Lawman (9 page)

"I won't need to. He is innocent."

Gabriel frowned and turned toward the
window, stepping far enough from her to draw back the edge of the
curtains and gaze into the yard beyond. The rigid set of his wide
shoulders looked fearsome, but something in the tilt of his head
suggested he hadn't fully decided about the case at hand.

That possibility was one Megan couldn't
afford to pass up. She didn't care if she was grasping at straws.
She wanted to be the one to convince him—in her father's favor.

"Joseph Kearney has never done a single
thing to regret in his life."
Except maybe disappear on an
occasional gambling junket with his daughter's savings
, her
conscience jibed. "Certainly nothing that would warrant having
Pinkerton men on his trail. You must believe me. He's an innocent
man. I just know it!"

"Based on what?"

His tone was deceptively mild. The stern set
of his handsome face as he turned to her was anything but.

"You say he's innocent. Based on what?"
Gabriel repeated.

"B—based on belief, of course," Megan
stammered, taken aback at the bleakness she glimpsed in his
expression. Whatever had put the wintery chill in this man's eyes
had wounded him, too deeply for words. "I believe it's true, with
all my heart."

Gabriel thumbed up his hat brim. From
beneath its shadows, he studied her. "You'd take something like
this on faith?"

"Of course. What else is there?"

He studied her a moment longer. "Then you're
a bigger fool than I thought."

Her, a fool? Simply for believing in her own
father's innocence? Megan didn't know whether to be shocked,
insulted ...or saddened that he was so disillusioned as to think
such a thing in the first place.

Before she could decide, he turned. Briskly,
he surveyed the room, and his gaze lit on the two satchels and
parasol she'd stacked in one corner of the station office in
preparation for her travels to Tucson. He nodded toward them.

"You'll be wanting to bring those, I'd
imagine. We'll leave in an hour."

"Leave? But I...no!"

His mocking smile caught her off-guard.
"Don't make me waste time drawing up matching father-and-daughter
wanted posters, sugar."

Shock glued her feet to the floorboards.
"
You're arresting me
?"

Gabriel's eyebrows raised. "Not yet.
Trusting someone isn't a crime. Just foolhardy."

He pulled down his hat and reached for the
doorknob, keeping one hand on the gun belt beneath his fine suit as
though expecting her to make some desperate, doomed attempt to
escape him. Megan knew better.

She'd elude him later, if necessary—when the
odds were better suited to her favor.

"That's why I'm not trusting you," he went
on, "I'm telling you. You're going with me to find your father.
And, if need be, you're going to help me do it. Ought to be no
better bait to a devoted father than a daughter in need, wouldn't
you say?"

Perhaps—for any father but her own. As Mrs.
Webster had so cruelly pointed out earlier, Joseph Kearney didn't
quite measure up to the ideal of a doting papa.

"I'd say you're a beast!"

"No, a realist." He had the audacity to
wink. "Although the two might look the same to you, just at the
moment. You'll come 'round in the end, I'll wager."

"And turn out like you? Sweet heaven, I hope
not."

He shrugged. "Beyond the first prick, it's
kinder to see things the way they really are."

With a powerful sweep of his arm, he opened
the door. The sounds of the latest stage pulling away in the
distance, men working, and birdsong from the pair of cactus wrens
nesting nearby rushed inside on a choking drift of dust and autumn
sunlight.

In the midst of it all, Gabriel Winter stood
on the threshold with his back to her and his arms folded, as
though deciding which outbuilding to search first, which station
hand to begin the questioning with. His whole manner bespoke
authority.

And Megan understood a threat when she saw
one.

"You can't really expect me to help you!"
she cried. "I'm the last person who'd want to see you bring in my
father."

"That's why I'm not leaving you here."

Unreasonable, unexpected tears came to her
eyes. She'd always managed to bring folks around to her way of
thinking, especially when it mattered. With the Websters. The
station hands. Her papa. Addie. What was so different about Gabriel
Winter? How, when she most needed to out-reason, out-talk, and
out-maneuver a Pinkerton man, had she suddenly lost her ability to
do it?

