Lawman (36 page)

"No." Shaking her head, Megan left his arms
and paced to the balcony's other side, then ran her fingers along
the rail. She glanced back at him. "At least not until the next
day. It wasn't until M—Mr. Bowen arrived—"

"The drummer?"

With a curt nod, she acknowledged the truth
of the story Gabriel had gleaned from his Pinkerton sources.
Emmaline Kearney had met with a traveling salesman on that long-ago
day. And if Megan were to be believed, she'd done it with her
daughter in tow.

"—with his piled-up wagon that I realized
why mama had gotten me all gussied up. I waited in the
zaguán
between the station house and the kitchens for the
longest time while they talked in the office. When she finally came
to get me, I was clean as a person just out of the washtub—hair
ribbons in place, and not a speck of dirt on me."

Gabriel pictured Megan as a girl, small and
determined as she waited beneath the adobe archways. "That's no
mean feat for a child," he said. "How did you do it?"

Megan shrugged. "I wanted to play. I
remember watching a lizard run up and down the
zaguán
wall
right beside me—just scuttling along in the sun like they do—and I
wanted to pick him up and play with him so much."

She hugged her arms over her chest and
stared at the stone underfoot, motionless but for the steady stroke
of her thumbs on her elbows. Her position called to mind the way
she'd looked when he'd first questioned her at Kearney Station.
Defensive. Thoughtful. Filled with patience.

At a terrible price.

She looked up. Upon realizing where his gaze
was directed, Megan unfolded her arms with a self-conscious
gesture, and a vague smile crossed her face.

"But I didn't. I kept still much like this,
I suppose. Just waited until mama came for me. One look at her face
was all I needed to know it was something important." Her gaze
turned faraway. "One look at that sharper's face was all I needed
to know what his answer would be."

"Megan—"

Her shoulders stiffened. "It wasn't my
mama's fault. It wasn't!" Megan protested. "She pleaded with him to
take me, too. Threatened not to go along if I couldn't come with
them. Their voices never got loud enough to carry into the station
yard, but I heard most of what she said, Gabriel. She tried to take
me."

How Megan could find anything defensible in
her mother's actions, Gabriel didn't know. He stared in amazement,
picturing the heartless Emmaline and her lover...and the little,
rag-curled girl who had watched them drive away in a drummer's
painted wagon and leave her behind. It was beyond cruel.

And crueler still was Megan's belief that
she'd somehow deserved it all.

Dry-eyed now, she gazed into his face. A
moment later, he felt her thumb nudge the corner of his mouth, then
the upward sweep of her palm on his cheek.

"Don't look so sad," she said. "It's in the
past now."

But it wasn't. Not so long as Megan believed
in it. If he left her with nothing else, Gabriel swore in that
instant, he would leave her with the belief that she deserved to be
treated finely and well.

"They were fools, Megan.
Fools
. And
I'll not hear you say different." Filled with the memory of all
they'd shared, he tilted her face upward in his hands and gave her
his fiercest look. "If it's the last thing I do, I'll have you
believe it."

"You're sweet to say so."

Her tremulous smile told him he might as
well have been speaking to the stars overhead. She didn't believe
him.

"But I was a troublesome child," Megan went
on, waving her hand dismissively. "Curious. Talking too much.
Always getting 'round my punishments. It's no wonder that—"

"
No
."

"—they didn't want me. I'm lacking, somehow.
I must be. I've learned to live with that."

The indifference in her voice was thin as a
sharper's promises. It hurt him to hear it.

"Listen to me," Gabriel said, mimicking the
way she'd all-but shoved her beliefs at him earlier that night. He
rested his forehead gently against hers, willing Megan to hear the
truth. "All you lack is a decent family. Nothing more."

"No," she whispered, pulling away.

He held fast. Pushed back the hair that had
fallen against her cheeks and pulled her still closer. "It's
true."

She brought her head up, her expression
filled with the same fire and determination he admired in her.

"You weren't there," she said. "In this, you
don't have all the facts you love so well. There's no use
pretending you do."

