Lawman (6 page)

Her jaw dropped. So did the wanted poster,
to the rug at their feet. Apparently, he'd shocked her into
stillness. Taking advantage, Gabriel let his gaze linger on her
hair, her neck, then followed the trail of black buttons toward the
ample curves of her breasts, hidden beneath her stiff-starched
clothes.

"You're a right fine looker," he said
softly, giving her hair one last, smooth stroke before lowering his
hand. "Too bad you're a wanted man's daughter."

Too bad he wanted her himself.

He couldn't think about that. Not with a
case at hand. But it had silenced her well enough, and that would
have to do. He couldn't afford to turn mush-hearted now.

Putting behind thoughts of wanting for
wanted, Gabriel surveyed the room and decided the chest was the
most likely hiding place for the stolen money he sought. With an
ache of regret he didn't care to consider, he went first to the
scratched wooden trunk at the foot of the cot.

He didn't expect to find the loot stored in
such an accessible place, but the criminals he'd tracked had done
stupider things in the past. It wasn't his practice to overlook any
potential lead. Bending to one knee on the soft rag rug, he peered
closely at the latch.

"Too bad you're insane!" she cried.

Ahhh. She'd recovered.

With a rush of displaced air that smelled of
soap and sage, Megan Kearney came toward him. Before she could
reach him, he grabbed for the cold iron latch, wrenched it
upward...and felt the whole chest shudder as she heaved herself on
top of it, rear-end first.

It slammed shut.

"And you're the one calling me insane?" he
asked.

"Yes."

Looking indisputably
un
convinced of
her father's guilt—and extremely satisfied with the loud thunk the
lid had made when it came crashing down—she glared at him from her
perch on top of it. "You can't look in here,
you—you—
madman
!"

"Madman?" Gabriel watched her blow a wisp of
hair from her eyes, and fought the urge to grin. "I've been called
worse."

"I'll just bet you have."

He shrugged.

She narrowed her eyes, transforming them
from the warm, caramel brown he'd admired earlier into something a
shade darker—and miles more dangerous. Nothing appealed to him more
than a woman with grit, a woman with the courage of her convictions
and the gumption to back them up.

"Unfortunately," she said with a toss of her
head, "whatever it was, it wasn't nearly bad enough to describe a
man like you."

"Probably not." He shrugged and flipped her
scratchy brown skirt hem out of the way, then wedged his fingers
along the lid's seam and tried to lift it. It rose an inch...a
little more...then the little hellion bounced harder.

"Youch!" He snatched his fingers back,
narrowly missing having seven or eight of them crushed flatter than
her station hand Mose's head. "Careful. This is official
business."

"It's official bunk! My father hasn't done
anything."

"Ma'am, as you read on that poster, somebody
stole ten thousand dollars from a Kearney express shipment last
week. If that's what you call bunk, you've got a mighty sobering
idea of what's a crime and what's not."

Her expression turned serious. Then
defiant.

"Well, since
we
haven't had any
thefts reported, and
you're
chasing the wrong man, it's
still bunk," she said. "But I guess a common trespasser like
yourself wouldn't care about things like what's right and
wrong."

Ahh, yet another tactic. An accusation,
followed by a change of subject.
If you don't have the answers,
change the questions
. His estimation of Megan Kearney went up a
notch.

"Trespasser, hmmm? I've heard that around
here, a man could get strung up for such a thing," Gabriel said,
echoing her earlier remark. "Even one who has a pretty daughter to
hide behind."

With a murderous look, she flung something
small and shiny at his head. He ducked just in time to hear it ping
against the wall and drop to the floor.

His Pinkerton badge. He left it where it lay
and caught hold of her wrists instead, meaning to haul her off the
trunk lid by force. Instead, the incredible sensation of having so
much softness in his grasp stopped him before he could move. Warm
and pliant, her skin felt like silk beneath his callused
fingertips.

Like warm
outlaw's
silk, Gabriel
reminded himself. He couldn't afford to be swayed by distractions,
even ones packaged as prettily as Megan Kearney.

