by Lisa Plumley
“You were ready to jump, Megan. Don’t deny it again.” His hand caressed her cheek, and his breath feathered past her hair with a gentleness that surprised her as much as his words did. “Rather than admit the truth that’s in front of you, the truth about your father, you were ready to jump to escape it.”
Her mouth fell open. “You thought I was—” Sweet heaven, she could barely bring herself to say it aloud! “—was about to jump from the balcony?”
Were he not so deadly serious, the very notion would have made her laugh. She, give up her life for the sake of an accusation that most certainly couldn’t be true?
“If I were broken so easily as that, I’d never have survived beyond girlhood.” Or beyond all that had come on its heels. “No, agent Winter, I wasn’t—”
“You wouldn’t be the first,” he said solemnly.
Or the first he’d stopped from taking such a desperate measure, Megan guessed, and the knowledge that Gabriel had thought he was saving her life just now cast a brighter light on all he’d done.
“And I’ll wager you wouldn’t be the last,” he went on. “No one wants to believe the worst of the people they love.”
“Fortunately for me, I do not.”
She wriggled experimentally, succeeded only in wedging herself more firmly beneath the weight of his chest and thighs, and stilled to catch her breath. Mercy, the man must have been born straight from the mouth of a quarry, to be so hard everywhere!
“Fortunately for you,” Megan added, searching for another strategy to free herself—or at least to put more than a shadow’s width between them, “I tend not to believe the worst of the people I don’t love, as well.”
“Maybe you should, when the proof is all around you.”
“I wouldn’t begin to know how.”
“Then it’s time you learned.” His words were rough. But the steady caress of his thumb against her temple told another, gentler tale—one that came from the heart, not the mind. Aloud, he said, “Denial can’t hold back the truth. No more than you could hold me back when I brought you inside.”
He’d halted her, not defeated her. She couldn’t let him think he’d won already. “I could have! If only I—”
“No. No more than you could hold me back now…if you had a mind to try.”
Heavens! Suddenly, she tingled with awareness of her situation, caught fully beneath a man’s body for the first time in all her twenty-eight spinster’s years.
“I don’t believe you do,” he said.
“Have a mind to hold you back?” Megan did her best to give him a steely look. “Gracious, agent Winter, you do flatter yourself. What do you think I’ve been trying to do these past few minutes, except get out from beneath you?”
His gaze challenged her—but it was the unexpected sweetness of his smile that jolted her heart.
“I can’t say what you’ve been trying to do. Only what you’ve done. We’re closer than before, thanks to all your squirming.”
He was right, drat him. As though his words had made that fact truer than ever, as though they’d brought her fully alive at last, Megan’s senses grew inexplicably keener.
Around her, the air filled with Gabriel’s scent and her own, with the fragrances of rose water and tobacco and lingering traces of the tangy amole soap the maids used to launder the hotel linens. The coverlet took on a cloud softness she hadn’t noticed before. The fine-spun wool of his suit sleeves rubbed over her bare wrists, and the fabric’s tender abrasion only heightened all else.
She heard her own indrawn breath, and felt his chest rise against her in turn. On the fireplace mantel, the clock ticked off the moments between seeing and feeling, between awareness and whatever action their nearness would give rise to. Was this what it meant to be ravished, after all? If so….
If so, she could never succumb. Especially not while Gabriel Winter was her enemy. Biting her lip, Megan tried to sink into the warmth of the coverlet beneath her and escape in that way. As she’d expected, though, his body only settled more firmly on hers.
“Not that I’m complaining,” he went on. “To my mind, lying still doesn’t have much place in bed.” Now his smile seemed surpassingly devilish, given the circumstances. “Are you hoping to see the worst—and the best—of me? You will, if you keep wiggling like that.”
Panicked, Megan squirmed harder to release herself. This predicament had all the makings of a French-novel heroine’s ruination! Despite her comments to Addie, she was in no way prepared to step between those scandalous pages herself. With a strength born of need—and hopes of dislodging Gabriel’s hold long enough to scramble from beneath him—she thrust her hips toward the high, pressed-tin ceiling.