"Maybe not." Gabriel kissed her forehead. He
rubbed his hands in slow circles over her back, feeling her muscles
gradually lose their stiffness beneath his caress. "But in this I
may have more information than you credit me with."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing you should sound so damned
suspicious about." Teasingly, he lowered his hand to give her
rounded bottom a swat. "When will you begin trusting me?"

Megan smoothed her skirts behind her and
gave him a quelling look. "Never, so long as you keep that up!"

"Soon, I'll wager." He looked at her
seriously. "Do you know what your mother's profession was before
she married your father?"

At once, her skirts assumed far less
importance in Megan's thoughts. Her fingers stilled within the
fabric. "If you're about to tell me something horrible, like my
mama was a soiled dove in the city someplace, then you might as
well save your breath."

"It's not that."

Her chin came up at a proud angle. "My papa
would never love a fallen woman. He doesn't even visit them
now."

Gabriel thought it best not to mention the
things he'd heard at Doña Carlotta's house. "No. But he might have
loved an actress. And he did."

Patent disbelief filled her expression. Her
mouth opened, awakening in him a wild urge to close it with a
kiss...one deep, long, and loving enough to clear her thoughts of
all else save pleasure.

"He did not!" she cried, astonishment
evident in her face.

Nodding, Gabriel said, "He did. Emmaline
Kearney—née Chevalier—was an actress on the Denver stage when your
father met her on a prospecting trip. According to my reports, they
met and married within a week, and came back to the Arizona
Territory together. Within a year, Kearney had founded Kearney
station along the Tucson-Tombstone line, and had a flourishing
business on his hands."

"Hmmph." She quirked her lips. "Evidently,
not flourishing enough for my mama."

"Evidently not," Gabriel agreed, wanting to
applaud Megan's newfound spirit. Although she'd seemed bewildered
and bemused in turns when he'd told her all he'd uncovered about
her family, now she just looked ready to believe.

"You didn't know?" he asked.

"My mama never talked about her past." Her
gaze turned contemplative, then brightened with a new sense of
relief. "I guess this explains how she knew so much about styling
my hair."

He couldn't help but laugh. "And it explains
why she couldn't stay at the station. There was no audience to be
had. No footlights or handbills to say how adored she was."

"No applause," Megan whispered.

"She must have needed those things." Gabriel
ran his hands down her sides, feeling the warm feminine curves
hidden beneath calico and lace. At her waist, he used his hands to
draw her nearer. "To give up so much for the sake of them."

"Do you—"

"Don't ask me if I mean it." With a low
rumble of warning, he kissed her, then gazed at her upturned face.
"I do."

Her smile was beautiful to behold. "Do you
know what this means?" Megan wrapped her arms around his waist,
looking almost giddy with what she'd learned. "Maybe it wasn't me,
wasn't my fault all those years ago. Maybe my mama just needed a
different kind of life to be happy."

"It wasn't you. It wasn't." Gabriel smiled
back at her, loving the feel of her arms around him. "And as for
those beaus of yours...well, that's just a few dozen men I won't
have to deal with before I claim you for my own."

Her laughter rang out. "Luckily for
you."

"And you." He grinned still wider. "And
Mose. I suspect he gave himself a full-time job of keeping anyone
wearing britches and boots clear away from you. I do believe you
have yourself a protector. Getting from him to you when I arrived
at the station was like tunneling through a hunk of adobe with a
spoon."

Megan's eyes widened. "He didn't."

"He did."

"And you came for me anyway." Sighing, she
gazed up at him with a bemused look. "Just like a fairytale knight
in shining armor. Just like Addie always said."

Gabriel winked. "I'll slay your dragons,
sugar. All you have to do is believe."

"I believe you stole
my
words of
wisdom. That's what I believe." She smiled anew over his pretended
innocence and hugged him tighter, burying her face in his
shirtfront. "But I don't mind. Right now, I'm so happy I could kiss
a blasted dragon and not care a whit."

"Meg." He put his hand to her chin and
lifted her head. "To hell with dragons. I'd rather you kissed
me."

Chapter Nineteen

"Kissed you?" Swallowing hard, Megan stared
into Gabriel's dark-shadowed face. His was as bold an invitation as
she was likely ever to receive from a man. But did she dare take
it?

