Lawman by Lisa Plumley Page A

toward release from
the...stifling air of the hotel," Megan countered, doing her best
to ignore Gabriel's raised eyebrows and skeptical expression. She
wished her hands were free to flutter before her face, fan-like,
and bolster her excuse. "I swan, they must never air out these
rooms. It's nigh sweltering in here, and only a few minutes past
noon, at that."
    His gaze bored into hers, deep blue and
filled with a tumult of emotions Megan couldn't begin to name. Lust , a part of her whispered—but some hidden part of her
nearly hoped for more.
    "Deny it all you want," he said,
stone-faced. "I'll go on believing the truth of what I saw."
    "And what did you see?"
    She felt his body tense against hers, every
muscle rigid with remembrance or restraint...or deceit, Megan
warned herself. Turning softhearted over Gabriel Winter would only
endanger her further.
    But gazing up at the lines of weariness
bracketing his mouth, at the darkness shadowing the eyes she'd
admired so much upon meeting him, she did feel softhearted.
Stupidly, Megan wished herself free of his grasp, if only to hold
him in her arms instead. Despite her wariness, she couldn't help
wanting to ease him. Nor could she help wanting to know what he'd
been about by dragging her from the railing by force.
    "What did you see, Gabriel?" she asked
again. "When I stood at the balcony before?"
    His haunted gaze met hers. He bowed his
head, showing her the shining midnight of his hair falling near to
his suit collar...and, in sharp, unknowing contrast, the pale skin
at the nape of his neck where he'd been shielded from the sun.
    "I saw my past," he said.
    The rasp in his voice warned her his past
was nothing he remembered fondly. Nothing he spoke of willingly.
And then Gabriel blinked, and whatever ghosts of the past he
carried vanished with the gesture.
    "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