by Lisa Plumley
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?”
“I’d rather forget.” A disgruntled expression crossed her face. “You don’t have to look so blasted smug about it, agent Win—”
“Gabriel,” he reminded. Abandoning thoughts of laying her down on the hearth rug—at least for the moment—he strode instead to the cluster of baggage nearby. He reached for an opened satchel. “I saw some fruit you’d packed in here when I was moving things aside for the washtub. I’ll just—”
“No!”
He paused with his hand thrust between the softness of a bit of clothing and the leather-bound hardness of a book. “No, what? You said you were hungry. There’s a solution to that problem right here.”
“I’m not hungry anymore,” she blurted.
In obvious protest, her stomach rumbled. Looking chagrined, Megan clapped her palm over top of it. “I’m not,” she added, less forcefully now.
What daftness was this? Most likely, she didn’t want him rooting amongst her things, Gabriel decided. On the verge of withdrawing his hand, he felt his fingers touch the round, dimpled surface of the orange he’d seen. He pulled it out and flipped it into the air, then caught it.
Her eyes watched him perform the trick with an eagerness—and a shadow of despair—he had never expected. Stopping with the fruit held suspended toward her, he crossed the short length of floor separating them. “I’ll even peel it for you, if you like.”
“I don’t like!” She made a grab for the orange.
Puzzled, Gabriel held it back. “The kitchen downstairs is closed. This is all there is to eat until tomorrow—unless you plan to make a meal of the potted palm over there, and have bath water to drink along with it.”
Megan shook her head. Biting her lip, she folded her hands in her lap along with her hairbrush. Given the hunger in her eyes as she gazed up at him just then, he’d have sworn she meant to make a meal out of him.
The idea had merit, the man in him decided.
Stay away, the Pinkerton operative in him warned.
Plainly, the time for sensible thought had passed, when both parts of him could no longer agree. Gabriel hesitated. For the first time he could remember, he wanted to cast aside reason and logic and truth, and hold beauty in his hands instead. He wanted to use his vaunted instincts for something besides winnowing out facts.
He wanted to make Megan happy.
Even if only
for tonight, he wanted to see her pleased. Satisfied. Lonely no longer. He’d lived too long with that same emptiness inside him to wish it on her as well.
During all his long years as an operative, he’d had nothing to hold close but the cold comfort of a case well-completed. Now—tonight—Gabriel wanted free of secrets and lies. He wanted a woman’s arms around him instead.
And he wanted that woman to be Meg.
He hunkered down beside her, running his fingers over the orange’s cool-skinned surface. “It looks awfully good to me. Ripe. Round. Sweet, I’ll wager—with just enough tang to make a man hungry for bite after bite.” Gently, he tugged her hand from her lap and pressed her fingers to join with his over the fruit. “Just like you, Meg.”
She looked up, startled. “Just like me? I don’t—” She licked her lips, and her gaze turned watchful instead. “You’re not making sense.”
“This from a woman who’s hungry one minute and sated the next?” Gabriel grinned. “I make plenty of sense, once you quit looking for an underside to everything I say.”
With a murmured disagreement, she twisted her fingers beneath his to pull away. With patience to spare now that his mind was made up, he released her.
Megan stared at her freed hand in surprise. “You let me go.”
“I want you to come to me willingly, or not at all.”
Her head came up sharply. “Does that mean I can leave?”
Hurt welled within him at her words. He closed his eyes against it, briefly, then gazed at her again. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“But I could if I chose to,” she argued, shrewd as he should have expected. “After all, you can’t very well keep me here with wanting.”
“No,” he agreed. Gabriel rolled the orange from hand to hand, its weight cupped in his palms and briefly caressed, then moved again. “But I hope it makes a difference to you.”
If it did, he couldn’t tell. Megan’s face betrayed nothing of her feelings, beyond thoughtfulness. Her indrawn breath might have signified surprise, agreement…or even fury. In this, he had no Pinkerton techniques to show the way, no past experience to lend its guidance. Nothing but instinct.
And need.
Gabriel edged sideways and held out the orange. “Here.”
“Thank you.” Her fingers trembled as she took it from his hand. Frowning down at it, Megan hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Are you hungry? Because if you are, I suppose I—”
“No.” He shook his head and leaned closer, smiling as he realized she hadn’t moved away from his nearness. “Thank you. But I’ll not let a woman go hungry because I ate the last piece of fruit.”
“Oh, but if you’re hungry,” she protested, “I could—”
“No.” Carefully, he eased the hairbrush from her slackened grasp and fitted its smooth handle in his fist. “I’m hungrier for something a shade more…satisfying.”
Still smiling, Gabriel seated himself behind her. He stretched his legs forward, spreading them on either side of her skirted hips so that his thighs straddled hers and his boot heels pointed toward the fire. She jumped a little as his legs came forward, and started to rise.
“No need for that,” he murmured, settling his hands on her shoulders. He rubbed softly, the hairbrush poking from beneath his thumb, and waited for her skittishness to ease. “I’m just looking for a little warmth. It was wicked cold outside on that balcony waiting for your bath to be done.”
“Oh.”
Her voice sounded small. Regretful. He hoped it would not sound the same when this night lay finished between them.
“I didn’t mean to make you cold, or hungry,” Megan went on, half turning her head to look over her shoulder at him. “I’m sorry, agent Win—”
“Gabriel.” Lord, but he hungered for the sound of his name on her lips. Holding back the need, he parted a length of her shining dark hair and raised the hairbrush to smooth it. “Tonight I’m just a man. Just Gabriel.”
