Lawman (18 page)

The alleyway narrowed as he reached the area
behind the Cosmopolitan's rear courtyard. Here, an adobe wall
jutted into the pathway, its bulk intended to shelter the fountain
and
saltillo
-tiled hotel courtyard inside.

Gabriel slowed, listening hard. With its
irregularly shaped wall and cover of concealing water sounds, this
would be an ideal spot for an ambush. All he heard, though, were
the muted sounds of water splashing into the fountain, and an
accompanying feminine voice...swearing?

"Drat those
bizcochitos
!" he heard
next, followed by the sounds of shoes—he surmised—scraping against
something. A frustrated, feminine grunt followed, and then the
night fell silent.

Only one voice he knew carried such
determination—even wedded as it was to a lovely feminine form and
misleadingly compliant manner. Only one woman he knew would be fool
enough to scrabble around past midnight, and in the midst of the
city, at that.

Megan Kearney.

Only one man he knew would look forward to
the kind of homecoming that wildcat woman would offer. And Gabriel
was standing in that man's boots.

Lucky him.

"Ooof!"
Drat this wall
. Slung halfway
across it, Megan felt the thick adobe surface of the hotel
courtyard's wall jab into her midsection for what had to be the
third time straight. If she didn't hurry, the Pinkerton man would
beat her inside the hotel.

And then he'd discover she'd been gone, all
along, despite the dapper and agreeable agent he'd left in charge
of her care. Agent McMarlin couldn't have kept a dog from
scratching its fleas, and the fact that he'd so readily accepted
her need to take a sudden, unplanned-for and luxuriously extended
bath—
privately
—in her hotel room only proved it.

Even if it hadn't, the church bell-loud
snoring she'd heard issuing from his station outside her closed
door not long after her tub of hot water had been delivered most
assuredly would have. The man barely deserved his badge. In her
opinion, she'd bested him easily.

Almost too easily.

Megan wished she could say the same for the
blasted wall. It certainly hadn't seemed this large—or this
slippery—when she'd climbed down from the balcony and clambered
over it to follow agent Winter earlier this evening. With rancor,
she glared at the dark stubbled surface of her perch.

As though in answer, the wall sent a chill
straight through her, one that easily penetrated the plain calico
gown she'd changed into for her adventuring.
I will not wish to
have Gabriel's toasty warm suit coat around my shoulders again
,
she told herself staunchly.
And I will not let a pile of bricks
defeat me
.

Not even if those bricks came complete with
cold, mold, and the occasional pigeon dropping for decoration.
She'd grown up running around the wild lands of the Arizona
Territory desert, for heaven's sakes! Compared with the canyons and
rocky hillsides she'd explored as a child, this measly wall was
nothing.

Levering herself upward, Megan attempted to
wrap her hands around its edge and roll her body toward the
beckoning safety of the hotel courtyard. Instead, she wobbled. Her
locket and its chain swung forward from their hiding place inside
the neckline of her dress, and clinked into the wall with an impact
that made her wince. Forced to cling to the adobe like a gecko in
the sun, she had to admit the obvious.

Her
bizcochitos
-eating personage just
wasn't up to the challenge of scaling walls and escaping from
Pinkerton men. Or even escaping from one singular rogue Irish
Pinkerton man, with hardness in his gaze and a tenderness to his
touch that made her shiver to recall it.

With effort, Megan shoved that remembrance
from her thoughts. As someone with a two-foot wide wall to ascend,
and quickly, she couldn't afford such distractions.

Besides, after all he'd said at Hop Kee's,
she certainly knew better than to succumb to Gabriel Winter's
heartless charm now.

And she knew as well not to let him capture
her in the midst of undoing her earlier escape. She hated to think
what his reaction would be. To be sure, it would involve those
irons he bragged about carrying with him—and maybe even a cell at
the county jail, too. For a lady! The man had no chivalry in him at
all.

Goaded by visions of handcuffs and hatched
iron bars, Megan struggled harder to thrust herself up and over the
wall. The worst of it was, she'd risked herself tonight by
following Gabriel, and had learned practically nothing about her
papa's activities in town.

