Lawman (24 page)

"However could you hope to give anyone what
they needed, if you weren't willing to change yourself to do it?"
Megan asked. She shook her head doubtfully. As though in agreement,
her hat's feather bobbed in the breeze. "I can't imagine it. Why,
I'd turn myself green if I thought it would help my papa."

Gabriel wondered what else she'd be willing
to do for the sake of having her father remain free. To be sure,
Joseph Kearney didn't deserve a daughter as trusting as Megan. Not
if everything he'd learned of the man was true.

Mindful of a sudden, ridiculous urge not to
reveal those things to the woman beside him—not to disappoint her
with the truth—he only said, "There's not enough changing in the
world to accomplish some things."

A sorrowful expression crossed her face. "I
know," she whispered.

The loneliness in her eyes struck him like a
blow. He recognized that feeling, ached with it himself. It was
nothing he would wish on a woman like Megan.

"It's fortunate you are, then," Gabriel
said, ladling cheer into his words with hopes of easing some of the
ache inside her. "Since you're nigh perfect as you are."

"Hmmph."

Apparently unimpressed with his praise, she
only arched her brow and pulled at the last unruly finger of her
glove. It was caught somehow, refusing to be peeled from her
skin.

"So says the man with no blarney in his
soul. If I ever hear the truth from
your
lips, agent Winter,
I'll know for sure that
enormous
changes are possible."

She tugged harder. Her glove stuck fast.
Frowning in impatience, Megan dipped her head and, with utmost
delicacy, snagged the pale tip of her glove's finger between her
teeth.

He'd never before thought to envy a slip of
fabric and thread. Somehow, now he did. Her quicksilver motions,
her faintly pursed lips as she prepared to tug anew, suddenly
seemed impossibly erotic. Gabriel's breath caught.

Megan heard. She glanced up, looked
chagrined at having been caught in an action so unrestrained...and
then grinned around her mouthful of glove.

It was a glimpse into a side of her he'd
never witnessed before. This was a Megan both uninhibited and shy,
aware and innocent. In a woman as appealing as she was, the
combination was a heady mix.

With a quick twist of her head, she pulled
free her glove and dropped it with its mate in her lap. Gabriel
looked longingly at the pile of things she'd made atop her skirts,
and grinned at the bawdy thoughts they inspired in him. A man could
die happily to be cradled so well as her fan and gloves were
now.

Raising her arms overhead, Megan yawned
anew, arching her back in a feminine, elegant gesture that made all
Gabriel's weariness vanish. For one long, breath-stealing instant
her breasts thrust upward, their lush curves limned in
sunlight.

She had to be taunting him apurpose.

All the same, he found looking away was
impossible.

Captivated, he watched as she lowered her
arms. With elbows straight as her usually defensive posture, Megan
braced herself in place with her palms cupped around their stone
seat's edge. Gabriel watched her fingertips play over the
water-worn roundness beneath her hands, and felt the cool
smoothness of the stones as plainly as if he'd touched them
himself.

She breathed deeply and lifted her face to
the sky. The sunset washed her face with golden light, gilding her
freckled cheeks and shadowing the delicate hollow at her throat.
He'd touched her there, he remembered, feeling again the warmth and
softness of her skin beneath his hand. He'd stroked his tongue
against hers, kissed her long and hard, and felt her throat vibrate
with the moan of pleasure that kiss had called from her.

Would it feel as good to kiss her again?

Or would she refuse him—this time, with no
stage station to protect from his investigation? Megan had been in
his arms to divert him from his search, he remembered. Nothing
more.

Harshly, Gabriel steered his wonderings in a
new direction. Thoughts like this—feelings like this—would only
distract him from his case.

Winter brings in the right man at the
right time
.

At this rate, he'd be going back to Chicago
empty-handed. The notion struck a peculiar sense of bitterness
within him. When had his vaunted reputation as an agent become more
of a burden than an accomplishment?

Megan shifted beside him, letting her
starched blue skirts brush against his leg. "I do believe you were
a tremendous success with the ladies in town today," she said.
"It's a shame I don't truly design men's clothing. I'd have more
orders than I could handle—at least if your reception was anything
to go by."

