Hat Trick (Cougar Challenge) Read online

  Hat Trick

  Cerise DeLand

  A standalone title in the Cougar Challenge series.

  Fit, fab and forty-five, Belle Sterling chomps at the bit to accept the Cougar Challenge. But finding a younger man in her one-horse Texas town is one giant problem—until two scrumptious men stroll into her office.

  Gage Wagner and Trey Sandoval have been best buddies since college and know how to share…everything. When they meet luscious Belle, they know she needs the good lovin’ two men can provide…together.

  Belle’s a regular gal and putting two men in her saddle seems like a dream. Then she tries it. More than once.

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Hat Trick

  ISBN 9781419930560

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Hat Trick Copyright © 2010 Cerise DeLand

  Edited by Helen Woodall

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication October 2010

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Hat Trick

  Cerise DeLand

  Dedication

  To Desiree Holt, Regina Carlysle, Nicole Austin and the terrific team of authors who are the stars of this series! Thank you for the opportunity to growl with you!

  Author Note

  You’ll find the wonderful women of Cougar Challenge and the Tempt the Cougar blog at www.temptthecougar.blogspot.com

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Bugatti: Bugatti International S.A. Corporation

  Ford Excursion: Ford Motor Company

  Jaguar: Jaguar Cars Limited Corporation

  Lear Jet: Learjet, Inc.

  Looney Tunes: Time Warner Entertainment Company

  Maserati: Ferrari S.p.A Joint Stock Company Italy

  Snoopy: United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

  Stetson: John B. Stetson Company

  Chapter One

  “I know for certain, honey,” Belle Sterling told her newest client, twenty-two-year old bride-to-be Marilee Betterton, “that sleeping single in a double bed does not make for a happy life. Not after you’ve been married to a man you adore.”

  She smiled at the young woman who sat opposite her in her office. “In fact, I have just three pieces of advice for each new bride who hires my planning services. Love the man you marry. Love him so well that ‘keeping only unto him’ is no hardship. And commit to doing whatever you each want in bed where all great marriages are made.”

  “Oh, you needn’t worry on that score, Miz Sterling. My mama says exactly the same thing.”

  Does she now? That’s why Doreen’s had more lovers than a bonobo monkey in her forty-five hectic years on this earth? “Not hard to do, either. To love a man.”

  “I reckon I have loved Brent since we were in kindergarten. And definitely since high school. He’s going on to pro football, you know.”

  “I heard.”

  “I’m just so excited. We’re moving to Dallas and I get to meet all the men on the team.” Her eyes lit up like the year-round Christmas lights on her mama’s front porch. “Imagine that.”

  Belle did. And she tried not to wince at the feeling Brent Fuller was gonna get when he saw his new little wife bat her baby browns at his buddies. “Well, Marilee, let’s meet again next week. Is this a good day and time for you?” Belle looked at her calendar on the computer screen as the young woman agreed. “Good. Do bring your tentative list of invitees and we’ll see what our potential sites are for the reception.”

  “Mama wants to come, too.” The girl was fishing for feedback.

  Doreen Betterton and Belle were not friends. Never had been since Doreen tried to scoop Walt Sterling from Belle when they were all in high school. But Belle was ready to let bygones be bygones. Walt had never cottoned to Doreen. Never took her bait, either. Besides, Walt was gone now and their married life had been twenty-two years of the finest bliss a woman could imagine. Plus, Doreen was welcome to the pickings around here. No man within a hundred miles interested Belle enough to get her pussy wet, and even if he succeeded, he wouldn’t know what to do with it.

  Belle cleared her throat and smiled. “I hope she does come with you. There are so many things to decide, Marilee, and your mother will be a great help to you in this.”

  “That’s right. Mama says I’m gonna be a better wife than she ever was.”

  Belle couldn’t resist the lure. “How’s that?”

  “She says she just knows that Brent is the right man for me and that we are going to be married forever.”

  But minutes later, watching spoiled-rotten Marilee preen, rise from her chair and strut her toned little ass out of her office, Belle wasn’t going to give a plug nickel that the young filly would or could take any of her suggestions.

  “Of course, the girl is twenty-two,” Belle muttered as the tiny bells on her door knob rang out Marilee’s exit. “Who knows what love or marriage is all about at that age?” Belle whispered to herself.

  I did.

  Yeah. Well. I had a mother and father who taught me how to love. Totally. No one and nothing else greater than the union. Not too many who know how to do that nowadays.

  Belle sighed, hit a few buttons on her computer screen to close the files on the Betterton-Fuller wedding and pushed away from her desk. She stood, ran her hands down her slim skirt and strode to the window. The brilliant Texas sun hit her in the face and even though she had jacked up the air conditioner to seventy-five this morning, August in southwest Texas meant triple digit heat by noon. She inhaled the steamy beauty of her little hometown. Main Street was humming. The Duck’s Bill Bakery was jumping with customers hot for their German crullers. Jack’s Auto Shop was buzzing with a couple of ranchers who had scraped the paint off each other’s pick-ups yesterday. And one of her two best friends, Aurora Mansfield, waved at her while watering her geraniums in front of her flower shop.

