Hot Coco (4 page)

“Whoa, easy now,” Coco whispered to the animal while gingerly guiding it toward the ramp.

Mike managed to hoist Shane, huffing and puffing, from the pool. In a puddle of chlorine water, he collapsed onto the cement floor. Much to his own surprise, he found the cell phone still in his hand. Gulping for air and blinking his eyes from the nip of the chlorine, he lifted the phone to his face.

“Mr. Mason ... Mr. Mason?” No reply. “Great. Hey thanks, bro.” Grumbling, he pitched the phone into the pool.

Mike’s face flushed.

Enough is enough for one day, Mike thought.

It seemed like a wise decision to not bother with any more of Coco’s horses for the rest of the day. After gathering Shane up from the wet cement, they put the two Thoroughbreds away. Having been on the r
eceiving end of dirty looks from Punch earlier, and now Shane wielding the same expressions in his direction, Mike considered it a brilliant decision to send Coco home.
She looped her arm through Mike’s when he escorted her to the barn door.
He wondered if she was picturing him naked after his poor judgment call at the pool.

“I’d love you to come for dinner at my house tonight, Mike,” she said. “I know it’s probably hard to believe, but I’m actually a very good cook.”

In fact, yes, it was very hard for him to believe, but he was so busy with the birthday suit thing, that he found himself most agreeable. “I’m sure you are.”

Biting her lip, she gently stroked his wet chest while churning out in a soft, sensual tone. “Are you sure Shane will be all right?”

He didn’t care what happened. Even though it was his no-no and not hers, he was picturing those full, firm, fantastic breasts.
Shane? Shane who?
Mike blinked back into the moment. “Oh, yeah, he’ll be fine. It was just an unscheduled bath, that’s all.”

She giggled like a schoolgirl. “Do you think Mr. Mason will swim his horses?”

“We’ll see.” He opened the door of her SUV.

She stroked his cheek before she slipped into the driver’s seat. Then, she drew his face close and kissed his lips while caressing them with her tongue. When she pulled away she thought that he would look damn good naked.

“See you tonight around seven,” she said while starting the vehicle and shoving it into reverse.

Slowly, the SUV backed.

Catching a glimpse of Shane walking past with his dripping shirt over his arm, Coco’s eyes veered from the rear-view mirror. Her eyes fixated on his wet sculpted pecks. His tight abs glistened in the sunshine.

The SUV backed.

She licked her lips when he stopped to wring out his shirt in the driveway.

The SUV backed.

Droplets of water dripped down Shane’s broad shoulders, biceps, and over his tight belly while the water poured from the shirt.

The SUV backed.

“Coco, watch out.” Mike’s voice ripped through her diversion.

Her attention jolted back to the driveway at the very moment the Escalade sideswiped Mike’s six-horse trailer. The sound of metal ripping and curling reverberated through the farm. Horrified, Coco slammed on the brakes.

Shane stopped wringing-out his shirt.

Kate and Punch rushed from the barn.

Mike darted toward the Escalade.

Their faces fell in shock at the sight of the smashed trailer that was tangled up with the SUV.

Mike yanked open her door. “Are you all right? What were you doing?”

Dry, her mouth moved but nothing came out for a few seconds. “I don’t know. I’m so sorry,” she wailed.

Kate leaned in close to Shane. “She is so not for him.”

Shane sighed. “Wait till he checks out the damage.”

Pursing his lips, Punch expelled a long downward whistle that was accompanied by a wince.

Afraid to look, Mike approached the trailer and cringed. Squeezing his eyes closed, he tried to remain cool.

Naked ... She’s gorgeous naked. Try like hell to picture her.

Naked.

Naked ballerina.

Okay, just naked.

He opened his eyes. “Coco, pull forward ... very slowly.” His voice was tight.

Smothering whimpers, Coco bit her lip. Shoving the Escalade into DRIVE, she pressed the accelerator gently. The tinny echoes of ripping metal skittered up Mike’s stiffened spine. It seemed like forever. Finally, there was a loud pop, and the two vehicles were separated.

Gasping, Coco jumped from her SUV and clutched her mouth with her hand. “I’m so sorry,” she said repeatedly with great remorse.