Above the hard line of his jaw, Gabriel's
lips curved with amusement. Probably, he'd guessed at the source of
her hesitation, she figured...and didn't care. After all the
revelations he'd unwrapped for her tonight—after all the caring
he'd shown for her tonight—there wasn't much she could find lacking
in Gabriel Winter at this moment.

But there was plenty she found to
desire.

Plenty she found to love.

The appreciative gleam in his eyes, for one.
The warm, muscular strength of his body beneath her hands for
another. And, most of all, the big, gentle heart he'd hidden so
deftly beneath facts and findings and a water-spotted white dress
shirt, for a third.

Drawing in a deep breath, Megan let her gaze
wander over the broad male shoulders his shirt enclosed. She
followed the uneven line of his collar to his partly opened button
placket, and savored the glimpse of tanned skin and curly dark
hairs that showed between its edges. Mercy, but he was a
fine-looking man!

And, tonight, he was hers.

"I believe all knights are owed a boon when
they've made their ladies happy," she said lightly, raising her
fingers to his shirt's wrinkled percale sleeves. The fabric felt
soft as a smile. "And you've done that with room to spare."

Trembling with anticipation, she closed her
eyes briefly and prayed for courage. Then Megan rose on tiptoes,
watching Gabriel's face edge nearer and nearer into her vision. Her
knees wobbled, forcing her to tighten her hold on his shirt for
leverage. She felt her bosom slide slowly up and over his chest,
caught his intoxicating scent of soap and man...tasted pleasure as
her lips touched his.

It should have felt like every other kiss
they'd shared this night.

It did not.

It felt even better.

Bravely, Megan kissed him again. She sensed
the leashed patience in Gabriel's body, felt his heart pound
beneath her questing, curious hands. He wanted her still! And
she—however wicked it might be—she wanted him, as well.

His lips were warm and firm against hers,
yielding just enough to set her senses aflame. Doing her best to
recall his example, she tentatively opened her mouth. She eased her
tongue forward, licked his mouth, nudged at the seam of his lips
until he opened to meet her.

Her reward was a kiss as wild as it was
tender. Gabriel's hand spanned the back of her head, holding her to
him as he returned every loving stroke of her tongue. As a teacher,
he excelled, Megan thought crazily. Practicing something so
wonderful as this would be no hardship at all.

As though in demonstration, he deepened the
kiss. Eager to give him all the feelings that tugged at her heart,
Megan responded with enthusiasm. Nothing had ever felt so
incredible as the caress of his mouth, his hands. Nothing had ever
felt so right.

"Oh, Gabriel," she whispered when she'd
pulled away. "Thank you."

His eyebrows rose. "For a kiss?"

"For...for everything." She felt heat rise
in her cheeks, and made herself say the rest in spite of it.
"
And
for the kiss."

His smile promised more of the same. "Truly,
my lady, the pleasure was mine."

He executed a cavalier's bow, then lifted
his dark head. His gaze roamed over her in the moonlight, touching
her face, her bodice, and her skirts in turn. Somehow, Megan had
the feeling he saw more than ordinary calico. She sensed instead
that he imagined all that lay beneath the fabric and lace, saw
through to the woman inside her. And approved wholeheartedly. The
naked interest in his gaze thrilled her as deeply as did his
words.

The pleasure was mine
.

"The pleasure was yours, you say?" She wound
her arms around his neck, playing with the thick dark hair at his
nape. A cool breeze sifted through the strands, calling her
attention to the warmth of the skin she touched. Gabriel's eyes
turned smoky at her touch, and from somewhere deep inside her,
Megan found the courage to add, "Then I insist you share it with
me."

"Gladly."

He rasped the word, moments before his head
descended once more. His mouth met hers. His steady hands tangled
in her hair, stroking it back from her face with gestures as
comforting as they were exciting. Bliss. It was bliss to be held by
him this way...and to touch him, in return.

She caressed the hard muscled contours of
his back, bunching his shirt by fistfuls. Feeling nigh swept away,
Megan moaned beneath his kiss. A need for their joining to go on
forever welled within her, fierce and exciting in its intensity.
Wicked, wanton, reckless—compared with the wonderful joy of being
in Gabriel's arms, they were words without meaning. Caution was for
another night. Tonight, she wanted to give him everything she
could.