by Lisa Plumley
“Not when you’re doing the work of a man.” He looked up. “I didn’t feel young then.”
His expression suggested that maybe he never had, and a surge of empathy twisted inside Megan. She wanted to go to him, to hold him in her arms and comfort him as he had comforted her. The steely set of Gabriel’s jaw warned her to stay where she was.
He snapped the twig in half, then threw both ends into the fire’s embers. “It’s hard to feel young when you’re hunting your father down, night after night. Searching alleyways. Looking down into the ragged faces you pass, knowing any one of them could be him. Knowing you might be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
Not answering, Gabriel added a log to the fire, then wielded the poker to urge the embers into new flames. When he returned the heavy iron to its place and turned to her at last, his gaze had never seemed more startlingly blue. Or more regretful.
“Did you know that if you stay up long enough, you stop being tired?” he asked, tilting his mouth in an odd smile. “When you leave exhaustion behind, the sounds around you all blur, and everything passes more slowly, but the colors are beautiful. They take on a new brilliance. It’s incredible.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face, seeming passing weary right now, and then twisted his lips with an irony it pained her to see.
“Those colors were the best part of those days, days when my mother sent me out to find my father. She would beg me to bring him home—with luck, before sunrise struck. She didn’t want our neighbors to look up from their morning newspapers and see Timothy Winter singing his way home from the opium dens across town.”
Opium. Had his father been an addict, then? Her image of Gabriel as a brash youth blurred, merging with another, more hurtful reality. A boy wandering alone in the worst parts of town, growing increasingly desperate as dawn streaked over the slumped, drug-rotten bodies of the men whose faces he hadn’t yet examined. A boy expecting to find his father among them.
“Oh, Gabriel….”
His face harsh, he turned again toward the fire. “You didn’t want my pity. I don’t want yours, either. Sometimes it took till the city was waking, but I never went home empty-handed. I always found him.”
Just as he’d always found his Pinkerton suspects, Megan realized. Just as he’d always brought in his man, and meant to bring in her father, as well. She hadn’t known Gabriel’s past was threaded so deeply into the man he was today. Knowing it now only made her all the sadder.
“Your mother must have been very grateful to you,” she said softly. “Not even fully grown, yet you protected your whole family.”
Gabriel stared at her, suspicion evident in his hard-set face. He said nothing.
“It was brave, Gabriel,” she went on, feeling tears tug at her voice. “It was an act of love.”
“It was—” His voice caught, then strengthened. “It was what I was good at. Nothing more. Because of it, I met Tom McMarlin, and I hired on with the Pinkertons a few years later, and my life went forward past the damned stink of opium pipes and the hollow-eyed ghosts who held them.”
“It was the path to a position to you?”
He nodded, stubbornly.
“It was more,” Megan insisted, unable to stand apart from him any longer. She went to the hearth rug and knelt beside him, taking his big hands in hers with twice the urgency with which he’d held her before. “So much more! It was your way of taking care of your family—even your father—when they needed you.”
Shaking his head slightly, he began to pull away, sliding the callous-roughened length of his hands through hers. Megan tightened her grasp, looking at him more closely. He would not retreat from her now. He would not. With a lurch of emotion as painful as any she’d experienced, she recognized the expression on his shadowy face.
Shame.
Sweet heaven, how she’d felt it herself.
Before she could speak, Gabriel drew a breath and spoke quickly. Harshly. “McMarlin was working on a case involving a man who visited some of the same places my father did. Another addict, and a cracksman. I was at that den so often. Nobody noticed me listening to him make plans to sell his boodle around town. Nobody saw me pass on the information to McMarlin. Nobody could pinpoint me when the Pinkertons slapped the hoister in irons a week later and finished their case.”
He stared into the fire. “Nobody was surprised when I signed on with the agency a few years later, after my father had passed away.”
After his mother had needed his constant help no longer, Megan thought. Even then, he had put his family first.
She stroked his knuckles with her thumb, willing him to look at her again. He did not. “Nobody could blame you for caring for the people you love, Gabriel. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
His fingers twisted, clamping hard on hers. “You asked me how I became an agent.” Suddenly, his gaze bored into hers, and she wished mightily to call back her earlier desire to have him look at her. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
“But I can hear so much more!” Her heart near to overflowing with understanding, and with a kind of aching gladness that he’d felt close enough to share his past with her, Megan worked her hand free and caressed his cheek. “You have a loyalty that’s bone-deep, Gabriel. You were good at finding your father because you needed to do it. For him. For your mother. Even for you.”
“No. I found him because I was good at it,” he insisted, his voice deepened and gritty. “I kept disgrace off my family’s necks. I learned how, and I did it. Night after night. It taught me well—and then it trapped me.”
“Trapped you?”
His gaze burned her, filled with an anguish she’d never expected. “Like the shackles I always carry. This work is all I’ve ever been suited for. All I’ve ever known. And it came from a damnably poor part of me.”
“Listen to me.” Fiercely, Megan cupped his face in her hands. She stared into his unyielding features and wished she could push a bit of her belief into him. “Whatever your father was,” she said, “it did not lessen you to help him. Dear God, I should know that well enough myself! And if you’re trapped in your work as an agent, then leave it behind. Walk away, and be happy.”
