Beauty and the Beefcake

by Pippa Grant

“You can’t steal people’s pets!” Which is a phrase I’m capable of saying. Whereas I can’t make myself say I want to marr—marr—fudgesicles. You know. Do that thing. That ceremony.

  With Martin.

  I swallow half the remaining bottle of mead in four gulps. My eyes burn. My throat’s on fire too. But the alcohol is warming my belly and defrosting my ovaries, and I’m starting to breathe better.

  “When you’re king, you can do anything,” Gunnar tells me with a shrug.

  “You’re not the king.”

  “But I will be one day. And then my son will be someday after that. Which isn’t the immediate issue, my lady. The immediate issue is canceling your wedding.”

  “I know none of you are Martin’s biggest fan,” I say, pointing the bottle at each of them, “but he—he—we’ve been together for seven years. That’s like…like…a llama caw wedging.”

  I get two matching squints and another sigh.

  “A common law wedding?” Colden prompts.

  I point the bottle at him. “Seventeen points for House Coldendorf!”

  The three of them share a look.

  Or maybe the five of them share a look. Why are there two Mannings and two Gunnars and only one Colden?

  I should’ve eaten something for dinner.

  And not used that secret passageway Manning showed me in my chambers—palaces don’t have bedrooms—to slip away from my bridesmaids tonight.

  My bridesmaid wouldn’t be getting me drunk and trying to talk me out of doing…the thing…tomorrow.

  Or maybe they would. They’re not Martin’s biggest fans either. I squeak as a thought hits me.

  “Did my friends tell you to do this?” I demand.

  They share another look. “The throne room,” they say together.

  “Oh, no, are the sheep in there?” I whisper. “They can’t be. Not yet. The sheep don’t invade the palace for washings until the washing day.”

  “Weddings for the wedding day,” Manning helpfully corrects.

  I point at him. The one of him on the left, I mean. “You told me so when I helped you herd them inside before Mom married King Tor.”

  “Bloody bastard, I knew that was you.” Colden catches Manning with a punch to the arm.

  Gunnar leaps between them. “Later,” he says.

  “Fight! Fight! Fight!” I chant. And then I giggle. Because I’d way rather watch Vikings fight than get marr—marr—marrrrr—fudgebuckets.

  “We possibly should’ve skipped the mead,” Manning says cheerfully.

  “The mead’s tradition,” Gunnar replies.

  “For the men in the family,” Colden points out.

  “For everyone,” Gunnar argues. “Merely because there hasn’t been a royal female in two hundred years doesn’t mean the females should be excluded.”

  “She’s not technically royal,” Manning observes.

  “She helped you herd sheep. She’s family.”

  Colden twitches his fingers at me. “Hand over the bottle, Willow.”

  I pull it to my chest. “No trucking way.”

  Am I drunk?

  Maybe.

  But I’m also seeing something very, very clearly.

  I’ve been with Martin for seven years. I know all of his eighteen cats. I know his birthday, his family’s birthdays, the gate code for his family’s Long Island estate house, that he’s allergic to soy and works too much, that the diamonds his mother wears in public are replicas of family heirlooms because she’s terrified the plebian masses will breathe wrong or steal the real pieces, and that he has some insecurities that come from not being loved enough as a child, which is why it took him six years and an anti-anxiety pill to propose.

  But I don’t know that I love him.

  I mean, I love him. But I don’t think I’m in love with him.

  He’s the outward physical manifestation of the perfect husband—successful financial blah blah something, animal lover, upper crust family, respectful of my boundaries—and he’s also boring as hell.

  And he never comes to my band’s performances, whereas my band mates’ boyfriends are always there.

  Over dinner one night last week, I told him about Beatrix Clara Clementine trying to prove she could fly by leaping off the top of the slide on the playground at the preschool where I work, and he had no idea who I was talking about.

  Beatrix Clara Clementine joined my class last August, and on her first day, she tried to practice being a submarine in the bathroom sink, which was the first of no fewer than ten instances this school year where we had to call an ambulance for the child.

  I don’t even know what Martin does for work anymore. We used to talk about stuff like this, but he switched companies to work for his uncle a while back, and now it’s all oh, honey, I don’t want to bore you with that.

  And we haven’t had sex in four months.

  “We’ve a secret stash of mead in the throne room,” Manning tells me. “No sheep, I promise.”

  “Better fucking not be,” Colden mutters.

  “If there are, it was the Berger twins,” Manning replies. With a smile. Of course.

  I hug my mead tighter to my chest. “I’m taking this to bed,” I tell my stepbrothers.

  All three of them study me closely.

  They might be Viking goobers, and they might’ve gotten stuck with a stepsister who has no interest in any of this royal business, but underneath it all, they’re good guys.

  They’ve been good to my mom. They’ve been good to me.

  And it’s sweet that they care.

  But me getting marr—marr—dang it.

  They can’t tell me what to do. They can’t tell me how to do it.

  “May I escort you back to your chambers then?” Gunnar asks.