Mike took in a deep, frustrated breath. His brain was betraying him. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine the buxom blonde beauty naked. He needed her to leave immediately. “I’ll see you later. …Okay?”

Coco cowered. “Okay, Mike. I’ll see you at seven.” She stopped to measure the damages to her white Escalade. While bending over to run her hand over the curled, smashed bumper; her shirt hiked up enough to reveal a butterfly tattoo that swept daintily across her lower back.

Kate’s eyes brightened. She jabbed Shane with her elbow. “Nice tramp stamp.”

Shane’s face lit-up. He leaned into Punch. “A little bit of ba-donk-a-freakin’-donk going on.”

“Mmmm, mmm, mmm,” was all Punch could manage.

They watched Coco drive up the driveway, past the grand oaks, and through the stone entrance.

Pallid, Mike dragged his fingers through his dark hair and cupped his hand on the nape of his neck while staring at his trashed trailer. “I’m going to the track.”

“What for?” Punch asked.

“To get some information on Coco’s horses.”

“Who ya gonna talk to?” Shane wanted to know.

“Someone who’ll tell me anything I want to know. Margie O’Conner.” He went to his truck.

“You might have to put out,” Shane joked. When Punch chuckled along, he continued, “Take one for the team.”

“Not even with a ten-foot pole, buddy,” Mike assured the two laughing hyenas.

Four

Sitting on a bale of hay, Margie O’Conner wiped down a bridle with an old filthy rag. Next to the bale, a pile of bridles waited their turn for her to clean them. She examined the leather on the bridle and the bit to make sure it was spotless.
Perfect.
She set the bridle aside and picked up the next in line.

Doug always kept her busy with cleaning stalls, hauling water, and grooming the horses. When she wasn’t at the track, she was doing laundry or cleaning the shack-of-a-house they lived in at the far end of Lanzville.

When a strand of her mousey brown hair fell loose from the rubber band to tickle her nose, she combed the mop with her fingers to tidy up her ponytail. An old Charlie Rich song filtered through the radio. Unlike the other stables along the shed rows, the radio was never tuned to the popular country western music stations. As far as her father was concerned; Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and Waylon Jennings—those were the
real
country western singers. She didn’t dare touch the dial on the old battered radio—Doug would have a stroke.

In looking for something else to occupy her mind while she scrubbed green horse salvia from a bit, Margie noticed something resting on top of an over-turned bucket. She put down the bridle to investigate.

It was a book.

She remembered seeing Scott reading it earlier in the day. He looked so content with his glasses parked on his nose while submerged in the story. She fingered the words on the sleek cover.

Earlier, when she had asked him what he was reading, he said, “It’s a book about a solider in the Civil War. I like historical books. What kind of books do you like?” There he was again—looking into her eyes while waiting for a response as if her opinion mattered.

Margie was most taken aback by the question and the way his beautiful compassionate eyes always probed hers. Dropping her gaze, she searched her mind. Unbeknownst to her father, some of her mother’s old paperbacks were still in a box in the corner of the basement.

“I like the ones with the good-looking guys holding the pretty girls on the front,” she blurted out.

Scott’s eyes fell into a squint. “Do you mean romance-type books?”

“Ummm, yep, those are the ones,” she lied. “You seem pretty smart, Scott. What are you still doing here? Why didn’t you go on to college instead of mucking stalls and living in the trailer park?”

He studied her for a moment before lifting a shoulder. “Mom didn’t have the money to send me to school. No one from our family ever went to college. Everyone worked here at the track at one time or another. Then when mom got sick—Well, I had to stick around. It’s okay. It all worked out.” He returned to his book.

She felt bad for him. He was stuck with Keystone Downs—the same way she was.

She picked up the left-behind book and perused the pages. Her eyes narrowed. She recognized a word here or there. Easy words like:
to, the, and, it,
and
horse
. She knew that word well, that was a word that was on almost every sign around the racetrack,
“horse”.
But the rest she couldn’t decipher. Wishing she could, she shrugged. She replaced the book on the bucket and shuffled back to the bale of straw, and pile of dirty bridles.

Charlie Rich crooned, “
Behind closed doors ...”
Sighing, she submitted to hum along as if she had a choice in the matter.

