Hot Coco (6 page)

Flames shot across the counter top. The smoking skillet spit sparks and fire like a cannon.

He snatched the tablecloth from under Coco and ripped it off the table. China, glassware, silver crashed and broke against the wall and on the floor. He beat the flames while dragging the horny Cocker Spaniel, still humping his leg, across the room with him.

“Call the fire department.”

“Wha—” Coco tried to get a grasp on the situation.

“Nine-one-one!” Mike shrieked while thrashing the flames, kicking his leg, and cursing her calamity.

With his belt dangling from his waist, Mike sat on the steps in front of Coco’s townhouse with an oxygen mask clasped to his face, which was covered in thick, black soot. With a glazed-over, disgusted expression, he watched the fire fighters roll up the hoses, and load them into their trucks.

Neighbors gathered on the sidewalks to whisper and point. Mike wondered how many times they gathered to gossip about the catastrophic Coco.

A young fire fighter approached the steps to claim a rolled-up hose next to where he was sitting. Fixated on the nightshirt clinging to Mike’s every muscle, his lips moved slightly while he read the words scrolled across his chest. Looking at him like he was a circus freak, his eyebrows rose.

Mike ripped the oxygen mask from his face. “It’s not my shirt.”

With a shrug and a wink, the fire fighter swooped up the hose and retreated to the fire truck.

The full moon splashed its light over the wooden rural landscape along Ridge Road. Feeling like a total idiot, not to mention gravely let down, Mike took the long way home. He smelled like smoke, he felt like shit, and he couldn’t wait to take a shower. He never got to see Coco naked.
Hell, things were heading for beyond naked if dinner hadn’t exploded. Yep, it’s going to be a cold shower tonight.

He steered the truck into his driveway that was fifteen hundred feet before the main stone entrance into Westwood. After rolling along the white fences under the canopy of the oak trees, it crunched to a stop in front of his bungalow. Mike saw that the barn lights were on. Then, he noticed the time: eleven o’clock.

“What now?” He shoved the truck back into gear.

The barn was trashed. Broken bales of hay were half-eaten and scattered over the floor. Wheelbarrows, buckets, and pitchforks were tossed in every direction. The horses whinnied from their stalls and stomped their feet. Eric gathered what hay he could salvage; while Kate, wearing her pajamas, swept the floor. She was murmuring disparaging comments about her older brother.

Leading Charlatan toward his stall, Shane wearily shuffled up the aisle when his brother slipped through the barn door.

Mike was greeted by their stiff glares. “Not again,” he sighed.

Eric glowered with his infamous I’m-going-to-skin-you-with-a-dull-knife look that used to make Mike’s blood curl when he was a kid. His eyes trained on the words on the nightshirt, and then to his black sooty face. “Yep, you’ve got a real handle on the situation, son.”

Oh yeah, there’s that icy tone that always backs-up the infamous look.

Eric shoved a pitchfork into Mike’s hand and marched out the door.

Feeling a tap on his shoulder, Mike turned. Kate eyes burned through him when she shoved her broom at him and followed her father.

He looked around at the huge mess that the horses had provided. Coco’s firehouse calamity had followed him home, and it was burning a hole in his gut. Maybe he would have seen the humor in all this, maybe he would have laughed it off, if he had gotten to see her naked.

He was lost in the mess, disgust, and less than satisfying dinner date when he noticed Shane with a cock-eyed grin on his face.

Reading the less-than-dignified message on the woman’s nightshirt that Mike was wearing. Shane’s gleaming eyes met his. His grin transformed into an all-out toothy smile. “Whoa, Coco’s kinda kinky.”

“Shut-up.”

Chuckling, Shane followed his father and his sister from the barn to leave him to the task of cleaning up.

Mike began to sweep the hay along the aisle when he noticed Charlatan stretching his neck under the gate of his stall and slapping his big lips together while trying to chomp a broken bale of hay that was just out of his reach.

Mike tossed the broom aside. “You’ve had enough hay for one night, don’t you think?”

He pushed the horse’s head back and kicked the hay aside when he realized that Charlatan was not stretching for the hay. Coco had left the bag of peppermints on the bale. When the horses broke it, the bag must have fallen behind it. The sweet peppermints were scattered amongst the hay.

Mike picked up the bag.

Charlatan’s ears perked. His eyes widened. Snorting at the sound of the crinkling bag, the horse stomped his feet.

