TAMING JESSE JAMES Read online

  "How's the pain?" the nurse asked.

  Numb. Just like the rest of her. She had novocaine where her emotions, where her soul, were supposed to be. "Fine." She mustered a smile. "Can't feel a thing."

  "Let me know when it starts to wear off," Dr. Wallace said. "We can give you another shot."

  She nodded. All she wanted to do was close her eyes for a while and pretend the past two hours had never happened. But the white-coated professionals at the Salt River Health Clinic wouldn't give her that luxury. Not when there was poking and prodding and bandaging to be done.

  It didn't really matter. She doubted if she would be able to forget, even for a moment. Lucky her—she now had a lovely assortment of nightmares to choose from each night.

  Besides, what she really wanted was Jesse's arms around her once more, for him to gather her up against that broad, hard chest and hold her there forever.

  The few fleeting moments after he yanked her out of Hob Sylvester's battered pickup and into his arms had been the only time she'd felt completely safe since she had walked out to her car after school.

  She had sobbed with relief as he held her fiercely. It was over. Jesse was there and everything would be okay.

  But the embrace had been brief. After making sure she wasn't seriously injured, he had handed her off to Officer Hernandez with terse instructions to take Sarah to the clinic while he dealt with Sylvester.

  The doctor stopped stitching at her sudden frown. "Are the shots wearing off? Are you regaining feeling?"

  "No. I was just … I was wondering how he is. Sylvester."

  The kindness vanished from the doctor's eyes. Instead they looked flinty, angry. Not at her, she realized, but at the man who had wreaked such havoc in her life and others.

  "Last report I had, the chopper crew had him stabilized," he answered. "The doctors at the University of Utah will take care of him. Who knows, they might even be able to save the sight in that eye. Won't do him much good in prison, though, and that's exactly where the sleazebag is headed."

  As Chris Hernandez drove her to the clinic, the police radio in her vehicle had squawked the entire time. Through the crisp communications, Sarah learned that Hob Sylvester had surrendered to Jesse and county sheriff's deputies without a fight, in too much agony from his injury to stage much of the fuss she suspected Jesse had been hoping for.

  She closed her eyes, trying to block the memory of that terrible moment when she had lunged toward him with that glass shard. Another nightmare to add to her list.

  She wouldn't regret it, though. She had only been protecting herself, had done what she had to. If she ever did have a twinge of guilt at possibly causing a man to lose the sight in one eye, all she had to do was remember Corey and his bruises and the gruesome, obscene mark of ownership his own father had left scarred into his back.

  "Okay." Dr. Wallace tied off the last stitch. "We're all done here."

  "May I go home now?"

  "I don't have any reason to keep you any longer. Do you have a ride home?"

  "Yes. I'll take her."

  At that deep, rough voice, Sarah's gaze flew to the door of the exam room. Jesse filled the doorway. An ugly smear of blood on the shoulder of his uniform gave her a bad moment, until she realized it was her own, from that brief time he had held her.

  She almost flew into his arms right then, but checked the impulse. She could hang on for a few more minutes, just until they were alone.

  If she hadn't already restrained herself, the look in his eyes would have done the job.

  He looked wild. As if fierce violence seethed just under his skin. In another man, she might have found that raw energy terrifying, but not with Jesse. In him, it was only unsettling.

  "Are there any precautions she needs to take once she's out of here?" he asked the doctor.

  "Just use common sense. Keep the bandage dry and change it a few times every day."

  "What about something for the pain?"

  Sarah shook her head. "I don't want anything. I'll be fine."

  The doctor shrugged. "You heard the lady. She can take over-the-counter pain relief if necessary, or if the pain intensifies, give me a call and I'll write out a scrip."

  The doctor and nurse walked out of the exam room, leaving the two of them alone. Sarah waited for Jesse to pull her into his arms at last. Instead he stood by the door, his features stony and hard. "Are you ready?" he asked gruffly.

