Taming Jesse James by RaeAnne Thayne Page B

would want to lurk outside the house of a boring schoolteacher?
    She sighed. No one. That’s why she must have been imagining things.
    Jesse had been very patient with her. He had been true to his word—several times each evening she had seen police vehicles drive past her house. She found their presence comforting. And if she carefully watched to see if a certain gorgeous police chief might be driving one of them, well, that was nobody’s business but her own.
    She glanced at her watch. Five more minutes before the bell. She hated to be a spoilsport, but she was going to have to start gathering her students. She glanced around the playground at the rope-jumping and the hopscotching and the heated game of four-square in the corner. The children looked jubilant to be outside. Maybe she could just hold class out in the sunshine today.
    She spied Corey under the spreading branches of a maple tree whose leaves were small and new, his back propped against the trunk. As usual, he sat by himself, and her heart twisted with sympathy for him.
    He had a few friends, she knew, but none in their class. Her students were not cruel to him, but they were uneasy around a boy with such a hostile attitude toward everything.
    He could use some company, she decided, and ducked under the low overhang of branches to join him.
    As she neared the boy, she could tell instantly something was wrong. Corey’s head was buried in his arms and he was shivering slightly in the cool shade.
    â€œCorey? Honey? Are you all right?”
    After a long moment he lifted his face slowly, as if the movement pained him. He was pale, she saw with concern, his flushed cheeks the only spots of color on his face.
    â€œI don’t feel too good,” he whispered.
    She knelt in the grass and touched his forehead with her fingers. “You do seem warm. What else is going on?”
    â€œMy throat and my head hurt and I itch.”
    For the first time she noticed ominously familiar red blisters creeping up his neck and covering his arms below his sleeves.
    â€œWhere do you itch?”
    He looked positively miserable. “Everywhere. Especially my stomach and my back.”
    â€œOh, dear,” she murmured.
    Corey finally met her gaze, worry darkening his eyes. “What’s wrong with me?”
    For all his cocky bravado most of the time, he was still just a boy, she reminded herself. And right now he was a very sick boy. “Sweetheart, have you ever had the chicken pox?”
    â€œNo,” he mumbled. “I don’t think so.”
    â€œYou do now.”
    The boy’s eyes widened, his features twisted with dismay. “I can’t. I’m supposed to help Chief Harte. We’re supposed to practice today after school.”
    â€œHe’ll just have to do his presentation without you or reschedule it until you’re better. You need to be home in bed. I’m sure that’s what’s itching. Let’s take a look at your back.”
    She reached for his T-shirt. Corey froze, then scrambled back against the tree, out of her reach. “No. No. That’s okay.”
    â€œJust pull it up a little so I can see how bad the spots are on your back.”
    He batted halfheartedly at her hands, but she persisted and finally lifted his T-shirt up just enough so she could see.
    The normal playground noises around them—the rattle of chains on the swings, the shrieks and laughter of children, the breeze rustling the new maple leaves above them—seemed to fade away.
    All she could hear was her own horrified gasp.
    Halfway down his back, red, puckered skin surrounded a sickly gray scar in a distinctive S shape at least three inches long. It looked like a brand, like the ownership mark she saw on cows all around Wyoming.
    Bile swelled in her throat and her stomach heaved. Dear Lord. How could anyone do such a thing to a child?
    â€œWho did this to you?” she asked when she could find her voice through the