Despite her own nightmares, she had done the right thing by going to the proper authority and he had basically laughed in her face.
Calm down, Sarah.
A corner of her brain sent out strident warning bells that she was going to say or do something she would regret, but she ignored it, lost to everything but her anger.
“I can’t believe this,” she snapped. “If I ever wanted to commit a crime, Salt River, Wyoming, would obviously be the place for it. All I have to do is swear to the police chief that I didn’t do anything and I’ll be home free.”
He dropped his relaxed pose as easily as a snake shedding his skin and straightened in the chair. “Now, wait a minute…”
“Of course, maybe I’d have to be a powerful person like the mayor so I can get away with it,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Apparently, holding political office around here gives a person the right to do whatever he darn well pleases.”
“I can see where you’d think that, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong. If I thought for one minute Seth had given that boy so much as a hangnail, you can be damn sure I wouldn’t let him get away with it.”
“Lucky for him, then, that he managed to convince you he didn’t do anything. I’d like you to leave now, Chief Harte.”
She whirled away from him with an angry, abrupt movement, completely forgetting that her knee was in no condition to withstand the stress of such a quick motion.
She heard an ominous pop, then she had the sudden, sick sensation of falling as her knee gave out.
One instant she was tumbling toward the hard wooden slats of the porch, the next she heard an alarmed “Hey!” and found herself wrapped in strong male arms, shoved back against a hard, muscled chest.
For a moment she froze as she was surrounded by heat and strength, helpless to get away. And then panic took over. He had held her just like this, from behind, with her arms locked at her sides.
Instantly she was once more in that dingy Chicago classroom, with its dirty windows and broken desks and stale, tired air.
Not again. She wouldn’t let this happen again.
She couldn’t breathe, suddenly, couldn’t think. Her heart was racing, adrenaline pumping like crazy, and only one thought pierced her panic.
Escape.
Somehow, some way, this time she had to escape.
Chapter 3
What in the hell?
Jesse held an armload of kicking, fighting female and tried to figure out what had set her off like this.
All he had tried to do was keep her from hitting the ground when she started to topple. One minute she’d been standing there, her pretty mouth hard and angry as she ordered him out of her house, the next she had turned into this wild, out-of-control banshee, flailing her arms around and twisting every which way.
He figured her bum leg must have given out and that’s what had made her start to fall. The way she was fighting him, she was only going to hurt it even more—and maybe something else, too.
She wanted out of his arms. He could respect that. Only problem was, if he let her go now, she would still hit the ground.
“Take it easy, ma’am,” he murmured softly, soothingly, the way he would to one of Matt’s skittish colts. “It’s okay. I’m only trying to help. I won’t hurt you.”
Carefully, moving as slowly as he could manage with his arms full of trouble, he eased her down to the floor. The lower to the ground they moved, though, the more frenzied she fought him. Through the delicate skin at her wrists he could feel her pulse trembling and she was breathing in harsh, ragged gasps.
He finally was close enough to the wooden slats of the porch that he could release her safely. As soon as she was on solid ground, he moved back, crouching to her level a few feet away. “See? No harm done.”
For a moment she just stared at him, her big green eyes dazed and lost. She blinked several times, her small chest heaving under that soft old sweatshirt as she tried to catch her breath.
He knew exactly when she snapped back into the present—her eyes lost that frantic, fight-or-flight look and a deep flush spread from her neck to her cheekbones like bright red paint spilling across canvas.
“I… Oh.”
In those expressive eyes he could see mortification and something deeper. Almost shame.
She cleared her throat and shifted her gaze to the ground. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice was small, tight. “Did I hurt you?”
“Nope.” He tried to smile reassuringly, for all the good it did him, since she wouldn’t look at him. “I’ve run into much tougher customers than you.”
“I don’t doubt that,” she murmured, a deep, old bitterness in her voice.
Her hands still shook and he had to fight the urge to reach out and cover those slender, trembling fingers with his.
She wouldn’t welcome the comfort right now. He knew she wouldn’t. And she’d probably jump right through the porch roof if he obeyed his other sudden, completely irrational impulse—to reach forward and press his mouth to that wildly fluttering pulse he could see beating quickly through an artery at the base of her throat.
“You want to tell me what that was all about?” he asked instead.
She still refused to meet his gaze. “You just startled me, that’s all. I don’t like being startled.”
Yeah, like a wild mustang doesn’t like rowels dug into his sides. Eyes narrowed, he watched her for several more seconds, then realized she wasn’t going to tell him anything more about the reason for her panic.
“How’s the leg?”
“The…the leg?”
“That’s what started this whole thing, remember? You turned to walk away from me and it must have given out. I tried to keep you from falling and you suddenly went off like a firecracker on the Fourth of July.”
The blush spread even farther. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. “Thank you for trying to help.”
She reached out and used a chair for leverage to stand, then tested her weight gingerly. “It’s my knee, not my leg. It gives me trouble sometimes if I move too quickly.”
Was that the reason for that slight, mysterious limp of hers? What had caused it? he wondered. An accident of some kind? The same accident that made her spirit seem so wounded, that put that wild panic in her green eyes when somebody touched her unexpectedly?
He had a thousand questions, but he knew she wouldn’t answer any of them. “Sit down. Need me to call Doc Wallace and have him come take a look at it?”
“No. I’m fine. It should be all right in a few moments.”
