Lawman (20 page)

The vision in blue stopped at his table,
bringing with her the mingled scents of rosewater, hotel-provided
coconut soap, and a goodly dose of dress starch. Smiling with
pleasure at her arrival—surely he'd gone daft to be doing such a
thing—Gabriel absently traced his fingers along the folded creases
in the wanted poster lying on the table before him.

As though drawn there by his movements,
Megan's gaze fell upon it. "I see you like to begin your morning's
allotment of devious plotting straightaway, agent Winter," she
said. She smiled sweetly and seated herself beside him with mock
companionability. "I hope it gives you indigestion."

If it did not, her quarrelsome morning mood
likely would. Evidently, sleeping in irons didn't agree with
her—and she intended to let him know it. Why he should care what
Megan thought of him, Gabriel didn't know. All he knew was that he
did—and he wanted it to stop.

Slowly, deliberately, he rolled the wanted
poster and tucked it inside his coat pocket. "I hope it leads me to
your father. Or had you forgotten I have a job to do?"

"A job?" She lifted her arched brows in mock
surprise. "If tracking an innocent man like a beast, destroying his
family and livelihood, and dragging his name through the mud
constitutes work, then half the outlaws in this territory ought to
consider themselves gainfully employed!"

"I have no doubt they do. Some of the most
industrious men I've known have been criminals."

"Hmmph. Perhaps their influence has rubbed
off on you."

Gabriel smiled. "You consider me
hard-working, then?"

"No, dishonest." Megan twisted sideways to
stab the hooked end of her parasol over the back of her chair, then
picked up her folded linen napkin. She whipped it open, all but
polishing the end of his nose in the process.

"I suppose it's not terribly surprising,"
she went on blithely. "A person can hardly be expected to spend all
his time dealing with outlaws, and not become at least a little bit
like them."

"I might say the same of you." He leaned
back in his chair and folded his arms. Spoken aloud, the thought
grew new roots. If Joseph Kearney were a criminal, could his
daughter be innocent of that fact? "You said yourself that you and
your father were close."

"Stop talking about him as though he were
already gone!"

He gave her a cat-and-mouse smile. "Isn't
he?"

"No," she said stubbornly. "He is not."

"Then you know where he is." Gabriel leaned
forward, urging her without words to come closer as well. He
lowered his voice. "Give over, Megan. Let's have this finished
between us, and go on to finer things."

She looked away, as though fortifying
herself against his words, his intimate tone, his cajolery. "I
can't imagine what you're suggesting. And I don't need you or
anyone else to tell me what to do. I'm a woman fully matured—"

"I can see that plain enough."

"—and I'll do as I like. I don't intend to
rely upon anyone, agent Winter.
Least of all you
."

With her pronouncement finished, she raised
her chin. Her spirited brown eyes dared him to oppose her. Without
wanting to be, Gabriel found himself at once intrigued and aroused
by her fighting spirit. No mealy mouthed miss was Megan Kearney.
The man who won her heart—and her body—would have to fight to claim
both for his prize.

He'd also have to be daft as a post and
lacking in both reason and self-preservation.

Hiding his grin, he vowed to avoid all those
hazards—and to win her cooperation in spite of it. Strong-willed
though she was, Megan had it in her to compromise. He knew it after
last night.

Sensing her weakening, even if only a
little, Gabriel pressed his advantage harder. "Tell me where to
find Joseph. It's the right thing to do—the thing I would do in
your place."

Her expression turned truculent. "For my
father's sake, I'm glad your lack of loyalty is not contagious. I
have
faith
, agent Winter, even if you do not."

Frustration welled within him. He'd never
known anyone more damned immovable, more senselessly determined to
shove starry-eyed belief where it didn't belong. Didn't she
understand? Faith could waver. Faith could die. Faith could vanish
in a moment.
Facts never would
.

"No. What I do not have is more patience for
lies," he ground out. "Where is he?"

"You can't seriously imagine I would tell
you
."

Her killing glare ended their conversation
abruptly. In an excellent imitation of a woman dining alone, Megan
picked up the folded newspaper at the edge of their table and
snapped it open.

