Hot Coco (9 page)

“They don’t,” Kate said. “It was a special purchase from a classic car dealer. I had it mounted. Cost me a small fortune, but it was so worth it.”

Kate glanced at the silver Lexus SUV parked near the barn door. “Where’d you get the Lexus?” She hitched her chin toward the luxury vehicle.

“Oh, that’s Daddy’s. Mine’s in the shop,” she giggled nervously. “I’m sure you know why.”

Unamused, Kate smirked.

“Sharp car, isn’t it?” Eric’s voice made the girls turn.

“Beautiful,” Coco said.

“Mike had to go to the track with your horse this morning,” he began the smooth lie. “So I’m afraid he’s not here.”

Quite impressed with her father’s fib, Kate bit her lip.

“Oh, I wanted to talk to him about last night. I’ll see him later, I’m sure.” She smiled. “Love the car, Kate. Not a scratch on her.”

Coco climbed into the Lexus, started the engine, pushed the gear shift into DRIVE, and depressed the gas at the same time her phone announced the arrival of a text message.

“Oh, good.” Hoping the call was from Mike, she reached into her Gucci bag for the cell, but it slipped through her fingers and onto the floor. She kept her left hand on the steering wheel while she stretched, and stretched while wiggling her fingers to retrieve it.

Out of the blue, she heard Eric’s panicked voice. “Watch out!”

She snatched the cell from the floor and sat up in time to see him shove Kate out of the path of the Lexus when it slammed into the side of the brand-new, hard-earned Mustang.

Watching in horror, Eric and Kate lay on the ground while the Lexus pushed the Mustang a solid seven feet—squealing, tearing metal, and twisting the whole way.

Shane rushed into the barn office to snatch up the ringing phone on the desk. “Hello? Hey, Mr. Mason, I’m so glad you called—” He barely got the words out of his mouth when he heard a terrible commotion outside. Narrowing his eyes, he raised his chin to peer out the window across the room. That’s when the barn wall came crashing in.

Coco had shoved the Lexus into reverse to escape the Mustang but had pressed down too hard on the accelerator. The back-end of the SUV burst through the solid oak planking. The win pictures that once hung in tidy rows of victory were launched to scatter through the air.

Shane vaulted over the desk to take cover from the projectiles flying over his head to hit the wall behind him and collapse a metal shelving unit on top of him.

Silence followed. Smoke billowed from the vehicle that was now the centerpiece of the office.

Sliding to a stop in the doorway, Punch peered in with round, wide eyes. “Shane, where are you?” Coughing, he waded through the debris, while batting at the ashen smoke.

Waving his hand in front of his face, Shane coughed while climbing out from under the shelves.

Punch pitched rubble aside before grabbing him by the arm. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.” Then he saw it. “Coco?”

The door of the Lexus slowly opened with a squeal. Timidly, Coco emerged.

“Oh, yeah, Coco,” Punch said.

The thick ashen smoke filled the hole where the lame vehicle was jammed.

Eric pulled Kate from the ground “Good God, Coco.” He dashed toward the SUV and skidded to a stop when Punch delivered her from the wreckage. Covered in ashy dust, Shane was close behind.

“Are you all right?” Eric was relieved to see everyone in one piece.

“Oh, Mr. West, I am so very, very sorry.” Weeping openly, she cupped her hand over her mouth.

Shell-shocked, Kate stared at her mangled Mustang. Her lips moved, but she was unable to forms words. Her cheeks burned red and her eyes filled with fire. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” She scrambled toward the mutilated car. Her mouth dangled open and nostrils flared until her temper reached crescendo. “What the hell is the matter with you?” she wailed.

Coco couldn’t answer. Visions of Mike’s trashed trailer, and the scorched kitchen slammed through her head.

What is wrong with me? Am I a walking disaster area? Good God, I’m a bona-fide klutz.

Never once did Mike call her names or demand sexual compensation for the torture she realized she had wielded upon him. He was a gentleman. A genuine gentlemanly cowboy
.

Rare.

She was joggled back into the moment when an object whizzed past her head.

Shane and Punch ducked. Kate had chucked the classic hood ornament from the Mustang. It smashed through the windshield of the Lexus. The security system screamed
.