  "I … yes. Please, take me home."

  A few moments later, Jesse had bundled her up and ushered her out to his waiting patrol vehicle, all without touching her once.

  Baffled and hurt by his distance, she sat quietly in the passenger seat, listening to the tires humming on the wet road and the staticky voices on the scanner. What was wrong? What had she done to make him so angry?

  "I'm going to have to ask you some questions," he finally said when they were a few blocks from her house. "Do you want to answer them tonight or in the morning?"

  She frowned at his formal tone and wrapped her hands tightly around herself, trying to contain the chill spreading through her. What was wrong? What had she done?

  "Tonight," she murmured. "I have school tomorrow."

  "Don't you ever get a substitute?"

  "When I need it. I won't need one tomorrow. I'm sure I'll be fine in the morning."

  He was quiet for several moments, his mouth in a tight line. "I didn't think you would want to be alone," he finally said, "so I arranged for Cassie to stay the night with you. She's probably at your house now."

  I wouldn't be alone if you stayed with me, she almost said. If you stay and hold me and keep me warm. She choked down the words. How could she say them when he obviously had gone to a great deal of trouble to fix things so he wouldn't have to stay with her?

  He didn't want to be alone with her. She might still feel shocky and rattled, but she could figure out that much.

  Where was the sexy, laughing man who had spent the night with her? Who couldn't seem to touch her enough over the two days? Who had awakened her by blowing raspberries on her stomach and had explored every inch of her skin with his powerful hands? Who had looked at her with a soft, aching tenderness glinting in his blue eyes?

  Somehow between this morning when she had left his arms and tonight, that man had disappeared. This Jesse was a stranger, abrupt and distant and withdrawn.

  "It was nice of Cassie to agree to stay," she murmured, staring out the windshield at the wet road glistening in the headlights.

  "She's worried about you. I'm sure she could stay a few nights or more if you need her to."

  He pulled into her driveway and turned off the engine but made no move to climb out. For the first time she saw the lines of strain around his mouth, the muscle clenching in his jaw, the wildness that turned his blue eyes dark and murky. He looked like a man just barely holding on to control.

  She swallowed hard and gathered courage. If she could take on a man with a gun, surely she could confront the man she loved. "Jesse, what is it? Why are you so upset?"

  Some of his fury bubbled out and the look he aimed at her was razor sharp. "Why the hell do you think I'm upset? You could have been killed tonight!"

  She drew a deep, shuddering breath, remembering those terrible moments when she thought she would never see him again. "But I wasn't. I survived, Jesse."

  "No thanks to me. I should have been able to protect you. It was my job to keep you safe and I let Sylvester waltz right in and take you. Hell, I practically handed you to him on a silver platter."

  "Your job? Is that all it was?"

  He didn't answer. In the dim moonlight she saw that muscle clench in his jaw again, but he didn't say anything. In the awful, drawn-out silence, she wondered if he was able to hear the crack and shatter of her heart.

  She was a fool. She had begun to build stupid, silly fantasies of forever with a man who didn't know the meaning of the word. Who had probably slept with her out of pity and obligation, only because she had
practically begged him to.

  "I changed my mind," she said quietly, opening the door of the Bronco. "I don't think I want to answer any questions tonight. Now I think I would just like to go inside and sleep."

  "Sarah—"

  She shook her head. Go away. Go away before I break apart. "Good night, Jess."

  Clutching her bandaged hand against her heart, she walked slowly, carefully into her house on old, tired bones.

  * * *

  Sometimes being clean and sober really sucked.

  Right about now, Jesse would give just about anything for a good, stiff drink. Or two or three or ten. And it was only eight-frigging-thirty in the morning.

  He had one mother of a headache squeezing his skull like a junkyard compactor. That's what happened when he tried to keep going for twenty-four hours on no sleep and way too much coffee.

