Lawman (29 page)

Let me help you
. The words couldn't
possibly be meant for her. And yet they were. A small, strident
part of her warned Megan his request might be a trick...but the
rest of her didn't want to listen. Not tonight.

She lifted her foot, placing herself in his
care. Gently, Gabriel maneuvered her shoe onto his bent knee and
began plucking at the ruined leather tie that held it on her foot.
Megan watched his strong, sun-browned fingers work at prying apart
the knot, and found herself fascinated. He worked dexterously,
carefully. Much too soon for her liking, he had her outfitted in
matching stockinged feet.

With a roguish grin, Gabriel tossed her shoe
aside, lifted one of those stockinged feet—and tickled.

Megan jerked, startled into laughter as his
fingers danced along her foot's arch. The sensation felt nigh
unbearable. Giddy with laughing, she yanked against his hand, and
when that had no effect in loosening his grasp, she dropped both
hands to his shoulders and pushed him instead.

His body heated beneath her touch. His
muscles bunched and released, enticing her with their strength.
Struggling against him proved useless as always, but Megan couldn't
help but try. She squirmed beneath his tickling fingers, begging
him between gasps to stop. His brightened face stared up at her
through the firelight, amused and remarkably carefree. His laughter
burst from him wholeheartedly, sounding scarcely used but wondrous,
all the same.

"Stop, stop!" she shrieked again, beating
ineffectually at his arms. Her toes wiggled against the hard
support of his thigh, beyond her control and delightfully tortured
with tickling. "I can't bear it!"

He paused. "Say please."

"What? No!"

Gabriel gave a shrug and tickled anew.
Grasping her ankle tightly to hold her steady, he looked up and
spoke loudly over her helpless laughter. "Please," he said again,
his voice teasing. "It's not hard to say. 'Please, Gabriel.
'Please.'"

She wouldn't. Wouldn't. Stubbornly, Megan
planted her hand on the middle of his chest and pushed harder
instead, hoping to unbalance him. She felt his heart pound beneath
her palm, felt his chest rise and fall with his breath, felt the
wrinkly soft texture of the shirt he'd ruined helping her. Above
all, she felt tickling. The rascal wouldn't stop!

His fingers roved higher, now teasing the
back of her calf, a place she'd never before imagined as ticklish.
"Give over, Megan," Gabriel persuaded. "Say please and I'll end
this right now. Pleeeeaaase."

What would one small surrender matter? If
she did not yield now, doubtless he would move still higher to her
knee or thigh or...sweet Heaven, she had to end it this
instant!

Breathlessly, she turned his face toward her
so he'd be sure to hear her the first time. "All right! All right!
Please stop. Please—please—"

Instantly, he grew still. With his hand
lingering on her leg, Gabriel eased himself upward till he knelt on
both knees. Between her legs, of all places.

"Please?" he repeated, as though unsure he'd
heard her aright. "Please...what?"

Her heartbeat quickened at his words. The
air turned thick with expectation between them, with anticipation
and something more...something dangerous. Megan swallowed around a
sudden ache in her throat, watching as he released her leg and
instead used both hands to catch hold of the lapels of the suit
coat she'd borrowed to stay warm. Using them for leverage, he
pulled her closer.

Gabriel's face neared, handsome and intent
and perfectly level with hers. His gaze slipped to her lips, caught
and held. His look was a caress, an invitation, a demand she yield
still further.

He wanted to kiss her, she realized.

Heaven help her, but she wanted him to do
it.

"Please come closer?" he guessed.

"Please, please..." she whispered again,
seeking a rational finish to the words and finding none. Her mind
filled with thoughts of the way he'd held her before, of the way
his arms and hands and mouth had felt on hers, and Megan knew she
was lost.

"Please kiss you?" he asked.

"Please, just please!" she blurted, her
voice a shaky murmur that had somehow slipped beyond her power to
restrain it. "Oh, I've never...I need—"

"I need this."

He brought his mouth down on hers, stealing
her thoughts along with her will to resist. Megan opened readily to
him, feeling the delicious heat of his lips against hers, the
incredible swirl of his tongue stroking hers, the boundless welcome
of the way he kept her close. Still, it wasn't enough. Gabriel
wound the lapels in his hands to bring her nearer and nearer, then
deepened the kiss anew.

