Lawman (32 page)

"Oh, Gabriel. No more than it hurts me to
know what I've missed," she said, her voice barely more than a
whisper as she withdrew her fingers. "No more than that."

A wistful expression crossed her face. Then
she looked more closely at him—doubtless seeing the confusion he
felt—and assumed a brisker pose, instead. "You didn't hurt me when
you brushed my hair. It felt wonderful, and so, so...."

"So right."

She smiled, nodding. "Yes, so very right.
You have quite a way with a hairbrush, I must say."

Gabriel thought of his mother and sisters,
recalled finding the three of them at home always brushing and
putting up their hair—their main distraction at the times when he'd
gone searching to bring his father home again—and remained silent.
In all of his boyhood memories, his mother's bedroom was a cocoon
of warmth and gilt mirrors and smiling faces...a haven that
necessity had sent him from, time and again.

He pushed the memories aside. His father was
gone, his mother remarried, his sisters grown—as was he. A man now,
and still damnably unable to keep the past buried.

Turning his focus relentlessly to Megan, he
said, "The trick is all in the wanting to. I wanted to do that for
you. Truth be told, it's no hardship to brush your hair. I'd do it
every day, if you'd let me."

He drew in a breath, surprised at the depth
of longing he felt at the notion of staying with her, day after
day. Trying to turn it aside, Gabriel shrugged.

"Time passes more slowly when I'm touching
you," he said simply.

Megan sighed. "I wish time would stop
altogether."

She looked at him, then pushed suddenly to
her feet and carried the hairbrush and orange to her baggage.
Kneeling, she placed everything back inside the closest satchel,
then fastened it closed. Megan's hair fell forward over her face,
hiding her expression, and for an instant, Gabriel feared she'd
retreated from him again.

He would never have the answer he wanted.
Never have her as close as they'd been just now.

Never be able—some hidden, ruthless part of
him thought—to use the new easiness between them as a means to
gather more evidence for his case.

Twisting his mouth in disgust, Gabriel got
to his feet. Had he lived so long in his cynical Pinkerton's world
that he'd become incapable of kindness? Incapable of acting as a
man, rather than an agent, for even one night?

The possibility sickened him. Too real to be
cast aside, but too terrible to freely act upon, his instincts and
training bore down on him. They urged him to question Megan more
closely, to use the faith she'd shown in him and end his searching
now. To act as ruthlessly as her father had, in turning away from
her at the fountain.

To end the war between his heart and his
mind, and get on with the future he'd dreamed of, planned for,
needed
, for so long.

Pulled from his thoughts by the muffled
sound of Megan's bare feet padding toward him across the wooden
floor, Gabriel looked up. She moved toward him with a feminine
strength and undisguised grace that were as much a part of her—and
as much beloved by him—as were her smile, her face, her heart. From
somewhere inside him, Gabriel found the strength to fight his
operative's urgings just a little longer.

Megan stopped before him. "I want to thank
you," she said, laying her hands warm over his chest, "for all
you've done for me tonight. Coming back for me—" Her voice
tightened, fraught with a hoarse kind of urgency that baffled him,
then strengthened. "—bringing me here, making sure I was warm and
dry and safe."

Safe
. Was she safe with him, Gabriel
wondered? Could she ever be safe, so long as he had Pinkerton honor
between them and a pile of questions to divide them? Saying
nothing, he nevertheless put his arms around her shoulders and drew
her closer. For one, aching moment, he buried his face in her hair
and drew in the clean herbal scent that would linger in his
memories forever.

"And for brushing my hair, too." She smiled,
faintly. "When you drew that brush through my hair tonight, time
ran backward for me."

The declaration was so like her, that
Gabriel couldn't help but grin. "Backward, sugar? I'm a man, not a
magician."

She grinned back. "I'd say that depends on
who you're asking. I've felt some downright magical things since
you turned up in the Territory."

So had he. But it would be beyond ridiculous
to admit it, especially when he couldn't yet trust it himself.
Instead, he squeezed her a shade tighter, loving the way Megan came
willingly against him now.