Addie's words came heartbreakingly to mind.
You'd better take care
, she'd said.
That fancy talk won't
always work on folks
.

Blast it, it could and it would. Megan
wasn't beaten yet.

"I'm not leaving you unguarded," Gabriel
said, facing her at last, "to run and warn your father the minute I
ride beyond sight of the station."

He laughed, with an uncommon lack of humor,
and passed his hand wearily over his face. "Or should I say, the
minute I turn my back on you. You're a wily one, sugar."

"Only when I need to be." Like she'd need to
be in order to keep an eye on him, while he tried to trap her poor
papa. "Only when my back's up against a wall, like it is now."

This time his laughter was genuine. "You
backed yourself into that wall, if I remember aright. I only kept
you company beside it."

That he had done—and more. The memory of her
body arching away from the wall as his arms pulled her closer
brought new heat to Megan's cheeks...and strengthened her resolve.
Gabriel might have the upper hand for the moment, but she'd managed
somehow to lead him in the direction
she'd
set at least once
before. She could do it again.

Amazingly, a part of her almost looked
forward to the challenge.

"Be that as it may," she told him coolly,
mimicking his crossed-arm pose, "things have a way of changing
quickly here in the Territory. As a city man, of course—from
Chicago, didn't you say?—I don't expect you'd know about something
like that. You'll see soon enough, I suppose."

"I suppose I will. I have no trouble seeing
what's right in front of me."

As though in demonstration, Gabriel's
shuttered gaze lowered to her bosom. Gradually, his attention moved
to her waist and hips, which he leisurely examined before raising
his gaze to meet hers again. She should have been shocked by such
an intimate appraisal. She
was
shocked. But it wasn't
because of his improper behavior. It was because of the frank
appreciation in his gaze that followed it.

"Exactly what do you think you're doing?"
she snapped.

He smiled into her eyes. "I should think
that would be obvious enough, even to someone like you."

Someone like her? What was that supposed to
mean? Bewildered, affronted—and more than a little embarrassed to
be the subject of such intense scrutiny—Megan drew up her shoulders
and faced him straight-on.

"Well!" she said in her snootiest tone,
copied directly from the ladies in town, "I hadn't figured you for
a dressmaking connoisseur, agent Winter, but—"

"I wasn't looking at your dress."

In the face of his outright lie, her
composure deserted her. "Yes, you were. I saw you!"

Gabriel's smile widened. "Whenever possible,
I prefer to work from the facts. Your dress is all that stands
between them and me."

Just as she realized what he'd meant, he
stepped into the sunlight of the stage station yard and turned to
her. "I'd hate to draw up that wanted poster wrong, darlin'." He
tipped his hat. "We ride out in less than an hour."

Chapter Six

She's likely the daughter of a thief
,
Gabriel reminded himself as he rode beside Megan Kearney into the
dusty streets of Tucson late that afternoon.
And far too wily to
be trusted
.

Not that he'd been tempted to trust her. At
least not beyond the first moment she'd batted those sad brown eyes
at him and invited him to a necktie party on his own behalf, just
for suggesting he'd like to do business with a pretty woman. If
that hadn't been warning enough of her true nature, the moment
she'd aimed a firearm at the lapels of his favorite suit would have
been.

Plain as the saddle beneath him, Megan
Kearney was desperate to prove her no-good, gone-missing father
innocent. However unworthy the damned knuck was. And in Gabriel's
estimation, dangerous usually rode in on desperate, sooner or
later. He meant to be ready when it closed in on the woman beside
him.

Until then, he'd stick as tight to her side
as the twin satchels and frilly parasol she'd insisted on lashing
to her sidesaddle for the trip to town. They bounced as she rode,
flopping up and down in concert with the close-curved brown bustle
on her dress. For a woman reportedly raised in the west, Gabriel
noticed, Megan rode remarkably poorly.

In an effort to accommodate her, he slowed
his horse to a walk as they neared the center of the
presidio
. Here, wood and water vendors filled the streets,
driving their goods-laden mules between freight wagons and
pedestrians as they plied their wares in English and Spanish and
occasional Chinese.

