Taming Jesse James (14 page)

Sarah's laugh was the first genuine one she had enjoyed in a week. When the sound of it faded, the kitchen fell silent except for Daisy slurping at her water bowl. She glanced at Cassie and found the other woman watching her closely, a strange light in her eyes.

“I think you're really wonderful for Jesse,” his sister said quietly.

Sarah flushed. “Oh, no. We don't…I mean, we're not… You've got it all wrong.”

Cassie didn't look convinced. “That's too bad. He needs someone like you in his life.”

“What do you mean?”

Cassie was silent for a long moment, and Sarah felt her scrutiny and wondered at it. After a moment, she spoke.

“Our parents were killed in a car accident when Jesse was seventeen. Did you know that?”

She had wondered about the elder Hartes, but no one had ever told her their fate and she'd never dared ask. “I'm sorry,” she said softly. “That must have been horrible for all of you. How old were you?”

“I was twelve. Matt was twenty-one. It
was
hard on Matt and me, but I think their deaths hit Jesse the hardest. He was the only one in the truck with them when Dad hit a patch of ice in the canyon between here and Jackson. The truck rolled about a hundred feet down a steep embankment and almost into the Snake River.”

Sarah made a soft sound of distress and wondered why Cassie was telling her this.

“Mom and Dad weren't wearing seat belts,” she
went on, “and they had massive injuries. I think Jesse knew they were dying, but that didn't stop him from going for help.”

Sorrow for what he must have gone through squeezed her insides. “Was he injured?”

Cassie nodded, a faraway look in those startling blue eyes so much like her brothers'. “His leg was broken in a couple places, his wrist was shattered and his shoulder was dislocated. I can't imagine the kind of pain he must have been in, but he still managed to claw his way through snow and ice, up that steep hill toward the highway. It took him more than an hour. By the time he made it to the top and flagged down help, Mom and Dad were gone.”

The kitchen fell silent again as Sarah tried to come up with an adequate response that didn't exist. Before she could say anything, Cassie continued.

“An experience like that changes a person. Jesse was always a little wild, but after Mom and Dad died, he spiraled out of control. Drinking, partying, fighting with anybody who even looked at him wrong. Matt must have bailed him out of jail a dozen times.”

“He must have been hurting so badly.” She wanted to cry just thinking about it.

She wasn't sure what she'd said that made Cassie smile so unexpectedly or look at her with that funny light in her eyes again.

“Even worse than the fighting were the women. I swear, he dated every bimbo between here and Cheyenne. It's about time he realized he deserves better than that. He deserves a woman like you. Someone warm and smart and decent.”

If Cassie only knew how far off the mark she was!
The last thing Jesse needed in his life was a woman with the kind of problems Sarah had.

“Well, as I said, you have the wrong idea about us. I'm only staying here because Jesse wouldn't let me check in to a hotel and I didn't know where else to go. Your brother and I are only friends.”

They were, she realized with surprise. She genuinely liked and respected him. She had told him things no one else in Star Valley knew about and she trusted completely that he would keep her secrets.

“Well, you can't blame a sister for hoping.”

The door opened before Sarah could come up with a suitable reply. An instant later, the subject of their conversation loomed in the doorway, looking big and dark and gorgeous in his uniform.

Cassidy chuckled—at what, Sarah wasn't exactly sure, but she suspected it had something to do with the sudden blush scorching her cheeks.

“Hey, brat,” he greeted his sister, but there was clear affection in his expression and in his voice. “I thought you were too busy with those fancy rich cowboy wannabes you're cooking for now at the Lost Creek to bother hanging around us lesser mortals. What are you doing here?”

She sniffed. “I brought food. But if you're going to make fun of my new gig, maybe I'll just take my lasagna and leave.”

His face brightened like a kid waiting outside the gates of Disneyland for the park to open for the day. “You brought lasagna? And bread sticks, too? Sarah, sweetheart, did I ever tell you my baby sister is a goddess in the kitchen?”