"Backward," she said, laying her head
against his chest, "because it's the first time in years anyone has
brushed my hair for me."

Her sigh rippled across his shirt sleeve and
faded into the hushed quiet beyond. Even the fire seemed to slow
its biting progress through the wood, as though anticipating what
might come next. Gabriel stroked her hair, content to listen to the
sound of her voice. Content to stay close.

The golden, flower-filled image of his
mother's bedroom returned to him. If Megan had grown up in his
household, she would doubtless have had her hair brushed morning,
noon, and night. He smiled.

"What about your mother?" Gabriel asked.
"Surely she—"

"Brushed my hair?" Megan interrupted,
pulling away with a falsely bright expression. "Oh, she did. She
did. With a tortoiseshell hairbrush almost exactly like mine, in
fact."

She moved rapidly across the hearth rug,
picked up the poker and jabbed viciously at the embers beneath the
slowly dying fire. The flames leapt into life, illuminating her
closed-off expression.

"She stopped when I was seven."

The same year Megan had wished for the stars
from her China heaven, Gabriel remembered. The same year she had
seen them delivered at Joseph Kearney's hand.

"Why did she stop?" Gabriel asked. He sensed
that much lay beneath the question, and the answer. The key to his
case? Or to capturing Megan's heart?

Which would he rather have?

Over her shoulder, she gave him a glance he
recognized.
His glance
, Gabriel realized with a quick
chill—the same hardened, faithless glance he'd used on her so
often.

"She couldn't very well brush my hair,"
Megan said, replacing the fireplace poker with elaborate care. "Not
when—"

She stopped, her expression turning from
bleak to painfully shrewd. "Well, you know so much about me, agent
Winter—"

His heart ached at her return to the
formality he'd hoped they'd left behind them. Heedless, Megan
continued:

"—that I'm sure you must know this, as well.
Come closer, lawman," she invited. "Let me hear what happened from
you, instead."

Chapter Seventeen

From her place beside the fire he'd laid for
her, Megan watched Gabriel Winter struggle for a response. His
eyebrows raised in silent question. He took a booted step, another,
and then stopped to aim an assessing glance in her direction.

"I'd rather hear it from you," he said.

Why hadn't he taken the opportunity to taunt
her with it? To heap on false pity, like everyone else had, and
gleefully speculate upon what had caused her mother's flight?

Perhaps because he knew what lay at fault,
just as Megan did. Could his investigations have uncovered so
much?

Gabriel gazed at her expectantly, as though
waiting for her to confirm the conclusions he'd reached for
himself—especially after having spent days in her company.
Stubbornly, she remained silent. No one in her life had ever loosed
from her lips the true reasons for her mother's leaving. No one.
The Pinkerton man should be no different.

Yet, somehow, he was.

Somehow, she sensed he might understand.

Wariness too longstanding made her stay
tight-fisted with the truth—at least for a little longer. "Why hear
it from me?" she asked, folding her arms over her chest. "When I
might taint the facts you prize so well with feelings and beliefs
and faith?"

Or a lack of it
.

Gabriel's wide shoulders lifted, inviting
her to watch the play of muscle and sinew that showed beneath his
plain white shirt. For a powerfully built man, he had touched her
with remarkable gentleness earlier. Brushed her hair with a
skillful hand. Stroked away her tears with something tantalizingly
close to love in his face.

Megan looked away. Doubtless, she had
baffled him with her sudden contrariness over her mother. For him,
his question had been about hair brushing. For her, it had roused
so much more.

Tears threatened again, tightening her
throat. Who would have thought she could have missed a simple touch
so much? The rasp of the brush gliding through her hair had called
forth a million memories...all of them turned bittersweet.

As though it were yesterday, she had
remembered the feel of her mother's practiced, nimble fingers
parting and brushing her hair. Slowly, Megan's memories had all
flowed together somehow, Gabriel's patient touch merging with that
remembered one, and both had combined to turn back the years. Like
alchemy, the scent of the rosemary rinse in her hair had
transformed itself into Emmaline Kearney's violet perfume. Megan
had felt a girl again, being made pretty beneath her mother's
care.