Her words came freely, formed with a sort of
strict casualness that Gabriel was beginning to suspect only came
about when she felt strongly about something...and didn't want him
to know it. If she was to be any help to him at all, he needed to
learn to read Megan Kearney. To understand her.

And, eventually, to see her faith in her
father destroyed.

He couldn't think about that now. Instead,
he fixed his attention on Megan's face, in profile as she watched a
group of Mexican musicians assemble their instruments nearby, and
found it took little effort to shove aside his thoughts of what
would come between them. Her eagerness for the musicale to come
brightened her face and her smile, and touched a place in him that
Gabriel had thought long abandoned.

"Do you mean to say your designs aren't
always greeted with that kind of enthusiasm?" he asked. "I don't
believe it."

"Believe it. I've never seen anything like
what happened today." She narrowed her gaze, momentarily abandoning
the musicians' display for the sake of looking Gabriel up and down.
"Those ladies were on you like a pack of ravening wolves. I'm
surprised your clothes survived it."

He smiled. "Jealous, Megan?"

"Jealous? Of what?"

"The ladies in town, of course." Gabriel
gave her a teasing grin. "I've been thinking that maybe you were
wanting to have your hands all over me too, like they did
today."

"Bosh." Megan lifted her chin and returned
to watching the musicians with a rapt interest he didn't believe
for an instant. "Over the past two days, my hands have been close
enough to you to suit me for a whole lifetime," she said, in
blatant referral to the handcuffs they'd shared. "If it meant I
could go on my way without you, I'd be perfectly happy to let you
capture someone else."

"Ahh, but I didn't need to break out
shackles to keep those ladies nearby," Gabriel pointed out. "Why do
you suppose that is?"

She shrugged. "Your appeal certainly doesn't
lie in an excess of humility."

He laughed. "And yours doesn't hide itself
in sweet-tongued talk. Sugar, you seem a mite prickly...for a woman
who professes not to care who touches me."

"I don't care." Megan's back straightened.
Over her shoulder, she pursed her lips and gave him a
mock-sympathetic look, then added, "I'd meant to spare you this,
agent Winter. But the truth is, it was mere curiosity that had Ida
and Hattie and the others squeezing your shoulders and trying to
take off your suit coat this afternoon."

"Curiosity?"

"Yes. I'm quite certain I heard them
whispering about horsehair-padded shoulders." Her gaze spanned the
width of his shirt, then raised to his face. "An understandable
conclusion, given your size. Anyone might wonder about it."

He boggled at the implication. "Might wonder
if my shoulders were genuine?"

She nodded.

"Men with fake shoulders." He shook his
head, imagining the absurdity of it. "Women stuffing earmuffs
beneath their dresses. I don't know what the world is coming
to."

"Neither do I. But then, many things aren't
what they seem, agent Winter," Megan said. "You, of all people,
should know that."

She was right, at least as far as her logic
went. Faulty conclusions could be made. Mistaken impressions could
be had. He was willing to admit that much. It was part of the
reason Gabriel insisted on facts, not faith. It was part of the
reason he hadn't already reported to the agency what he'd learned
about Megan's lengthy days at her father's station...or her need
for money to open the dressmaker's shop she longed for.

Leaning forward, Gabriel rested his forearms
on his thighs and loosely clasped his hands together. One of the
colorfully costumed musicians passed by carrying a lighted lantern.
His rapid-fire Sonoran speech rose and fell as he transferred the
light from his hands to those of one of his partners. Then, in a
fluid motion, he raised his guitar and plucked at the strings.
Melancholy notes crossed the short distance dividing the troupe
from the fountain where he and Megan sat.

The sound stirred something equally
melancholy in Gabriel. Too incomplete to be called a melody, it
seemed to yearn for completion...just as he did.

"Did
you
wonder about it?" he asked
Megan. "You hardly seemed ready to tear off my coat upon our
meeting."

She looked at him, her face pinked with the
sunset's light—or with the blush that came with an embarrassing
truth she wanted to hide. Ridiculously, he found himself hoping
Megan
had
been curious about him. He wanted her curiosity
and her encouragement, her challenging words and her star-filled
beliefs.

