A Fallow Heart (Tommy Creek #2)(81)

Eyes narrowing, he trailed the two from a distance, stepping lightly so his boots wouldn’t alert them to his presence. Reaching the opening of the hall, he paused and leaned forward to peer down the row of lockers. Jo Ellen ducked into a shadowed nook and her companion followed. Though he could barely see both of them, he couldn’t hear anything they said.

Cooper studied the other man a moment longer before he recognized Travis Untermeyer. Jaw clenching, he kept watching, unable to look away as Jo Ellen and her first love began to talk. As his retinas stung from the intense way he stared, Cooper watched Untermeyer reach out and catch Jo Ellen’s hip in a possessive hold. He drew her close to him.

Cooper couldn’t watch them kiss. To avoid it, he slammed his eyes closed and tried to breathe through his nose to keep from exploding.

She’d made her decision, he kept telling himself. She’d chosen Pretty Boy. He needed to leave it alone. Still, he wanted to storm down the hall and kill her perfect, little polished city boy. He wanted to crush and hurt. Instead, he whirled on the heels of his boots and didn’t open his eyes until he’d moved past the opening of the hall.

Storming from the school, he strode to his truck, the sound of his single footfalls making him grit his teeth. Damn it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

Rubbing at the center of his chest, trying to abate the clawing ache, he opened his door and climbed in. Starting the engine, he didn’t even look back. He drove away.

He wouldn’t mourn, he commanded himself. He didn’t have time. He had crops to harvest.





“So?” Jo Ellen licked her dry lips, nervous about what Travis planned to say.

He smiled. “So…”

Her brow puckered with confusion. “Did you…did you want to talk about the baby or what?”

Confusion lined his features and wrinkled at the corners of his eyes. “Baby? What baby?”

Her mouth fell open. She blinked rapidly through the incredulous shock swelling inside her before she hissed from between clenched teeth. “Our baby?”

He stared blankly before his eyes grew wide. Then he glanced around as if to once again make sure they were alone. Then he grasped her hip and led her deeper into the dark nook. “Are you telling me you actually kept it?” he hissed.

“Kept it?” she repeated, totally bewildered. What in the world was he talking about?

“Christ, Jo Ellen. I knew your family was against the idea of abortion, but I thought your parents were at least smart enough to make you give it up for adoption.”

He didn’t know.

Like a punch to her solar plexus, the truth slammed into her. He had no idea her baby had died. She wasn’t sure what upset her more, that he hadn’t even bothered to find out what had happened to his own child or that he assumed it was still alive and with her. He didn’t demand a single detail, like gender, or name, hair color—

Suddenly glad her baby hadn’t been forced to exist with such an uncaring, awful father, she fisted her hands down at her sides and envisioned herself plowing him right in the nose.

“So what did you want to discuss with me in Dallas?” she asked, not even feeling the compulsion to inform him his child hadn’t even survived to birth.

He quirked his brows. “Discuss? Why would I want to talk about anything?”

“Because you said…” Jo Ellen lost a bit of her cool as steam gathered around her collar. If he hadn’t wanted to discuss anything, what the hell had he meant by I want to make amends when he’d said it in Dallas? She had assumed he wanted to apologize.

Damn it, she wanted an apology.

Before she could question him further, a hand curled around her waist in a firm grip just before he slid his palm up the back of her blouse. “Yeah, I said I wanted to meet up with you again.”

“Hey!” She jerked back, surprised. “Wha—”

He prowled after her, his eyes lighting with accomplishment as he leered. “That’s right.” He chuckled. “You prefer a little…coaxing to get into the mood, don’t you? It’s what I miss most about you, Jo. Always a challenge.”

“Actually that was me resisting,” she muttered in a dry tone, slapping his hand away when he reached for her again.

He laughed. “But you could never resist me for long.”

She threw up a little in her mouth. All this time, he still believed her adamant no’s had simply been foreplay.

“No,” she corrected, except he didn’t give her time to explain. He moved in, crowding her against the closed classroom door. When fingers squeezed her breast, she gasped in shock and shoved him back hard.

“How dare you!” She couldn’t decide what insulted her more, the fact he assumed she’d be willing to pick up where they’d left off or that he could so blithely break his marriage vows…with his wife and children somewhere in the same building. “Your wife is—”

“A cold, lifeless bitch. But her daddy’s richer than Midas.” Which is exactly how he’d always described Jo Ellen’s father when they were dating.

Too horrified to respond, she could only feel ill as she realized she’d once dated this person, actually let him into her body. A shiver of revulsion consumed her.

She was so busy reveling in her disgust, she wasn’t paying attention enough to dodge aside as he lunged after her and wrapped his arms around her middle. His bulging belly prodded hers. The intense smell of aftershave and cologne suffocated her.