "This is something more." His brogue
strengthened with the urgency he felt; even Gabriel could hear it.
Powerless to stop it, he hoped she wouldn't recognize what drove
him if she heard it, too. "Can't you feel it, this...attraction
between us?"

Stillness overcame her. A small sound
slipped from between Megan's lips, seconds before she glanced up at
him at last. Barely more than a sigh, to Gabriel her response made
all the commotion around them recede. The whole world narrowed to
the woman at his side, and her reaction to his question.

Defiantly, she jerked her hip sideways. Her
chin came up, another sure sign of her fighting spirit. It was a
quality he admired in her, despite the fact that she typically
aimed it against him.

"If I ever do feel whatever it is you're
talking about," Megan informed him airily, "then I'll be sure to
extinguish it. Completely. And thoroughly. Without fail and—"

"There's no call to belabor the point. I
understand." Despite himself, Gabriel grinned. To his immense
surprise, she did, too. She might not want the attraction between
them—but neither did she want outright war, it seemed.

Her wish for some measure of accord between
them was something he'd need to encourage, if he were to gain any
ground with his case. It wasn't likely she'd help him, as long as
she saw him as an enemy to be bested. Could he encourage an
alliance between them?

He had to try. Not because he wanted her,
Gabriel assured himself, but because he wanted to finish this.
Needed to finish this. Soon.

"And if I were to pursue you, all the same?"
he asked quietly.

She examined his vest with more absorption
than the plain dark garment warranted, all but memorizing the
fabric's taper from his chest to the gunbelt he'd strapped beneath
his suit coat. She said nothing.

"Or woo you?" he coaxed, unable to help the
renewed smile that flickered over his face at the old-fashioned
language. There was nothing funny about his intentions, though—or
his interest in her, however unwise it was. "What then, Megan?"

"You—you're teasing me," she protested. She
lifted her gaze from his chest to his face, and the glitter of
tears in her eyes was enough to steal his breath. "Because of Mr.
Kee. You're only saying these things to flatter me, to—"

"Hop Kee is still busy with his employee. He
can't even hear us."

"But—"

"But I'm telling you truly," Gabriel
interrupted, beset with an urge to kiss the downward turn from her
lips. Would she taste as hot and honeyed as before? "You're a very
desirable woman, Megan."

Her lips parted. He glimpsed a new light in
her eyes, a kindling of something uncommonly rare. Uncommonly
beautiful. Then as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished. In its
place came the kind of wariness he'd come to expect from her, along
with a goodly dose of starch.

It pained him to see it, and even more to
hear it come from her mouth.

"I don't believe you. And I don't trust
you," she said. "And no quantity of Irish charm will be enough to
make me forget it. Do you think me stupid enough to fall into every
trap you set for me?"

Lord, but she could let fly a barb meaner
than any woman he'd met. And now that he'd glimpsed the tender side
to her, somehow those spiky words of hers stung even deeper than
before.

"I could ask the same of you." Gabriel
noticed Mr. Kee finishing his conversation with the worker, and
leaned slightly forward to add, "Since you've been trying to lure
me into a fair share of traps since I got here."

"Traps? I don't know what you mean."

"Don't you?"

"No! But if it's too uncomfortable for you
here in the Territory, perhaps you ought to take your leave."

"Not until I've finished the job I came here
to do. I intend to win. I always do."

Hop Kee's approach left her little room to
argue, and Megan knew it. She flounced into her chair at the table,
teeth set in determination, and struggled to seat herself closer.
The sound of ripped fabric announced the difficulty she had in
doing so.

With a feminine growl of frustration, she
tried again.

"Allow me." Gabriel bent over her, sensing
both her trembling and her resentment of his help. He didn't care
for either one. The last thing he'd do was stand by while a lady
did everything but turn herself upside down, just to take a
meal.

Arms flanking her sides, he grasped the
chair's edges in both hands. Her warmth washed over him, tempting
him to find some excuse to linger there, some reason to prolong the
contact between them. He could find none, save wanting to. That
would never be enough.

When he did move the chair forward, his
motion inadvertently stirred the air between them. It became a rosy
wash of fragrance so pure Gabriel had to close his eyes against it.
Was he mad, to surround himself with the essence of her?

Surely he was, but not for long. "Don't
fight me," he said. "It will only make things harder for us
both."

He saw her eyes close, briefly. When she
opened them again, the golden light he'd seen before in her gaze
was undiminished. "I have to."

Hop Kee's approach cut short whatever reply
Gabriel could have made. The Chinaman clapped his hands together
and surveyed their table—and Megan's seated position beside it—with
obvious pleasure.

"You like this one?" he asked. "I think it
is the special one you wanted."

"This table looks perfect," Gabriel said,
putting on a smile. If Megan's rapt expression was anything to go
by, she thought so, too—not that he could waste time wondering over
her change of mood. Neither could he delay his true reasons for
being there any longer.

With that in mind, he offered Kee another
handshake, and an invitation. "Can you join us for a few minutes?
With so much news to catch up on, I've about worn poor Megan's
voice clean through, and we haven't even gotten to talking about
her father. I was hoping you could tell me how Joseph's been faring
these last few years."

Chapter Nine

"Defeated again," Megan announced, eyeing
Gabriel over the table they shared. "A person would think you'd get
tired of hearing the same old things about my father, and not
believing them."

"It's not a question of believing," he said
quietly. "It's a question of finding out the truth." He smoothed
his fingers over the rich red tablecloth, then brought them to the
side of his teacup in an absent-minded caress. "Obviously, this
wasn't the place to find it."

"Obviously."

A small sense of giddiness burbled up inside
her. One meal and too much conversation later, the Pinkerton man
still wasn't any closer to tracking down her father than he'd been
walking in—even after all his piles of questions. She couldn't help
but feel a little vindicated.

Her father was innocent, blast it! Somehow,
she'd prove it, too. But to do so, she had to gain some measure of
Gabriel's trust—something she wasn't likely to do without first
softening the cynical bend of his thoughts.

So far, doing
that
had proved more
difficult than she'd envisioned. Gabriel had remained unmoved by
her friend Hop Kee's jovial presence and lively conversation. He'd
been unimpressed by the elegance of the
Celestial Kitchen's
red-and-gilt dining room. And he hadn't loosed the frown from his
face for the past half hour or more.

How could that be? She'd felt sure this
place held at least a fragment of the magic that would sweeten him
up. Over her years' worth of cherished visits there, Megan had
certainly never come to Hop Kee's restaurant and failed to leave
feeling happier than before.

She wrinkled her nose at the undeniable
conclusion. Her adversary was clearly cut from a different—and far
tougher—bolt of fabric than she was.

Well, she'd just have to work harder. There
was nothing honest labor and quick-thinking couldn't get for
her—including her own way with Gabriel Winter. Megan considered
him, wondering how best to turn their situation to her
advantage.

With that same scowl firmly in place,
Gabriel sat across from her and stared into his cup of green tea,
just as he'd done since Hop Kee had departed for the kitchens.
Light from the paper lantern above their table illuminated his
features, highlighting the handsome, surly angles of his face and
throat. Even more so than the late-afternoon sunlight shining
through the wood-framed window beside them, it wove gleaming
blue-black highlights in his loose dark hair, and emphasized the
strength in his wide, suit-coat-covered shoulders.