  And me? I’m standing here wondering if my life is now only about helping twenty-somethings get hitched.

  Sure. She loved the wedding business. The organization. The cake. The bouquets. The fun of invitations and receptions and gowns.

  The romance.

  The thrill of watching a man eye his bride. The way his gaze would flow over her face, her throat, down to her breasts.

  Belle would often play a silent game with herself noting how long it took for the bride to sense her groom’s eyes on her. How long before she would squirm, feeling the cream i
n her pussy, the throb of her labia, the need to have his fingers play with her and open her wide for his mouth. And his cock.

  Belle squeezed her own thighs together. Felt her own insides gush with moisture. Remembering desire.

  Remembering Walt Sterling. His blue eyes on her lips. His firm mouth on her throat. Her nipples. His teeth nipping her areolas. His rough tongue licking her until she squealed. His fingers drifting down her ribs, caressing her stomach, twining in her cunt hair. “Love your pretty red pussy hair, Belle of mine,” he would croon as he’d lift her against him, by that time both of them stark naked. “Like a beacon. Gonna make you come hard for me, baby. How would you like me today?” he’d whisper as he bit her earlobe. “Slow or fast?”

  Wild. Often. Furious. She’d tell him anything she wanted that day.

  “In my mouth? In your sweet ass?” He’d offer her a few more options.

  She loved sex with him any way at all. All the time. Any time. Day. Night. In the barn standing up. In their truck sitting down. In their kitchen on their table, their breakfast dishes bumping to their body-rocking rhythm.

  So long ago. Three years to be exact.

  “God. I loved you, Walt.” Belle jumped, stunned at herself that she’d said it out loud. “Isn’t there any man alive who’s your equal? I’m lonely here, honey.”

  Her gaze ran up and down Main Street and the answer she got this morning was the same as the one she’d had yesterday and the month before and the year before that.

  “I’m not finding one I want to be with. In bed or out.” Not in this one-horse town. Too small to offer variety. And few strangers strolled in.

  Problem was, Belle knew precisely two local men who were eligible. Both were widowers. Nice guys. But over sixty. Fifteen years older than she! And frankly, she needed a man who could not only get it up, but get it going on for more than five minutes of slam-bam. She liked sex. Really liked sex. Funky, funny, feverish sex. Walt, who had been two years older than she, had taught her to need it, crave it and initiate it. So she wasn’t about to settle for lukewarm lovin’ when she knew how lusty, sweaty, energetic fucking could improve a woman’s attitude, to say nothing of her complexion or the ability of her hungry little kitty to howl.

  “I can’t go on like this,” she muttered and strode back to her computer. “I need a young man with class, imagination and raging hormones. But damn if I know how and where to find one!” She plunked herself in her chair, revved up the internet and surfed over to her friends’ blog at Tempt the Cougar. Belle had discovered their exciting personal stories about hooking up with younger men, then three months ago she’d begun to correspond with a few of them individually. Over the last year, each of the women had consciously decided to seek out younger men to satisfy a need for great sex. To date, each of them developed satisfying relationships with their partners. Belle didn’t need a long-term relationship so much as she needed a good romp in the hay.

  “Dear Cougars, HELP! I’ve told you how I live in a small ranching town of two thousand—and trust me, I have looked for a man to warm my bed. Old or young, no man lives within shouting distance who thrills me! A young man in my bed sounds like a swell idea. Someone who has the stamina and the energy to give me one heart-pounding night of non-stop love. But how can I take the Cougar Challenge if I can’t find one?”

  She hit the SEND button.

  Outside, a car screeched to a stop in front of Belle’s office. A door slammed, high heels clattered on the sidewalk and Belle’s front door swung wide. The bells on the knob chimed a merry welcome to her newest visitor. Belle glanced at the clock. Her visitor was her other best friend, Carla Smathers, who had called this morning to announce her arrival.

  “Belle Sterling,” declared Carla as she stood stock-still in all her tall platinum-blonde glory, a Cheshire cat grin on her lovely, heart-shaped face, “I have the most exciting news for you.”

  Belle stood, clasped her hands together and threw a welcoming grin at the one friend of their trio who had left Winterhalter, Texas at the age of eighteen. “Carla! Honey! I knew it had to be something terrific for you to come here on short notice. What’s going on?”

  Carla thrust forward a hand adorned with the biggest damn rock Belle had seen in years. “Guess.”

  “You’re getting married.” Again?

  “I am. I am!” She gushed as she bustled forward, leaving the door open for the sounds of the street and the heat of the day to follow her inside. “Are you not just so thrilled for me?”

