by Lisa Plumley
“What for?”
Her shoulders heaved, straightened, but she didn’t face him. “Please,” Megan said. “I—I—”
Hell. She was going to cry. A woman’s last weepy damned resort. She’d probably tell him it was because of him, too, when it was plain as warts on a bullfrog her father was the real trouble.
“I can’t stand the thought of…oh, p-please leave my father alone!” she begged in a choked voice.
Her back was to him, so he couldn’t see her face. But Gabriel heard the catch in her voice caused by fenced-in sobs, saw her fumbling around in her skirt pocket for something, and knew he was as defenseless as the next poor knuck in the face of a weeping woman.
He shoved his handkerchief toward her. “Now, hold on a minute,” he murmured. “There’s no call to cry on account of the no-goods in the world. They sure as hell aren’t crying for the likes of you.”
“I—I’m sorry,” she sobbed.
Now he had her apologizing for crying! She might as well just apologize for being a woman and be done with it. Near as he could tell, it wasn’t like a female could help turning on the waterworks. Obviously she was too distraught even to take his handkerchief. He doubted she’d even noticed it, she was getting so worked up. Gabriel felt like hell.
“There’s no need to apologize,” he said. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
Suddenly Megan turned. He was startled to glimpse, despite her reddened cheeks and watery eyes, a smart-alecky smile on her face.
“Not yet, I haven’t,” she said, jerking her fisted hand upward, to about waist height. “And if you leave now, I won’t have to.”
The derringer in her hand jerked upward again as she took aim at his chest. “Please leave.”
Chapter Five
Gabriel Winter’s dumbfounded gaze swept from Megan’s derringer to her face. “Darlin’, you’re not the type to plug an outright criminal with that peashooter of yours, much less a lawman.”
He was right. She’d be a fool to admit it, though. With a little luck—and a little harmless brandishing of her weapon—he’d be just distracted enough to forget about pursuing her father. At least for a short while. If saving papa and safeguarding Kearney station meant offering herself to agent Winter as a temporary diversion…well, that’s just what she’d do.
“Maybe.” Megan wrinkled her nose, as though considering what he’d said. “If a lawman’s really what you are, that is.”
Privately, she had her doubts. Any man who could use his blarney-kissed Irish brogue to feed a woman sweet words about her hair and her eyes and her figure, who could suggest a wildly improper trade of favors for secrets and then kiss her near swooning moments later, had a wide streak of elemental deviltry in his character, lawman or no.
It wouldn’t do to let down her guard around him. Megan kept her weapon steady. This was a man who could not be trusted.
Not that she’d been anywhere close to doing so, Megan assured herself as she sharpened her focus on his roguish face, waiting for whatever he’d do next. If she’d forgotten herself for an instant or two, that was only because he’d forced her to play every role she could think of to try to stop him from searching the station. It certainly had nothing to do with the shocking feel of his arms holding her close, his hands stroking her hair, his mouth meeting hers in a kiss so gentle, so tantalizing….
She grabbed hold of her wayward thoughts and steeled her resolve. Too much lay at stake here to risk being distracted, and she’d need all her wits to deal with the challenge Gabriel Winter presented.
How was she to stop him from searching the station—preferably without getting herself arrested in the process?
She still couldn’t believe none of the methods she’d tried earlier had worked. Even tears hadn’t been enough to soften him, and she hadn’t thought to find a man alive who’d remain unmoved by a woman’s tears. Agent Winter’s heart must be as cold as his name implied.
The realization was enough to kindle fresh terror inside her. This time, it was just possible she’d bitten off a greater challenge than she could chew. Megan steadied her gun with hands gone suddenly damp and trembling, and did her best to assume an air of nonchalance.
“In any case, agent Winter, you must know that crooked lawmen roll through this territory as often as tumbleweeds do. So even if what you say is true, I—”
“It’s true.” He stepped closer. “I am a lawman, clear to the last inch.”
Involuntarily, she checked the truth of his statement. The civilized polish of his city-slicker’s wool suit and clean-shaven jaw suggested a businessman more than anything else. But the low-slung heft of his gun belt and the cynical steel in his gaze told another story. It was the latter Megan was inclined toward believing.
He really was a lawman. One intent on locking her father in irons and dragging him to jail for a crime he couldn’t possibly have committed. Dear Lord. She had to do something to stop him. The havoc agent Winter could wreak at Kearney Station with his wrongheaded investigation was terrifying.
“And an honest lawman, at that,” Gabriel went on, dropping his gaze to her derringer, “one with half a mind to take you in right along with your father. It’s a dangerous woman who’d draw a weapon on a Pinkerton man—no matter how wee a one it might be.”