The early evening sunshine sliced into the barn when the door creaked open. The backwash of bright light provided only the silhouette of a man standing in the threshold. His broad shoulders eased down through his slender hips. “Hey, Margie, what’s going on?” Mike West’s voice carried like a song down the aisle.

Her face lit-up. She pitched the rag to the floor, brushed back a frock of hair from her eyes, and wiped her hands on her cruddy jeans. “Hi, Mike. What brings you by?” She tried to smother a nervous giggle.

“Coco’s horses.” He walked down the aisle to perch his boot on the bale next to her.

Margie’s face drooped. Her shoulders slumped. She snatched up the rag and returned to her chore.
Coco Beardmore, no freaking kidding.
“My father ain’t here, and I don’t know when he’ll be back,” she said with a cool, clipped tone.

“I was hoping you could help me,” he said with an easy smile.

Stopping in mid-chore, she peered at him askance. “With what?”

“How smart is that big grey gelding, Charlatan?”

Margie sighed. After contemplating Mike’s question, and his gorgeous, piercing hazel eyes for a moment; she tossed the rag to the floor with a disgusted groan.

Oh, it isn’t him. It’s me, and the fact that I can’t help myself. True, Mike West would never give me the time of day unless he needed something. Why should he? Look at him, just look at him, he’s fabulous. What’s wrong with Ava West? Carrying on with other men the way she does. If I had Mike, I’d never look at another man.

She stood up. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

Following her toward the stable office, he glanced down with surprise at her attractive figure. She was slender and tall. Her ripped jeans resembled the designer label called
hard freaking work
, but they clung to her tight shapely buttocks. He noticed the startling gentle sway of her hips when she walked.

She stopped abruptly at the office door and turned to him. Suddenly nose-to-nose with unattractive end of Margie O’Conner, he jumped back, which sent him tumbling over a bale of hay. He landed sprawled on his back into the dirt.

“Coco rubbing off on you?” Chuckling, she held out her rugged man-hand, but he managed to scramble to his feet without touching her. She opened the door to the office and invited him inside with a chilled nod.

Doug O’Conner’s office was pretty much a reflection of its owner: old and crusty. The walls were paneled with dirty rough-cut lumber. Faded win pictures hung crooked on the walls among weathered bridles and dirty clipboards. A beat-up desk littered with tattered race programs, ashtrays filled to the brim with crushed half-smoked cigarette butts, filthy coffee mugs, and several empty cans of Copenhagen filled one corner. A brick substituting for one of the legs was stuffed under a corner of the desk.

Covered with a thick layer of dust, a small black-and-white TV and an old VCR rested on a rickety stand next to the desk. Margie gestured to a scarred wooden chair near it, but Mike politely declined with a wave of his hand.

She pushed the door closed with a loud clap. Uncomfortable with being in a small, closed-in room with her, Mike flinched. The anxiety etched on his face did not go unnoticed, but she let him off the hook and got to the business at hand.

“Every morning we’d come into a wrecked barn,” she said, “Charlatan and his friends would really work the place over every night.” She slipped a battered tape into the VCR. “Dad got sick of it, so we set-up a close-circuit TV to see who the smarty-pants in the group was. Watch this.” She poked a screw driver into a hole where the power button used to be and turned it, the screen lit up to a dull gray.

A wobbly image of the barn aisle filled the screen. Gradually, a stall door jerked, bumped, and then slid open. Charlatan stepped out of his stall and meandered down the aisle while plucking mouthfuls of hay from the bales stacked along the walls.

Stopping at a stall, he nuzzled the horse through the bars. Then, with proficiency, he unlatched the stall door with his teeth, and slid it open. Repeating the routine, he continued down the aisle until five horses wandered freely through the barn to munch on the stacked bales and knock over pitchforks, wheelbarrows, and buckets of water.

“Well, I’ll be damned. We’ve got a regular Houdini on our hands.” Mike was most impressed.

“He’s very smart,” she said. “Funny how he only lets out some of the horses. His buddies, I guess.”

“We’ll fix that.”

“Good luck.”

Mike turned from the TV. She was so close to him that her breath feathered his face. He swiftly eased away. “Well, thanks for the information, Margie.”