Speaking loudly to be heard amidst their
singsong calls and the rattle of a stage passing nearby, he turned
to his unwilling companion and asked, "How long have you lived in
the Territory?"

From beneath the wide straw brim of her
geegaw-bedecked hat, she gave him a surly look. "Long enough to
know that innocent men don't always go free around these parts,
especially once word gets around and vigilante justice takes up the
case."

As a punch to his sense of integrity, her
reply found its mark. Nevertheless, he kept his voice calm. She'd
realize the truth soon enough—if she hadn't begun to already. Facts
didn't lie.

"A long while, then," he said mildly.

"It's only seemed so since this
morning."

Gabriel frowned and guided his horse past a
group of Indian women carrying earthen
ollas
toward the
center of town. Several cowboys rode past, spewing dust from their
horses' hooves. On either side of the packed-dirt main street,
whitewashed adobe shops and saloons squatted side-by-side, almost
identical in their flat roofs and peeled-log
ramadas
. Given
the warm autumn weather, the meager shade they cast felt welcome as
a cold drink of well water.

Even so, the shadows they rode through
weren't half as cooling as the chilly demeanor of a woman who
thought she'd been wronged. He cast a sideways glance at the
daughter of his likeliest suspect, and all but shivered at her
schoolmarm's posture and tight-lipped survey of the people and
buildings surrounding them. She didn't want to be here.

Especially with him.

That made them even, Gabriel figured. He
didn't want to need her here. But he did. And until the case was
solved, he'd have to make the best of it. After nightfall, he'd
track down McMarlin and send him to follow up on the search of
Kearney station he'd been forced to postpone. In the meantime, he'd
have to do his damnedest to thaw out Miss Megan Kearney.

He searched his mind for a neutral topic of
conversation, something he could use to take some of the starch out
of her expression. Once he'd found one, Gabriel turned his most
charming smile in her direction.

"A woman like you must have several beaus
here in town," he remarked. "If I stop to kiss you again—" He
snagged her mare's reins in his hand and halted their progress
beneath the shelter of a newspaper office's
ramada
. "—will
someone be riding out from behind one of these sun-baked buildings
to avenge your honor?"

Her startled gaze met his. As though sensing
her unease, her horse skittered sideways, forcing him to draw the
animal closer—along with its rider.

Turning her face quickly away, Megan raised
her chin. He doubted she realized the provocative way the gesture
lengthened the vulnerable column of her neck. Or the way it
loosened the prissy, high-buttoned collar of her dress. Or the way
it revealed the telltale flicker of her pulse beating wildly at her
throat.

Gabriel did. And vowed to remember.

"Avenge my honor? Only if I'm lucky," she
said. A hint of pink stained her cheeks as she added, "If I'm
exceptionally fortunate, one of them will challenge you to a
duel—"

"Ahh. You're a romantic, then?"

"—and win."

Undoubtedly pleased with the notion of her
Pinkerton captor gunned down in the midst of the busy street
surrounding them, Megan snatched back her mount's reins and started
forward again.

In the bustle of Tucson's main thoroughfare,
it would be easy to lose sight of her. In all likelihood, that was
what she'd intended, and with his wounded male pride for an excuse,
to boot. He'd say one thing for her—she possessed resourcefulness
to spare.

Intrigued far more than he felt willing to
admit, Gabriel followed her. He wended his way past ladies out for
a stroll in white dresses,
sombrero-wearing
men, solitary
riders, and enough buckboard wagons to clog the streets, keeping
Megan's ramrod-stiff, brown wool-covered back in his line of sight
until he drew up beside her horse once more.

Casually, he rested his hands atop his
saddle horn, clasping the reins loosely as he glanced at her.
"You've a cruel mouth on you, Megan Kearney. Did no one ever tell
you you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?"

She seemed unsurprised to find him beside
her again. "Actually, I've caught more pests than I ever wanted. My
trouble is getting rid of them afterward." Giving him a pointed
glance, she sat even straighter in her saddle. "No matter what I
do, they just keep buzzing around me."