Summoning all the bravado she could, Megan smiled past the hammering of her heart and looked him up and down. “Pshaw, Mr. Winter. You don’t seem so very wee to me.”
His answering smile looked deadly—and miles more charming than it had a right to be, given the circumstances. Caught beneath its influence, she could almost believe he was a man who’d lock an innocent woman in jail. Most certainly, she could believe he was a man who’d give his lady prisoner a scorching goodbye kiss…only moments before turning the key.
The cad.
“Is there always a double meaning to your words, Miss Kearney? Or might it be possible someday to believe what you say?”
“I doubt very much you believe in anything or anyone.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “I believe in facts.”
“I’ve already given you those,” Megan said. “My father was not involved in any wrongdoing. So if you’d kindly leave before your presence here causes any more ruckus—”
“No.”
Despite the threat of her derringer, he moved closer. Either she didn’t seem menacing enough to keep him away, or he was too fearless to heed her warning. She sensed the ready strength in his shoulders, felt the warmth of his body near hers, and started trembling anew. Desperate measures were in order.
Megan attempted a sneer, like the ones the Easterners wore when they stepped off the stage and glimpsed The Great Desert for the first time. As meanly as she could, she said, “I already asked you once to leave, Mr. Winter. I’m not asking again.”
Unfortunately, he seemed unimpressed.
“I’m not leaving here until I’m finished.” His bemused smile was enough to get her dander up, all on its own. “And I’m a long sight from being finished with you.”
Her thoughts whirled. Trapped between the door at her back and the solid, implacable man at her front, Megan did the only thing that seemed reasonable.
She raised her gun higher.
He spared it a glance. Nothing more. An instant later, Gabriel brought his big hand up to cradle the back of her neck in his palm, and the searing heat of his skin was almost enough to make her drop her derringer without a single thought.
Holding her breath, Megan looked up into a face shadowed with hard-won experience. For a man not much older than she was, Gabriel Winter seemed remarkably cynical. His features called nothing to mind so strongly as danger, and the angle of his jaw, the sharp edge of his nose, and the predatory gleam in his eyes did nothing to dispel that impression.
However civilized the trappings he wore, Gabriel Winter was nonetheless a hunter. One who would not rest until he’d taken what he’d come to find.
She had the sudden, panic-stricken fear
he had come to find her.
As though he’d guessed her fear, he increased the pressure of his fingertips against her nape and tilted her head toward his. The other quality agent Winter possessed in abundance was masculine assurance, and he was plainly unafraid to use it.
“If my presence here is too much for you,” he said, “I’d advise you to lay down your weapon right now. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself with more of me than you can handle.”
Megan figured she already had more of him than she could handle. She almost admitted it aloud. After all, his unexpected arrival at the station had already forced her into sweet-talking, kissing, and desperate measures the likes of which she’d never tried before.
And the likes of which would have worked on almost anyone else, she felt sure. Drat the man and his stubborn, wily ways!
She needed time to think. She needed time to plan. She needed distance from the impossible-to-ignore masculinity of a man with her father’s ruination on his mind…and the back of her neck in his hand. Gently, he thrummed his fingers over her skin, teased the fine hairs at her nape, stroked her as though he hadn’t anything better to do in the world than sample the feel of her beneath his fingers.
And watch her with the eyes of a hawk.
“Understand?” he asked.
She understood. Understood he wasn’t leaving the station unless she found a way to make him, somehow. Blast it.
In answer, Megan jerked her head upward, trying to free herself from his grasp. She found the impulse as impossible to resist as it was useless. Although he took his hand from her neck, hers was a temporary victory at best, and she knew it. She could no more escape the war of wills that had begun between them than she could snap her fingers and have her father magically reappear at the station with her nest egg money safely in hand.
She almost cried out at the thought. What chance did she have to regain her savings, her chance for a future, now? With only three days until the Websters left Tucson for good, a father gone missing, and a relentless, silver-tongued Pinkerton man to keep track of, it looked as though her dressmaker’s shop dream was about to slip from her grasp for the last time.
It would be years, maybe many years, before another affordable shop came available to buy. Whatever else happened, she could not let this Pinkerton man delay her. Neither could she let him ruin her papa’s life and livelihood by openly accusing him of something he couldn’t possibly have done. Somehow, she had to find her father, recover her savings, and get away with both before agent Winter realized what she was up to.
With that thought in mind, Megan glared up at her unwelcome guest. If she left for Tucson to find her father as she’d planned, he’d surely search the station, with or without her consent. It would throw the place into an uproar. Somehow, she had to draw him away from here. But how?
Would he believe she’d had a sudden change of heart?