Mike’s right brow lifted. His eyes narrowed. Extending his palm with a peppermint, Charlatan gulped it in. He sucked in the flavor with such replete that it was almost like he was having a damned orgasm.

Amazed at the Thoroughbred’s utter bliss, Mike blinked hard. He shoved a handful of peppermints into his jeans.

The soot on his face and demeaning T-shirt stretched across his pecks were forgotten. The trashed barn was the furthest thing on his mind when he darted to the tack room and flipped on the light. He yanked an exercise saddle from among the many hanging on the tree, and grabbed a bridle from the tack rack. He hurried back to Charlatan’s stall.

When he stepped inside the stall, Charlatan almost knocked him down while nuzzling his pocket hard in a feverish search for another peppermint treat. Mike was quick to oblige. While Charlatan was in his nirvanas mint trance, he tossed the saddle on the horse’s back and tightened the girth.

Success. No fuss, no muss, and more importantly, no flipping.
TLC. Maybe Coco was on to something, after all. Who would have guessed?

He had to find out for sure.

He shoved the bit in Charlatan’s mouth, led him from his stall, down the aisle, and out the barn door into the cloak of night.

They walked along the winding path toward the training track. Seeping through the canopy of the trees overhead, the moonlight stalked them to illuminate the wide yawn of the track at the end of the trail.

The grey gelding was a bulldozer of a horse with a wide chest, big round hips, and good stout legs. Mike was an easy six-foot-two and weighed about one-hundred-and-ninety pounds, but he felt confident that Charlatan could carry him for one moonlit test run.

He tossed Charlatan another mint, which he caught in mid-air. No one would be around to pick his sorry ass up out of the dirt if the big gelding decided to flip-over, but his gut told him that that’s not how the moonlit experiment would end.

Mike leapt into the saddle, pressed his feet into the irons, and urged Charlatan onto the track. The big horse snorted and his feet danced in the sand before he galloped into the moonbeams. His neck arched. Mike kept a tight gathered hold on the reins until he pushed his arms forward and let Charlatan have his run.

Wahoo!

Part Two

Feel the Burn

Six

A
ugust mornings provide a lovely prelude to autumn’s crisp, refreshing air in the Allegheny Mountain region.

A breeze rustled Eric’s hair while he strolled through the shed rows after leaving the cafeteria with a cardboard tray filled with coffees.

Jen Fleming tiptoed from behind to playfully loop her arm through his. A slender, attractive, middle-aged woman, Jen was the racetrack nurse. She wore her brunette tresses in a short blunt cut around her face to give her a pixie-like appearance.

Having a thing for the imposing patriarch of Westwood Stables, she was optimistic that someday he would have a thing for her as well. So far, he behaved like a charming courteous gentleman toward her. That wasn’t exactly what she had in mind, but it would have do for now.

“Good morning,
Mr. West
,” she chirped in a sing-song voice.

Eric smiled. “Good morning, Jen, what brings you to the lowly backside?”

“I was hoping one of those coffees might be for me.”

He looked down at the coffees. There were no extras, so he plucked his cup from the tray. “This one looks about right.”

Grinning, she wrapped her hands around the warm Styrofoam cup that the true gentleman gave up for her. Oh yes, she was well aware of the sacrifice. “Do you have horses racing tonight?”

“Mike has a mare in the fifth race for Coco Beardmore.”

“Mmmm, what’s she like?”

“Interesting, in a frightening sort of way,” he answered.

“So I’ve heard.”

They shared a quiet chuckle.

“West!” Doug O’Conner’s gruff voice skittered up his spine. “You’re just the man I wanna talk to.” He spit an icky brown line of tobacco juice at their feet.

Eric’s brows furrowed. “What’s the problem?”

“That oldest boy of yours, that’s what. I’m gonna kick his ass!” Doug shook his fist in his face before turning to Jen. “You watch ‘em, Ms. Fleming. Them Wests ain’t nothing but a bunch of horny bastards.”

Her eyes widened and her lips parted. She was stunned.

Placing his open palm hard against Doug’s chest, Eric forced him back a step. Through a clenched jaw, he spoke, “Why don’t you calm down and tell me what’s eating at you?”

“Mike came to the barn last night and had a little one-on-one with my Marge.”

“With
Margie?”
Jen didn’t realize she had said it out loud.

He glared at her.

