TAMING JESSE JAMES

by Reanne Thayne

  "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.

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  « ^ »

  He managed to put off talking to Corey Sylvester for nearly two hours.

  Finally he had to admit that he had nobody left to interview. He had talked to the janitor and the assistant principal, to several of the faculty members and the custodial staff. He had interviewed the residents of the three houses across the street from the school to see if any of them had heard or seen anything in the night, and he had Lou notifying local merchants and banks to give him a buzz if anybody brought in an unusual number of quarters.

  He had half a mind to wrap up the initial canvas right now and forget about Corey Sylvester. It stuck in his craw that he had to treat the kid like a suspect just because Chuck Hendricks had decided to peg him as that year's scapegoat.

  Jesse knew how it felt to be the kid everybody looked to when trouble broke out. He knew what it was like to be blamed any time anything came missing, to be sent to the principal's office for something he didn't have a thing to do with, to know that most people figured you would never amount to much.

  He knew the deep sense of injustice a ten-year-old can experience at being unjustly accused.

  He loved his older brother, but he had to admit he'd been a tough act to follow in school. Matt had been every teacher's dream. The best athlete, the best student. Trustworthy, loyal and all the rest of the Boy Scout mumbo jumbo.

  Jesse, on the other hand, had struggled in school. He'd been a whiz at math, but words on a page just never seemed to fit together right for him. Reading and spelling had always been torture, right on into high school. In his frustration, maybe he'd developed a bad attitude about school, but that didn't mean he'd been a bad kid.

  After a while, he'd got so tired of trying and failing to measure up to Matt's example that it had seemed easier to just give up and sink to everybody's expectations.

  While his parents had still been alive, he had managed to stay out of serious trouble just because he knew how his mom's face would crumple and his dad would look at him with that terrible look of disappointment. After they'd died, everything had changed and he'd become all Chuck predicted for him.

  He hated having to feed the principal's stereotypes about Corey Sylvester by interviewing the kid, especially when he was trying to find out what was going on with him. But Hendricks had said he'd seen the kid by the coin jar. What kind of a cop would he be if he ignored a possible lead, just because the source of that lead was a bitter, humorless man who had no business working with children?

  He had a duty to follow up, and he had worked hard the past three years to prove he was the kind of police chief who tried his best to meet his obligations.

  At least he could make the interrogation as subtle as possible. And on the upside, pulling Corey out of class would give him a chance to see Sarah McKenzie again.

  While he had been busy chasing down nonexisten
t leads to the theft, the students had descended on Salt River Elementary. Up and down the hallway he could hear the low murmur of voices in classrooms, the squeak of chalk on chalkboards, the rustling of paper.

  As he passed each doorway on the way to Sarah's room, he could see teachers lecturing in the front of their classes and students bent over their work.

  Walking the hallways brought memories, thick and fast, of his own school years. This was a different school than the one he'd attended. The board of education had bonded for a new building ten years earlier and demolished the crumbling old brick two-story structure to build this modern new school, with its brown brick and carpeted walls.

  It might be a different building, but it smelled just as he remembered from his own school years, a jumbled mix of wet paper and paste and chalk, all mingling with the yeasty scent of baking rolls that floated out from the cafeteria.

  Ms. McKenzie's classroom was the last one on the right. He smiled at the whimsical welcome sign over her door, featuring a bird knocking at the door of an elaborate birdhouse.

  He could hear her musical voice from inside and he paused for a moment to listen. She was talking in that soft, sexy voice about fractions. Despite the benign subject matter, her voice somehow managed to twine through his insides like some voracious vine.

  How could he get so turned on by a shy schoolteacher talking about fractions, in a building full of kids?

  He watched her through the little square window set into her door, trying to figure out her appeal. She was soft and pretty in a pale blue short-sleeve sweater set and a floral skirt. Her sun-streaked hair was held back on the side by some kind of clip thing, but it fell long and luxurious to the center of her back, just inviting a man to bury his hands in it.

  And that mouth. Full and lush and soft enough to make even a priest have to spend a few extra minutes in confession.

  But she was still much too innocent for a wild, somewhat-reformed troublemaker like Jesse Harte.

  He clamped down hard on his unruly imagination and opened the door to her classroom.

  Sarah turned toward him at the sound and her big green eyes widened. Interesting. Now, what made her cheeks turn pink and her breathing speed up a notch?

  Before he could put his crack investigative skills toward figuring it out, he was attacked. Lucy and Dylan ambushed him from the left, throwing their arms around him and jabbering like two monkeys in a zoo.

  They fired questions at him one after another. "Uncle Jess! What are you doing at school? How long will you be here? Can you stay and have school lunch with us? Can we use you for sharing today?"

  He opened his mouth to pick one question to answer, but Ms. McKenzie beat him to it. "Girls," she interjected firmly, "I know you're excited about your uncle visiting our classroom. I'm sure it's a real treat for all of us, but you need to take your seats again."

  He raised his eyebrows when they immediately obeyed and hurried back to their desks. Wow. The woman knew how to run a tight ship. Who would have thought someone as meek as she seemed to be could command instant order with her students?

  "Can we help you with something, Chief Harte?"

  He was pretty sure that tight schoolmarm voice shouldn't turn him on so much, especially with a classroom full of interested fourth graders looking on. It shouldn't be able to slide through his bones, settle in his gut.

  He was a bad, bad boy and the idea of pulling her silky hair from its clip, undoing that sweater a button or two and seeing if he could make even more color soak that honey-soft skin appealed to him far more than it should.

  He was sick.

  He had to be, to entertain prurient fantasies about a sweet, shy schoolteacher like Sarah McKenzie.