  The words and spaces on the incident forms in front of him all blurred together into one big gray mess and he blinked, trying to focus. It was a futile effort. How was he supposed to fill out the necessary paperwork of Sylvester's arrest when he couldn't concentrate on anything but fragmented, tortured images from the evening before?

  The cold clutch of terror in his stomach at finding out Hob Sylvester had taken Sarah.

  That terrible moment when he had pulled her, bleeding and sobbing, from that ratty pickup truck and into his arms.

  Finding out from a ranting Sylvester that Jesse couldn't live down his past, that it was an intrinsic part of his present—that one of the reasons Hob had targeted her, put her through a hell Jesse couldn't even begin to imagine, was because of him. Twisted revenge for some stupid thing he'd done sixteen years ago, in those awful, reckless months after his parents died.

  The last image in his mind was the worst—the shattered hurt in Sarah's big green eyes right before she walked away from him.

  He had wounded her. She had needed things from him the night before that he had been unable to offer.

  He hadn't meant to hurt her, hadn't wanted to, but on some level he supposed it had been inevitable. Sooner or later she would figure out she deserved better.

  His sweet Sarah.

  His chest ached suddenly and the words swam before his eyes. Not his. She had never been his. He had been fooling himself to think a man with a hell-raising past could hold on to something so good.

  He scrubbed his hands over his face and forced himself to turn back to the paperwork. He was on a short clock here—he would have to leave soon if he was going to make the five-hour drive to Salt Lake City to interrogate Sylvester in the hospital.

  And wouldn't it be a treat trying to spend five minutes in the same room with the bastard without breaking him into tiny little pieces?

  There had been more than a few moments the night before when he'd been tempted to indulge in a little police brutality while he arrested the son of a bitch. For Sarah. For Ginny. For Corey. The only thing stopping him had been the honor of his badge and the very real fear that if he started, he wouldn't be able to stop.

  His phone suddenly buzzed and Lou's gravelly voice gritted over his intercom. "Boss, you have company coming in."

  "Not now, Lou. I'm busy. Just tell 'em I'm not here."

  "Too late." His little sister stalked into his office, her eyes a dark, stormy blue and a fierce scowl on her face.

  "You're an idiot," Cassie snapped. "Did I ever tell you that?"

  He did not need a confrontation with her today. He leaned back in his chair. "Good to see you, too, sis. And yes, I believe you've mentioned that a time or two."

  "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  Ineed a drink. And a woman I can't have. "What isn't wrong?" he murmured.

  She shook her head in disgust. "Would you like me to round up a few puppies you can drop-kick, too, just for laughs? Because that's exactly what you did to Sarah last night."

  "I didn't do anything!"

  "Yeah, that's the point, isn't it? She needed comfort. She needed to feel safe. She needed you, you big idiot! And you just ditched her like you were some kind of cabbie dropping off a fare."

  "It wasn't like that," he muttered.

  "What was it like?" His little sister didn't get mad very often. She had always been the calm one in the family, the peacemaker, but right now she churned with fury, like some vast, storm-tossed ocean.

  At his continued silence, she shook her head in disgust. "You don't get it, do you? For some mysterious reason the woman is crazy in love with you, Jess. I've seen the two of you together, I've seen the way you look at her and I know her feelings are not one-sided."

  "You don't know anything about this."

  "Maybe not. But I have seen you with plenty of women over the years. Too damn many, if you ask me."

  "I didn't ask you," he muttered.

  She went on as if she hadn't heard him. "And never once have you looked at any of them the same way you look at Sarah. You want to tell me why, then, you ran off when she needed you more last night than she's probably ever needed anyone in her life?"

  "I had things to do. Loose ends to tie up, just like I do now," he said, with a pointed look at the paperwork scattered across his desk.

  "And those loose ends were more important than Sarah?"

  "No. But I had a job to do. If I had focused on that job in the first place, none of it would have happened."

