Lawman (19 page)

She stopped in the middle of the wagon wheel
tracks dividing the path and put her hands to her hips—the better
to glare at agent Winter. Undaunted, he glared right back.

"You seem as though a fishwife is what you
want," Megan challenged. "Fool as the notion may be."

A new grin softened Gabriel's features.
"Fool to be sure. Seems I can't help myself when you come
'round."

He moved closer, then reached out his hand
and tucked back a wisp of her hair. His fingers followed the curve
of her ear, lingered, then lowered again. Looking into his face so
near to hers, for the first time tonight Megan glimpsed the
weariness in his expression. Logic told her to press her advantage,
maybe even escape him while she had the chance to go and warn her
papa on her own.

She didn't have the heart to do so.

Especially not when Gabriel said such things
to her as he had just now.
Seems I can't help myself when you
come 'round
. His admission was enough to set any feminine heart
aflutter. She had never felt more powerful...or more at risk of
exposing her own mixed feelings to him.

"Then it's a good thing I still have my wits
about me," Megan said, "seeing as how you've misplaced yours."

Gabriel sighed. To her surprise—surely it
wasn't disappointment she felt—he didn't rise to the bait she'd
tossed him. Instead, without speaking, he put his finger to the
sensitive nape of her neck, then trailed it down the line of her
locket's gold chain. He skimmed over her collarbone, little impeded
by the open neckline of her calico dress.

Why didn't I put on something less
mousy?
Megan thought suddenly. Next to the ladies on Maiden
Lane, she surely had all the elegance of a darned sock amidst fine
embroidered silks.

But Gabriel, a man obviously more fond of
the homespun in hand than fancies for sale at a price, didn't seem
to care. He followed her locket's gold links still lower, setting
her atremble with the slow surety of his touch. The subtle pressure
of his hand gliding across her chest was an exquisite
torture—something Megan had never in a million years expected to
endure.

At last he reached the oval locket at her
bosom. She felt him scoop it into his palm, felt the backs of his
fingers brush over her bare skin as he cradled it.

He looked up. "I do want you," Gabriel said.
"T'would be more than dangerous to deny it. I'm weary of fighting,
and to tell you truly, more sorry for this than you'll likely
believe."

"Sorry?" He was apologizing to her? Her
thoughts boggled at the notion. But to be truthful with herself,
more than his apology might have been at fault for that. The gentle
back-and-forth contact of Gabriel's hand against the topmost slope
of her bosom made all but the most rudimentary thought impossible.
"Sorry for what?" she managed.

"In your shoes, I'd likely behave exactly as
you have," Gabriel said, inexplicably—and uselessly, when their
situation couldn't possibly be reversed and his comment didn't
begin to answer her question.

He rubbed his thumb over the carved flowers
inlaid on her locket, then let it fall to her chest again. "But
that doesn't mean I can let this go on, now does it?"

Megan wrinkled her forehead, trying mightily
to make sense of his words. Seeing her confusion, he held out his
hand, palm facing.

"Give me your hand."

He wanted to hold her hand? Perhaps he meant
it as a prelude to an apology made on bent knee. After all that had
transpired this night, she could almost believe it. There had
hardly been a moment during their shared acquaintance when the
Pinkerton man had failed to surprise her. Why should this moment be
any different?

Already anticipating the sense of victory to
come, Megan held out her hand. "This really isn't necessary, agent
Winter. I realize you've simply done your job, and—"

"Good. I hope you'll keep that in mind."

Something heavy and cold circled her wrist.
An instant later, it snapped into place, dragging her hand down
with its weight.
Handcuffs
.

"No!" Ineffectually, she yanked her hand
back.

Gabriel Winter's hand followed, thanks to
their shared bonds. With no apparent effort at all, he pulled her
hand back near his and clasped their fingers together in a mockery
of affection.

"Behave," he warned, his eyes gleaming with
galling amusement. "I'd hate to have to shackle those pretty ankles
of yours, as well."

"You wouldn't."