Sarah swallowed hard at that devastating grin.

“It should be ready as soon as the timer goes off.”
Cassie gathered up the boxes she had carried the food in. “Since you already tossed the salad, all you need to do is heat the bread sticks in the microwave for just a few seconds.”

“You're leaving?”

“You know me. Always on the run.”

“Why don't you stay and eat dinner with us?” Sarah asked. It was such a brilliant idea she was amazed she hadn't thought of it earlier. Cassie could provide a much-needed buffer between her and Jesse and maybe ease some of the tension that always churned between them.

“Another time. I've got things to do. Sarah, I enjoyed talking with you. It was very educational.”

Cassie kissed her brother's cheek, then surprised Sarah by pulling her into an embrace and kissing her cheek.

As she watched her walk out the door, Sarah experienced a brief, fierce moment of regret that there really wasn't anything more between her and Jesse. Not only because of her growing feelings for him, but because she had always wanted a sister. She suddenly knew without question that Cassie Harte would have been perfect.

Jesse leaned his hip on the countertop, enjoying the sight of Sarah busying herself in the kitchen. He loved watching her. She always looked so pretty and flustered, and she blushed whenever she caught him at it.

“You have a nice visit with Cassidy Jane?”

She looked up, a startled look in her eyes. Just as he'd hoped, that appealing color crept over her cheeks. “I had no idea Cassie was short for Cassidy.”

He snagged an olive out of the salad and popped it
in his mouth. “Yep. Just like Butch Cassidy. We're all named for outlaws.”

“I knew you were. Jesse James, right?”

He smiled his best bandito smile. “Exactly.”

“I get the Cassidy and the Jesse James but what about Matt? I admit, I'm not the world's best Wild West historian, but I'm not familiar with any outlaws named Matt.”

“Matt's the one who started it all. My dad was the great-grandson of Matt Warner, who rode with Butch and Sundance in the Wild Bunch. Dad was fascinated with stories of the old West that had been handed down in his family and he wanted to name his firstborn after his ancestor. The rest of us just followed the theme.”

“Your mother must have been a very understanding woman.”

He smiled. “She used to call us her own little wild bunch. Living out on the ranch away from most neighbors, we had to learn to entertain ourselves. We used to play hide and seek, and Mom would pretend she was the sheriff rounding us all up to take us to the lockup. We even made this star out of glitter and construction paper that said Sheriff Mom, and she always kept it on the fridge. She'd pin it on and come looking for us.”

He hadn't thought about that star in years. What had happened to the silly thing? It had probably disintegrated years ago. The memory made him smile and a little sad at the same time.

His folks had been gone a long time—sixteen years this winter—but sometimes he still missed them so much, he felt it fill his lungs until he couldn't breathe around it. The grief and the guilt always hit him at the same time.

He looked up and found Sarah watching him out of soft, sorrowful green eyes that saw too damn much.

“Cassie told me about the accident,” she said quietly. “I'm so sorry. They sound like they were wonderful people. They would have to be in order to produce such fine children.”

“I wish they had lived long enough to see that I'm the one chasing the bad guys now.”

“I'm sure they would both be very proud of you,” she said, and her soft smile was like a shot of pure mountain air, chasing away the thickness in his lungs.

“You remind me a lot of my mom. She was a teacher, too. Taught seventh-grade English.”

“I'm sure that must have put quite a crimp in your junior high school social life, to have your mother always watching over your shoulder.”

He laughed. “I don't remember it being too much of a detriment. Somehow I always found a way to keep the worst of my rabble-rousing out of her line of sight.”

Sarah looked doubtful. “She probably knew much more than you're giving her credit for. Mothers—and teachers—usually know exactly what you're up to.”

“I really hope not,” he said vehemently.

Her low laugh slid right to his gut. “I know. I know. You were the bad boy of Salt River, Wyoming, right?”

“You don't believe the hype?”

