Lawman (30 page)

She reckoned he could just deal with the
consequences.

He swallowed hard, then gave her a
questioning look. "My advice?"

"Yes." Feeling herself on the brink of
regaining her composure, Megan propped her bare arms atop the
screen and looked at him. "It might do you good to confide in
someone."

"I suppose you hope such a confidant might
be you?"

She might have guessed he would try using
her own reasoning against her. It didn't matter. She would not be
defeated.

"Certainly, me." Megan batted her eyelashes,
then widened her eyes in a blatant attempt to seem as trustworthy
as possible. "Why not?"

Another of his glib smiles foretold a new
twist—else gave away his skepticism at her obviously assumed
trustworthiness.

"But
you
did not confide in
me
," he said.

"You're right. And if I did?" To hide her
growing interest in the notion, Megan ducked her head and set to
work unhooking her corset. She sucked in her breath, parted the
last steel fastener, and dropped the garment to the floor with a
sigh of relief. "If I did confide in you?"

"You wouldn't." Gabriel touched one of her
castoff stockings, and smiled faintly. "I have a feeling I've
already come as close to you tonight as I ever will."

Was that longing she heard in his voice?
Surely not, not from a man who only pitied her. And that could not
be an answering need she felt in herself, Megan vowed. She would
simply not allow it.

"Perhaps." From behind the screen she
shrugged, then absently ran her hands down her white lawn chemise
and drawers in an attempt to discern if they truly had remained as
dry as they felt. "Or perhaps we might come still closer—"

"Closer?"

"—with a bit of confiding, of course."

She looked up, and gasped to find him
practically nose-to-nose to her. When had he moved so near? And
why?

"Those are dangerous words, for a woman
who's dressed so temptingly as you." Gabriel arched his eyebrow,
and wrapped his hands around the screen top, as though preparing to
peer over it. "Or should I say, as undressed as you are?"

Megan rapped away his knuckles. She must
have gone mad, to be conducting a discussion with him while only
partly dressed. Buying time until she could get herself outfitted
in a new dress, she nervously backed up, then gave him a look
designed to keep him at a safe distance. The same withering glance
always worked wonders on the station hands back home, even when
they'd imbibed too much Old Orchard and came looking for advanced
pay or favors from the boss's spinster daughter.

Oddly enough, it did not have the same
effect on Gabriel. He didn't even blink. He did smile, though, in
an especially knowing way. Why ever was he looking that way? She
couldn't spare more time to wonder. Instead, Megan smiled
self-consciously and groped for another gown to change into.

"I propose a trade," she said.

"I'm interested."

He looked it, too, she thought, glancing up
as she pawed through the things draped over top of the screen.
Good. Perhaps she had him nearly hooked.

Where
was
that dress? She'd been sure
she'd left her calico from last night draped over the screen
someplace. Frowning, Megan resumed her search.

"What shall we trade?" Gabriel went on.

"Truths," she answered, deliberately
strengthening her voice. "I'll answer one question of yours—any
question you name—and in return, you'll answer one of mine.
Truthfully."

He clapped his hand over his heart. "You
wound me. I'm always truthful."

She couldn't help but smile. "It's poor form
to promise the truth with a lie on your lips."

Gabriel laughed. "Meg, we are two of a
kind."

Meg, Meg
. How she loved it when he
called her that. Hearing the nickname slip from his lips when he'd
kissed her had made her feel so cherished, so beloved, so...no. She
couldn't think about that now. There was more at stake here than a
stolen kiss and the need that had coaxed it into being.

"Then do we have a deal?" she asked.

"No." He shook his head, pressing his lips
together in thought. "I want three questions."

"Three? No!"

One was risky enough, Megan figured. In
truth, though, the risk to her seemed small. She'd had almost a
whole lifetime of fending off curious questions—about her mama, her
papa's gambling, her reasons for not marrying. She doubted the
Pinkerton man could claim the same.

"One question," she insisted.

"Hmmm." On the other side of the screen,
Gabriel hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and appeared to consider
her proposition. Then he bent and scooped something from the
floor.