You'll want to look your nicest when he
gets here
, she'd said on that long-ago day.
Hold still now,
Meggie-mine. There isn't much time
.

The muted sound of Gabriel's voice dissolved
her memories like sugar in water. Megan blinked and focused,
willing herself to feel a woman again—strong and capable and nearly
self-sufficient—instead of a girl in pigtails, with too many
freckles, too many questions...and not enough of the things that
mattered.

"I'm thinking there may be more than plain
facts to this," Gabriel said, his face solemn in the pooled wash of
the lamplight and fire's glow. "And I'm thinking that I want to
hear it from you."

"Then you do know what happened."

He nodded. With her chin raised, Megan
watched him come closer. Oh, but she wanted him to take her in his
arms again. Wanted him to hold her close and speak her name in his
wonderful husky brogue, to kiss her hair and never let her go.
Maybe if Gabriel hugged her tightly enough, she'd be able to absorb
just a little of his strength. Just a smidgen of his surety. Right
now, awash in her old fears and with the future so uncertain, she
needed both so much.

"I know the facts," he agreed quietly. "But
not the rest."

To her astonishment, Gabriel stopped a short
distance from her and tugged off one of his boots. Balancing on one
leg, he likewise pulled off the other, then dropped both to the
polished floor with an uncaring clunk. He came nearer.

She backed up, staring agog at his discarded
boots. "What are you doing?"

More importantly, what did he plan to shed
next?

"I'm putting us on more equal ground,"
Gabriel said.

His gaze flicked to her bare toes peeping
from beneath her skirts. With a few quick motions, he'd removed his
knit half hose as well. Giving her a determined look, he wadded
them in his fist and hurled them over his shoulder. Sweet heavens!
Was the man about to disrobe completely in an effort to make her
talk?

An anticipatory shiver coursed through her,
wholly inappropriate...and wildly exciting, all the same.

Megan lifted her gaze from the careless pile
of boots and men's hosiery Gabriel had made, pretending not to care
one whit for his concessions to equality. "I don't see how being
equally barefoot is supposed to help matters any. You still have
the advantage over me."

"Advantage?" His gaze darkened. With a
leisurely, powerful movement, Gabriel clasped both her hands in
his. He raised them, looking long into her eyes, and kissed her
fingertips one by one. "So long as you remain yourself, Meg, you
have all the advantage over me."

His murmured words flowed over her, creating
a feeling inside her that was nearly as intoxicating as the caress
of his lips on her sensitive fingertips. His shadowed beard chafed
faintly over the base of her thumb as he angled his head sideways
and set to work on her other hand. Megan quivered, wanting this
feeling to go on endlessly.

Wanting to run from it, too.

"You—you flatter me," she stammered. Truly,
it would be wiser to withdraw her hands from his and put safe
distance between them. But the knowledge that his attentions would
likely not continue once Gabriel learned the truth of her kept
Megan exactly where she was. "You can't mean—"

"I only speak the truth." Another kiss found
the tip of her little finger, then a tender nibble. "You lay bare
all that I am, Meg. Don't turn your back without seeing what you
revealed."

The ache inside her intensified, quickened
as surely as her heartbeat. She stared raptly at Gabriel's bowed
head, watching the color deepen faintly in his cheeks, gauging for
herself the truth of all he'd said. It was more than could be
believed.

But oh, how she wanted to!

Her voice trembled when she spoke, although
she endeavored to sound calm, even lighthearted. "Being exposed
from the ankles downward hardly qualifies as—"

"Don't." He squeezed her hands, giving her a
midnight version of his charmer's smile. "This time you can't hide
behind that sharp-tongued talk of yours. I won't have it. Not so
long as I'm waiting for an answer from you. Not when you hold the
truth so close. You have the advantage, Meg. Tell me what happened
with your mother."

It was some Pinkerton's trick. It had to be.
And yet. . . Gabriel seemed so sure, so sincere. His gaze held
steady on hers, as did his grasp on her hands. But a lifetime of
keeping to herself urged Megan to pull away.