TAMING JESSE JAMES Page 6

  A teacher's worst nightmare.

  And a sixth-grade girl's biggest fantasy.

  She jerked her mind away from that dangerous road. "What possible reason does he have to accuse Corey, besides the fact that he blames the poor boy for every single thing that goes wrong in this entire school?"

  "He says he's seen Corey hanging around the jar several times in the last week, looking at the coins inside."

  She bristled. "Since when does looking at something make you a criminal? If that's the case, arrest me now. Sometimes I like to walk through the art galleries in Jackson and dream about owning some of the works hanging there. That must make me some kind of international art thief, right?"

  "Which ones?"

  "Which ones what?"

  "Which art galleries do you like?"

  "What difference does it make?" she asked impatiently. "My point is, I can't believe you would base your entire investigation on the suspicions of a nasty, small-minded little man."

  "I didn't say I agreed with him," Jesse protested. "I'm just telling you his theory."

  "So that's why you're really here? To interrogate a child?"

  She knew she sounded judgmental, shrewish even, but she didn't care. All her hard work trying to gain Corey's trust these past few weeks would be for nothing if she handed him over to Chief Harte like a trussed goose for Christmas dinner.

  "I'd like to talk to him, not interrogate him. I would have pulled him out of class, but I figured the rest of your students didn't need to speculate about why the two of us might need to have a little chat."

  She narrowed her gaze at him, studying him closely. She didn't know him nearly well enough to know whether he was telling the truth, but she would have to trust her instincts. All she could see gleaming out of his deep blue eyes was sincerity.

  "That was very thoughtful of you," she murmured. "Corey has a hard enough time getting along with his classmates. To be marked as a thief would make him a pariah. I'm afraid children don't readily understand the concept of innocent until proven guilty."

  "Neither do certain principals I could name."

  She smiled. "Right."

  He returned her smile with a grin that made him seem much more like that mischievous sixth grader he'd referred to earlier. Her pulse fluttered wildly and she finally dropped her gaze to her hands. "I really do need to get back to my class. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

  "Yeah. I'm still going to have to talk to Corey so I can clear him as a suspect and get on with the investigation. I just wanted some advice on the best tack to take with him. You seem to have a rapport with him."

  "I don't know about that." She thought about the boy's surliness since he had come into her class. He had begun to unbend a little, but she knew she still had a long way to go before earning his trust.

  "Is there some time during the day I could talk to him without the rest of the class around?" Jesse asked.

  She thought a moment. "Yes, actually, there is. Around twelve-thirty, during lunch recess. You could talk to him then. He has to stay in because he didn't turn in his homework folder last week. It's, um, one of our classroom rules." Why did she suddenly feel so defensive, as if she were the strictest teacher in the school?

  Jesse didn't seem to notice. "Sounds like a plan. And I'll bring you lunch so I have an excuse for being here. That way he'll think I'm only here to see you."

  She wasn't at all sure she wanted her students to think she and Chief Harte had something going. They didn't. Of course they didn't. Two people couldn't possibly be more mismatched—he caught criminals for a living and she was afraid of her own shadow.

  "Murphy's got a special on fettuccine Alfredo this week," Jesse went on. "How does that sound?"

  "Lunch is really not necessary, Chief Harte. I'm sure you can come up with another excuse for dropping in to the classroom."

  "It's the least I can do for your help." He gave her another one of those devastating smiles, the ones that made her feel as if her legs had no more substance to them than Mr. Murphy's fettuccine.

  Arguing with him would make her sound even more like an idiot. Besides, she had a sneaking suspicion Jesse Harte was fairly used to getting his own way.

  Lunch wouldn't hurt her. Hadn't she just been thinking how tired she was of eating alone? Here was her chance for a little conversation.

  But as she watched him walk away down the hall with that purposeful stride, she had the sudden, terrifying certainty that she had just agreed to dine with the devil.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  He couldn't remember when he'd ever looked forward so eagerly to taking a statement. But then again, few of his interviews had the fringe benefit of including lunch with a sweet, pretty schoolteacher who blushed like a rose in full bloom.