They fit together like magic. Like a union
meant to be. And just this once, just for now, Megan allowed
herself to believe. Gabriel's words flitted through her mind, and
her heart echoed them inside her.

I need this. I need this
.

She needed this too, and more. Needed the
hard, steady grasp of his hands pulling her close. Needed the warm
contact of her bosom against his chest and her arms wound at his
neck. Willfully, she ignored the warnings still whispering at the
edges of her thoughts, and heeded her body's commands instead. She
cupped his nape in her hand, feeling his hair brush soft against
her bent fingers, and gave herself fully to the kiss.

Gabriel moaned. The sound of his pleasure
thrilled her. It endowed her with the courage to open her lips to
him still wider, to let her hands rove even further. She tunneled
them through his hair, sifting the silken strands through her
fingers. She stroked the lean raspy stretch of his jaw, marveling
that it owed its hard angles to the intensity with which he kissed
her. Could it be true that
she
had aroused such passion in a
man?

Emboldened at the notion, Megan pushed
herself into his waiting arms. In reward, Gabriel spread apart her
suit coat's lapels. He urged it over her shoulders, still kissing
her, and pushed the coat into a wadded lump at her hips. She heard
it slither across the sofa's smooth surface, felt it fall to the
floor beside her foot. For the first time in her life, Megan cared
nothing for fashion or clothing or for paying heed to anything
beyond what was happening between her and the man who held her so
fiercely.

"Ahhh, Megan. Meg," he murmured as he ended
the kiss at last. His lips moved against hers as he spoke, his
brogue deep and exciting and husky with emotion. "You feel so good,
so soft. So right."

Only in your arms
, she wanted to say.
For truly, the rest of the world looked less kindly upon the
spinster Megan Kearney than Gabriel did right now. But she'd rather
have died than reveal how little cared-for she really was, so she
only walked her fingertips down his shirtfront, spread her hands
over his wide, strong chest, and stared in wonder at the man before
her.

"It's beautiful you are to me," he went on,
giving her a faint smile. "Beautiful like never before."

His eyes darkened as he gazed over her face,
her dress, her hair. She trembled under his regard. No man had
looked at her this way, awestruck and marveling. No one, that is,
save Gabriel.

His smile widened, remarkable in its
similarity to the spoony expression he'd worn when she'd stepped
beside him at the fountain. As though needing to touch her without
stopping, he raised his hand and tucked a bit of hair behind her
ear.

"You're still shivering," he said, examining
her with newly concerned eyes. He stroked his hand over her
forehead, pushing back some tendrils there. "Have you taken a chill
after all? I thought you'd be warmer by now."

She was warmer. Warmer and colder at once.
Because although his words, his gestures, seemed tender to be sure,
Megan found she could not believe them. As soon as his fingers
touched her pitiful, mud-splotched hair, she knew his concern—and
his pretty, blarney-filled compliments—for the lies they were.

How beautiful could she be to anyone, with
her soggy dress wrinkled and ripped at her elbow, her Medusa's
hairstyle, and her face most certainly smudged with fountain grit?
The way she looked now, it was impossible he would find her
attractive. Just as she'd suspected, the warnings she'd stupidly
let herself ignore had held exactly the advice she should have
heeded.

Awareness of her situation returned to her
in a swift, pain-filled breath. She leaned away, unable to think
with the musky warm scent of his skin all around her—unable to
react to anything else so long as Gabriel's hands touched her skin.
Mindless of the damp clothes she still needed to shed, Megan
clasped her arms protectively around her middle.

She stared at him, at his charming liar's
smile and his rugged hunter's face, and suddenly knew the truth of
it.

"You pity me!" she cried, and it was as
though the words came wrenched from her throat past the agony they
caused. "You pity me, and that's why you—"

"No!"

Gabriel gaped at her. If not for the hurt
inside her, Megan might have believed his disbelief was genuine, so
credible was his imitation of it.