She shrugged, a rare, teasing light in her eyes that sent need uncoiling inside him like barbed wire. “Sorry, Jesse, but all I've seen is the reformed version.”

Now, there was a challenge if he'd ever heard one. “There's still a little bad boy left in me, I can promise
you that,” he murmured, and stepped a little closer to her.

Wariness flickered in her gaze—and something else that he couldn't quite recognize—but she didn't retreat. Not even when he took another step forward and another, then leaned in to back up his words with action.

H
e knew he shouldn't be doing this. He could come up with a dozen reasons not to kiss Sarah McKenzie. Hell, a hundred, if he really put his mind to it.

All those excuses might be fine in the abstract, but none of them meant a damn thing in reality. Not when she smelled like a summer garden after a rain shower and when she lifted her face for his kiss with the same trusting beauty of one of those rain-soaked flowers turning toward the sun.

And when his subconscious had spent the past week torturing him with fantasies of doing exactly this.

Just a quick kiss, he vowed to himself, just to taste the sweetness there, to tease her a little, then he would back away and return to his side of the friendly, casual distance they had worked so hard this week to maintain between them.

At the first touch of her mouth under his, silken and warm and welcoming, he forgot about keeping that
frustratingly safe chasm between them. Forgot about treating her with polite, casual restraint.

All he could focus on was the slick heat of her mouth against his and the way her slender body bowed so perfectly in his arms and the way she kissed him back with an enthusiasm that would have startled him if he'd been capable of rational thought.

He wasn't consciously aware of undoing the clip that restrained all that luxurious hair, but somebody did it. He figured it must have been him, since he was the one whose fingers tangled in it, raked through the long, silky strands, tugged it gently so her head fell back to give him better access to her incredible mouth.

She moaned against his mouth. At the sound of it, low and aroused, he lost the last tenuous hold on his control. He deepened the kiss, molding her body to him, letting her feel the strength of his arousal.

Her arms slid around his neck and the movement pressed her small, firm breasts against the muscles of his chest.

Heat rushed to his groin and he pressed one thigh between hers. She wore a skirt and another of those short-sleeved sweater sets, demure and sweet, that somehow still always managed to conjure up all manner of wicked thoughts in his head. This one was pale lavender, and he had no trouble slipping a hand underneath it to caress the achingly soft skin at her waist.

She rewarded him with another of those sexy noises she made, so he pressed his advantage and ventured higher along that expanse of skin, toward the lace covering her breasts. When he was nearly there, she gasped his name, and a small, delicate shudder racked her frame.

He froze, breathing harder than a rookie on his first call, his hand still under her sweater.

What the
hell
was he doing?

He was about to feel up Sarah McKenzie like some kind of randy teenager hoping to get lucky in the back seat of his dad's sedan—even knowing what he did about her past and the scars that had been carved in her soul.

She must be scared to death to have him mauling her like this, after what she'd been through.

Self-disgust roiled through him, sick and hot and greasy. She had trusted him and this is how he repaid her?

It made him feel even worse to realize that even now—when he was fully aware of the gross inappropriateness of groping her while she was a guest in his home—part of him didn't want to stop.

Somehow he mustered strength enough to edge away, though his body groaned in protest.

He shoved his hands into his back pockets. “That was unforgivable, Sarah. I'm so sorry.”

Her breathing was as ragged and shallow as his, her eyes dark with confusion. “You're sorry for what?”

“I shouldn't have kissed you. Touched you. I was way out of line.”

“No, you weren't. I wanted you to kiss me.” She cleared her throat. “And to, um, to touch me.”

Her voice was strong and determined even though color coated her cheeks like autumn brushed on leaves. Still, her words did nothing to ease the guilt writhing around inside him.

He raked a hand through his hair. “I promised you would be safe here, and you are. Even from me.
Especially
from me.”

“I wanted you to kiss me, Jesse,” she repeated. “I've been wanting you to kiss me again since that day on the mountain.”

He stared, hearing the exasperation in her voice. “You have?”

