by Lisa Plumley
He chanced a look at her. Quickly, she ducked her head—but the motion couldn’t conceal the silly smile on her face.
“Miss Kearney?” he prodded. He couldn’t have explained the ridiculous pleasure he felt at having made her smile, and he didn’t want to try. “I can see you don’t care for oranges, but I know you’re capable of expressing your opinion.”
In answer, she leaned a bit from her sidesaddle and reached to catch the orange in midair. Gabriel snatched it back, and she gave him a quelling look.
“Actually, I’m partial to ‘agent Chowderhead,’” she said. The sassy smile on her face was a sight to behold.
“I thought you might be.”
“But I’m willing to settle on Gabriel,” Megan went on, her expression sobering, “if that’s what you’d prefer.”
Her voice was soft, filled either with the apology he found himself hoping for—or with the guile he’d come to expect from her. The sweet sound of it could have lulled a lesser man into underestimating her talent for distraction.
Luckily, Gabriel counted himself twice wiser since meeting her this morning.
“And,” she went on, “if you’ll agree to call me Megan in return. I’d like it very much if you would.”
He gave her a doubtful, sideways look. Deftly, he flipped the orange upward, rolled it over the back of his hand, and turned his palm to cup the fruit and complete the trick.
He offered it to her. “I will. Megan it is.”
Her fingers curved over the orange, touched and joined briefly with his. In that instant, he wished her gloves away. He wished for the feel of her bare skin on his, even in an area so small as their hands, and knew his dealings with her could demand more than he’d bargained for. Far more.
Or offer just as much.
Anticipation flowed through him, hot as the sun overhead and just as impossible to extinguish. He wanted her. If the sudden, reflexive tightening of her hand on his meant anything at all, Megan felt the same. Her awareness of it showed in her eyes when she looked up at him. It sounded in the breathlessness in her voice when she spoke.
“Thank you. Very much.”
Damn, but she gave over her thanks like another woman would have invited a man upstairs. Sweetly. Seductively. Too bad it would likely wind up costing him just as much, in the end.
For now, he didn’t care.
“You’re welcome. No need to thank me, though.”
They’d reached an accord. It ought to have been enough, at least for a start. But Gabriel had never been a settling kind of man. Motioning for her to follow, he set his horse into motion toward the two-story, balconied haven of the Cosmopolitan hotel.
“After all, I reckon being on familiar terms with each other will be mighty useful,” he said, nodding toward the hotel’s whitewashed adobe façade and distinctive sign, “once we’re inside…sharing our room.”
Chapter Seven
Sharing a room!
Megan still couldn’t believe Gabriel Winter’s scandalous suggestion—or the impossible, cocksure look the Pinkerton man had worn when he’d made it. He was too determined, too audacious, and too sure of himself by far.
Not to mention too appealing for his own good. And, if she were to be honest, her own. Never had a man paid such undivided attention to her as he had since they’d arrived in Tucson together. Never had anyone paid her such extravagant compliments, or shown such consideration for her wants and desires.
Except in the matter of their hotel room accommodations, of course, Megan amended. There, Gabriel had remained unbudgeable. She was to remain close to him—exceedingly, dangerously close to him—for the duration of their unlikely partnership.
When she’d protested, he’d pointed out quite nicely that she could always stay alone if she chose…in a private cell at the territorial jail. Since that would leave her father at the mercy of Gabriel Winter and all the Pinkerton men he’d assembled, Megan had felt compelled to decline his offer.
As he’d known she would. The rascal.
Sighing, Megan opened the pair of glass-fronted doors leading to the balcony of their second-story room at the Cosmopolitan. Embraced by a swirl of crisp afternoon air, she stepped outside. Almost immediately, her heart lightened.
Despite the luxury at her back, despite the man whose image and presence filled her thoughts, the world she was accustomed to living in still existed. The proof of it drifted upward on the dusty autumn breeze, made itself heard in the clip-clopping hoofbeats of horses and their riders passing in the streets below, and sailed past on the wings of a cactus wren sweeping toward the hotel roof.
Megan’s eyes followed the bird’s flight, and for a moment she wished herself as free as it was. Disasters had closed in on her from all sides. This time, she feared, quick thinking and fast talking might not be enough.
But what else did she have?
Nothing. Dispirited, she curled her fingers around the chilly scrollwork of the wrought iron balcony rail. If she tried, perhaps she could catch a glimpse of the Webster’s shop from here. Surely looking toward her future would bolster her spirits—something she badly needed to do, before being called to face agent Winter again. She’d begged a few moments of privacy when they’d arrived, citing a need to freshen up before calling on the townspeople Gabriel intended to question, but she doubted her respite would last for long.
She had to make the most of her opportunity. While nothing could cool the blush his scandalous compliments brought to her cheeks, and nothing could stop her foolish, French-novel-inspired imagination from leaping to flights of fancy at his touch, the more Megan could prepare herself for his return, the better she’d fare against him.
Sparring with Gabriel had sapped her strength. Being on guard against him had damaged her faith. And, however much she wished it weren’t true, resisting the pull of his quick, charm-filled smile had challenged her heart. But she judged herself holding her own against him, at least, and that accomplishment had to count for something.
