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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.
“Get off,” she demanded, shoving at him again, but this time, she couldn’t break free. “Travis.” She growled his name from between gritted teeth. “I’m warning you.”
The jerk tried to kiss her. When his mouth loomed close, she panicked. Needing immediate freedom, she hiked her knee up, glad her skirt was loose enough to lift a satisfying height to hit her target.
As soon as she cracked him between the legs, h
e choked out a surprised, pained grunt and lurched over, cradling his privates before tipping sideways and pitching to the floor. Curling into the fetal position, he gasped, “You…bitch.”
She sniffed, unimpressed by the insult and began to step over his leg to stride off, but he caught her ankle and nearly sent her sprawling onto her face.
Just as she yelped out her surprise and threw out her arms to catch herself, a strident voice roared from down the hall. “Hey! What’s going on here?”
Cooper, something inside her called. He’d come.
Except, when she lifted her face and tugged her foot free from Travis, losing her sandal in the process, Cooper wasn’t the man charging toward her. She was so disappointed to not see him, she didn’t even recognize her brother-in-law until he caught her arm and steadied her, helping her straighten back to her full height.
“Thank God Em sent me to check on you. Are you okay?”
She tucked her mused hair out of her face. “Yeah. I…I’m fine.” She lifted her face to smile at her savior, but he’d already turned away and was hauling a still-hunched Travis to his feet.
“You messed up, pal,” he said calmly enough before shoving the wounded man against a row of lockers and pinning him there. “Now apologize to my sister.”
Instead of cowering and immediately spitting out an impassioned apology, the idiot blinked at Branson. “Sister?”
“He’s married to Emma Leigh,” Jo Ellen explained vaguely as she tugged at her brother-in-law’s arm. “Bran, let him go—”