Clutched by alarm, Coco looked up. Poor Kate was beyond soothing. She marched around her maimed car while barking disparaging words at Coco’s intelligence.

Punch tenderly touched Coco’s arm.

Turning to the huge compassionate black man, she shivered.

“I think you should go home,” he suggested.

Her face was wet with tears. When she looked into his face, she saw that Punch felt sorry for her, but there was something else there. Behind the empathy, she also saw the word “klutz”.

Oh yes, he has the same look in his eyes that Mike had the night the kitchen caught on fire; and that Henry had in his eyes the day I smashed his brand new Bentley Mulsanne into his vintage Ashton Martin. It screams, “Bumbling klutz!”
She hated that look, and she needed to find a way to eradicate it forever, and soon.

She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Is Daddy’s Lexus drivable?” she mumbled through quivering lips.

Punch glanced over his shoulder at the new embellishment wedged in the barn wall.
No way. How is she going to break the news to Daddy? Then again, I imagine Daddy is already accustomed to Coco’s catastrophes.

“I’ll drive you,” he told her.

Mike led “Flipper”, Charlatan, back into Westwood stables at Keystone Downs. Sebastian O’Terra had taken the gelding for a gallop with great success. While Sebastian fed him peppermints, he had been an angel while being saddled, and he turned in a time that was most impressive, indeed. Charlatan trotted into the stall after Mike slapped him on the rump. He let out a sigh of relief.
A simple remedy for a huge problem. Perfect.

A nanosecond later,
BAP!
His jaw slammed sideways and his head lobbed against the stall door. Almost to his knees, he grabbed the wall to steady himself.

“I’ve been waiting for you, boy,” a familiar gruff voice rang out beyond the white stars that were dancing in front of his eyes.

Mike shook his head. The stars cleared in time for him to duck when Doug swung a pitchfork in his immediate direction. The pitchfork bounced off the wall above his head. Doug heaved it over his shoulder to prep for another blow.

Wide eyed and snorting, the horses jumped to the back of their stalls.

Crouching low, Mike managed to maneuver around the man swinging the fork back and forth madly over his head. “What the hell’s the matter with you, O’Conner?” He backed down the aisle while dodging the prongs of the pitchfork that was jabbing and stabbing toward his chest.

“You ain’t getting away with what you done to my Marge! You took that sweet woman’s virginity, and now I’m gonna take it outta your hide!” Doug bellowed like an old hillbilly at a shotgun affair. He swung the fork.

Mike ducked again, but his mind was racing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never touched Margie.”

“You damned Wests, you’re not only womanizing pigs, you’re cowards!” Filled with malevolent rage, he wrapped his arthritic fingers around the handle so tightly that his crooked knuckles looked as though they would rip through the weathered and cracked skin.

Mike grabbed for the pitchfork. Doug whipped it down to smack his hand and wound up for another bout of blows. Ducking and dodging, Mike sucked back. He was running out of real estate, and soon Doug would have him backed against the wall—literally.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Now put down that damned fork!”

“I’ll put the fork down when you’ve paid for what you took!”

“I didn’t take anything!”

Doug wasn’t interested in reason. Mike really didn’t want to tackle the old guy, and he didn’t want a broken hip added to his mounting laundry list of “forgive and forget” situations. But the wall was closing in, and so was that damned pitchfork. Tackling Doug was rapidly becoming the viable option.

“You violated my Marge!”

Hokay, enough is enough. Need to lay my cards on the table, and spell it out in a way that the old crotchety coot will understand.
Doug swung the fork again, but this time Mike was ready, he grabbed the pitchfork from the old man’s hand and snapped it over his knee. The crack of the handle breaking in two, and the frustration on Mike’s face made Doug cower.

Out of sheer agitation, Mike pointed the broken jagged handle at him. “Listen up, Doug. I wouldn’t touch Margie with a freaking ten foot pole!”

“Dad!” Margie dashed in from the end of the barn.

Tears filling her eyes and streaming down her cheeks, she stared at Mike. The image of her perfect Mike West shattered and fell into mangled fragments of her heart around the pedestal from which he had tumbled.

Her voice quivered with hurt. “Mike didn’t do anything wrong. He never touched me.” She glared through her tears into his eyes. “He would never get close enough to touch the likes of me. Now, you’ve gotta get it outta your head.”