It did count for something. For better or worse, Megan Kearney was a woman who believed in taking action. It would be disastrous to begin doubting all she’d done so far.
Perhaps the distance she’d accomplished—however short-lived—had already made her immune to agent Winter’s rogue Irish charms, she decided optimistically. Why, he’d probably return without her even noticing his presence at all.
Immensely cheered at the thought, Megan tightened her grasp on the railing and rose up on tiptoes. The breeze stirred her skirts around her ankles, brushing worsted wool against the thin knit of her cotton stockings as she raised herself still higher by propping one foot on the lower rail. Peering south along the presidio’s Main Street, Megan let her gaze travel past rows of flat-roofed shops and houses, paused upon San Agustín church in the distance, then continued onward.
Was that the Webster’s mercantile, there?
She stopped on a humble whitewashed building, squinting harder. It was. Someday, it would house her new dressmaker’s shop, her dreams for the future—even herself, in the living quarters behind the storefront. Megan imagined herself already there, self-assured and resplendent in her modiste’s fashionable dresses and impeccable manners, taking orders from customers eager to sample her wares.
Once there, she’d be safe. No one would be able to rouse the doubts she’d have put to rest behind braid and buttons and cunning hats. No one would be able to hurt her. She’d be done with reliance, and the ties it wound to hold her. She would be done, once and for all, with being left behind.
This time, she’d take the role of the one who left herself, and be forever beyond the reach of the fears that bedeviled her.
From so high a vantage point, the tiny shop seemed uncommonly close. Felt close, as though she might reach out and cup the baked adobe bricks and all they promised right in the palms of her hands.
Movement behind the mercantile captured Megan’s attention and cut short her thoughts of the future. A figure dressed in black cloth
es and a matching hat crossed the yard with a bundle of goods in his arms. Jedediah Webster, she guessed, carrying his and his wife’s belongings to their wagon parked in back and preparing for their trip to the States. She had so little time to secure their shop for her own! Only three days, and with Gabriel Winter tracking her every step….
She couldn’t think about that now. Wouldn’t. Somehow, she would find a way to clear her father’s name and have the dressmaker’s shop she longed for. With a sense of determination as steady as the black wrought iron railing in her fists, Megan leaned a little further. She could drive away the uncertainty that the Pinkerton man’s arrival had aroused in her, just as she could bring her dream into sharper focus with a closer vantage point.
She had to.
Megan leaned, squinting once more at the shop. A longing to go there, to finish what she’d begun with the Websters and have her future secured, pulled at her. Why did you do it, Papa? Why now, why—
“Megan!”
Gabriel’s voice shattered her thoughts. Turning to see him charging through the entrance to their shared room destroyed her balance, as well. Thrown akilter by the sudden crash of the heavy paneled door against the wallpapered wall, by the sight of Gabriel’s big body moving toward her at surprising speed, Megan wobbled sideways. With a squeal, she clutched at the railing.
Her grasp met scrollwork…and slid. Her midsection jabbed into the railing as she fought to steady herself, and the maze of streets and shops below her whirled. Would a fall from this height be enough to kill her? she wondered wildly. Or would it only leave her with broken limbs and less time than before to help her father, and herself?
Neither, she realized as she straightened her arms and somehow caught her balance again. She’d live to see her father’s name cleared—and to tell agent Winter exactly what she thought of his bull-in-a-china-shop manners. Raising herself to her full height, Megan started to step from the railing so she could confront the man headed toward her.
Instead, his strong arms closed hard around her middle before she could speak. Her breath left her in an undignified grunt as Gabriel yanked her from her perch. With a roar of determination so fierce it made her heart pound, Gabriel lifted her against him from behind.
“No!” he bellowed. “You’ll not escape it that way.”
He shouldered his way backwards between the balcony doors and hauled her inside. Warmer air struck her, and the room’s furnishings jogged by in a jumble as he carried her in his arms beyond the lace-curtained windows, past the marble-topped bureau and cluster of traveling satchels piled beside it, past the potted palm and horsehair settee, all the way to—
The bed. Its white tufted counterpane rose at the edge of her vision, and in that instant Megan realized his intent. Squirming against his iron hold, she yelled for all she was worth.
“Let me go!” she demanded. “Have you lost your mind?”
The rest of the words she’d meant to speak flew from her thoughts as she felt herself lifted, higher than before. He’d ascended the step stool used to clamber into the fancy, four-poster hotel bed. Megan wriggled harder, twisting and arching in his arms, but Gabriel’s strength surrounded her. It made her struggles useless and her cries as ineffective as shouts into the wind.
She sailed downward. Her body struck the bed hard enough to make the counterpane and down-filled mattress billow at her sides, temporarily blinding her with their snowy thickness.
“Be still!” he growled.
Was he insane? Momentarily stunned, Megan told herself he couldn’t really mean to throw her onto the bed and simply ravish her with no warning at all—could he? Agent Winter was a lawman, a self-professed man of truth. Surely his baser instincts were under stricter control than those of the average cowboy or rustler or station hand in town for an afternoon’s carousing.