Brought short by her sudden withdrawal,
Gabriel stared at the printed
Arizona Citizen
headlines
facing him. The sight of them did nothing to improve his state of
mind. The newspaper, the same one he'd seen before encountering
Megan in the alleyway last night, only served to remind him of
their meeting...and all that he'd said while he held her.

Meg, Meg
.

He wanted to groan at the remembrance. What
had possessed him? At the sound of her struggle with McMarlin, he'd
been struck with a fear unlike anything he'd ever experienced. And
at the feel of her warm, curved body in his arms, he'd been blasted
with an emotion too uncontrollable to deny.

Lust
, he told himself.
Nothing
more
. Most likely, Megan had felt it, too. It was the only
explanation for the way she had lingered in his arms.

Why else, when they were enemies?

For an instant, when she'd accepted his
comfort so eagerly, Gabriel had felt tall enough to snatch real
stars from the sky. Proud enough to kneel at her feet to give them
over. But reality had returned when she'd asked him to say again
the endearment that had slipped from his lips.

Meg, Meg
.

Damnation. Nothing like this had ever
happened to him before. Not on a case. Not ever. And he swore now
that it never would.

Shaking his head, Gabriel stared across the
table at Megan's fingers clenched tightly against the
Citizen
. Doubtless she felt more comfortable behind several
inches of newsprint and animosity than she had with only the easily
shed clothes and honor that had stood between them last night.

She slanted him a glance across the top of
her newspaper. He'd had kinder looks from men in irons being
dragged to jail. In no mood for more games, he scowled straight
back.

She sniffed and went back to her
reading.

Inexplicably, his mood softened toward her.
His wariness, on the other hand, remained. If she'd held a knife at
that moment, he had little doubt she'd use it—to escape from him,
if nothing else. Grimacing, he slid her heavy silver butter knife
from her place setting nearer to his. What had possessed him, to
spend his time in Tucson with a she-devil like Megan Kearney?

His case
, Gabriel remembered, and
issued her a level look. If he hoped to enlist her cooperation, he
couldn't go on tussling with her.

He forced a stiff-feeling smile to his face.
"In any case, sugar, the wait was worthwhile. You look
beautiful."

"Hmmph." She put down her newspaper in
preparation for further battle and then tossed her head, making the
doodads on her hat wobble. "You needn't bother wasting your Irish
blarney on me. Your flattery can hardly turn my head, now that I
know what you're really about, agent Winter."

"Gabriel," he reminded her. "And I haven't a
speck of blarney in my nature." He smiled at her obvious,
open-mouthed skepticism. "It's more than flattery when it's
true."

In the midst of reaching for the coffee pot,
Megan paused. Only inches away from the gleaming silver handle, her
fingers trembled—and beneath her hat's gaudy brim, her brows
snapped together. Whether because of flattery, truth, or something
else, the lady was not as unaffected as she wanted to seem.

Pressing his advantage, he said, "It's true,
Megan. You're a rare sight to behold."

And a handful to reckon with.

No sooner had he made the observation than
she whisked her hands beneath the white linen tablecloth and folded
them in her lap.

"Stop. Just stop!" Megan raised her pleading
gaze to his. "Save your sweet talk for someone more gullible than
me. I'll not believe a word of it."

To his shock, he saw that tears shimmered
unshed in her eyes. They captured the light from the dining room's
crystal chandelier, splintering it with pain. In the moment before
Megan looked down again, a kind of defiant hurt hardened her
expression.

Dumbfounded, unable to see her face clearly
while she kept it downturned, Gabriel stared instead at the silk
flowers and bows at the crown of her hat. He could have sooner
named all the geegaws spread before him than he could have made
sense of her reaction.

How could it be that their sparring troubled
her less than his compliments did?

Her response confounded him. It was, like
her, contrary above all—and nigh impossible to deal with.

He'd wounded her somehow. He didn't know
how, or why, but all at once Gabriel wanted to steal the sadness
from her soul. He yearned to replace it with something real and
lasting and glad.