For a man who said he hated subterfuge, the
Pinkerton man seemed to excel at it, all the same. But then, why
not? He had fooled the ladies in town today into believing him a
mannequin
, of all things. She'd seen it with her own eyes.
The fact that now his lie worked against her rather than for her
should not have made it any less false.

Gabriel stared fixedly down at his hands, as
though seeking an answer there—or expecting to find their
traitorous grasp still held fast on her body. When he recognized
their emptiness, he reached to hold her once more. Luckily, Megan
held enough safeguards on her heart that she whisked her hands away
before he reached her.

"No!" he said again, seeming to recover
himself—and to gather the beginnings of an anger she didn't want to
witness, much less to have caused.

"Why should I pity you? Better yet, why
should I kneel here—" He indicated his position on his knees with a
bewildered sweep of his arms, for all appearances surprised to find
himself settled so before her. "—with a woman I pity? Christ,
Megan! Do I look like a man who would do this without reason?"

"You do have reasons!"

He didn't move, only stared at her with eyes
gone cold. At her accusation? She couldn't bear to simply sit and
find out. Megan shoved herself up from the sofa and went past the
snapping fire to the dressing screen in the corner. Behind its
protection, she began unbuttoning her ruined dress with clumsy,
anger-stiffened fingers.

Why was she so gullible where Gabriel was
concerned?

"What reasons?" he asked.

His voice had lost none of its bewilderment.
None of its hard-edged anger, either. She stuck her head over the
top of the painted Chinese screen to see his expression, and was
greeted with the sight of Gabriel Winter coming closer. Hunting
her
, and the answers he wanted.

"What reasons?" she echoed, her fingers
moving rapidly, unthinkingly, down her buttons. "For one, you—you
want my cooperation!"

He stopped. Centered his attention on her
face—no, her
lips
, she realized with something akin to
panic—and raised his eyebrow.

"I had your cooperation, sugar," Gabriel
said. "You came into my arms like you were born to be there."

She had. She knew it. But drat the man for
smiling so silkily over her failings! Megan pulled her arms from
her sleeves, trying to summon a worthy response, then pushed her
gritty, dampened dress to her feet and stepped out of it.

Lifting her chin, she said, "For another,
you want me to believe you're a decent man. You want me to trust
you. You said so yourself!"

"I am a decent man."

A lie. It had to be. If Gabriel Winter were
right, then what was she to believe about her father? Confused—and
hating it—she wadded up her discarded dress and hurled it at
him.

"Here's what I think of your decency!"

With one big hand, he caught the fabric
bundle in midair, and tossed it to the sofa. Then he came
closer.

"I didn't say you should trust me," Gabriel
pointed out, "although you could, if you'd give up your damned
prickly defenses long enough. I said you needed someone to
trust."

Oh, but she wanted that, too! When he'd said
it before, on the way to their hotel, Megan had been tempted sorely
to confide in him. To ask the Pinkerton man for help in tracking
her father, on the chance that everything could be cleared
straightaway—and she would have her dressmaker's shop money secured
that much faster. Fortunately, she had restrained herself then. But
how much longer could she do so?

Megan bit her lip. "Who do you trust,
Gabriel?"

"Me?"

Finally, she'd found the words, the subject,
to keep him at bay. He stopped, only a few feet away from the
screen.

"Yes, you." Afraid of what she might find if
she looked into his careless charmer's eyes again, she kept her
head down as she spoke. By now, she'd discarded all but a few of
her underthings. Balancing in the midst of wrinkled petticoat
piles, Megan unhooked her garters and began rolling down her dark
stockings. Her voice muffled, she went on: "You grew up without
fairy tales. Spend your days working far from any home you've ever
mentioned. And so far as I can tell, you have no belief in stars or
China heavens or the prospect of innocence. Is it possible you have
ignored your own advice?"

His gaze, pensive at first and then
increasingly keen with interest, flew to the twin stockings she
flung over the top of the screen. She knew a moment's regret for
having tossed about her clothes like a common woman from Maiden
Lane—doubtless the kind Gabriel Winter was most used to. But it had
been his bullheaded insistence that had trapped them both in the
same shared hotel room in the first place.