“Why do you sound so surprised? If I took a poll, I imagine I'd find that half the women in town probably want you to kiss them.”

This time he was amazed to find that
he
was the one blushing. “That's ridiculous,” he mumbled.

“It is not. Half the women in town and probably a vastly higher percentage of the women who hang out at the Renegade would stand in line for a chance to be right here.”

“That's different.
You're
different.”

“Why? I'm still a woman.”

Same equipment, maybe, but he could come up with very few other similarities between her and the kind of wild party girls who hung out at the local honky-tonk. “Trust me. You're different. I should never have kissed you.”

She was quiet for a moment, then lifted her chin. “Because of what Tommy DeSilva did to me?”

He couldn't lie to her. “That's part of it.”

At his words, the color faded from her face and her features seemed as frozen as a mountain lake in January. “I see,” she murmured.

But he could tell she didn't. How could she possibly understand, when he wasn't sure he did? She probably was thinking some nonsense about how he didn't find her desirable or that he couldn't get past the fact that she had been raped.

That was so far from the truth, he wanted to laugh. Every moment she spent living in the same house with
him, breathing the same air, he only wanted her more. From the moment he walked in the door after work until he somehow made it through the torturous hours until he left again in the morning, he had to fight like hell to keep from touching her, from kissing her, from doing exactly what he'd just done.

She didn't have a clue.

He had worked hard to make sure of it, to conceal as best he could the effect she had on him. The hunger eating away at him. If she'd caught even a glimmer of it, he had no doubts she would have moved back into her shell of a house in a second, broken windows or not.

How would she react if she knew he spent every damn night tossing and turning in his bed, listening for her down the hall, cursing the fact that she was so tantalizingly close but completely out of his reach?

He wanted her with a fierceness that stunned him, but he knew he couldn't act on it. She needed tenderness, gentleness—a delicate, careful touch. How the hell was he supposed to provide those things when he lost control with just a simple kiss?

The plain truth was that he didn't trust himself. He wasn't sure he could give her all those things he knew she needed after what that bastard had done to her.

Yeah, part of the reason he had stopped had to do with Tommy DeSilva. Whenever he thought about her attack, a hot, savage spear of rage lodged in his chest. He had never experienced such mindless fury in his life.

And even though he hadn't known her at the time—even though her attack had happened a thousand miles away—he couldn't shake this strange sense of responsibility, as if the system of justice he believed in so
strongly and worked so fiercely to uphold had failed her.

He was a cop, and a damn good one. He should be used to seeing the darker side of society. He was, even in a small town like Salt River. But somehow knowing that a sweet, innocent woman like Sarah had been the victim of something so terrible hit him in the gut like a cannonball whenever he thought about it.

He ached to make everything better for her. It was impossible, he knew that. He couldn't change what had happened to her—hell, he couldn't even find the words to tell her how very sorry he was—and the knowledge made him helpless with frustration.

The timer on the oven went off before he could look for those elusive words once more.

“That's your lasagna.” Avoiding both his touch and his gaze, Sarah crossed to the oven and removed the casserole dish with oven mitts. “Shall we eat here at the bar or in the dining room?”

He didn't want to eat. Cassie's lasagna appealed to him about as much as gnawing on cement right about now. Not when the air between them still hummed and sparked with tension.

“Sarah —” he began, but she cut him off.

“Let's eat in the dining room, shall we?”

Her abrupt tone and her cool body language told him she wanted the subject dropped.

He huffed out a breath. As much as he needed to clear the air between them, he refused to force a heated discussion that she would obviously prefer not to have.

Frustration churning through him, he jerked his chair out and sat down.

They went through the motions of eating in silence for several minutes. Finally, just around the time he
was ready to climb the walls, she rose from the table. “You know, I'm really not hungry after all. I have a PTA meeting at seven, so I think I'll just run over to the school a little early and try to finish some work in my classroom.”