Doubtless that was because Gabriel had taken
the most unlikely route possible to tracking her father. She hadn't
the faintest notion why agent Winter had insisted on visiting Doña
Carlotta's house and so many others, when everyone knew respectable
men like Joseph Kearney did not frequent such places.

Perhaps his activities hadn't been rigged
toward tracking down her papa at all, she mused. Perhaps Gabriel
had
personal
reasons for visiting Maiden Lane tonight.

Like wanting a dalliance with one of the
'maidens.'

Horror loosened her grip on the rough adobe
she clung to.
He wouldn't!
a part of her protested, but the
rest of her could all too easily picture the devilish Gabriel
charming one of the ladies. He'd flatter her with compliments, all
spoken with his deep, brogue-laden voice. He'd stroke her cheek,
maybe curl his big gentle fingers around her nape and draw her
closer for a stolen kiss. He'd look at her with that slumberous,
cat-with-cream expression in his blue-eyed gaze, and strike her
breathless with the intensity it held.

Not that Megan cared one whit.

Nosiree. Not even half a whit.

The cad
. Newly determined to best
him, she dug her hands into the wide top edge of the wall and
pulled. Her fingertips touched the edge, flexed...and then the nail
on her little finger bent backward and snapped.

Squealing, Megan clutched her injured
finger. Utterly unbalanced by the movement, she dropped to the
alleyway below like a bucket of brass buttons shoved from a
shelf.

"Ooof!" Dust billowed around her, stirred by
the impact of her bottom hitting the dirt. A chill breeze whipped
up the length of her stocking-clad legs, alerting her to the fact
that her fall had also managed to toss her skirts in a jumble.
Through tears of frustration, she glared up at the courtyard
wall.

Outlined against it, bold as you please, was
the shadow of a man. A very tall, very big, hat-wearing man.

Instantly, her throbbing finger vanished
from her list of worries. So did the bedraggled state of her dress
and the possibility of being caught by Gabriel Winter before she
could return to their room and pretend to be asleep. Who but a
bandito
would be out past midnight, slinking through
alleyways and preying on innocent women?

Her only possible defense was subterfuge,
and Megan meant to use it. Forcing her fear-stiffened limbs to
cooperate, she drew her heels beneath her body as though preparing
to get up—and then slumped face-first in the dirt, in her finest
approximation of a dead faint.

No, just a plain garden-variety
faint
, she amended to herself, trying to keep her breathing
steady. With luck, once the
bandito
behind her saw her
collapsed on the ground, he'd skedaddle for livelier pickings
straightaway.

That, or he'd peg her as an easy mark and
come closer.

Filled with fear at the thought, Megan kept
herself motionless and waited. Seconds later, she heard boot heels
stamp across the alleyway. Her nose filled with the dust his
footfalls raised, and she struggled not to sneeze. The scent of
tobacco smoke drifted toward her. Sensing his nearness, she held
her breath.

His shadowy bulk loomed over her. She
cracked one eye open. The scuffed length of what she took for a
boot trod past her nose, then stopped. Its mate joined it, as
though the
bandito
stood beside her shoulder, deciding what
to do with the fallen lady before him.

Megan needed no such lengthy
deliberations.

Quick as she could, she snaked out her arm.
She grasped a handful of trouser leg, boot, and ankle, and yanked
with all her might.

The
bandito
lost his footing every
bit as quickly as Mose always had, back at Kearney station when
he'd taught her this trick. With an incoherent yelp of surprise,
the man smacked into the ground—no less painfully than he deserved,
she felt sure—and lay momentarily motionless.

It couldn't last. Heart hammering, Megan
surged to her feet and ran full-bore down the alleyway. Never mind
getting over the wall and eluding agent Winter—she had bigger fish
to fry now. It was almost enough to make her wish for the Pinkerton
man's solid, undefeatable presence.

Almost.

Panting, she raced further. Was that the
sound of footsteps following her? She couldn't stop to find out.
Fearful that it was, Megan risked a backward glance over her
shoulder...and ran straight into something hard, immovable, and
undeniably human at her front.