The sound that rumbled from his throat was something between a masculine moan and a half-formed plea. It froze her in place.
“If you know that’s true, then let me go!” she cried. Had he no sense at all? If her nearness pained him enough to cause the throaty, needful groan he’d just given, then why did he want to continue it?
“Let you go?”
With the practiced expertise of a man accustomed to evaluating all that came near, Gabriel took in the sight of her lying beneath him. His perusal felt soft and warm as a caress, but his flinty gaze told another story. One that mingled with the past he’d only alluded to?
“Damnation,” he muttered. Briefly, his eyes flickered closed, then opened again on another curse. “If I had the brains of a jackass, I would.”
Sensing an opening she might use, Megan stilled her restless squirming. “Do it then. Let me go,” she urged. “You don’t need me for finding my father. You have those other agents, all over the hotel, to—”
“Ahh, but I do. I do need you.”
I do need you. Gabriel was the first person she’d ever heard say so. Sadly, he only wanted her as bait to capture her father. However sugared his words might be, she couldn’t afford to forget that fact.
“Pshaw, agent Winter. You said yourself you’ve tracked dozens of men. Whatever could you need me for?”
“For finding the truth,” he said bluntly. “For finding the facts you don’t want to face any more than…hell. I never should have left you here alone.”
“Finding the truth? You don’t believe it when it’s staring you in the face. You want me for serving as your bed pillow, more likely.”
Her nod indicated their ignoble sprawl atop the groaning rope-sprung mattress. Gabriel’s demeanor brightened.
“Would you?”
She narrowed her gaze and added as much ice to her voice as she could. “No. And if you’ll remember correctly, I asked you to leave me here for a few moments alone.”
It was the least time she’d needed to prepare herself for him—and for facing the gossipy, mean-spirited women in town, too. Dealing with them was nothing Megan looked forward to.
“Leaving you alone is something I won’t be doing again,” Gabriel said. “From here on, we’re bound as true as convicts strung hand and foot.”
“A prediction?”
“A promise.”
She wanted to shiver. Doubtless, he meant again that he wouldn’t hesitate to lock her up, if it served his case to do so. But if that was so, why did untold regret linger behind Gabriel’s eyes? And did that self-recrimination, so evident in the lines bracketing his mouth and brow, owe its cause to his worry over failing at his case? Or to his interest in ensuring her safety from the balcony plunge he thought so likely?
“Despite what you think,” Megan said, addressing the last at the first, “when you did leave me alone, I wasn’t about to leap to a tragic end from the balcony. My father is innocent. How can I make you believe it?”
His gaze slanted darkly over her, then settled on her mouth. “You can’t.”
A sigh escaped her. She’d never met anyone more resolutely determined to bypass faith for facts. Facts might change at any moment. Faith never would. Couldn’t he see that?
Squinting, Megan peered up at him. She couldn’t
hold back a teasing smile as she said, “Up close, you seem less decrepit and aged than I hoped at first sight.” Maybe then, he would have been easier to deter. “Tell me, then—how did you come to be so cynical?”
“Cynical?”
As though he weren’t listening at all but to parrot her words, Gabriel went on staring at her mouth. She felt his fingers smooth away a few wayward strands of hair from her forehead, and wanted to close her eyes beneath the good feelings his gesture aroused in her. His touch was fair bewitching…and she had no defenses against it save one.
Conversation.
“Yes, cynical. Jaded and world-weary, tired of—”
His smile touched her next. “I know what it means.”
She tsk-tsked. “You’re too young to be so cynical, agent Winter.”
“Gabriel,” he reminded her. “And I’m too experienced not to be.”
His was the saddest admission she’d ever heard. Her heart ached at the thought of all he must have seen and done while working to bring in Pinkerton’s most sought-after bandits. He would be bringing all that terrible knowledge to bear on his hunt for her father, Megan knew, and her heart ached doubly for that.
