Beefcake & Retakes

by Fennell, Judi

  They hadn’t healed separately; maybe, together, they could.

  His thumb stroked the tears from where they slid beside her mouth. “We can’t keep looking back. Can’t keep blaming. If he’d lived, he would have been the best thing that’d ever happened to us. And just because he didn’t doesn’t make it the worst. We found out what it was like to love a child. All that selfless, fierce battling to keep him safe. We lost that battle, but we came out ahead for having known him. I’ll always miss him. Always wonder what he would have been like, but I got to hold him, Juliet. I held my son. For a few brief moments, I was a father with my son. I consider myself lucky for having found out what that kind of love is like.”

  “Lucky? You hated me for getting pregnant with him and then when I…” She took a deep shuddering breath. “When I lost him, it was like I was taking more from you. Again.”

  He pulled her into his arms. “You didn’t lose him. For whatever reason, he wasn’t healthy enough to survive. You can’t blame yourself for that, Juliet. I never did.”

  “You didn’t? You blamed me for everything else.”

  “Maybe I was afraid to look at myself. If I’d loved you more, or shown you that I did better, maybe you wouldn’t have felt so insecure. I didn’t realize what losing your mom must have been like. How tenuous you thought love was.”

  “No. You can’t blame yourself.”

  “Then let’s both stop blaming each other—and ourselves.”

  Her eyes searched his and Tanner just wanted all the pain to go away. He just wanted what should have been theirs from the very beginning.

  “I love you, Juliet. That’s why you have the power to hurt me. But I do know that you love me, too. And now, now that we have this perspective, now that we’re older and have this perspective, we can make it work.”

  “Make it wor… Tanner? Do you mean it? Do you really mean it? You want to stay married?”

  “Stay married?” He chuckled. “Of course you didn’t sign the papers. I guess I shouldn’t have expected it.”

  “Actually…” She licked her lips. “I did. I just didn’t send them.”

  “You signed them?”

  She nodded. “They’re at the hotel. I didn’t want to just sign them and send them back without talking to you. Without you knowing the truth. Then, if you still didn’t want to work things out, I would give them to you.”

  “I still want you to.”

  She stiffened in his arms and he realized what he’d said.

  “So I can burn them, Juliet. I don’t want a divorce anymore. I want a wife. You. And I want the life we should have had. The family. It’s not too late.”

  “Does that mean you believe me?”

  “I do. And I forgive you for the past. I understand why you did it. But I have to take some of the blame for not being how you wanted me to be. How you needed me to be.”

  “Oh but Tanner you were. You are. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  “For not being enough then. But know this Juliet Chambers-Wentworth. You are my wife and I’m never letting you go.”

  Epilogue

  Six weeks later

  Penelope sipped her wine. She really liked this grape. Niagara, it was called. Fruity and sweet, just the thing for a happy wedding day—or vow renewal as Juliet and Tanner were calling it.

  Whatever they called it, she was just tickled pink that they’d finally worked things out.

  She was also tickled pink that Juliet actually thought she’d carried one over on her. The poor thing had been so apologetic when she’d explained how she’d gotten Tanner to come home.

  Had almost made Penelope come clean.

  Almost.

  “Nana! Come dance with us!” Juliet waved her over.

  Penelope raised her glass. Wine had just been added to her list of approved items, thanks to Dr. Jackson. His condition for his silence was that she abide by his rules for recovery. He’d said he didn’t want to see her again for another stroke, so she was going to have to take care of herself.

  Now she had the incentive.

  She glanced out over the dance floor and fanned herself. Tanner’s co-workers were there and even though they had all their clothes on, there was no hiding those dance moves. The single women here tonight were lucky indeed.

  All of Juliet and Tanner’s high school friends were there, too, all a little older, some heavier, some balder, but it was the same crowd she remembered when they’d hang out at the pool during the summers. And all of them were having a great time.

  Well, that Delia girl was on the prowl, but that was nothing new.

  She looked around the room. Tanner’s parents were at their table, chatting and smiling. It did Penelope’s heart good to see them here. Tanner had had a reason to be angry with his father, but what he hadn’t realized was that he hadn’t had to bail Palston out. That’d been his choice—and it was a good one.

  Penelope took another sip of her wine. Life was good.

  Well, hers was. Her son’s, on the other hand, could use some improvement. He was in the corner alone, surveying the room, a look on his face that was far from a smile. Penelope hadn’t seen him crack one all day.

  It wasn’t the cost that was getting to him—Tanner had been adamant that he and Juliet would pay for the day and wouldn’t take a dime of Burt’s money. Penelope liked that about Tanner; the boy wanted to stand on his own. That’s why he needed a woman who could, too, and Juliet had become that woman.

  But Burt… He was burrowing into his den and tuning out the world. Hopefully, Juliet would have a baby soon so Burt could go back to running the company—and she didn’t care how old-fashioned she sounded. Juliet wouldn’t want to leave her child for hours on end; the company would still be there when she was ready to go back to work. And Burt really needed something to focus on now that she was “better.”

  She smiled and took another sip of her wine.