“Ahhh, Meg.”
With red-rimmed eyes, Gabriel seemed to drink in the sight of her. His hands raised to her shoulders, stroking gently. She had the odd sense his caress was not the kind of beginning she’d felt before, but rather a goodbye. The notion filled her with panic.
“Once I thought I could walk away from the Pinkertons. Make a new life. I meant for this to be my last case.” He shook his head, then briefly closed his eyes. “It will be my last case. But the life I wanted is not what I thought it was. And when this case is over, the future I need will be lost to me. Forever.”
Inexplicably, Gabriel eased her closer. He touched his lips to hers in a kiss so heartbreakingly sweet, she wondered at its cause. Then, with a sound of frustration, he thrust himself away from her.
“The future is never lost if you want it bad enough!” Megan cried stubbornly. “It’s always there, waiting for you to take it. All you have to do is believe.”
A strangled laugh escaped him. Gabriel shook his head, letting the firelight play over his face. She glimpsed the sheen of tears in his eyes when he moved, and felt her heart near stop with surprise.
“No amount of believing is enough to make this right,” he said. “In this, cut-tin stars can’t make it so. Neither can you.”
“I can. Hard work and determination can get me whatever I want. It always has in the past.”
“It won’t this time.” His tone was final. Bleak. “You want something that’s not yours to take.”
What did he think she wanted? The means to end the case against her papa? Suddenly, it seemed likely to Megan that she could have it—or at least that she might persuade the Pinkerton man to give up his search. He’d already told her how he wanted to put his work behind him. Would it hurt to encourage Gabriel to stop worki
ng as an operative now, rather than later?
A chill swept through her at the realization of what she contemplated. It would be ruthless, to be sure, to use Gabriel’s unhappiness with his work as the means to keep her papa free.
Doubtless, it might also prove effective.
Megan bit her lip and gazed across the whisper of space dividing them. In the stillness of their shared room, Gabriel seemed suddenly quieter than before. It was almost as though he’d guessed the trap his revelations might lead him to—and had decided to end them now. If she was to act, she had to do it quickly.
She lay her hand on his, her thoughts filled with urgings to do what she must, to make the Pinkerton man stop his search by whatever means she could. Loyalty to her papa demanded it. The security of her dressmaker’s shop dream nigh required it. And yet…as Megan looked into his rugged face and his unaccountably despairing expression, she found that she could not.
From someplace inside her, she found the strength to hold the balance she’d struck for just a little longer. The will to follow her heart and take a chance on the wintery man who had laid claim to it.
The faith to believe there might still be another path to choose.
“My future is at risk here, as well,” Megan said, thinking both of her father and her own dreams of independent security. “You don’t know by how much.”
“I do know.” Gabriel looked up. At the same time, his hand squeezed hers gently. “I know it will hurt you to have your father taken. I’m sorry for it. If I could change it—”
“You could! Just give—”
“No. If it wasn’t me, t’would be another operative to find him, Meg. There are many on this case.”
Curious, however morbid it was to be so, she asked, “Is there a great reward, then? For the return of the ten thousand dollars taken from the express?”
He shrugged. “There may be. As Pinkerton agents, my men aren’t allowed to claim it. Neither am I. But there’s a powerful client to be satisfied at the end of it, and the agency’s reputation to uphold.”
Not to mention Gabriel’s own reputation, Megan knew.
“It’s the reason I was sent here at all,” Gabriel went on. “The client wasn’t happy with McMarlin’s work on the case, and demanded more.”
“Demanded the best.” She’d meant to say it as a question. But even as the words left her mouth, Megan realized she had no such uncertainties about the Pinkerton man’s competence. Indeed, that was what made him such a formidable foe.
“Yes. And I mean to see that the best gets delivered.”
“Will you tell me your client’s name?” she asked. “I believe I have a right to know which of our express customers leveled such an accusation against my father.”
“No. I cannot.”
He meant he would not. “Not even if I claim it as my second question? Not even if I demand the truth you promised?”
Gabriel’s lips tightened. “Are you claiming it?”
Suddenly weary of battling with him, Megan shook her head. She focused her senses on the feel of his hand on hers, still stroking, and on the warmth of his strong body beside hers, still protectively near, and briefly closed her eyes. How she wanted to lay aside their differences, and explore all that sat right between them instead!
“I’ll not use my final question so carelessly,” she said. “Not when there’s still every chance I’ll find my papa in time.”
Drat those gambler friends of her father’s, for putting Joseph Kearney, and herself, in danger now! Not even the one man who had hauled her from the fountain earlier—a Tucson blacksmith she’d recognized as one of her papa’s long-time Faro partners—had been willing to tell her the secret location of their game. Nor had he heeded her pleas to reveal the secret signal for tomorrow’s match.
Instead, he’d merely melted into the crowd once he’d seen her safely pulled free. The last Megan had seen of him was his broad back, disappearing toward the Faro game in which her papa might already have lost her entire nest egg money.