  Whistling in anticipation, Jesse reached into the back seat of his vehicle and grabbed the bag of takeout he had just picked up from the diner. As a rule, Murphy didn't normally fix takeout, but Jesse had had no qualms about cashing in some favors the café owner owed him. He now had two servings of Murphy's world-famous fettuccine Alfredo and all the trimmings in his possession.

  He just hoped he could convince Sarah to eat it with him.

  He wanted to talk to Corey about the missing money, but he also wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery that was Sarah McKenzie. This seemed like a golden opportunity to do it.

  For the second time that day he walked through the front doors of Salt River Elementary. Through the glass walls of the office he could see Chuck wagging his finger at some hapless student slumped in one of the hard plastic chairs.

  The principal spied Jesse as soon as he walked inside. Chuck froze in midwag, then changed the gesture to a crooked-finger demand for Jesse to come into his office. Pretending he didn't notice, he continued down the hall toward Sarah's room. Let Up-Chuck come find him if he was itching to have a chat so badly.

  The school was much more quiet mow than it had been earlier in the morning, probably because all the kids were either at lunch or out on the playground for recess.

  At Sarah's classroom he peeked around the corner, through the open doorway. She was the only one in the room, bent over her desk with a black gradebook in front of her and her hair a shimmering gold curtain flowing down her back.

  That sinfully gorgeous hair ought to be against the law. It seemed such an erotic contrast with both the innocent schoolroom setting and her frown of concentration that he had to swallow hard.

  A few seconds later she sensed his presence. She looked up and he thought he saw just a quick flash of jittery awareness before she blinked it away and gave him a polite smile instead. Too bad. He preferred jittery awareness any day.

  He held up the bag from the café. "I brought lunch. Murphy makes a killer Alfredo sauce. Do we have time to eat before Corey comes in for detention?"

  She frowned. "Fifteen minutes or so. But I thought I told you not to bother with lunch."

  "Hmm. And I thought I told you I wanted to bother. Come on, Sarah. Humor me."

  She sighed but didn't argue, which he took as a relatively positive sign. He held the bag up again. "Murphy put together the works for us. Salad, bread sticks and pie for dessert. Where do you want it?"

  With another sigh, she scanned the classroom. "That worktable back by the computers is empty. We can sit there."

  The next few moments were spent putting up chairs and setting out containers. Murphy was a saint. He had even included paper plates and plastic dinnerware, something Jesse hadn't even thought about.

  The one thing neither he nor Murphy had covered was a beverage, but Sarah solved the problem by going to a mini-refrigerator behind her desk and pulling out two bottles of water.

  He piled food on a plate for her, then did the same for himself, all the while aware of her sitting across the table watching him with the same wariness in her big eyes that he'd seen in Corey Sylvester's.

  The food was divine, just as he
expected. The sauce was rich and creamy, the bread sticks just crispy enough and the salad was fresh and tasted like springtime.

  Sarah didn't eat enough to keep a kitten alive, though. Maybe that was the reason the bones at her wrists seemed so fragile.

  "Do you always push your food around your plate," he finally asked, "or is it the company?"

  She looked up, startled. "I'm sorry," she said. "The food is wonderful. Delicious. And it was very thoughtful of you to bring it. I guess I'm not very hungry right now."

  Maybe she was just painfully shy. Maybe he was torturing her by continuing to force himself on her when she was obviously so nervous around him. The kindest thing would probably be to quit pestering her, to just stay out of her way.

  He wasn't at all sure why the idea was so repugnant to him. And anyway, the few times he'd seen her with other people she'd been friendly and composed. He was the only one who seemed to make her edgy and uptight, and damned if he didn't want to know why—and what had put those shadows in her eyes.

  Besides, he hadn't been kind in a long, long time.

  "So tell me about Chicago," he asked abruptly.

