Taming Jesse James

The image shouldn’t depress her so much. She quickly changed the subject. “What’s got Chuck’s toupee in such a twist?” she asked.

It was exactly the kind of thing the Before Sarah would have said, something glib and light and casual. But it was obvious from Janie’s raised eyebrows that she didn’t expect anything remotely glib from the stiff, solemn woman Sarah had become.

The rest of the faculty must think she had no sense of humor whatsoever. How could she blame them, when she had given them little indication of it?

She also hadn’t tried very hard to make friends. Not that she hadn’t wanted friends—or, heaven knows, needed them—but for the first time in her life, she hadn’t been able to work up the energy.

This was one of the things she could change, if it wasn’t too late. Starting today, she would go out of her way to be friendly to her fellow teachers. If anybody dared invite her anywhere after she had spent six months rebuffing all their efforts, she wouldn’t refuse this time.

“Somebody broke in to the school last night,” Janie finally answered.

Sarah immediately regretted her glibness. “Was it vandals?”

“Nothing was damaged as far as anybody can tell, but they got away with the Mile High Quarter Jar.”

She suddenly realized that was the reason the foyer in front of the office looked different. Empty. “How? That thing must have weighed a ton!”

As a schoolwide project, the students were collecting money for the regional children’s medical center and were trying to raise enough quarters to cover a mile if they were laid in a straight line.

They still had a way to go, but had raised nearly fifteen hundred dollars in quarters.

Janie shrugged. “Either we’ve had a visit from a superhero-turned-bad or they must have used a dolly of some kind.”

“How did they get in?”

“A broken window in Chuck’s office. That’s probably why he’s so upset. Forget the kids’ money, but if he knows what’s good for him, Chief Harte darn well better catch the villains who dared scatter glass all over His Holiness’s desk.”

Broken glass littering a desk like shards of ice.

Sarah drew a quick breath and pushed the memory aside. She forced a laugh, which earned her another surprised look from the other teacher.

Jesse couldn’t have heard it inside the office, but he lifted his head anyway.

His gaze locked onto hers and a slow, private smile spread over his features like the sun rising over the Salt River range.

A simple smile shouldn’t have the power to make her blush, but she could feel more color seeping into her cheeks. Still, she managed to give him a hesitant smile in return, then quickly turned away to find Janie watching the interaction with avid interest.

“Whoa. What was that all about?”

Sarah blushed harder. “What?”

“Is there something I should know about going on between you and our hunky police chief?”

“No. Of course not! I barely know the man.”

“So why is your face more red than Principal Chuck’s right now? Come on. Tell all!”

“There’s nothing to tell.” Without realizing it, she used the same curt tone she would with an unruly student. “Excuse me. I have to get to class.”

Janie’s tentative friendliness disappeared and she donned a cool mask. “Sorry for prying.”

Sarah felt a pang as she watched it disappear. She remembered her vow to make new friends and realized she was blowing it, big time. “Janie, I’m sorry. But really, nothing’s going on. Chief Harte is just…we’re just…”

“You don’t have to explain. It’s none of my business.”

“Honestly, there’s nothing to explain. I just always seem to act like an idiot around him,” she confessed.

“Don’t we all, sweetheart? What is it about big, gorgeous men that zaps our brain cells?”

The warmth had returned to Janie’s expression, Sarah saw with relief. She wanted to bask in it like a cat sprawled out in a sunbeam.

But she knew she would have to work harder to make a new friend than just a quick conversation in the hallway. Gathering her nerve, she smiled at the other teacher. “Are you on lunch duty this week?”

“No. I had my turn last week.”

“Would you like to escape the school grounds for a half hour and grab a quick bite sometime?”

If she was shocked by the invitation, Janie quickly recovered. “Sure. Just name the day.”

“How about Friday?”

“Sounds perfect.”

It was a start, Sarah thought as she walked to her classroom. And somehow, for just a moment, the water surrounding her didn’t seem quite as cold.

Jesse tuned out Up-Chuck Hendricks and watched Sarah make her slow way down the hall toward her classroom. She was still favoring her leg, he saw with concern. Her walk was just a little uneven, like a wagon rolling along with a wobbly wheel.

He shouldn’t have taken her word that everything was okay the night before. He should have insisted on hauling her to the clinic, just to check things out.

What else was he supposed to have done? He couldn’t force her to go to the doctor if she didn’t want to. He’d done what he could, sat with her as long as she would let him.

It amazed him how protective he felt toward her. Amazed him and made him a little uneasy. He tried to tell himself it was just a natural—if chauvinistic—reaction of a man in the presence of a soft, quiet, fragile woman. But deep down he knew it was more than that. For some strange reason he was fascinated by Sarah McKenzie, and had been since the day she moved to Star Valley.

He’d dreamed about her the night before.

He imagined she would be horror-struck if she knew the hot, steamy activities his subconscious had conjured up for them to do together. Hell, even he was horror-struck when he woke up and found himself hard and ready for action. She wasn’t at all his type. So why couldn’t he seem to stop thinking about her?

“Are you listening to me?”

“Sure.” He snapped his attention back to Chuck Hendricks, chagrined that he’d let himself get so distracted from the investigation by the soft, pretty Sarah McKenzie.

He also didn’t like the fact that the principal could make him feel as if he had somehow traveled twenty years back in time and was once more the troublemaker du jour in Up-Chuck’s sixth-grade class.

“What are you going to do to get to the bottom of this?” Hendricks snapped. “These criminals must be caught and punished severely. I can tell you right where to start. Corey Sylvester.”

The principal said the name with such seething animosity that a wave of sympathy for the kid washed through Jesse. He knew all too well what it was like to be at the top of Chuck’s scapegoat list.

“Why Corey?” he asked.

“It’s exactly the sort of thing he would do. After thirty-five years of teaching hooligans, I know a bad apple and I can tell you that boy is just plain rotten.”

The principal didn’t seem to notice the sudden frown and narrowed gaze of one of those former hooligans. “Besides that,” he went on, “I saw him hanging around by the jar yesterday before lunch recess. It’s the second or third time I’ve seen him there. I know he was up to no good.”

“Maybe he was putting some quarters in.”

Hendricks harrumphed as if the idea was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “I doubt it.”

Jesse felt a muscle twitch in his jaw. He would have liked to tell Up-Chuck exactly what he thought of him, but he knew that wouldn’t help him solve the case of the missing quarters. “I’ll talk to him. But I’ve got to tell you, my instincts are telling me you’re on the wrong track. I don’t think he did it. Or if he did, he couldn’t have acted alone.”

“Why not?”

“Do the math, Chuck.” His smile would have curdled milk, but his former teacher didn’t seem to notice. “Corey weighs no more than sixty-five pounds. A jar with six thousand quarters would weigh a whole lot more than that. He wouldn’t even be able to wrestle it onto a dolly by himself, let alone push the thing out of the building.”

He paused to give the information time to sink through Hendricks’s thick skull. “Then you have the matter of getting it out of here. You think he could haul a dolly weighing that much all the way to his house?”

“Well, he probably had help. Most likely that troublemaking Connor kid. You’ll probably find both of them spending the loot all over town on any manner of illegal—not to mention immoral—activity.”

Yeah. Paying for booze and hookers with quarters always went over real well. “Thanks for all the leads. I’ll do my best to get the money back for the kids.”

The principal sniffed. “I sincerely hope you do.”

Jesse sighed. Having Chuck on his case over this was going to be a major pain in the keister until he found the culprits.

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