The hairbrush ended its course. He began another stroke, delicately working the bristles past the silkiness in his hands. In places, her hair had nearly dried already from the heat of the fire.
Twisting at the waist, Megan reached behind her for the hairbrush. “You don’t have to do that! Gracious, I don’t know where my mind is at tonight.”
He hoped it was on him. Giving her groping fingers a squeeze, Gabriel settled himself more firmly behind her and went on brushing. “I want to do it.” He paused. “Will you let me?”
Her stillness struck him. For the space of more heartbeats than he cared to count, she neither moved nor spoke. Then her shoulders began their slow rise and fall, moving gently with each breath she took. With an almost imperceptible movement, Megan nudged herself more closely into the vee of his legs.
It was as much an assent as he was likely to earn. Feeling gratified, Gabriel raised the hairbrush again. Silence lay between them—but this time it was a comfortable quiet, filled with the crackle of the brush through her hair, the occasional popping spark from the fire, and the mingling of their breaths. The herbal scent of whatever Megan had used on her hair washed over him, a subtle reward as he worked through the rapidly drying strands again and again.
The motion was beyond soothing. Gabriel raised his arms slowly, enjoying it. Eventually, he worked free every tangle, smoothed every rebellious wave into a silken, straight mass. When he was done, her hair flowed long enough that the ends of it flicked past his groin, slithering over him like tiny lashes of fire…fire he’d unleashed on himself.
His imagination caught hold of the image. He pictured Megan moving over him, pictured the soft length of her hair cascading over his bare skin, and wanted to groan aloud at the thought. Tightening his fingers on the hairbrush, Gabriel fought the urge to hurl it aside and turn his wonderings to the reality he’d dreamed of.
She could be a suspect, a witness, an accomplice, he told himself for the hundredth time.
But now, suddenly, it mattered not at all. Not when it came down to he and Megan alone together.
A sniff broke the peaceful silence between them. Then another. With a pain as deep as any he’d ever felt, Gabriel bent to turn her face to his…and saw that Megan wept.
His heart ached for her. Whispering her name, he did cast aside the hairbrush—but it was to take her in his arms and comfort her. Nothing more.
He didn’t think he’d hurt her. Surely, Gabriel knew, he hadn’t brushed so hard as that. Why then, did she cry now?
“I’m all right.” As though in demonstration, a lopsided smile touched her face when she lifted it toward him. She sniffed harder, and raised her hand to dash away her tears. “I’m sorry to turn all watery on you, Gabriel. I just couldn’t help myself.”
She made as though to rise. He held her in place with nothing more than a hand and a questioning look, but was too worried over her tears to take pride in the accomplishment—or in the fact that finally she had called him by his name.
“Really,” she insisted, taking up the brush from where it had fallen beside her. Staring at it, watching the bristles bend and spring back beneath her moving thumb, she sucked in a shuddering breath. “Thank you for helping me.”
Gabriel boggled. “For helping you weep? I’ve never heard more madness from you.”
Concerned, he edged sideways atop the hearth rug, then thumbed up her chin and examined her tearstained cheeks. They bloomed pink beneath the signs of her sadness, as much a contradiction as Megan herself. With a frown, he searched his mind for whatever might pass for womanly logic in an instance like this one, and came up with only one answer.
“Does this have something more to do with that damned orange?” Gabriel asked suspiciously. “Because if it does—”
Her chortle of laughter astonished him. “The orange?” With patent disbelief, Megan shook her head. “No!”
Tenderly, she twisted enough that they sat nearly chest to chest, her bent knees touching his leg. She cradled his cheek in her hand. Her touch was li
ke a benediction, proof that he’d chosen wisely to stay with her. Gabriel felt humbled by it, especially in the aftermath of her tears. How could she stroke him so sweetly, when he’d just a few moments ago made her weep?
Her gaze searched his—measuring, considering, constantly wary—and then, with a decisive air, she lowered her hand.
“I didn’t want to eat that orange,” she said quietly, “because I’d been saving it.”
“Saving it.” Was that the entire explanation, or was there more to follow? Thoroughly off-balance, Gabriel waited.
She nodded. “Yes, saving it. As a kind of memento.” Some emotion, either embarrassment or excitement or something else, heightened the flush on her cheeks. “So I would remember receiving it, and remember—”
Megan stopped, swallowed hard as though gathering courage, and plunged onward: “So I would remember you. You gave it to me, Gabriel, and I…I wanted to remember you.”
All at once, Gabriel recalled riding down that dusty street with Megan, thought of gifting her with the orange from the fruit vendor they’d seen. They’d been no more than avowed enemies then, and yet she’d found something in him worth remembering. Worth saving. The sweetness of her confession poured through him, leaving him awestruck with the depth of feeling it aroused.
Her shoulders quivered. Silently, she gazed at the orange held in her cupped hands, round and colorful against the darkness of her spread skirts. As he watched, Megan rubbed her thumbs gently over the fruit’s surface. With a grace that was beautiful to see, she shyly smiled up at him again.
“I—I know it’s silly. It’s only an orange, after all, but I…it’s just that a woman like me doesn’t receive so very many gifts, especially not from a man like you. I wanted to remember it.”
“Ahhhh, Meg.” Gabriel swept a tear from her cheek, felt her smile tremble and broaden beneath his hand, and knew a savage need to give her all that he had…all that he ever might become. For now, he only answered her smile with one of his own, and then touched his lips to hers. “It’s not silly to remember. It’s not. I’m glad you did.”