Alone, her father stood no chance against a man such as Gabriel. But maybe with her on his side, helping to clear his name with the time that remained, Joseph Kearney would have a chance. Perhaps even a good one.
Summoning her courage, she asked, “Do you think that might ever change?”
Pain flickered in his eyes, then died. “If I did, sugar, I couldn’t rightly be called a cynic, now could I?”
“I suppose not. But there’s always hope, isn’t there?”
He smiled outright, and his hand delved beneath her hair to cradle the nape of her neck. Slowly, Gabriel leaned closer, bringing the full impact of his Irish eyes and teasing grin still nearer. His hair brushed her cheek. His face eased sideways, beyond her vision.
His breath whispered past her ear. “Hope for you, most surely.”
Tenderly, he pressed a kiss to her ear. Megan jerked with surprise. Her smooth jet earbobs jangled against her neck, their soft impact greater than the force of his lips…but far less arresting.
“Lord, you taste sweet.” He uncoupled her earbob from its place and kissed her again, this time in the sensitive indentation left by her jewelry. “So sweet.”
Her heart turned over. Goosebumps sped clear to her toes; she felt them prickle everywhere, despite the warmth of the room and her many layers of clothes. Gabriel swept his fingers upward from her neck, tugged gently. Near her other ear came a tumbling sound, like the muted clatter of dice cupped in a gambler’s palm.
Her other earbob joined the first. With more care than she would have expected from a man so large, he leaned across the dipping mattress to drop her jewelry safely onto the bedside table.
Concentrate, Megan ordered herself. His movement gave her just the opportunity she needed. However her stomach whirled at the feel of his warm lips against her skin, she couldn’t wantonly lie there and hope for more.
Nor could she let his whispered endearments erase all the words he’d said just before. They confirmed what she believed of him. They gave Megan one more hope to cling to in her battle against him.
Could she turn Gabriel Winter less cynical? Make some bit of belief squeeze its way past his walled heart and mind? If she could, perhaps he’d believe the truth about her father, as well.
She had to try.
In a flurry of petticoats and brown woolen skirts, Megan seized her one opportunity to scoot from beneath the Pinkerton man’s shadow. Breathless—thanks only to the blasted, too-small waistline she’d sewn into her new dress, she felt sure—she scrambled on hands and knees to the far edge of the bed.
“You could be sweet, too,” she announced boldly. “With the correct sort of teaching.”
Gabriel noticed she’d slipped away. Blithely, he reclined across the center of the rumpled coverlet, just beyond the place where she sat with her skirts arrayed atop her bent knees. He rolled onto his side and propped his head in his hand, seeming unconcerned with the fact that she’d escaped him.
Which showed exactly what sort of ravisher he’d turned out to be, Megan supposed with a surge of unwelcome disappointment.
His eyebrows raised. “What sort of teaching is that?”
Feeling unreasonably piqued, she rose and felt with her toes for the bed’s step stool. Once she’d found it, she stepped from the bed and assumed what she hoped would seem a detached, professorial pose. If Gabriel respected facts more than feelings, by God, she would present her feelings as facts and beat him at his own game.
He watched her feet touch the colorfully embroidered rug, and disappointment crossed his face. “Never mind. There’s nothing either of us can learn with you all the way down there, sugar.”
Frowning past whatever nonsense he meant with that remark, Megan said, “I’ll do the teaching here. And I’ll have you know, I’ve discerned exactly what you need.”
With satisfaction, she noticed the interest return to his expression. “You have?”
“Yes. And if you’ll take my hand, I’ll show you precisely what I mean.”
Chapter Eight
“This is not exactly what I needed,” Gabriel said.
And it was so far from what he’d hoped Megan meant about teaching him what he needed—teaching him sweetness—as to be almost laughable. Smiling despite that fact, he paused at the window of the simple yellow-painted adobe building she had led him to.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “It is what you need. Or at least, a part of it.”
Making a noncommittal sound, he cupped his hands at his temples and peered inside the window. All he managed to catch were glimpses of people moving amongst tablecloth-covered tables and chairs, flickering lamplight, and an assortment of statuary before she tugged him toward the door.
