Over Tom’s shoulder, she spotted Henry a short distance away. Wearing his old trusty binoculars around his neck and a smile on his face, he nodded at her and touched his fingers to his brow, as if he were tipping his hat, before disappearing into the crowd.
Eric walked Tom and Colette to their car. Tom could hardly contain his excitement. Eric thought he was going to break into a skip at any moment.
When Eric held the door of the Porsche open for Colette, she kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for everything, Mr. West, especially your patience.” She slid into the passenger’s seat. “And will you please tell Kate that I am truly sorry about her car?”
“Be happy, Coco ... Colette,” Eric said, with a wink and a smile.
The banana bread baking in the oven sent a heavenly waft through Margie’s kitchen.
She had carried the old battered box of her mother’s romance books into the room and set them on a chair. Carefully, one by one, she laid them on the table. She read each title slowly. The corners were brown and bent. Some of the books had been nibbled at by mice. The pictures of the erotic lovers on the covers were faded, but they were a beautiful mystery to her. The romance books were all she had of her mother after she had abandoned Margie and her father many years before.
The kitchen door opening and slamming shut broke through her concentration. Looking up, she found Doug staring at her and the box of books on the chair. She could see the seething burn in his eyes.
He said nothing. Frowning, he stomp to the sink, washed his hands, and dried them on a towel while studying her.
Indifferent to the resentment she could feel permeating from his gaze, she continued to sort through the books and arrange them on the table.
Pitching the dish towel to the counter, he clomped into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him. She could hear him rummaging around the room, banging dresser drawers, and plodding about like an angry child sent to time-out. His bedroom door whipped open to push a gusty draft through the room. Wearing a flushed, tight expression on his weathered face, he marched to the kitchen and slapped an old photograph face down on the table.
Her questioning wary eyes met his. When he withdrew his hand from the photo, he shot her a “go ahead” nod before going out the kitchen door.
After the slam, Margie leaned against the counter to stare at the photograph on the table. With a braced breath and a deep swallow, she reached for the picture. Her heart thrummed against her chest when she turned it over. Tears swelled in her eyes while she studied the face of the mother she had no recollection of.
There she was. Tall and thin with long brunette hair that was just like Margie’s. She was no raving beauty, either. Pity, I’ve always imagined her looking like a movie star. That’s why she didn’t want or couldn’t stay with dad and me. Her beauty was too grand to waste on this beat-up old farm. That wasn’t the case. She was as homely as me.
Margie strained to study the grainy image of her mother holding her daughter on her hip while smiling into the camera. Funny, she doesn’t look unhappy at all in this drab old picture. Slowly, she turned it over. There was an address on the back. Denver, Colorado.
Carrying a plate of warm banana bread, Margie stepped out of the kitchen door onto the small unkempt back porch. The cinnamon butter melted over the steaming aromatic bread. Her father leaned against the porch post with his hands tucked into the pockets of his worn-out flannel pants. He stared out at the old Thoroughbreds mulling about behind the baler twine fence. He seemed meditative and sad.
Doug spit tobacco into the bristly weeds beyond the porch. There was nothing genteel or tender about Doug O’Conner. He was a hard man, with a hard heart that seemed to have softened … maybe just a little.
“That’s as good as it gets, Marge. That’s the last address I had for your mom. She wrote me four years after she left. She wanted to see you. Screw her. She left. She had no right—not no more,” he said, bitterly. He turned and she offered him the plate of piping hot bread. “You patch things up with Scott?”
“Mostly.” Margie watched him savor the taste of the cinnamon and the banana.
“Suppose you’ll be leaving me, too.”
“Naw, who’d put up with you, anyways?” Margie chuckled while urging a tiny curl from his craggy lips.
“You gonna look for her?” he asked in probably the softest tone she’d ever heard from him.
“Maybe, I got some thinking to do.” She did something that she had never done before. She wrapped her arms around her father and rested her head on his shoulder.
The old coot seemed to like it.
Strong black coffee, that’s what Lugowski had a taste for. McDonald’s coffee never tasted as good as that afternoon when he sipped it with Kate West, the blue-eyed blonde that had his brain wrangled in a tight ball of confusion.
It was that very confusion that had made him break protocol by convincing Captian Lutz to let him interrogate Margie O’Conner. Being a by-the-book kind of man, he was shocked when the captain gave him the nod. Maybe Lutz enjoyed pissing-off Detective Steward as much as Lugowski enjoyed doing the deed.
After Margie’s release, he jokingly told Kate that she owed him. Jokingly? So why am I steering my SUV through the stone entrance of Westwood Thoroughbred Farm? Coffee and Kate. At the moment, they seemed like a tasty combination.