  He hadn't meant to say that. Not to Cassie, who knew him too damn well. She stared at him, then her eyes narrowed. "This is why you didn't stay when she needed you last night? Because you think it's your fault Sylvester got to her?"

  He didn't answer. He didn't need to.

  "You're an even bigger idiot than I thought," she snapped.

  "Just back off, Cass. This is none of your business."

  "It is my business when two people I care about are hurting. You're not responsible for what Hob Sylvester did, Jess."

  "No. But I was responsible for keeping Sarah safe, and I failed."

  She came around to, his side of the desk and perched on the edge of it. After a moment spent studying him, she sighed. "This is about what happened with Mom and Dad, isn't it?"

  He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. The night before, he had experienced the same grim helplessness he had felt climbing up the mountainside after the accident. Knowing his parents were down there dying while he tried to claw his way to help. Knowing his father probably would have seen that patch of black ice and been able to avoid it if he hadn't been arguing with him at the time.

  Knowing he couldn't fix this, that he would have to live with the harsh guilt of failure for the rest of his life.

  All those feelings and more had plowed through him the night before as he had rushed after Sarah.

  Once more he had failed to save someone he loved. "Oh, Jess." Cassie must have read all those things in his face. She touched his cheek tenderly and he had to fight the urge to wrap his arms around his little sister and cry like a baby.

  After a moment, she cleared her throat. "None of it was your fault. Not Mom and Dad's accident and not what happened to Sarah."

  "I should have been able to keep her safe."

  Cassie shook her head. "You can't save the whole world, Jess."

  "I didn't need to save the whole world. Just Sarah."

  Cassie was quiet for a moment, then she spoke softly. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe this time she needed to rescue herself? If only to prove to herself that she could?"

  He stared at her, struck speechless by her words. By her wisdom.

  Why hadn't he seen it? He had been so consumed with guilt at not saving Sarah, at letting Sylvester get to her, that he hadn't thought about how empowering it must have been for Sarah to fight back against Sylvester when she was threatened this time.

  To fight back and to win.

  He thought of her attack in Chicago. Where on earth had she found the kind of courage to defend herself against Sylvester, especially when she knew the consequences better than anyone else? W
hen she had lived through those very consequences and still had the scars to prove it, both physical and emotional.

  A hot, fierce pride settled in his heart. His brave Sarah.

  "I'm no expert in this area," Cassie went on. "Heaven knows, I've made a mess of my own life. But I have the feeling the two of you could share something special. Something rare and precious. Don't let the past get in the way of your future."

  She was right. That was exactly what he was doing. He was throwing away the best thing that had ever happened to him because he was afraid. If Sarah could be brave enough to fight for her life, couldn't he be brave enough to fight for his?

  Yes. Hell, yes.

  "Thanks, brat." He kissed her forehead, then headed for the door.

  "Where are you going?" she asked.

  He grinned, his first smile since the afternoon before, when he had seen Sarah's empty car. "School. It looks like I still have a few things to learn."

  * * *

  Chapter 14

  « ^

  She had a feeling it was going to be a very difficult day. School had been in session for only an hour and she already felt exhausted, as wrung out as a wet, soapy dishrag.

  Maybe she should have found a substitute today. With only another two weeks of school before summer vacation, her students were wired, wriggling around in their seats and chattering incessantly.

  After the trauma of the day before and a night spent staring at the ceiling—longing for something she couldn't have—she wasn't sure she had the energy to keep up with them.

  On the other hand, she had only a few more days with her class and she hated to miss a minute of it.

  Right now their restlessness had been moderately contained while they painted watercolors under Janie Parker's instruction, but she feared the brief respite wouldn't last.

  "Miss McKenzie?"

  She glanced up to find Corey standing at her desk, shifting from foot to foot. The boy had been wary around her since school started, giving her furtive, watchful looks all morning.

  She knew she would have to talk to him at some point about what had happened the day before, about what his father had done to both of them, but she didn't want to push him. He would talk to her when he was ready.