Free Taming Jesse James by RaeAnne Thayne Page B

achieve in life.”
    â€œAnd you tried to do that?”
    â€œAs 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.
    â€œWhy 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.
    â€œEvery job has its good and bad points.” Her voice was stiff and bleak.
    â€œTrue 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 wantedwas another drink to dull the guilt. He doubted a woman like Sarah McKenzie would know anything about a world so sordid and dark.
    â€œWould 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.”
    â€œThat’s terrible!”
    â€œCarl 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.”
    â€œAnd 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 goingto 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