  I shake my head, which makes something slosh between my ears, and not in a completely unpleasant way. There are enough guards milling about that if I get lost, someone will point me in the right direction. And since Mom’s so popular here, and everyone says I look just like here, there’s little chance of me finding myself with a battle ax to the throat or anything.

  “Pass along any messages for you?” Manning offers.

  I shake my head again, and there’s more wooziness.

  Woozy is good. Woozy is fun.

  Colden’s frowning the biggest. He pulls me in for a hug, which is surprising, because I really did think he only liked sheep. “Call if you make a break for it and need anything,” he says gruffly. Quietly.

  Gunnar grabs me next. “Didn’t sleep a wink the night before my own wedding,” he says. “But I didn’t have the choices you do.”

  Right.

  Because his marriage was arranged.

  Whereas mine isn’t.

  And I have a crazy suspicion that if I were to walk out the castle gates, right now, in the dead of night, I’d have my passport, cash, and a phone with all the numbers I need to tell my mom that I’m okay.

  Which is sweet of them.

  But it’s not the right way to break an engagement.

  If I’m not marrying Martin, I need to tell him.

  To his face.

  Maybe after I take a walk.

  Click here to get Rockaway Bride!

  Books by Pippa Grant

  Mister McHottie (Chase & Ambrosia)

  Stud in the Stacks (Parker & Knox)

  The Pilot and the Puck-Up (Zeus and Joey)

  Royally Pucked (Manning and Gracie)

  Beauty and the Beefcake (Ares and Felicity)

  Rockaway Bride (Willow and Dax)

  The Hero and the Hacktivist (Rhett and Eloise)

  Hot Heir (Viktor and Peach)

  Charming as Puck (Nick and…)

  Exes and Ho Ho Hos (Jake and Kaitlyn)

  And more…

  If you love sexy studs who aren’t afraid to read romance novels, socially awkward heroines, and jungle beefcake bachelor auctions, read on for an excerpt of Stud in the Stacks!

  Knox (aka Mr. Romance, aka Tarzan,
but only for tonight)

  Even though it’s been six years since I stripped for a roomful of women, I’m pleased to report my loincloth still fits in all the right places. Tad more snug in front than I remember, but if I had to grow, might as well be in the junk.

  I give the elastic one last test as the producer signals that I’m up. Spider-Man gives me a fist bump. Thor smacks my ass. They’re the last two bachelors going up on the block after me in tonight’s superhero-themed auction.

  There are some who might say Tarzan isn’t a superhero, but Jane would beg to differ.

  And I fucking own this costume.

  Plus, if no one else bids on me, my Nana’s right up front, ready to throw down the hundred bucks I slipped her before the show.

  I’m hoping for a little higher than that though. Batman just went for a cool five grand.

  Batman was a dick, which I assume my Nana didn’t know when she started the bidding on him. A grade-A, condescending asshat who thought just because he had a few million bucks in the bank, he could call people gay like that’s an insult and take a metaphorical shit on my favorite books.

  I fucking want to beat Batman.

  “Ladies,” local anchorwoman Nancy Houlihan says into the microphone onstage just beyond the door where I’m waiting, “next up is…”

  She pauses, the spotlight criss-crosses the stage, and a drum rolls. All goes silent, the light stops on the doorway, and Nancy crows, “Tarzan!”

  My music starts—does anything say jungle man quite like “The Lion Sleeps tonight”? Not if you have half a sense of humor, it doesn’t—and I put all my swagger into walking out that door to the whoops and hollers of the fancy crowd. Nancy’s on the far side of the stage, waiting at the microphone while I make my way to center stage, grinding and gyrating and showing off my old moves for the ladies.

  At the front table, Nana’s covering her eyes, and despite my irritation with Batman, it’s all I can do to keep from cracking up.

  Am I a sexy beast? Sure.

  Do I know how to give the ladies what they want? Damn straight.

  But a bachelor auction? I’m a little more than just my meat, thank you very much. Also, I’ve read over eighty bachelor auction romances. I know how this story usually ends, which is why I almost said no.

  However, Nancy reached out to me through my blog and said the magic words—“All proceeds are going toward literacy”—so here I am, and I’m damn well going to get as much money for my sexy ass as I can. I shake my booty, I point at the ladies, I wink, I smile, and I get my groove on, squatting to the floor and thrusting to some “a-weema-weh.”

  Nancy and my Nana might be the only two women in the room unaffected.

  Just because I don’t take myself too seriously doesn’t mean I can’t give a good show.

  The music keeps playing, but it lightens as Nancy steps to the mic. “Ladies, meet Tarzan. He’s six-two, one hundred eighty pounds, and when he’s not swinging vine to vine to save Jane in the jungle, he likes to—”

  “One thousand dollars!” A brunette in a killer red dress leaps out of her seat at a table midway back in the banquet hall and waves her paddle.

  Holy shit.

  Bidding hasn’t even started, and we’ve already surpassed Nana’s budget. I cock a finger at the brunette, wink and fire, and a Marilyn Monroe lookalike in the corner flings her paddle in the air.

  “Fifteen hundred!”

  “Two grand!” I make eye contact with the strawberry blonde at table seventeen, and hello.