"You're wrong. I care a lot about what's
right and wrong," he said. "Most agents do."

"Hmmph. How do I know that thing's even
real?" she asked, jerking her chin toward his badge.

He tightened his hold on her wrists. "It's
real."

Her chin didn't lower, and her behind didn't
budge, but her gaze lowered to the sight of his big, tanned hands
wrapped around her slender wrists. He saw her eyelashes flutter,
like she was surprised at the sight, and then her gaze met his
again.

"Let go of me," she said.

He murmured a refusal, mentally bracing
himself for the screaming and struggling—and inevitable
victory—that would come next. A hundred-odd pounds worth of woman
wasn't keeping him from searching that chest, and it was high time
he made that much clear.

Her cool, measuring glance told him she
understood. Just to be sure, Gabriel stroked his thumbs over the
delicate insides of her forearms and warned, "If I have to move you
forcibly off there myself, I will."

Megan gave him an odd half-smile, then
opened her mouth to suck in a gulp of air. Resigned to the need to
haul her off the chest and get to work searching, Gabriel braced
himself to release her wrists in time to muffle her scream.

Instead, something seemed to occur to her.
Megan stopped in mid-breath and cocked her head at him, eyebrows
arched. "You really don't care if I scream, do you?"

"Nope."

Her forehead wrinkled in apparent
puzzlement. She looked at him a moment longer.

Her breath came out in a whoosh. "Isn't that
against the rules?"

"There's only one rule to tracking
outlaws."

Her eyebrows lifted in question.

"Find them before they find you, and get out
alive."

"Oh." Her gaze softened.

His shifted to her lips...and they'd
softened, too. They looked full, slightly downturned at the
corners. Kissable.
I'll be damned...

"That's the saddest thing I've heard all
year," she murmured.

Something feathery touched his palm. Her
fingers, caressing the pad of his thumb. Gabriel arched his hand
without thinking, allowing her greater access to stroke him. Maybe
he'd judged her unfairly. The sins of the father weren't
necessarily those of the daughter...

She spoke, crooning something about softness
and release. He was too engrossed in watching her lips form the
words to notice exactly what they were, probably something about
dresses or babies or cooking, all those things women cared about to
the exclusion of everything else. In his experience, there was
nothing a woman wouldn't sacrifice for the sake of home, hearth,
and family.

Family, family....
The notion sparked
something in him, some sense of warning, but it came too late to be
heeded. Her hands worked magic on his palms, his fingers, the scars
lacing the backs of his hands. God, how long had it been since a
woman had touched him like that?

He couldn't remember. But he wanted
more.

"However," she said, suddenly and quite
clearly, "I still won't let you search my father's things. So you
might as well leave." With a triumphant look, she tightened both
hands on the trunk lid, making it plain that lifting her would mean
lifting the trunk, too, because she wasn't letting go.

Wasn't letting go with her free hands.

How the hell? Somehow, she'd gotten loose.
She'd also gotten a firmer grip on the trunk beneath her, one
designed, by the looks of it, to be damned well immovable.

Gabriel shook his head. Her face came into
focus, faintly freckled, slightly square-jawed, and pretty as a
picture—even
with
the smirk she had on it.

"Next time," she advised, "try not to get
yourself all worked up over a lady's..." She paused delicately,
lingering over the next word to choose, then gave him a smug little
smile. ". . . feminine charms, if you're planning on detaining her.
I do believe you're your own worst enemy in that regard, Mr.
Winter."

He'd be damned. He'd half-expected all his
glib talk about her hair and her eyes and her fine woman's figure
to turn her wrathy, like it had outside in the station yard.
Instead, she'd stood there, listening calmly, and used it to ambush
him with later! Little Miss Megan had finagled a way to freedom
with his own loose talk for a cover.

Aside from himself, he'd never met anyone
who'd have tried such a thing.

Obviously, he'd underestimated her.

It wasn't a mistake he meant to make
twice.

So Gabriel tried another tactic instead.
Getting to his feet, he hooked both thumbs in his gun belt and
looked down at her. "I'm authorized to take you into custody, if
necessary."