Swallowing hard, she back-peddled. “She’s a lovely girl.”

Eric’s face wrinkled with doubt when he asked, “Who said so?”

“I got my sources.”

That morning, Scott had informed Doug over coffee and Copenhagen about bumping into Mike while rushing, red-faced, from the barn. He also relayed his sincere concern. Margie had seemed very guarded about her meeting with Mike and he saw her adjusting her shirt while leaving the office.

That was good enough for Doug. Mike West had done the dirty deed, and it was time for him to fess-up and pay-up.

“I asked Margie, too,” Doug told Eric. “She says he was just asking questions about Coo-coo Coco’s horses. She’s just trying to protect him from a good ass kicking. That’s what I think.”

“I’m sure it was more than likely the way Margie tells it,” Eric said. “Mike would never take advantage of her.”

Doug’s face went from smack-dab injured to insulted. “What? You think your boy is too good to take Margie for a little joy ride? I’ll take you on right here, West!” He hitched his pants higher on his hips and pushed his sleeves farther up his arms.

“Relax, Doug. Give me a chance to talk to Mike before we declare all-out war.” Eric wasn’t into street fighting.

A crowd was beginning to gather with hopes for some cheap entertainment to add to the juicy gossip they’d just been fed. That gossip would rip through the backside within mega seconds.

With his lip jutted out, Doug stood with his feet spread apart, his jaw set, and his fists poised high for a little round of fist-a-cuffs. Scowling, he contemplated Eric’s request. Feeling as though he had already tasted victory, he let his hands relax and drop to his sides.

He scrubbed his whiskers with his grimy twisted fingers. “Fair enough, West. But talk to him quick, and if my Marge is knocked-up … He’s a dead man!” He surveyed the crowd listening to his boisterous threats. Satisfied with his display of command, he nodded at them. Cocking his chin high, he strutted into his barn.

Bemused, Jen turned to Eric. “What was that?”

He sighed. “I’ll have to find out.” Taking note of the crowd still staring at them, he took her gently by the elbow and ushered her toward his stable. “Hey, how’s that coffee?”

Margie was terrified. Stealthily, she searched the shed rows for Mike to warn him that her father was pissed-off as hell and targeted for him. She couldn’t imagine why Scott would have told him such a shameful story.
Yeah, Mike came to see me. Yeah, we were in the office. No, he didn’t touch me. Damn it.

She tried to convince her hard-headed, mule-minded, father that all Mike wanted was information about Coco’s grey gelding.
But no, he has it in for the West family.

Why even when Dr. Spears came to care for a horse, Kate had to wait outside the stable. She had never done anything wrong. She was a West, and that was reason enough for Doug.

Margie couldn’t think of anything the Wests may have done to her father. Same as the rest of them, Eric West was always polite. But DougO’Conner hated the very sight of them.
Actually, he had little use for anyone at all—especially women.

Margie fingered the pair of glasses she had clipped to her shirt that she had found in an old desk drawer at home. She thought that if she could see the words in Scott’s book a little better that maybe she could read them. She crept around the corner of Westwood Stables in hope that Mike might wander out. He did with Coco at his side. Margie ducked behind the stable.

They spoke for only a moment before Coco brushed her lips over his and walked away.

Damn it.

Margie felt a presence over her shoulder and turned.

Ava West was watching, too. Her eyes were piercing. Her lips were tight and thin.

“Ava, what’re you doing here?” she whispered.

Her gorgeous green eyes flickered. “I could ask you the same question. Who’s that woman with Michael?”

“Coco Beardmore.”

“Is that—”

“Yeah, yeah, Beardmore Industries. She’s pretty and rich, and I think she’s seeing Mike.”

Ava’s lips jutted. After the confrontation between Eric and Doug that morning, the story about Mike’s roll-in-the-hay with Margie was already the hot topic. She didn’t believe it for a nanosecond, but she said, “I heard you were seeing Michael.”

Margie snorted. “I wish.”

“I bet,” Ava wryly retorted. Mike was not only out of her league; but Margie wasn’t even in the same galaxy.
Yeah, he wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.

The fact remained that a beautiful blonde with a boatload of coin was seeing her ex. The Wests were very well-off, and their Thoroughbred operation was more that lucrative.
Adding a million-dollar baby to the mix? That is not good.
She still commanded a little control over her ex-hubby, and had no intention of letting go.