In his hand, she glimpsed something blue and
sprigged with flowers. Something of fabric and lace, with a long
row of pearl buttons. Something that looked suspiciously like the
calico gown she'd been searching for.

The blasted man had found her dress on the
wrong side of the screen!

"Two questions," he bargained, "answered
truthfully. Any two questions."

"Give me my dress!" Rising on tiptoes, Megan
reached for it—and missed. She sighed and gave him an ire-filled
look. "This trade was my idea. You can't just barge in and dictate
terms to me."

"I can't?" He smiled and flung her dress
casually over his shoulder, holding it in place with a crooked
thumb. "Watch me. Two questions, Megan. Say yes."

Curiosity got the better of her—that, and
the need to have her dress back. "Fine!" she snapped. "But I ask
the first question."

With all the assurance she'd come to expect
from him, he nodded. That very assurance made her want to think up
the most dastardly, the most revealing, the most embarrassingly
personal question she could.

"Very well," Gabriel said. "Ask me
anything."

Chapter Sixteen

Ask me anything
.

Gabriel thought over the foolhardy challenge
he'd issued to Megan, and for the tenth time that night he
regretted it. The woman meant to make him squirm. He was sure of it
now. So far, she'd delayed her questioning for the sake of a
hastily called bath, a change of clothes, and the gathering of a
hairbrush from her bulging baggage. Now, from her seated position
before the fire, she turned her wily, clean-scrubbed face to his
and made ready to delay him yet again.

"Perhaps a bite to eat first?" she
suggested. Beneath her pink, freckled cheeks, her lips pursed in
apparent thoughtfulness. "I would hate to have you keel over with
hunger in the midst of my first question."

Seated on the sofa only a short distance
away, he stared levelly back at her. His fingers paused in the path
he'd been absently rubbing along her discarded dress, then Gabriel
rose. With satisfaction, he noted the way her gaze followed his
movement.

He stopped a few inches from the rug that
sheltered her rounded, calico-clad bottom and bare feet from the
pinewood floor.

"Do I look underfed to you?" he asked.

Her lonesome brown eyes widened. The
hairbrush went slack in her fist. Mutely, she shook her head—and
then touched him with her gaze yet again. He felt her attention
like a hot caress, everyplace she gifted him with a glance...on his
mouth, his shoulders, his chest, and brazenly lower. Her deepening
blush said more than Megan's silent denial allowed.

She liked the way he looked. The
appreciation in her eyes told him so, and Gabriel found himself
gladdened by her response. He drank it in like a good Napa Valley
Merlot
from back home, savoring the richness of her reaction
along with its bite.

Mmmmm.

Just as with the wine, the aftereffects of
loving Megan might be enough to bring him low. But that was for
tomorrow, Gabriel vowed. That was for the time when they'd return
to the
presidio
surrounding them, the time when he would
resume his Pinkerton work and all it entailed. Tonight belonged to
him and Megan alone.

The opportunity to be peaceably alone with
her might never come again. He meant to make use of it for as long
as it lasted.

She jerked her head and tightened her grasp
on her hairbrush. "No, actually," she said gamely, working the
fingers of her free hand through her loose damp hair as though to
untangle it. "Not underfed at all, now that I think on it. You seem
quite, ahhh, able-bodied to me."

Her lips quirked in a smile he recognized.
It was the same flirtatious one Megan had given him back at Kearney
Station, when she'd been trying to seduce him into abandoning his
search of the place. Now, as then, it worked.

Like magic, his blood ran hotter.

He took one step closer, beset with an urge
to kneel before the fire with her, to take her in his arms again
and let their dangerous trade of questions be damned. He wanted to
touch her. He wanted to feel her warmth beside him, and know that
he had helped coax it into being.

Gabriel almost smiled. He had seen her
warmed, to be sure—and himself heated right along with her. If
their shared kiss had not accomplished it, the scalding bath water
he had ordered for her would have. Especially considering the
lengthy time she'd soaked in it.