He slid his chair back, noting with a frown that she had barely picked at her food. “I'll go with you.”

“That's not necessary.”

“I don't want you going out at night by yourself. Not when we still haven't caught the vandal who re-decorated your house.”

That stubborn chin tilted in the air once more. “It's not necessary,” she repeated.

“It is to me.”

“Look, Jesse, it's bad enough for my reputation that I have been staying here alone with you all week. If you insist on following me all over town, people might start to get the wrong idea about us. And neither of us would want that, would we?”

Let them get the wrong idea. Maybe then she'd let him past this cool reserve. “Do you really think anybody cares where you're staying?”

“This is a small town with conservative values. I'm a single woman teaching impressionable children. Like it or not, I'm under a microscope. If enough parents complained to Chuck Hendricks about me staying with you, he wouldn't hesitate to fire me.”

“I won't go in, then. I'll just drive over behind you to make sure you arrive safely, then I'll come back in a few hours when the meeting's over to see you home.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off with a glare, all his frustration simmering back. If she wanted him to shut up, he would, but he wasn't going
to back down about this. Not when her safety was concerned. “Damn it, Sarah, I care about you. I don't want anything to happen to you. Just let me do this, all right?”

She blinked at his vehemence, then shrugged. “Fine. I'll be ready in a few moments.”

 

She should be paying attention.

Sarah stretched her knee out, wiggled around on her folding metal chair in a vain effort to find a more comfortable position, and tried to focus on the twangy voice of Nancy Larsen.

The PTA president was saying something about next year's fund-raising projects, but she might as well have been speaking pig Latin. Sarah couldn't seem to focus on anything but a certain frustrating, sexy, aggravating police chief.

She had replayed that scene in his kitchen at least a dozen times in the hour since the PTA meeting started. Every touch, every texture, every scent was imprinted on her mind, burned into it like the mark on Corey Sylvester's skin.

Just remembering his mouth on hers—the heat of his body pressed against hers, his hard, callused hands on her skin—turned her insides hollow and weak, her breasts achy and full.

She had wanted the kiss to go on forever. Hours, days, weeks. Forget food, forget sleep, forget anything but Jesse and his incredible mouth and clever, clever hands.

While she was being honest with herself, she might as well admit that she wanted much more than stolen kisses in his kitchen. She wanted to explore the hard muscles of his chest she could see bunch and play un
der his shirts. She wanted to glide her hands and her mouth over his skin.

She wanted to feel his hard strength inside her.

She shifted on her cold metal chair as color washed over her cheeks. She shouldn't be thinking about this in the middle of a PTA meeting, for heaven's sake!

She couldn't help it, though. It still seemed like some kind of wondrous miracle that she could want him that way, after eighteen months of believing she would never be able to feel the hot pull of desire again.

Unfortunately, what she wanted wasn't important. The reawakening of these long-dormant needs and desires inside her didn't matter. Not when Jesse admitted he couldn't get past what had happened in Chicago.

Telling him had changed everything, just as she had known it would. Just as it had with Andrew.

Like Andrew, Jesse couldn't look at her without remembering what had been done to her. She had seen it in his eyes. He was afraid to touch her, fearful that he would put his hands in the wrong place or say the wrong thing.

That he couldn't be gentle enough.

The hollow yearning in her stomach changed to something else. Something wistful and sorrowful and angry at the same time.

It was always there on the edge of her consciousness, that terrible October morning. Always lurking like some huge, hideous, wild creature, just waiting for her guard to slip so it could stick its vicious claws into her once more.

Since she had come here, she had tried to cope by not telling anyone. If people didn't know, then her attack didn't exist. It wasn't real. It couldn't
possibly
be real.

But Jesse knew now. She had been forced to tell him and now he couldn't touch her without also touching the rabid creature that followed her everywhere.

The young, frizzy-haired rape counselor who had visited her in the hospital right after the attack had given her a thick packet of information. Booklets and hotline numbers and support group schedules, to try to help her process what had happened.