Hot Coco (23 page)

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.