The grand Victorian style farmhouse was peeking through the tangle of branches of gracious oaks lining the driveway. He slowed the SUV to a stop in front of the house and stared at the steering wheel. Mechanically, he flipped an unlit cigarette through his fingers. Oh yeah, he wanted to light that sucker up.
C’mon. I finally have the woman I’ve wanted all my life. Ava. I wanted her before she was Ava West. I wanted her the entire time she was married to Mike. Now she’s exactly where I want her to be—in my life—and in my bed.
Again, he found himself wrestling with the same question: What the hell am I doing in Kate’s driveway? No argument, the girl stirs me. The girl has sass. The girl’s a keeper. She’s also Mike West’s little sister and Ava’s ex-sister-in-law. How out of the ball park is that?
Ava would rip me apart ten ways from Sunday, if she knew where I was. Correction: Ava would break it off with me, and probably go running back to Mike. How cozy would that be? Ava with Mike and me with Kate—not reality—but hey, crazier things have happened. Whoa, not that I want to be with Kate, right? Shit. I should throw the damned vehicle into reverse, and get the hell outta here before—
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Kate lightly rapped her knuckles on his window. Too late. He let the window down. She looked at him, bemused, with those beautiful, sensual, blue eyes that were the core of his confusion, stimulation, and straight-up trepidation.
“Hey, Carl, what’s going on? Am I under arrest?” She laughed.
God help me. I’d like to arrest her. I’d like to take her in my arms, feel the curve of her body against mine, kiss her, taste every inch of her, and try like hell to satisfy whatever it is that she stirs inside of me. Instead, he dragged his gaze to hers, and with that boyish smirk unconsciously planted on his lips, he proceeded with the truth.
“I’m here to collect.”
The End
A Note From The Author
I hope you have enjoyed reading Hot Coco as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. The Unbridled stories are fiction. That said, there are pieces of my life experiences weaved into the storylines, small reminders of what was going on at the time of writing the book. Included within the anecdotes are situations, exaggerated upon, of course, that have actually happened. Example: The burning down of Coco’s kitchen—Almost a true story—enough said. ;}
Many of the Thoroughbreds mentioned in Hot Coco are horses that have actually raced for our stable, Salty Silver Sally, Call Me CJ, and the mischievous Charlatan.<
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Thank you for reading Hot Coco. I love to write these stories and I have many more to share. I invite you to read the following excerpt from the next book of the Unbridled Series ...
Dangerous Deception
The fading sunlight seeped through the curtains to shimmer over the silky white Persian cat, Stella, sleeping on the window sill. The flickering candles on the vanity sent a waft of vanilla throughout the room to camouflage the smell of sex.
Ava West’s auburn hair cascaded across her shoulders. Her breathing was shallow and steady against Carl Lugowski’s chiseled chest.
Lieutenant Carl Lugowski worked homicide for the Rosemount Police Department. He was normally a light sleeper, as most cops are. Subconsciously, they must always be prepared for that emergency phone call from the station to jolt them from their bed because a body had been found in some dark alley or a domestic argument had gone terribly awry to result in murder.
Today, Carl’s gentle snore was restful while holding Ava’s beautiful naked body in his arms. After their afternoon of abandoned love-making, his sleep was deep.
God, she knew how to get to him. He had taken a half day off. They were supposed to see a matinee, but when he arrived at her apartment, Ava had other plans. Not a problem. Nosiree, Bob. She answered the door in a dark blue lace teddy that accentuated the swell of her round breasts and her stiff nipples peeking through the sheer delicate fabric. Her sultry green eyes had a “come on” look. Her plump lips curled. They were begging to be kissed hard.
Ava didn’t flirt. When she wanted sex, she was shameless.
She had opened the door and pressed her lips to his. While running her hands over his chest and unbuttoning his shirt, there was no fumbling. The buttons slipped open with unerring precision.
He slipped the strap of the teddy from her shoulder to bare her beautiful breast. Running his tongue over the pebbled nipple, he felt the undeniable pressure of his erection.
When she pushed him away, her smile turned devious.
Ava was like that. She teased.
He knew what she was about.
As gracefully as a dancer, she swooped up two glasses of wine from the hall table and strutted toward the bedroom. Her long silky hair caressed her back as she moved.
Lord have mercy, how he loved to watch her walk toward that bedroom where pleasure would rule the afternoon, and where once would never be enough to satisfy her desire. Ava was a demanding lover, and he aimed to please and please and freaking please.
Who needs a damned movie?
Their clothes lie on the floor, and the daylight was gently giving way to the purple whisper of twilight. They were spent.