  There’s something fierce about her. She’s not leaping out of her seat like the brunette, Marilyn Monroe, or the little old grandma in the back who just stole a mic to offer up seven grand and her pet poodle.

  Seven grand? And what’s a literacy foundation going to do with a poodle?

  “You keep your hands off my grandson, Mabel!” Nana yells.

  “Suck it, you old hag,” Mabel yells back.

  I point Nana to sit down, then do a slow turn, pausing to show the audience my ass while I flex my arms and shoulders. Am I whoring out my body?

  Yes.

  Do I care?

  Fuck, no. It’s for a good cause.

  Bonus if we click, but if we don’t, she’ll still have a night to remember. With all our clothes on. I might be nothing more than a librarian in a loincloth, but I do have some standards.

  “Ten grand.”

  The strawberry blonde at table seventeen again. She’s got a death grip on her paddle and her voice is firm, but there’s something in her expression that says this isn’t where she wants to be.

  Like she’s out of her element, but she has a goal, and she’s going to get it, even if it’s uncomfortable.

  And she just doubled Batman’s final price. I could kiss her for that alone.

  I’m distracted by a high-pitched whistle and a “Shake it, baby!”

  The music switches to an old song from my grad school stripping days. I tip my head back and laugh. Nancy cocks her own finger gun at me—the lady did her research well—and goes back to fielding bids. I dip into another grind, rub my hands down my chest and play with the band on my loincloth.

  “Fifteen grand!” That from the brunette who jumped the gun on the bidding.

  “Twenty!” Holy shit, Marilyn Monroe’s serious.

  The strawberry blonde at table seventeen surges to her feet. “Fifty thousand dollars!”

  Fifty what?

  Holy fuck.

  The music screeches to a stop. I stop. Nancy stops.

  She bats her fake eyelashes at the strawberry blonde. Not coy, like she’s hitting on the highest bidder. But like she just forgot how to talk and she’s stalling for time.

  She visibly swallows, which is more than I’m currently capable of doing. “Fifty thousand dollars?” she repeats.

  “Fifty thousand,” the strawberry blonde confirms with a waver in her voice.

  Fuck me.

  This isn’t bachelor auction money. This is gigolo money. Or… worse.

  I know that book too. And at least a dozen variations.

  Nana looks at me as though she, too, suspects this is bang her and knock her up money. Or I want to be your sugar mama money. Or possibly I need to take you into a secret room for a government experiment money.

  I read a lot. Don’t judge.

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” Nancy says. “Going once…”

  I stare at the strawberry blonde.

  She stares back, not blinking, but not nearly as confident as she was when the bidding was still in the four figures. There’s something about that determination in her gaze—there’s a story there.

  An intriguing story. One I’m surprisingly interested in hearing. Fifty grand? For me? I’m a catch, but dude. That’s almost as much as I make in a year.

  “Going twice…”

  “One hundred thousand dollars!”

  A new voice rings out from the back doorway. Gasps and whispers of “Who is that?” echo under the sparkling chandeliers.

  I crane my neck, but she’s backlit, and all I can see is a shapely figure and a curly head of hair.

  The strawberry blonde at table seventeen drops her paddle, eyes flared, lips parted like someone just stole her baby unicorn.

  I might be wearing a similar expression.

  Because what the fuck is expected of a guy who goes for a hundred grand?

  Nana’s gaping at me.

  Apparently she doesn’t know either, but then she starts grinning like she’s already counting new great-grandbabies.

  “One hundred thousand dollars,” Nancy repeats faintly. “Do I hear one-fifty?”

  Silence.

  “One hundred thousand. Going once…” Nancy calls.

  The strawberry blonde quietly sinks into her seat.

  “Going twice…”

  A hundred grand.

  Holy fuck. Batman can blow me.

  “Sold! To… the lady in the doorway for one hundred thousand dollars!”

  I
put on a smile and move to the side of the stage as my purchaser swings her hips through the tables. The strawberry blonde at table seventeen is staring down at her program, and I get the oddest feeling in my chest.

  Like something bigger than a hundred grand could’ve happened.

  Click Here to get Stud in the Stacks today!

  Books by Pippa Grant

  Mister McHottie (Chase & Ambrosia)

  Stud in the Stacks (Parker & Knox)

  The Pilot and the Puck-Up (Zeus and Joey)

  Royally Pucked (Manning and Gracie)

  Beauty and the Beefcake (Ares and Felicity)

  Rockaway Bride (Willow and Dax)

  The Hero and the Hacktivist (Rhett and Eloise)

  Hot Heir (Viktor and Peach)

  Charming as Puck (Nick and…)

  Exes and Ho Ho Hos (Jake and Kaitlyn)

  And more…

  About the Author

  Pippa Grant is a stay-at-home mom and housewife who loves to escape into sexy, funny stories way more than she likes perpetually cleaning toothpaste out of sinks and off toilet handles. When she’s not reading, writing, sleeping, or trying to prepare her adorable demon spawn to be productive members of society, she’s fantasizing about chocolate chip cookies.

  Keep in touch with Pippa Grant!

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  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Lori Jackson Designs.

  Edited by Jessica Snyder