Probably not.
“Do I understand?” She repeated his question, hating the shakiness in her voice even as she lay her free hand dramatically over her heart. “My goodness, agent Winter. You can’t possibly mean you would take me into custody! Not for something so inconsequential as ordering you off my land.”
“With a firearm for persuasion.”
She shrugged and gave him her sweetest smile. “I find it increases a man’s attention span.”
His gaze flickered over her, taking in her upswept hair, her dress, and her shoes just visible beneath her hem. Leisurely, he lengthened his perusal to include the flare of her long brown skirts, then took his time following her bodice’s trail of jet buttons upward to her face.
The rascal grinned. “I expect you manage to keep a man’s attention,” he said. “With or without a peashooter handy.”
His quicksilver smile, coupled with the heat in his eyes and the apparent sincerity in his voice, would surely have set another, more gullible woman to swooning on the spot. She knew better than to listen. Never had a man spoken such niceties to plain Megan Kearney. She prided herself on being practical enough not to hope for them.
At least she had until now.
“You flatter me, agent Winter.” Concentrate, she ordered herself. Was he falling for her tactic? “That must be how I knew you’d never arrest a lady like me, not even for pulling out this little old derringer of mine. Why, I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”
“I have.”
He was falling for it! “Oh, my. You don’t mean…?”
She let her voice trail off, and did her best to pack a goodly dose of trepidation into the stare she gave him. Deliberately getting herself arrested was a desperate means of making agent Winter leave the station, to be sure. But Megan felt fairly certain she could elude him once they’d set out on the road to the jail in Tucson. The way to town was as familiar as her own dress patterns to her—but not to him.
She blinked sorrowfully up at him and whispered, “Jail? For me? You can’t mean it.”
His gaze darkened, turning his eyes a deeper, lonelier blue.
“Oh, but I do,” he said. “I’d arrest you now, if I thought you could really pull that trigger.”
Despair tugged at her. He hadn’t believed her threat at all! At this rate, she’d never get him away from the station.
“But I could pull the trigger! You might not believe it, but I can be mean as all get-out when provoked. Ask anyone. Ask—”
He grinned. His hand covered hers, eased her fingers’ desperate clench on the cold metal protection of her derringer. “No, you couldn’t.”
“I could! You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, agent Winter. I’m snake-mean sometimes. You should see—”
“I can see,” he interrupted. “And I only needed one look at this place—and at the behemoth out there in the yard, watching out for you—to know that’s not true.”
He must mean Mose. Whatever could simple, sweet Mose have said to the Pinkerton man to make him think such a thing?
She couldn’t give up. Wouldn’t. “But I—”
He stopped her. “You’re about as mean as a day-old kitten, sugar.” One by one, Gabriel pried her fingers loose from her weapon, even as his next words washed over her with deadly seriousness. “But let me warn you right now—if I find out you’re involved in my case, I will take you in. And I’ll turn the key to lock you up myself.”
Visions of the scandalous goodbye kiss she’d imagined earlier whirled through her mind. Combined with the memory of the kiss he’d already given her, it was almost enough to set her tingling anew.
A person would think she wanted him to kiss her again, or something. Megan gave herself a shake and tried not to think about the fact that his hands still covered hers—and with a touch as tender as that of a man come courting the woman he fancied, too.
She’d bet a man like Gabriel Winter didn’t bother with courting anyone. She’d bet a man like him just took what he wanted. Suddenly, she wasn’t at all sure that if she found herself in such a position, she could refuse him anything.
A ridiculous notion, of course, Megan told herself. Surely she had more fortitude, more discipline, than that.
“If you’re involved in this robbery,” he went on, “I’ll find out. And then I’ll find you. And it won’t matter that you’re a woman.”
She couldn’t help the shiver that crept up her spine at his words. But she could help what she did about it, Megan vowed. Never let it be said that she’d abandoned her family, or the station hands who depended on her, in their time of need. The last thing she meant to do was let Gabriel Winter ride roughshod over their lives.
“Would it matter if I were innocent?” she asked, lifting her chin.
“If you were innocent—” He slipped her derringer from her hand and removed its bullets, dropping them into his palm as he spoke. “—then I would know it. I’ve never brought in the wrong man.”
He returned her gun with a small, aggravatingly gentleman-like bow. “Or the wrong woman.”
“How can you be sure?�
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“I’m sure.”
Her chin came up another notch. “I believe you’re confusing arrogance with certainty, agent Winter.”
“Well said, coming from a woman who’s confusing affection with innocence.” He paused, shook his head. “For your sake, I wish you could love your father enough to excuse his crimes. But you can’t.”
“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.