The sheets lightly covered their warm moist naked bodies, until suddenly the surreal quiet was broken by Lugowski’s cell phone buzzing and vibrating against the lamp on the nightstand. Damn it. His eyes dragged open slowly and rotated toward the meddling reverberation. Letting out a low grouse, he begrudgingly reached for the phone. Ava tugged at his arm.
“Let it go to voice mail,” she murmured.
Not a bad idea. In fact, he was seriously considering it, when his eyes caught the name on the screen: KATE WEST.
Game changer.
His relationship with Ava meant the world to him. He had wanted that woman since well, forever. He wanted her when they were in high school. He wanted her while he was away at the academy, and he still wanted her when he returned to find that she was Mike West’s wife. But now she was exactly where he always wanted her to be, in his life, and in his bed.
Wrangled and rocked beyond his control, his heart helplessly skipped a beat when Kate West was around; hell, when Kate West’s name was merely mentioned. She stirred something inside him that he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. It confused and, quite frankly, scared the hell out of him.
She wasn’t the clichéd blue-eyed, blonde-haired, “girl next door”. But she was definitely a woman any man would want to come home to, wrap his arms around, and make love to night after night. Kate West was what Lugowski would define as “a keeper”.
WTF? He was in bed with the woman of his dreams. He should really let the call go. Yeah, really, that’s what I should do. She was squeezing him. Why would she be calling? We don’t have anything but a professional relationship. So ...
“I need to take this. Sorry, baby.” Sitting up, he pressed the phone as tightly and as covertly as possible to his ear. “Lugowski ...” He made sure he sounded authoritative and official.
“Carl, I’m so sorry to bother you. This is Kate West.”
Dragging her fingers through her hair, Ava perked her ears when she detected a slightly familiar female voice filtering through the receiver. It made her brows furrow and her lips purse. Suspicion was mixing it up with jealousy—fast. While Lugowski had muffled the voice, she tilted her head against the pillow, narrowed her eyes, and became engaged.
The voice sounded like Kate’s, and that was definitely an unacceptable intrusion on her afternoon delight.
“What’s going on?” Lugowski recognized the disquiet in her voice.
“I don’t want to talk about it over the phone, but it’s really important, Carl. Can we meet at McDonald’s?”
Coffee. He had had coffee with the lovely blonde at McDonald’s several times. Usually it was at his request. It had become almost a code between them—never anything sexual, and he wasn’t sure what he would do if it ever did. Shit.What am I thinking? Kate is Mike West’s little sister, and Ava’s ex-sister-in-law. It’s too complicated, too weird, too out-of-control ...
“I’m on my way.” No hesitation. The words spilled right out of his mouth. He ended the call, pitched the sheets aside, swung his legs over the bed, and reached for his boxer briefs.
Briskly sitting up, Ava grabbed his arm. The black satin sheets slipped to her waist. Her breasts bobbed delicately into glorious view. “What? Wait a minute. Where are you going?” she demanded in a high-pitched annoyed tone.
It only took a nanosecond for her green bedroom eyes to morph into a jaded glower.
It was a justified question that he couldn’t give an honest answer to, unless he was absolutely sure he wanted to endure the repercussions. Ava would be furious, to say the least, if she knew he was leaving her bed to go to Kate’s aid, or whatever it was that he was going to. He wasn’t sure.
He only knew he had to go.
About the Author
For the past twenty years, Cindy has helped her husband raise, train, and race Thoroughbreds at their forty-five acre farm known as Fly-By-Night Stables near Pittsburgh.
During those years, Cindy has paid close attention to the characters that hang-out at the back-side of the track. She found the situations and life style most intriguing. In 2005, she sat down at her computer and began a journey into writing about this life that few understand.
Cindy has recently retired from making her living as a professional choreographer. She owned and operated Cindy McDonald’s School of Dance since 1985. She studied at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School and with the Pittsburgh Dance Alloy at Carnegie Mellon University to name a few. She has choreographed many musicals and an opera for the Pittsburgh Savoyards.
To find out more about future books of the Unbridled Series, please visit Cindy’s website at: www.cindymcwriter.com
Also Available From
The UnBridled Series
Make a note: never agitate a madman. Successful Thoroughbred trainer Mike West just made that mistake, and he’s gonna pay-more than he ever realized. But it’s all in the family; his sister, Kate, has been the object of the madman’s desire on the social network site “My Town”. Her constant rejections have infuriated him. People who seem to be in his way start turning up dead, and he’s got Kate and Mike next on his list! In the first book of The Unbridled Series Cindy McDonald introduces you to
the world of Thoroughbred racing, while taking her cast of characters for a wild ride through a maniac’s mind.
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