  “Feeling good about yourself?” Ermalinda took the seat beside her, chinging their wine glasses.

  “I’m feeling good about them.”

  “Are you going to tell them?”

  “What? That I wasn’t as incapacitated as I’d let them believe? Now why on earth would I do that? That sort of thing is what got them in this position to begin with.”

  Ermalinda sat back and raised her eyebrows. “That apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “I hate when you learn new idioms.”

  “You hate when I’m right.”

  Penelope sipped her wine and took her time before answering, her focus on her son. “True. But it worked.”

  “The ends justify the means?”

  Penelope set her wine glass down and it was her turn to raise her eyebrows. “My, my. Aren’t you the studious one?”

  “I am.” Ermalinda tilted her wine glass toward Burt. “Take a look.”

  As Penelope watched, a woman walked up to her son.

  Nancy Hillson.

  And this time, Burt actually talked to her.

  “Well played, Ermalinda. Well played.”

  “Just taking lessons from the master, Señora.”

  ***

  Juliet tugged Tanner onto the bed in the honeymoon suite. He’d insisted they have a real church service and reception this time, and she’d been more than thrilled that he’d wanted to make such a public declaration. He’d even flown his friends from Beefcake, Inc, in for the occasion. Well, the northern location of Beefcake, Inc. because the ones from the Texas branch could drive in for their boss’s vow renewal ceremony.

  “My, my, Jules. A bit eager are we?”

  “Can you blame me?”

  “Hardly.” And he kissed her to prove it.

  Well, more than kissed her.

  It was a while before Juliet could think clearly, but she had something on her mind that he needed to know.

  She ran her hand over his chest. She’d always loved Tanner’s chest.

  There wasn’t much about him that she didn’t love.<
br />
  “You know, Tanner, for all your big production about honesty, you lied to me.”

  He raised his head to look at her. “I’ve never lied to you, Juliet.”

  “Yes, you did. That first time we made love after you came back. You told me it wasn’t a happily-ever-after. That you were going to make love to me and then leave. That it wasn’t forever.” She snuggled into him and patted his heart. “See? You lied.”

  He smiled and it was a good smile. “Well, maybe I just gilded the lily a bit.”

  “Gilded the lily? Isn’t that like saying you’re a little bit pregnant?” She worked hard to keep the smile off her face.

  Tanner rolled his eyes. “Juliet, you can’t be a little bit pregnant. You either are or you’re…” His smile tightened. “Juliet?”

  She couldn’t keep him waiting any longer. She slid her fingers from his, grabbed his wrist and laid his had across her belly, hers on top of it.

  “Uh, Tan? I have something to tell you…”

  The End

  Thank you so much for reading the BeefCake, Inc. series. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review on the site you purchased it and letting your friends know.

  Turn the page for excerpts of more in the series!

  Read on for Gage and Lara’s romance,

  Book 1 in the BeefCake, Inc series,

  Beefcake & Cupcakes!

  The Morning After

  This wasn’t her hotel room.

  The suit jacket tossed on the chair was Lara’s first clue.

  The discarded matching pants on the floor in front of it was her second.

  The dip in the mattress as someone got off the bed behind her was her third.

  Oh my God. What had she done?

  Well, it was pretty obvious what she’d done, but, oh God...

  Lara clamped her eyes shut as that someone came around the foot of the bed, peeking only when she heard the bathroom door slide open.

  Oh my. The guy’s bare naked ass looked really good. Probably better out of those pants than in them—too bad she didn’t remember what it’d looked like in them.

  Too bad she didn’t remember him.

  The door clicked closed and Lara shot to her feet—to the second shock of the morning.

  She was wearing only a t-shirt. And it wasn’t hers.

  She didn’t want to think about whose it was or how she came to be in said t-shirt; she just wanted to grab her dress, shoes, and purse, and get the hell out before her one-and-only one-night stand finished doing whatever it was a one-night stand did the morning after.

  She scooped the dress off the dresser—no, she wasn’t going to think about how it’d gotten there—tore his shirt up over her head then the dress down over it, and bagged looking for her bra. She just wanted out.

  Her shoes were next to the chair—one was under it—and her purse, thank God, was hanging on the hotel room door.

  Twenty-five seconds. That’s all it took her to escape from the most un-Lara-like thing she’d ever done in her life.

  It took thirty-five more seconds for the damn elevator to make its way to the—she squinted at the floor marker above the “Down” arrow—the tenth floor.

  Thank God there was no one in the elevator. She didn’t need witnesses to her walk of shame.

  God, wouldn’t Jeff be shocked to see her now? “Sexually boring and uninspiring” was what he’d said to explain the affair—among others—but this walk of shame negated those.

  She couldn’t believe it. Thirty-years-old with her own up-and-coming bakery, yet one too many shots at her college roommate’s bachelorette party had her picking up some random guy for a night of uninhibited monkey sex to soothe her smashed-to-smithereens ego from an ex who didn’t deserve the time of day let alone this kind of prove-him-wrong strategy.

  It had been uninhibited monkey sex, right?

  She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up an image, but the last thing she could remember was jitterbugging on the dance floor.