She shrieked, and a pair of warm strong arms
closed tight around her. She'd escaped one
bandito
, only to
be captured by another of his cohorts? Screaming, Megan struggled
against her captor's iron grip. His hand clapped over her mouth,
sealing off her screams. Seconds later, she felt herself being
lifted and carried to the alleyway's darkest corner.

Her backside met cold adobe bricks. At her
front, the new
bandito
pressed his body against hers with
undeniable intent. His rapid-fire speech flowed over her, sounding
hoarse and oddly familiar.

"Meg? Meg?" His hands roved over her,
squeezing her shoulders, pulling her close, burying in the tangled
mess of her hair. "Christ, I heard you scream and I couldn't get
back here fast enough. What happened? Are you hurt?"

Dazed, she recognized Gabriel Winter's
soothing brogue, acknowledged the blissfully familiar warmth of his
hands stroking her hair back from her face. Whatever answer she
might have made stuck in her throat, held there by the shock of
hearing her name spoken so softly by him.

Meg, Meg
. No one had ever called her
that...and certainly not with such tenderness packed into the
words. Relief, and something more she didn't dare consider, poured
through her with all the sweetness of a
sarsaparilla
on a
hot August afternoon.

"Are you hurt?" Gabriel asked again,
stepping backward a bit to take a closer look at her. "I swear, if
you're hurt I—"

"It's nothing," she whispered, drawing her
trembling hand to her lips. Lord, but he looked wonderful, even in
the moonlight. Even in an alleyway, with a fallen
bandito
probably sneaking up behind them and danger 'round every turn. "I'm
fine now."

"You're not." His gaze seared through her.
"Any fool can see you've been weeping."

From the frustration of trying to escape
you in time
, Megan recalled, and decided to keep that
revelation to herself. She didn't want to think about that now. All
she wanted was a little more of the concern she'd heard in his
voice, a little more of the safe feeling she'd experienced upon
realizing it was Gabriel's arms that held her.

"Would you say it again?" she asked softly,
unable to resist. "Would you please call me 'Meg' again, just once?
I know I—"

His grasp stiffened, cutting short her
words. "I never called you that."

She might have slapped him, for all the
sweetness Gabriel showed her now. What was wrong with him?

"You did!" He had, and with the most
beautiful bit of caring in his voice, besides. But she could hardly
bring herself to ask him to say it nicely—not when he was being so
intolerably stubborn about saying it at all. "You called me Meg
just now, when you yanked me off the—"

"Yanked you? I kept you from running
yourself full-chisel into that bakery building over there, or
worse. That's what I did. You're lucky it's too late for buggy
traffic."

"You're lucky I don't call out the sheriff
and charge you with lewd conduct, after the way you manhandled
me!"

Mad at herself and at him, Megan shoved away
from the wall. Whatever had possessed her, to wish for kind words
from Gabriel Winter's lips? He was her enemy, and yet she
continually forgot that fact. She should have known better than to
ask him for anything at all.

It was disheartening to realize that, even
as a spinster of twenty-eight, part of her still yearned to rely on
someone other than her own lonesome self. Apparently her
foolishness knew no bounds.

Feeling defensive, she looked up to see
Gabriel gaping at her. His expression of disbelief didn't improve
her mood.

"Lewd conduct?
Manhandled
you?"
Shaking his head, he grabbed her arm and started tugging her down
the alleyway in his wake. "Never mind telling me about how you're
fine. I can see that for myself plain enough, since you're arguing
like a fishwife. You're fine as you ever were."

Outraged, Megan jerked her arm from his
grasp. "
Fishwife
?"

"Yeah."

And the fool man seemed pleased about it,
too! If she hadn't known better, she'd have sworn Gabriel savored
his arguments with her. Was he mad?

He gave her an audacious smile. "Yeah," he
repeated, nodding his head. "I'd say 'fishwife' about taps it."

He
was
mad. Why, everyone knew a
respectable man wanted a woman who'd comply with his wishes, and
never argue at all. Not being sure she could manage such a feat was
one reason Megan had never pursued marriage.

The other was the fact that no man had
courted her seriously, not with her father and Mose and all the
other men at Kearney Station guarding the path to her door.
Something about being like a sister to a dozen or so station hands
tended to discourage gentleman callers—at least Megan hoped that
was why they hadn't come calling.