He had rights to none of them—especially not
when Gabriel should have wanted nothing more than her
surrender.

"Well, I am a dressmaker by trade," she
demurred, smoothing a wrinkle from her skirts with unsteady
fingers. "Any curiosity I had about your shoulders—that is, whether
or not you used padding sewn into your suit shoulders, of
course—was strictly a matter of professional interest."

"Of course."

Megan folded her arms. "You don't believe
me?"

I don't want to believe you
. To
accept that she'd been so indifferent to him, so blind to him as a
man, was the last thing Gabriel wanted.

Aloud, he said, "I don't believe anything I
can't touch or see or prove."

"Because you're a Pinkerton man?"

He nodded, feeling the muscles in his jaw
clench painfully. Her question could only bring others just like
it. At the prospect of answering them, wariness fisted inside
him.

Why then, did a part of him yearn to be
asked?

She frowned. "Haven't you ever wanted any
other kind of work? You must be good at a great many—"

"I've never done anything else," Gabriel
interrupted. "Never needed to."

"Oh, but surely you've wondered about
it?"

He had. He'd wondered about it, imagined
what it would be like to live another life...and in the end, had
done his best to discard the false hope those notions had brought
him. Given his past, he was lucky as hell to have the life, the
work, and the respect he did. He'd be damned if he'd reveal his
yearnings for something more. Not to Megan. Not to anyone.

And especially not with his hopes so
unlikely to be made real.

Gabriel remained silent.

In the fading daylight, her gaze searched
his. As though not liking what she found in his expression, Megan
lowered her face. Briskly, she gathered up the drawstring purse
she'd dropped on the stone wall beside her parasol. Prying apart
the gathered fabric, she reached inside and withdrew a folded
packet of paraffin-coated paper.

"No? You've never even wondered what else
you might do?" She raised her eyebrows, then paused to unwrap the
white bundle in her hand. The sound of paper crinkling against
itself whispered between them. "I only ask because it's plain, as I
saw today, that you could have yourself a very fine job as a
mannequin
. If you wanted one."

Gabriel couldn't help laughing. It was
almost as though Megan had guessed at the downward bend of his
thoughts, and had set out to cheer him.

"A
mannequin
? Impossible," he said,
shaking his head. "After just one day, my teeth ache from so much
chatter. My arms hurt from holding them out like a scarecrow." He
smiled at the memory of Megan's hands on him, propping him into one
'stylish' position after another for the benefit of the ladies. "It
will be weeks before I can look a cup of tea straight-on
again."

"Me, too! I've never drank so much of it in
my life."

They shared a co-sympathizer's smile. To be
bonded with her, even in such a small fashion, gladdened him in
ways he'd never have guessed at. It made no sense. But for once in
his life, Gabriel realized, he cared more for the feeling itself
than the reasons behind it.

At ease now, Megan finished her unwrapping.
The rich scent of chocolate wafted toward him as, with a triumphant
smile, she raised the blossom of crumpled waxed paper and offered
him its contents.

Fudge. He recognized the neatly piled
squares he'd helped Hattie McDaniel stir, pour, and cut in her
small Ochoa Street kitchen. He'd just managed to escape the gaggle
of parlor-bound women long enough to wrangle a gulp of fresh air
and a much-needed piss when Mrs. McDaniel had lassoed him into
helping her. It had begun with him hefting her enormous cast-iron
cookpot onto the stove...and ended with him, sore-armed, spooning
out the finished fudge into a pan.

He'd relished all of it.

He'd sooner eat his boots than admit it.

"If you can't decide, I'll choose one for
you," Megan offered. She examined the chocolate pieces held cupped
in her hand, as though deliberating which would taste sweetest,
then selected one. She held the bite of fudge aloft, poised a few
inches from his mouth. "Open up."

The surprising intimacy of her suggestion
was enough to part his lips on its own. Gabriel did as she asked,
watching with his mouth open and waiting as she brought the morsel
of fudge closer. Its heady aroma teased his senses, sparking a
hunger he hadn't been aware of until now. Anticipation stirred,
making him angle his head still closer.