  She didn’t know how to jitterbug. But, apparently, that hadn’t stopped her.

  Oh, God, her head. And her stomach. And that cotton mouth thing…

  The bell dinged as the elevator arrived at the second floor. She fumbled for her room key and stumbled out into a blessedly empty hallway. Her room was down a few doors, and thankfully she’d decided to forego a roommate on this trip.

  Well, a regular roommate.

  Who was the guy? She didn’t even remember what he looked like, let alone his name.

  She groaned as she made it into her hotel room. How bad was it that the only recallable part of him was his bare naked ass and that she only remembered because she’d seen it on her way out the door?

  She peeled the dress off her body—it’d been on backwards—and headed into the bathroom. Shower, breakfast, and a big glass of orange juice, then she could grab her car and get the hell out of Dodge so she wouldn’t have to risk running into her biggest regret anytime soon.

  But the question was: what was her regret for? That she’d picked him up in the first place, or that she couldn’t remember a damn thing about what had come after?

  ***

  Gage ran the towel through his hair, then wrapped it around his hips. Didn’t want to shock Sleeping Beauty out there with nudity upon opening her gorgeous eyes.

  He caught his smile in the mirror. Yeah, it was wolfish, but why shouldn’t it be? He’d ended up with the most gorgeous woman at the party, and that included the bride-to-be.

  Of course, he’d broken his own rules to do so—no partying with the patrons—but she’d walked in and knocked him sideways.

  It’d be funny, really, if it weren’t so, well, not. He never went for short, dark, and curvy. Model-thin bombshells were more his type. At least, they had been. But then she’d walked in, her curves making his palms sweat, her curls begging for his fingers to dive in and hold on, and those chocolate brown eyes... They’d screamed bedroom so loudly they’d almost drowned out the music, and he’d had a hard time keeping his mind on the show.

  Thank God the guys knew their shit. Markus had known it a little too well; he’d been focused on Lara from the first bump-and-grind number.

  Luckily, no one had questioned the quick change-up in routines he’d made so that Markus was off stage until the middle of the second act.

  By then, the shots that’d been flowing around that table had insured Lara’s interest had no longer been solely on Markus.

  That’s when he’d made his move.

  Made his move. Gage groaned. What was he—twenty? He never had to make moves; women flocked to him.

  But she’d been wedged in the corner of her booth, surrounded by friends, staring at the stage, and hadn’t looked like she was going to get out anytime soon.

  He grabbed his toothbrush. He should have moved sooner. Then maybe she wouldn’t have done those last two shots. The woman was a lightweight. She’d made it to the hotel elevator and had literally passed out in his arms. It’d put a damper on his evening, but not his libido.

  He just hoped she was more awake this morning.

  He finished brushing his teeth and poured a glass of water. She was going to need it and it’d give him the excuse to sit beside her.

  And hopefully do much more.

  He opened the door softly. He wanted to be the one to wake her, not the noise or the light from the bathroom.

  Except… she was gone.

  He slumped against the doorframe. Served him right. He played to the fantasies of hundreds of women every weekend, but the one whose fantasy he’d personally wanted to grant apparently had no interest in letting him.

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  Bryan and Jenna’s story

  Beefcake and Mistakes

  Chapter One

  He had a son.

  Bryan Lassiter stood at the end of the grocery store aisle and stared at the little boy three feet in front of him.

  The curly black hair was the same, including the identi
cal cowlick above the right eye that drooped a little lower than the left, and the same dimple in his right cheek. The eyes, too, were the same. Those damned, cursed violet eyes that Bryan had hated ever since Julie Richardson had called them pretty in first grade. Him and Elizabeth Taylor.

  And now this boy.

  And if those weren’t enough, it was the birthmark on the kid’s arm that sealed the deal. Bry had the same one, shaped like a five-pointed star with a rounded tip on the bottom right spoke. Bryan had eventually had a tattoo put on top of it—in the shape of a star—but it was the same.

  He had a son.

  “Trevor? Where are you?” A pretty brunette rushed around the end cap, worry etched across her face. It softened when she saw the boy—the exact opposite of Bryan’s reaction.

  He didn’t know her.

  Oh, he’d slept with a lot of women in his life, but he did pride himself on remembering what they’d looked like, no matter how drunk he’d been—

  No. That wasn’t entirely true. Brad’s bachelor party had passed by in one drunken haze and there could have been a stripper involved…

  Considering Brad’s party had been four years ago, and the kid looked to be about three or so… Yeah, it looked like it was more than possible, though he’d never been so drunk he hadn’t worn a condom.

  Which have been known to break.

  Hell. Given that the kid looked like every one of his baby pictures, one night of debauchery and bad luck could have led to him having a son.

  “Sweetheart, I told you never to run away from Mommy. This isn’t the place to play hide-n-seek.”

  Bryan’s eyes flew to “Mommy.” About five-six, with curly brown, chin-length hair that she kept tucking behind her ears but which wouldn’t stay, high cheekbones, and wide eyes—blue or gray, he couldn’t be sure. Graceful movements of a dancer that would be lost in a strip joint, but the legs that went on forever definitely wouldn’t be.