While he'd been exiled to the chilly privacy
of their room's balcony to allow Megan some privacy, Gabriel had
seen the tendrils of steam snake beneath the balcony doors from her
tub. He'd smelled the sweetness of coconut soap and flowery
shampoo, mingled with the antiseptic odor of the Epsom salts the
maid had added to the bath to ease the sore muscles Megan had
gained herself at the fountain.

He'd seen the vague silhouette of her head
and shoulders moving behind the lace curtains, and had been
tortured with hints of a woman he could not—or at least should
not—possess. He'd heard the liquid teasing of water lapping at the
tub's steely sides, had heard her gentle splashing as she'd moved
in the water to wash...and Gabriel had known from that moment a
wanting for her unlike anything he'd ever experienced.

It remained with him still, curled in his
belly with hungry patience. Was Megan aware of it? Was that why she
gave him that special sorceress' smile?

Or did he only want that to be true?

"On the other hand," Megan went on, her tone
an uncanny echo to his earlier, "I've heard that you can't believe
everything you see. Maybe I ought to be wary."

Gabriel delivered her a bewitching grin of
his own and came closer. "You most definitely ought to be
wary."

Wary of the way I want you
.

Fiercely. Lustily. Lovingly
.

Christ, but he was in too deep with this,
and with her.

"Wary of you?" Megan asked, her voice light.
"Pshaw. I can handle a man like you with one hand tied back."

She waved her tortoiseshell hairbrush in the
air as though indicating which hand she'd meant would be tied, her
gaze directed toward the fire rather than at him. "Both hands,
even!" she boasted. "I've all-but proved it already."

He grinned, intrigued with the notion of her
offered up to him, a willing prisoner to his touch, his kiss, his
loving. "Care to test your theory, sugar? I'm game if you are."

For a moment, her back stiffened. Then her
face tilted toward him as she looked over her shoulder and upward.
Her eyes were alight with humor. "Very well. You go first. Mose
showed me a passably good fisherman's knot I could use on you."

"On me?"

Laughing, Megan went back to her hair,
gathering the lustrous strands she'd already untangled in her palm
and slinging them over her shoulder. "You need to listen more
carefully. I never said it would be
my
hands that were
tied."

Gabriel felt as though his hands already
were tied—bound by the discipline he'd kept round himself during
all his long Pinkerton's years. Never had he dallied with a
witness—or a damned suspect! Never had he even been tempted. Now he
felt tempted and more, lured closer to Megan as surely as if she'd
lassoed him with the kind of fancy rope work she'd been talking
of.

He neared the hearth, watching the curve of
her bent head as Megan combed her fingers through her hair, and
felt the heat of the fire prickle his skin. Liking the sensation,
Gabriel turned to face the greedy flames more directly. Their
blazing heat worked wonders on his muscles and mind, easing him
into a more relaxed posture.

His neck loosened, relieved for the moment
of its usual knots and stiff-held tension. His arms went slack at
his sides, freed of their confining cuffs and sleeves—at least
partway, as far as he'd rolled them. He hated the fussy clothes his
job often required.

Today for instance, while he'd been stirring
the thick, chocolaty fudge at Hattie McDaniel's house, his shirt
and vest had required more care than simple clothing ought to.
Gabriel briefly considered removing his shirt altogether, then
thought better of it.

At a liberty like that, Megan would likely
brain him with the fireplace poker for his trouble.

For now, apparently too engrossed in working
through a particularly snarled length of hair to look up at him,
she simply sat at his feet. She shrugged. "Perhaps tomorrow I'll be
wary of you again. Or maybe later, once I've had enough to eat to
get my thoughts straight a—"

"Ah-ha!"

She blinked up. "Ah-ha, what?"

"
You're
the one who's hungry."

"I never said that!"

Smiling, he tweaked the tip of her ear. She
jerked in surprise and clapped her hand over it just as he slipped
his fingers away.

"You didn't have to say it." Did she think
he was senseless to the ways of womankind? He did have two sisters
and a mother back home, after all. "I'm a listening kind of man,
remember?"