His eyebrows raised. "Care to test me? I was
about to go check on the fellow you clobbered—" He jerked his head
toward the alleyway behind them, where the fallen
bandito's
motionless form could still be seen beside the courtyard wall.
"—but I could be persuaded to let the poor knuck lie there a while
longer. Criminals get no pity from me."

And neither would her father, Megan knew,
however innocent he must be. She brought her infuriated gaze to
bear on Gabriel's face, and knew she could not let his comment pass
unremarked upon, any more than she could accept his infernal
manacles.

"I'm no criminal, and neither is my father."
She shook her arm, feeling the awkward pull of the handcuffs, and
wished she could use them to cosh agent Winter over the head with.
"These infernal things belong on the likes of him—" She nodded
toward the
bandito
. "—not me."

"Maybe. Or maybe not." He began walking
toward the indentation in the wall that housed the fallen man,
towing her along like a mutt on a leash. "But you've earned them,
I'd say, between escaping from McMarlin, tailing me through
town—"

"What? I beg your pardon, but I—"

"—don't bother to lie about it." He held up
his free hand to stop her automatic denial, then went on, "And
assaulting men in the streets. I think you'll keep your handcuffs,
at least a little longer."

Loud snoring drifted toward them as they
reached the
bandito's
temporary hideout.
At least he's
alive
, Megan thought, shaken by the realization that he still
hadn't moved. He must have struck his head on the courtyard wall
when he'd fallen. Either that, or she'd sent him tumbling to the
ground with more force than she'd thought. She'd never in her life
walloped anyone so hard.

Mose would have been proud.

Gabriel stopped suddenly, forcing her to
stop as well, else have her wrist yanked out of joint by the
handcuffs. Glaring at them, she didn't notice at first the sudden
stillness that had come over the Pinkerton man. When she did, Megan
had the sense he had been standing silent for quite some time, as
though waiting for her to notice something.

He nodded. "Yep, you'll be keeping your
handcuffs," Gabriel repeated, staring thoughtfully at the man
snoring near their feet. "I think Mr. McMarlin here will be wanting
it that way."

Chapter Eleven

The refined elegance of the dining room was
a point of pride at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, and when Gabriel
entered it the next morning, he could see why. Immediately he felt
welcomed, soothed by the familiar rustle of newspapers being read
and the murmur of travelers' conversations all around him. The
scents of brewed coffee and bacon sharpened his appetite, and lent
a keen edge to his already-prickly disposition.

He hadn't been forced to wait for a woman in
years.

He was none too happy to be doing so
now.

Frowning, he poured himself a cup of coffee
from the silver-plated pot standing ready in the center of his
table, then ordered breakfast for three—Megan, McMarlin, and
himself. That accomplished, Gabriel turned his chair to better face
the room's entrance. If he knew Megan Kearney, she'd take every
moment he'd allocated to prepare herself for the day, and likely
tack on half again as much time, too—just to prove she could. He'd
never met a more vexatious female.

Or one who intrigued him more.

Damnation, but she got under his skin. At
every turn she defied him. At every juncture, she tried to best
him. The last opposition he'd expected to face was his suspect's
spinster daughter. He didn't want to like her, but he did. Megan's
determination and loyalty impressed him. Even knowing they were
misplaced wasn't enough to change that.

He didn't know how long it had been since
he'd believed in anything as strongly as she believed in her
father's innocence.

Shaking his head, Gabriel opened his report
book and propped it on his knee, then set to work penciling in an
account of the work he'd done yesterday. Typically, he prepared the
daily accounting required from each Pinkerton operative at night,
and posted it to the Chicago office each morning. Last night, he
realized as he stared at the half-filled page before him, had been
the sole exception of his career.

Gabriel paused, pencil in mid-stroke. Was
his lapse due to his growing dissatisfaction with a detective's
lonely life of lost and found, hunter and hunted? Or was it because
his attention had been on Megan, with her wily woman's ways and her
penchant for troublemaking?

Neither, he decided. His handcuffs were at
fault—along with the damned insistence he'd felt on using them.
With McMarlin still sleeping off the combined effects of the lump
on his head and the Irish whiskey that had allowed Megan to put it
there, Gabriel had thought it prudent not to leave their suspect's
daughter on the loose. Who knew what sort of havoc she'd wreak?