At the thought of her hard-earned savings being lost in such a way, increasing urgency filled her. Maybe this task really was too big to be taken on alone, just as Addie had said. Maybe she did need help, Megan thought. The kind of help a man like Gabriel Winter could easily provide.
“Find your father in time for what?” Gabriel asked. “It’s not as though his guilt will turn real with the next full moon. All wishful thoughts aside, the facts will not change.”
And neither will the time I have magically lengthen itself.
Suddenly decisive, Megan looked into his face. “When you arrived at Kearney Station, I was on my way to town, remember?”
He nodded. With a bemused smile, he traced a path upward from her gold locket to its chain, then around the edge of her dress’s neckline. “Have I kept you from some woman’s errand? Shopping for lace or shoes or a dozen new hats? You’ll need one after tonight.”
She shifted her gaze to the pathetic clump of fabric and notions on the bureau near the balcony doors. Once her favorite bonnet, it was now a ruined testament to the desperate measures she would take to save her papa.
“Not precisely a woman’s errand.”
“Mmmmm. Go on,” Gabriel said. “I’m listening.”
But he wasn’t. Not really. Megan’s breath caught as two of his fingers edged beneath the neckline of her dress, then skimmed along its calico width. Gabriel’s knuckles grazed the bare skin at her throat and began working lower once more. She slapped her hand over his and held him still, the better to speak before she lost her wits to wanting him…and her will to act as she’d decided was best.
“A daughter’s errand, instead,” she went on, her voice far shakier than she liked. Because of what she was about to reveal? Or simply because of his touch?
She couldn’t risk her new resolve to wonder. “Even before you arrived, I was going to find my father. He has something I need, something I must have before the train east leaves tomorrow night.”
Gabriel looked up, eyes narrowed. “You’re headed east?”
“No.” Megan saw his expression ease, and knew a quick, sharp anger because of it. A part of him still considered her a likely suspect in his case, she realized, and wanted to keep her near if she was. “But my future is headed east on that train tomorrow, unless I find a way to stop it.”
“Your father is headed east?”
“No!” A frustrated sound burst helplessly from her. “For pity’s sake, Gabriel. Am I nothing but a scheming suspect’s daughter to you?”
Leaning forward, he shook his head and raised his hand to cradle her jaw. Gabriel brought her closer. His lips touched her mouth, her cheek, her ear…then came his murmuring, husky voice. “You’re far more than that to me. If you weren’t I’d be on the streets right now, hunting down that damned Faro game until every color in the Territory looked brighter than a dream.”
His confession startled her. The feel of his mouth against her neck excited her. The possibility that maybe, just maybe, she had finally found someone to safely trust did both. The thrill of discovery mingled with the terror of confiding in someone for the first time. Megan quaked with the enormity of all that Gabriel might mean.
And all that he might come to mean, to her.
But for now, she needed to concentrate on a future that waited more closely than Gabriel Winter did. “Jedediah and Prudie Webster are getting on that train tomorrow,” Megan said, “and if I haven’t given them what I promised by then, I’ll lose my best chance at a future I’ve worked for—dreamed of—for years now.”
Staring into the fire, she told him quickly of her arrangement to buy the Webster’s mercantile store for her own—and of the temporary extension she’d arranged with them before completing the deal. When she’d finished, Gabriel wore an expression that looked remarkably near amazement.
“I might have known you’d finagle a deal like that, rather than let them beat you,” he said, sounding impressed—and as though he fought ba
ck a grin. “I’d like to have seen old Prudie’s face when you did it.”
Megan did grin. “It wasn’t half so fine as the sight of her face when she saw you together with me. I’ll cherish that memory for as long as I live.”
Suddenly she wished it could be more than a memory. Wished that so much did not lay still between them. Wished that Gabriel could simply be the man Megan felt powerfully drawn to—instead of the man whose presence alone demanded constant wariness.
But wishes weren’t enough. One look at Gabriel’s face as he considered all she’d confided in him was enough to tell her that. With a surge of foreboding, she watched as he folded his arms and glanced sideways at her.
“What remains to complete the deal?” he asked. “A re-written purchase agreement-your excuse for delaying the sale—and what else? There must be a reason you haven’t told me till now.”
Chapter Eighteen
Gabriel watched Megan fidget with her necklace, her fingers twisting its locket and chain as she formulated an answer to his question. He felt her reluctance as keenly as he had felt her trembling response to his kisses earlier…but in this, he could not muster the same patience. He wanted to see this case to fruition. Have done with it once and for all.
Know what the daughter of his suspect kept hidden.
“Is this the first question of your two?” Megan bargained. “Because if it is, as we agreed upon—”
“Yes. If you wish.” Whatever would take the haunted expression from her face. Whatever would bring the differences between them into the open the soonest.
Frowning, as though determined to think logically past his obvious impatience, Megan said, “There is a reason I haven’t told you this until now.”
She kept her head high, her chin raised in that ever-present defensive posture of hers…but her sad brown eyes begged him to understand all she was about to reveal.
“I couldn’t complete the deal with the Websters. I still can’t. The nest egg money I’d saved to buy my dressmaker’s shop with is here in Tucson, but I don’t know where. And I have only one more day to find it.”