  Belle opened her arms to the friend she had loved since second grade. Hugging Carla like a bear, Belle oohed and ahhed over her and the enormous three-carat lump on her hand. “Come sit down and tell me all.” Belle led Carla to her client chair, a comfy Victorian wingback that brides just loved to curl into and confide everything about the love of their lives.

  Of course, with Carla, this man—Jed Bainbridge was his name—would be her fourth husband.

  “He’s a real estate developer, honey,” Carla told Belle. “I am just tickled pink with him. He is so good to me.”

  “I can tell,” Belle agreed, knowing that with Carla, gifts implied how well a man loved a woman. The bigger, the gaudier, the more expensive, the better. Sure, Carla might be accused by some of being a gold digger, but in truth she just lassoed men with money. Nothing wrong with that, especially since she was crazy about each one. For about five years, give or take a little. “When is the wedding?”

  “This weekend. Here!”

  “Here?” Belle hitched her hip on the edge of her desk. “Why here, honey? You’ve never gotten married here before. Your folks are gone and…”

  “I know. But Jed is eager to have me, if you get what I mean.”

  Belle nodded. Carla might be the last woman in the world to insist a man marry her before they went to bed. “I hear you!”

  “Besides, he wants to spend some time looking around the county. Look at my folks’ land and some other ranches. So I told him, if he wants to do that, and he wants to marry me as soon as possible, then he must marry me here. We’ll do it in the Methodist Church. I called our old high school buddy John Hampton over there yesterday and asked him to preside. And of course, Rory will do the flowers and you, my sweetie, will do the entire—” and at that she made a grand flourish with two hands in the air, “affair!”

  “You want me to arrange your wedding?” Belle was as pleased as punch. “Gosh, I‘d be delighted!”

  “Oh, thank you!” Carla jumped up and hugged the stuffing out of Belle. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t.”

  Belle frowned. Uh-oh, she suspects I don’t approve. “Why not?”

  “You know,” Carla sat down again, brushing imaginary lint from her starched designer jeans.

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Your three rules?”

  “Carla, they are advice. I’m a wedding planner and not a judge of—”

  “Don’t be upset with me, Belle.” Carla bit her lip and examined the pale Aubusson rug on the floor for too damn long. “But I’ve got to tell you.”

  Oh, boy. I hate confessions. Belle took the wingback opposite Carla and reached for Belle’s hands. “What are you talking about?”

  “I lied to you. Before.” Carla’s pale blue eyes locked on hers. “Twice before.”

  Belle wondered if she was keeping a straight face now. If she was frowning or scowling or in any way indicating to Carla that she knew—hell, she had always known—that Carla had never observed the three rules completely.

  “I love this man, Belle. Love him totally. He’s a bit younger than me.”

  “He is? How much younger?” Belle pressed her for information, dying to know how a woman whom she knew personally dealt with that issue.

  Carla seemed flustered by the questions. “Eleven years. But he’s sweet and kind, so I don’t care. But I want you to know too that it’s not a problem for me to ‘keep unto him’ just like you quote from the marriage vows. No, ma’am, I do not do affairs. You
know I am a died-in-the-wool prude, for all my flirting. But this time,” she said with a tear in each blue eye, “with this man, I will promise to do whatever he wants in bed to keep him satisfied.”

  Belle got a lump in her throat over that declaration. She had always loved Carla, but known, too, that her friend had hang-ups about sex that only true love and commitment could wipe away. The younger man issue didn’t seem to be a problem, though, and that made Belle ponder her own hesitancy. “Great, honey. Great. But he must do the same for you, or there is no bond.”

  “I know, Belle. I hear what you’re saying. I am hearing it now for the first time.”

  “And he agrees to this?”

  “Oh, he does. He does!”

  Outside Belle’s front windows, she could see from the corner of her eye that three cars were now parking in the slots kitty-corner to her little office.

  “And I want you to meet him! There he is. There they all are!” Carla was once more gushing like a teenager as she turned toward the wide window and watched three men climb out of three fancy, foreign convertibles.

  Belle could only sit there with her mouth hanging open, wide enough to catch flies, while she stared and took in the male feast before her eyes.

  She snapped her mouth shut.

  And watched three of the most luscious pieces of masculinity head toward her office door, push it open and ting-a-ling her little bells.

  Inside her, the ting-a-lings were ring-a-ding-dinging her pussy. Her clit. Her nipples and her appetite.

  Because the first man inside, so said Carla, was her fiancé, Jed Bainbridge. A fine man, hefty, five ten max, round face with ash brown hair. Smiling. Congenial.

  But his two friends took Belle’s breath away. Made her wonder. Made her wish. Made her yearn. Like a horny teenager, Belle examined the two young strangers and bit by bit, took each item of clothes off their backs and with silent apologies, did not bother to replace any at all.