Undoubtedly, she'd have climbed from the
window yet again, and gone to alert her father. The woman was
tireless, clever ...and entirely too appealing between the
clean-scented sheets of a hotel room bed.

It had been years since he'd stayed till
morning with a woman. Still longer since he'd spent the entire
night simply sleeping with one. Something about the feel of Megan's
warm, lithe body beside his, about the way she'd cuddled
unknowingly against him in her sleep, left him unsettled.

Gabriel had enjoyed sharing his bed with
her—even perforce—and not even McMarlin's snoring presence on the
horsehair sofa just a few feet away had been enough to change
that.

Neither had Megan's typically combative
sleeping habits. When she'd first set to thrashing in her sleep,
he'd thought her flailing arms and legs yet another ruse to earn
her escape from him. Then he had suspected her moans and murmured
cries a gambit to force McMarlin into intervening on her behalf.
But when both had gone on past the few moments it had taken to
awaken him, he had realized her restlessness was real.

As real as it was short-lived, once he'd
coaxed her into his arms. Gabriel wanted to smile at the memory of
Megan's body easing against his. Happy as a woman newly pleasured,
she'd laid her head on his shoulder and breathed evenly once more.
Possessive as a child with a favored toy, she'd spread her hand
across his chest to keep him beside her, and lapsed into a deep,
easy sleep.

And he, aroused as a man who'd spent years
without knowing a woman's touch, had lain wakefully beside
her...hard and ready and needful.

Just as she'd planned him to, he'd wager.
There was nothing he'd put past anyone who'd proved herself as sly
and determined as Megan.

His scowl deepened. Refocusing on the page
in his lap, Gabriel put aside thoughts of the lady for a thorough
accounting of his search for the lady's father. He finished his
report, folded and sealed the pages, then slipped them into his
coat pocket for later mailing.

His fingers touched the thick folded paper
already waiting there. The wanted poster he'd drawn on the train.
Withdrawing it, Gabriel sipped his coffee and considered his case.
His client, the foreman of a Tombstone mining outfit, had hired
Pinkerton operatives to track a missing shipment of payroll, sent
special delivery on a stage that regularly passed between the mine
and Kearney Station. The strongbox had arrived safely in Tucson
several days later—but the ten thousand dollars inside it had
not.

All the evidence he'd gathered indicated
theft by someone at the station. Logic suggested the man who
reportedly held the sole in-transit strongbox key, Joseph Kearney.
Circumstance pointed plainly to the same man, who'd hot-footed it
to Tucson with the money, just one step ahead of the Pinkerton men
in pursuit. If Kearney's sudden, unexplained absence from the
station wasn't a strong suggestion of guilt, Gabriel didn't know
what was.

Like every other Pinkerton detective he
knew, he based his cases on a combination of experience, intuition,
and fact. The first two told him he was on the trail of the
thief—the last demanded he find proof of it.

When McMarlin left today to search the
station, with luck he would turn up Joseph Kearney's missing
strongbox key—or the original shipment instructions from the
Tombstone mine foreman. Those instructions had dictated that they
be signed and included with the shipment as verification of
transit. Their absence in the strongbox implicated Kearney as
strongly as the foreman's accusing letter to the Pinkertons
had.

Somewhere, the manifests existed to prove
that the stolen money had passed through Kearney's hands last. They
would be easy to find, Gabriel would wager. Harder still would be
finding the man himself, at least if yesterday's battles proved
typical.

He wanted to get on with it. Filled with
impatience, he looked toward the dining room's entrance again...and
found himself nigh spellbound by the sight that greeted him there.
Megan Kearney, outfitted in some sort of frothy blue dress and
another of her bauble-bedecked hats, caught sight of him at the
same moment and strode purposefully toward his table.

Her body, Gabriel realized as he watched,
was every bit as contrary as the woman herself. Despite their
buttoned-up confinement, her breasts bounced gently as she moved.
Her hips swayed with an allure that should have been at odds with
the stabbing progress her frilly parasol made at her side...but
wasn't.