She flinched—realizing how far in over her
head she was, he'd wager. Protecting a potential road agent
couldn't be easy. To his admiration, she recovered quickly.

"Now, why would you want to do something
like that?" she asked, clasping her hands in her lap and gazing up
at him sweetly. "I swan, agent Winter—you must have more important
things to do than be concerned with a harmless female like me."

She fluttered her eyelashes, then added,
"Isn't that right?"

The overall effect was like being walloped
to death with a feather pillow. It didn't hurt much while it was
happening, but in the end, you still wound up six feet under. Not
many people successfully misled him, and he didn't intend for a
woman like Megan Kearney to be the first—no matter how much she
batted her eyelashes and petted his hands. He'd handled rock-hard
criminals in the past. He could handle her, too.

"No, it's not right," he said, leaning over
her. "I'll drag your pretty little conniving self all the way back
to the Pinkerton office in Chicago, if that's what it takes."

"Conniving! I'll have you know—"

"Yes, conniving. You probably can't help it,
though." He slipped his hands to her shoulders, feeling her tremble
beneath his palms—with fury, probably. "Like father, like
daughter."

"My father's no crook!" she yelled, trying
to wriggle her shoulders out of his grasp. "Let go of me."

"Gladly." He held her tighter, then hauled
her off the chest and deposited her in the middle of the rug. She
lunged to reclaim her place on the chest, but Gabriel got there
first.

"Next time you try to stop a man from doing
something, Miss Kearney," he advised as he undid the latch, "you
might consider doing a little less posing."

Pausing to gaze pointedly at the hands she'd
folded so demurely across her lap, he leaned his elbow on the chest
lid and smirked up at her. "I do believe you're your own worst
enemy in that regard."

With an unintelligible sound of frustration,
she rushed toward him. "You can't search that. It's a violation of
privacy. I'll—I'll—" Her chin jerked upward, a pious attitude in
search of a target. "—I'll report you to Mr. Pinkerton."

"He already knows." Gabriel lifted the
lid.

She shot it a despairing glance. "You've got
the wrong man!"

"That remains to be seen."

He scanned the chest's contents, taking in a
jumble of fabric, bottles, and folded papers. Strange items for a
station master to keep stored. He picked up a leather-bound ledger
and stood facing her, absently running his thumb along the book's
cracked binding.

"Criminals behave in predictable ways, Miss
Kearney. That's how we track them. How we catch them."

"I don't believe you. My father never acted
criminally in his life. He's not that kind of man."

He looked up. She stood silhouetted in
brightness and shadow, smack in a shaft of light from the window
behind her. Silently she hugged her arms over her chest and stared
at the floor, motionless but for the steady stroke of her thumbs on
her brown-clad elbows. For a woman—hell, for anybody—she seemed
remarkably self-contained. Controlled.

But that small restless movement of her
thumbs spoke volumes, and Gabriel was a listening kind of man. That
irrepressible gesture told him all he needed to know.

Megan Kearney was worried. Even if it didn't
show on her face, even if she argued her father's innocence from
now till next Sunday, she had doubts. And she was thinking them
over. He wanted to be there for the conclusions she reached.

He moved closer, then tipped her chin up
with his hand. "You don't have to believe me. You only have to
believe the evidence."

She jerked away. "You won't find any. Not as
long as I'm around."

"You've hidden it that well? I'm
impressed."

"You mustn't have very high standards, then.
There was nothing to hide."

"I'd rather ask your father about that. When
will he be back?"

Her mouth turned down at the corners. "With
luck, not until you've pulled foot back to wherever you came from.
An accusation like this would kill him."

She looked like she believed it. Gabriel
couldn't afford to. "Thieving's a dangerous occupation."

Megan bit her lower lip, giving him a
speculative look. "Will you at least agree not to search the
station until you've spoken with my father? I'm sure he can
straighten this out, if you'll only—"

"No." Gabriel flipped open the musty ledger
in his hand, scanning the rows of neatly penciled entries.