The notion that he wanted nothing so much as
to make Megan happy astonished him. It had to be some trick of
their closeness yesterday—and all through the night, thanks to
their shared handcuff bonds. It had to be some form of madness,
specially spun by a woman set on deceiving her way past the
Pinkertons and Gabriel alike.

It felt like madness and more. But the tears
in her eyes were real, and so was the unaccountable impulse he felt
to wipe them away.

Gabriel touched her chin, urging her face to
turn toward his. "Why can't you believe it? The evidence is here in
my hands. I'd rather see your face frowning at me—" She wrinkled
her nose with irritation. "—than any other face lit up with
joy."

It was true, he realized. God help him. He
wanted Megan Kearney, and no other woman would do. Though she
hadn't seemed precisely beautiful to him at first, now Gabriel
couldn't begin to remember why.

Her eyes widened. He felt the renewed tremor
in her fingers as she raised them to his wrist. Belatedly, he
realized she was trying to wrest away his hand.

He didn't want to let her go.

After a moment, she jerked her chin away.
Blinking rapidly, she delivered the rebuke he should have
expected...but hadn't.

"A lie for every occasion." She smiled
thinly. "How resourceful of you."

Remembrance struck him. Compared with her
poisonous tongue, the kick in the shin she'd given him when they
met had been nothing at all. She had more defenses than an army's
fort, and better weaponry than all the Pinkerton operatives
combined.

Too bad she hadn't mustered those defenses
for the sake of something—or someone—worthwhile. Admirable as it
was, Megan's continued support of her father was misguided as hell.
She'd be better off to recognize it.

And Gabriel would be better off to remember
it.

"Do you think I'd be a spinster," she went
on, "if I were really as attractive—"

"—beautiful."

"—as you say? Everyone knows a man wants
beauty and obedience in a wife, agent Winter, and I can muster
neither. Not that I should care to," she added quickly.

Her moods changed with the swiftness of odds
at a gambling table, and with just as little predictability.
Typical of a woman...but maddening as hell. If he emerged from this
case with his wits intact, Gabriel figured it would be a miracle.
Still, he was willing to go along with her apparent
light-heartedness—especially since she'd stopped crying—and to go
on arguing in her favor.

"Beauty and obedience? You possess at least
one of those qualities in abundance." Grinning, awash in a sense of
relief he refused to consider more deeply, he filled her cup with
coffee and replaced the silver pot in its place. "The other can be
obtained easily enough."

"Conveniently said, for a man with shackles
in his pocket." Megan frowned into her cup, as though imagining it
filled to brimming with arsenic along with the steaming Arbuckle's
he'd poured. She spooned in some sugar, then shrugged as she
stirred. "With accoutrements like that, your success is
assured."

"I plan for it to be. In all things."

"Not if I can help it." She removed her
spoon, then sipped her coffee and smiled. "Mmmm. That's better,
thank you. I never feel quite right until I've had my morning
cup."

"Obviously."

She pulled a face at him over the rim, but
with her next sip Megan's expression turned downright
pleasure-filled. The golden brown hue of her eyes mirrored her
appreciation, as did the subtle blush warming her cheeks.
Fascinated, Gabriel propped his elbow on the table's edge, put his
hand in his palm, and watched her.

With tantalizing slowness, she licked her
lips. "As for the other marriageable quality," she went on, waving
her fingers airily, "that can be managed, too. Quite successfully.
In fact, I believe it's worked its deception on you already."

"It has?"

"Yes." Looking self-satisfied, Megan settled
into her chair and regarded him with a smirk. "Otherwise, you would
never imagine me beautiful."

"I think I would."

She shook her head. "It's only my skill that
makes you believe such a thing."

"Your skill?" This ought to prove
enlightening.

"Yes. My skill at dressmaking. It's the only
possible explanation." Her smirk widened into a prideful smile as
she replaced her coffee cup in its saucer and then spread her arms
high to the side, baring the lace-bedecked, high-buttoned bodice of
her gown to his view. "I made this very gown, in fact, and altered
my parasol to match."