He frowned—in confusion, he told himself, not disappointment. Never that. “I hate to tell you your own city, but we could have eaten all the way across town and saved ourselves some shoe leather. Those steaks at the Congress Hall saloon smelled mighty fine to me when we passed by there.”
“And so did the tamales the ladies were selling in the plaza when we passed through there,” Megan said, grinning. “I know, you told me. But nothing else is quite like this. Trust me.”
Trust her? Not likely. Not as long as she insisted on shouting her father’s innocence to anyone who’d stand still. But in a matter so small as this, Gabriel guessed he’d have to. After all, if his sisters and mother were any indication, women were prone to fancies like this excursion across town. Once they took a certain notion into their heads, nothing else would satisfy.
He and Megan passed beneath a fancy-lettered sign naming the place as Hop Kee’s Celestial Restaurant. Nearing the unlikely seeming red lacquered door, he reached past his companion’s shoulder, dodged a lowlying feather from her smorgasbord of a hat, and pushed the door open.
“Allow me.” Holding the door ajar, he doffed his own, less-embellished headgear and motioned her inside.
“Why, thank you kindly, sir.” Her smile flashed. “And to think I’d begun having doubts about your status as a gentleman, after all that passed between us at the hotel.”
At her words, Gabriel felt again the sweet, curved warmth of her body beneath him on the mattress, inhaled again the scents of roses and sunshine that surrounded her. Her nearness alone had the power to set his senses afire, he’d discovered. Only pure grit—and the knowledge that they were enemies still—had kept him from deliberately kindling a similar heat within Megan.
“A sliver of sunshine couldn’t have passed between us, sugar. We were too close together for that.”
She paused on the threshold and looked backward at him. “That’s what I mean. It was hardly gentlemanly of you.”
Neither were the thoughts he found himself entertaining right now. The sensual pucker and release of her lips was worthy of several moments’ contemplation i
n itself, as was the enticing swell of her breasts, only a few breaths distant from his outstretched arm. Were her curves due to feminine trickery, like a soiled dove’s padded combinations and rouged cheeks? Or were they genuine?
Sorely tempted to find out, Gabriel leaned closer into the doorway. The darkened vestibule of some Chinaman’s restaurant was hardly the place to indulge his curiosity about a wanted man’s daughter. But despite that fact, he felt himself drawn to touch the petal softness of Megan’s mouth, to linger a little longer in the shadows with her, to sample the pleasures he might find with her…and to pleasure her, in return.
All of which were, no doubt, exactly the distractions she’d meant to engender, he realized. He’d neatly stepped in tune with another of her double-edged maneuverings.
Damnation. It was almost enough to make him wish she’d come out with it straight, and wallop him in the shins again.
Almost.
Determined to fall for no more of her tricks, Gabriel straightened. He fisted his hand on his hat brim and said, “It was more gentlemanly than you know.”
“Hmmph. I suppose you expect me to thank you for that?”
Her arched brows and skeptical expression said the desert would turn to snowdrifts before she’d thank him for anything—least of all holding her captive on their shared hotel room bed.
“Thank me?” Leisurely, Gabriel took in the fit of her fussy brown dress—still slightly rumpled, despite her attempts to smooth it—and the subtle disarray of her upswept hair, only half-tamed by her hat. Both reminded him of how close he’d come to abandoning the principles that had guided him all these long years on the Pinkerton trail.
“Yes, you should,” he said, and felt it to be true. He frowned. “I didn’t have to let you out of that bed at all.”
Thrusting her nose in the air, Megan planted her hand beside his on the door. She pushed it a little wider open. “Never mind the courtesy. I didn’t realize it came with a price.”
“Everything does.”
It was a fact he lived with. A fact he’d never had cause to regret. But watching Megan sashay alone into Hop Kee’s Celestial Restaurant, bustle swaying and chin held high as though she owned the place, Gabriel did have regrets.