  He reined in his rampaging thoughts, shifted his weight and turned his attention to the class. He recognized most of the students from around town. Near the back he found Corey Sylvester, sitting alone and looking very aloof. The boy met his gaze warily, then looked down at the book open on his desk.

  Was he acting guilty or just resigned to what he had already figured out was coming?

  Jesse couldn't tell. How would the kid react if he singled him out in front of his whole class? If he yanked him out into the hall and started grilling him like a suspect? It sure as hell wouldn't put the kid in any kind of mood to chat about who or what was causing his mysterious accidents.

  Chuck Hendricks and his suspicious little mind could go to the devil, he decided abruptly. He would run this investigation his own way.

  He turned back to Sarah with a smile. To his guilty amusement, the color dusting her cheeks turned a darker shade. "I'm sorry to interrupt, Miss McKenzie. Could I take a few moments of your class time?"

  "I … of course."

  "Thanks. I'll make it brief and then you can get back to whatever you were doing."

  "Math," his new niece, Dylan, said with a disgusted sigh. The implication in her voice was obvious: Take as long as you want. We don't mind. He swallowed a sympathetic grin and turned to the rest of the class.

  "I suppose you've all heard by now that somebody broke in to the school last night and took the money you've been collecting for the hospital."

  As he expected, the students buzzed with reaction, from boos and hisses to shocked exclamations by those who hadn't heard. He registered them all, but kept his gaze on Corey. Unless he was mistaken, Corey looked as upset as the rest of the class.

  A redheaded boy covered in freckles—Paul Turner's kid, if Jesse wasn't mistaken—raised his hand. "You catch who did it yet, Chief?"

  "Not yet. But I'm going to, I promise you that. I'll need your help, though."

  Jackie Allsop, who had won the Little Buckeroo mutton-bustin' competition at the county fair two years running, raised her hand. "Are you puttin' a posse together?"

  He swallowed another grin. "Something like that. See, the way I figure it, it's not right that somebody can come in and take something that you all and your friends have worked so hard to earn. Money you intended to be used to help sick kids. It's not fair: It makes me mad and it should make you mad, too."

  Their outraged reaction filled the room. Out of the corner of his gaze, he saw Sarah frown. Uh-oh. Before she could step forward to quiet her students, he held up his hands. The students immediately quieted. "I appreciate your spirit. That's what it's going to take to catch whoever did this because, to be honest with you, we don't have a lot to go on right now."

  "How can we help, Uncle Jess?" Lucy asked in her soft voice.

  He smiled at her. "Good question, Luce. I want all of you to use your eyes and your ears for me. You have to promise me you won't do anything dangerous, though. If you hear anything you think might help us find whoever took the money, you need to let a grownup know, okay? Either tell your mom and dad or Miss McKenzie or me. What are some of the things you could be on the lookout for?"

  For the next few moments all the children—even the quiet ones—vied with each other to give suggestions, and Sarah watched their enthusiasm with amazement. Jesse had quite a way with children. She should have expected it by the adoration Lucy, and now Dylan, had for him, but she was still surprised at the way her students hung on his every word.

  He managed to stir up participation from the entire class as if he had been teaching all his life.

  She was going to have a tough time trying to get them to focus on fractions after this kind of excitement, she thought with a sigh. Who was she kidding? Forget the kids. She would be lucky to get through math herself today.

  "Thanks for all your great ideas." To her relief, Jesse started to wrap things up. "Now I have to get back to work trying to find out who did it. Remember, if you hear or see something that might help solve the case, who are you going to tell?"

  "A grown-up!" the class chorused.

  He turned the full power of his smile on them. Even though she was just out of range of it, Sarah still felt the impact of that smile sizzle clear down to her toes. Darn it. The man had no business coming into
her classroom and sabotaging her concentration like this.

  To her dismay, when he finished addressing the class he headed toward her. "Can I talk to you out in the hall for a minute?" he asked, his voice low enough to send shivers rippling down her spine.

  Out in the hall? Just the two of them? When she felt as rattled as seed pods in a strong breeze?

  She could handle it, she reminded herself. She was turning over a new leaf and putting all her anxieties behind her. Right? A few minutes alone in the hall with Jesse Harte would be fine. Completely fine.

  "Of course," she answered coolly. "Students, turn your attention to today's math assignment. If you have any questions about the work sheet, I'll be back in a few moments to answer them."

  Ignoring their grumbles, she set her teacher's guide on her desk, then led the way out into the hall.

  Jesse followed her with the strangest look on his face. If she didn't know better, she might have thought it was masculine interest, but of course it couldn't be.

  He seemed extremely fascinated by her hair, though. She spent a brief, horrible moment wondering if she'd smeared paint in it while she was preparing the art supplies for the day. She almost reached a hand to check, then let it fall to her side, feeling extremely foolish.

  "My students are waiting, Chief Harte," she finally said. "How may I help you?"

  "Jess. Call me Jess. Everybody does."

  Yes, she knew. Jesse James Harte, the outlaw cop. "If this is about the stolen money, Chief Harte—er, Jess—I'm afraid I can't help you. I don't know anything."

  "It's more about one of your students. I need to ask your advice."

  She stiffened. "Do you suspect one of my students was involved?"

  "Up-Chuck is convinced Corey stole the money."

  "Up-Chuck?" she asked, momentarily diverted.

  "Er, Principal Hendricks. Sorry. You know what they say about old habits. It's been a long time since sixth grade, but it's still tough for me to think of him as anything else."

  She could just imagine him in sixth grade, cocky and tough and rebellious.