  She nearly knocked over her water bottle. "Wh…what?"

  "Chicago. What was it like teaching there?"

  She was silent for a several moments and he thought she was going to ignore the question, then she smiled softly. "It was great. Really great. I loved my students. It was an incredible feeling to know I could make such a difference in their lives."

  "You taught elementary school?"

  "Yes. Third grade, a year younger than my students here. It was a fairly rough neighborhood and some of my students lived in the most hideous conditions you can imagine. Without heat or running water, even. And I suspect that for many of them, school lunch was the only square meal they had all day. But despite their hardships, they all had so much promise. They were starving for far more than food. They needed someone to show them what they could achieve in life."

  "And you tried to do that?"

  "As best I could. Sometimes it was tough, I won't deny that, but I loved the challenge. I found that with a little creativity, I could usually find something that interested them—sports or animals or music or whatever—and individualize each student's curriculum around his or her interests. It really worked."

  When the subject was teaching, she glowed with enthusiasm, with bright energy, and he couldn't take his gaze off her. She was like some rare, precious flower that bloomed only under exactly the right conditions. Now that he'd seen her vivid petals unfurl, he knew he wouldn't be content with just this one fleeting glimpse.

  "Why didn't you stay?" he asked.

  Wrong question. He regretted it instantly when her animation died just like a frost-killed blossom. That haunted look flashed across her eyes again before she quickly shuttered them.

  "Every job has its good and bad points." Her voice was stiff and bleak.

  "True enough. My job is usually great, but every once in a while I have to deal with the Chuck Hendrickses of the world."

  Her expression thawed a little. "What are you complaining about? I have to deal with him every day."

  He smiled even as he fought the wholly inappropriate urge to press his lips to the corner of that mouth that lifted so endearingly.

  As if she could tell exactly what he was thinking, her breathing quickened and she became fascinated with the pasta she twirled around and around her fork. "What about you? Have you always wanted to work in law enforcement?"

  His own smile slid away as he thought of those days and months and years when the only thing he wanted was another drink to dull the guilt. He doubted a woman like Sarah McKenzie would know anything about a world so sordid and dark.

  "Would it shock you if I told you I decided to become a cop one night when I was in jail?"

  Her gaze flew to his, then she colored again. "How am I supposed to answer that? No matter what I say, I sound like a prissy schoolteacher. You're making that up, right?"

  He laughed, but it held little humor. "It's true. I was twenty-one years old and in the joint again for a D and D—drunk and disorderly. This time I'd made the mistake of planting a right hook on the officer who came to break up the bar fight I was relishing at the time of my arrest, so old Chief Briggs added assaulting a police officer to my charges."

  He sipped at his water bottle. "Unfortunately, I didn't have enough cash on me to pay the necessary bribe and persuade Salt River's finest to look the other way. That's the way things worked in those days."

  "That's terrible!"

  "Carl Briggs, the previous police chief, ran his own little fiefdom. He was a real prize. Anyway, I realized that arrest would stick on my record and there wasn't a thing I could do about it."

  "And that was a turning point for you?"

  He nodded. "I can remember lying on that scratchy wool blanket in my cell and looking out the little window at the night. I was hungover and battered and bleeding from the bit of extra attention I received from a couple of nightsticks. I felt like an old man. In that moment, I decided I was tired of being on the wrong side of the law. At the rate I was going, I was going to end up dead or doing some hard time in the state pen, so I decided right then that things would change."

  He gave her a wicked smile. "I was a bad boy when I was younger, Ms. McKenzie. The kind your mama probably warned you about."

  She raised her eyebrows. "Since we've already established that I sound like a prissy schoolteacher, I must ask. Just how, exactly, have you changed since then?"

  Damned if she didn't make him feel fourteen years old still lighting bottle rockets in the mayor's mailbox. He laughed. "You're probably right. I'm still a hellraiser. I just try to do it on the right side of the law this time."