The impact of Gabriel’s hard, wool-clad body following hers onto the mattress squashed those hopes. Caught beneath his taut muscles and unforgiving strength, Megan remembered how easily he had overpowered her at the balcony railing, and knew that in this instance at least, she was beaten.
For now.
“I won’t let you do it,” he said. “Christ, but if I’d been a step or two later—”
His voice choked to a stop, strangled by whatever impulse tightened his long-fingered grasp on her wrists, as well. Panting, Megan arched her neck and looked from side to side, taking in the sight of his sun-browned hands on her arms long enough to confirm with her eyes what her mind already knew.
Gabriel Winter was a man as untrustworthy as she’d suspected from the start. She’d do well to remember that in the future.
“If you had been a step or two later, I wouldn’t be lying here,” she felt compelled to point out, “with you! And I’d be glad for it.”
Frustration assailed her. What in heaven’s name was he about? What kind of man would assault her this way, and then regret aloud the fact that he’d done it too slowly for his liking?
Megan prided herself on her ability to understand people, including the station hands, drivers, and businessmen she came into daily contact with. But Gabriel Winter confounded her. If she lived to be a thousand, it wouldn’t be time enough to comprehend the workings of his mind.
“Glad of it?” His head bowed. “Dear God, not again,” he whispered.
“Again? But I’d only just—”
“Yes, and come too close, at that!” His interruption came fierce and unguarded, his brogue strengthened by the force of his emotions. “I said you were a wily one, Megan Kearney, and I knew it to be true. From the moment I first laid eyes on you in that station yard, I knew you were uncommon to me as the rest of this damned Territory. But I wouldn’t have pegged you for this.”
“For what?”
His passing mention of the very unfamiliarity she’d surmised—and now knew—he held with Arizona Territory and its people intrigued her. Reassured her, too. But this wasn’t the time to explore what might be her only advantage against him. Plain and true, Gabriel Winter wasn’t making sense, and the feeling of being two thoughts behind him in their dealings unsettled her more than Megan wanted to admit.
Needing to get to the base of his reasoning, she returned to what he’d said before without waiting for an answer to her question.
“There’s nothing wily in looking out over the city,” she told him, trying to imagine what he’d seen when he’d come into the room and glimpsed her at the balcony railing. “Nothing uncommon or strange in looking toward release from the—”
His gaze sharpened. Megan saw his interest and snapped her mouth closed. However flap-jawed an agent he might be, nothing demanded that she confide her plans for the future in him. Indeed, it would be wiser not to. If Gabriel Winter learned of her missing nest egg money, learned of her father’s role in its disappearance, that would only incriminate Papa more.
Striving to seem indifferent—no easy task, given the unexpected stimulation of being sandwiched between the cradling mattress at her back and the hot, wholly unyielding Pinkerton man at her front—Megan gazed up at him.
Sweet mercy, but he was a handsome man! His face held angles and experience too hard-edged to be called beautiful. But just for a moment, she glimpsed the goodness beneath the grit Gabriel Winter showed to the world around him, and that peek inside him was enough to entrance her. Breath held, Megan stared more boldly—and then reality returned.
Despite her earlier hopes, she hadn’t magically become immune to his charms. The realization kindled something close to panic inside her, a sensation very like the way she used to feel as a child, twirling round and round the station yard until she came up dizzy.
At least then it had been apurpose.
“Go on,” he said, his voice a rumble she felt clear through the clothes that separated them.
Go on with what? her despairing mind wondered. And then she remembered.
“In, in looking toward release from the…stifling air of the hotel,” Megan countered, doing her bes
t to ignore Gabriel’s raised eyebrows and skeptical expression. She wished her hands were free to flutter before her face, fan-like, and bolster her excuse. “I swan, they must never air out these rooms. It’s nigh sweltering in here, and only a few minutes past noon, at that.”
His gaze bored into hers, deep blue and filled with a tumult of emotions Megan couldn’t begin to name. Lust, a part of her whispered—but some hidden part of her nearly hoped for more.
“Deny it all you want,” he said, stone-faced. “I’ll go on believing the truth of what I saw.”
“And what did you see?”
She felt his body tense against hers, every muscle rigid with remembrance or restraint…or deceit, Megan warned herself. Turning softhearted over Gabriel Winter would only endanger her further.
But gazing up at the lines of weariness bracketing his mouth, at the darkness shadowing the eyes she’d admired so much upon meeting him, she did feel softhearted. Stupidly, Megan wished herself free of his grasp, if only to hold him in her arms instead. Despite her wariness, she couldn’t help wanting to ease him. Nor could she help wanting to know what he’d been about by dragging her from the railing by force.
“What did you see, Gabriel?” she asked again. “When I stood at the balcony before?”
His haunted gaze met hers. He bowed his head, showing her the shining midnight of his hair falling near to his suit collar…and, in sharp, unknowing contrast, the pale skin at the nape of his neck where he’d been shielded from the sun.
“I saw my past,” he said.
The rasp in his voice warned her his past was nothing he remembered fondly. Nothing he spoke of willingly. And then Gabriel blinked, and whatever ghosts of the past he carried vanished with the gesture.