Doug’s wicked daggers had been exchanged with fear. “C’mon, Dad.” Margie tugged her father down the aisle to drag him out the door.

Biting down on his lip, Mike took in a deep, ashamed breath.

Punch threw the huge, bay gelding, Disturbia, an armful of hay and watched the well muscled horse dig in. He patted him on the neck before he meandered up the aisle to turn off the lights for the night. The barn was dark. Martina McBride’s voice filtered through the radio to fill the dimness. A low glow from the office sifted down the aisle. Surprised that he wasn’t the only one left, he checked it out.

He found Mike leaning a hip against the desk while staring at the boarded-up wall and the huge pile of debris swept in the middle of the floor.

What a mess.

Relaxing against the door jamb, Punch folded his massive arms over his chest. “Eh, Eric was talking about putting a bigger window in anyway.”

Mike pitched a broken mug into the pile. “She’s a real live train wreck, isn’t she?”

“Yep.”

“Kate isn’t speaking to me. Dad thinks I’m an irresponsible jerk, and Shane ... well, he’s just Shane.”

“Don’t forget O’Conner. He thinks you’re a pervert.” Punch urged a crooked smile out of him.

“A
womanizing
pervert.”

“So, what’re you gonna do?”

Mike felt a snarl of regret churning in his gut. He hated himself for scaring poor Doug half-to-death. Add to that, blurting out such a grisly insult and seeing the result of his damning words in Margie’s dark teary eyes. He didn’t know she was there. That was no excuse
. Yep, this is turning into a huge forgive and forget state of affairs: Ava, Coco, and now Margie.

He’d hit the trifecta
.

Sliding onto the desk, he took a deep confident breath and looked Punch square in the eye. “I’m gonna race Charlatan tomorrow night. Then, I’m gonna tell Miss Beardmore to get out of Dodge.”

Nine

Coco sat at her vanity filled with angst. The palms of her hands were sweating.

Booger’s ears perked. In need of her attention, he let out a frustrated grouse. When he saw it was of no use, the dejected Spaniel flopped to the floor to pout.

Indecision rolled through her.
How can I do this to my gentlemanly cowboy? How can I not show up for Charlatan’s race?
She feared that her horse would flip when Mike tried to saddle him, and then her cowboy would wield that look at her again: the klutzy-Coco look. She couldn’t bear it anymore. She couldn’t stand those looks anymore.

The gelding had flipped over several times when Doug attempted to saddle him, but she had surmised that the horse was threatened by the crotchety trainer’s nasty demeanor.
Who could blame him?
Then, when Charlatan flipped for Mike and Punch, it shook her confidence in that conclusion.

The purple whisper of twilight seeped through her bedroom curtains. She dropped her elbows onto the vanity and put her face into her hands.

Perhaps I should stop Charlatan from racing all together. Maybe I should call the racing office and tell them that I’ve fired Mike as my trainer, and he isn’t to enter the paddock with Charlatan.

Expelling a sigh, she realized that that would only result in a different look from the cowboy: frustration, anger, and possibly even hate. She couldn’t bear to see that in his eyes.

Mike had a plan, and she hoped it would work.

Glancing down at Booger, she gently stroked his head.

Taking in a deep breath, she decided to call Mike after the race. It was a cowardly decision at best, but it was the only one she could muster.

Charlatan never looked so magnificent. Mike had instructed the groom to brush him to a laser sheen, and braid his mane.

Wide-eyed and ready to rumble, the gelding burst into the paddock at the end of Shane’s lead.

Striking his usual pose, Mike leaned against the saddling stall with his arms folded over his chest while watching the gelding, the patrons eyeing him up, and the other Thoroughbreds high-stepping around the paddock.

His plan was to feed Charlatan peppermints while he was being saddled to keep him from rearing up and flipping over. He reached back to his hip pocket to make sure the bag of peppermints was still there.
Check.

“Hey, West!” Doug’s voice ripped up his spine like a chainsaw. “What’s it gonna be tonight? Flip or flop?” The cantankerous old trainer shouted at him while passing Mike’s stall. He expelled an obnoxious laugh followed by a croaky nicotine cough.

What an asshole.

Looking like an old, well-used, rag doll, Margie walked by carrying the bridle for the horse her father was running in the same race.