  Once more that flicker of awareness flashed across her green eyes like distant lightning on a July night. His gaze landed on her mouth, tracing the curve of her lips.

  As he watched, her pink tongue darted out to lick that little indentation in the center of her top lip where mouth met skin. It was a completely guileless gesture, probably a nervous reaction to him staring at her mouth, but it reached right into his gut and gave a hard tug.

  His pulse seemed suddenly thick and heavy through his veins. Like a slow trickling creek in the middle of August.

  He wanted to be the one licking at her lips. Gliding over that lush, soft mouth, tasting whatever memory of butter and cream remained from Murphy's killer Alfredo sauce.

  No. He couldn't.

  But his body was already angling toward her, his head already leaning to hers. Her eyes widened with alarm—or was it anticipation?—then her lips parted slightly.

  He took that as assent. What the hell else could he do? He would die if he didn't kiss her. His mouth was almost to hers when the sound of her classroom door opening echoed in the room like a gunshot.

  Sarah froze, exhaling a puff of air that skimmed over his lips as erotically as their might-have-been kiss, then she jerked away from him as if he'd yanked her hair.

  She turned toward the door, fierce color spreading over her cheeks in a hot, angry tide. "Corey! Come in."

  The boy sauntered into the classroom, his usual air of defiance and belligerence firmly in place. Sarah didn't seem to notice. "Uh, thank you for coming so quickly," she said distractedly. "Did you have time to finish your lunch?"

  Corey shrugged. "Much as I could stand."

  "Was it awful?"

  "Chipped beef on toast. Yuck. Least they had apple crumble for dessert."

  "Good for you to come up with a bright side to chipped beef on toast!" She smiled at Corey and Jesse realized with mild shock that she genuinely cared about the kid, despite the troublemaker attitude he wore as proudly as Jesse wore his badge. It was obvious from her smile and her body language and the affection in her eyes. What's more, Corey knew it was real, and he obviously adored her for it.

  Jesse remembered her passionate defense of the boy against Chuck's suspicions earlier
in the day and her willingness to go to the authorities with her fear about Corey's home life.

  To his chagrin, he experienced a flash of sudden and completely unreasonable jealousy. It wasn't only the grim knowledge that she would probably never look at him with that same affection. He suddenly realized he couldn't remember any of his teachers ever looking at him like that, ever being willing to stand up for him or take his side of things. If they had, he probably would have liked school a whole lot more.

  So what made Sarah different than the other teachers Corey had gone through?

  Maybe she had a soft spot in her heart for bad boys.

  "What's the chief doin' here?" Corey asked.

  Jesse answered before Sarah could. "Having lunch with Ms. McKenzie. We're friends." At least, he thought he wanted them to be.

  Corey took in the scattered plates and takeout containers on the table, then looked back at the two of them. His sharp little face twisted into a frown. "Yeah? I didn't know stupid cops had any friends."

  Now, where did that sudden animosity come from? "Some of us even get married and have families, amazingly enough," Jesse answered.

  Corey looked completely aghast at the idea. As his gaze darted between the two of them, Jesse realized something else enlightening. The tough kid of Salt River Elementary had a crush on his pretty blond teacher.

  Sarah seemed oblivious to it. "If you're still hungry, I have some pasta left. You're more than welcome to eat it, Corey."

  "Looks like chipped beef on noodles," he muttered.

  "It's much better," she assured him, but the boy didn't look convinced. "How about some pie, then?"

  This was obviously much more appealing to Corey. He grabbed for a piece with a mumbled thanks and dug right in to it.

  "I have to finish recording a few grades," Sarah said after a moment. "When you're done with your pie, why don't you wash your hands and clean out Raticus's cage? I'm sure Chief Harte would love to give you a hand with our class pet."

  "Oh, yes. Love to," he said dryly. A pet rat. Great. Still, it was a chance for a little private time to talk to Corey and he couldn't pass up the opportunity, even if it entailed cleaning out a rodent's cage.