Beef Cake

by Smartypants Romance

  Janice, you’re a proofreading wizard! Thank you for polishing our manuscript and making it shine.

  To Penny Reid, the evil overlord and creator of the Green Valley universe. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. We’re so grateful for this chance to step into your world and get creative with your characters. Thank you for trusting us and believing in us.

  And to all the other SPR authors, we love each and every one of you, and we’re so happy and blessed to be a part of such a wonderful group of women. You’re all badass boss babes and you inspire us every single day!

  Thank you to all our new readers we’ve found on this SPR journey. If you’re not a part of our Jiffy Kate’s Southern Belles reader group on Facebook, we’d love to have you! All of you make our days better.

  Sign up for our newsletter --> http://eepurl.com/c_JFaX

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  It takes a village and we’re so happy you’re a part of ours.

  Much love,

  Jiffy Kate

  About the Author

  Jiffy Kate is the joint pen name for Jiff Simpson and Jenny Kate Altman. They're co-writing besties who share a brain. They also share a love of cute boys, stiff drinks, and fun times.

  Together, they've written over twenty stories. Their first published book, Finding Focus, was released in November 2015. Since then, they've continued to write what they know--southern settings full of swoony heroes and strong heroines.

  Website: http://www.jiffykate.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jiffykate

  Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7352135.Jiffy_Kate

  Twitter: @jiffykatewrites

  Instagram: @jiffykatewrites

  Find Smartypants Romance online:

  Website: www.smartypantsromance.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/smartypantsromance/

  Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/smartypantsromance

  Twitter: @smartypantsrom

  Instagram: @smartypantsromance

  Read on for:

  1. Sneak Peek: Batter of Wits by Karla Sorensen, Book #5 in the Donner Bakery series

  2. Jiffy Kate’s Booklist

  3. Smartypants Romance’s Booklist

  Sneak Peek: Batter of Wits, Donner Bakery Book #5 by Karla Sorensen

  Grace

  “Motherfucking son of a bitch deserted ass backwoods southern roads," I yelled skyward. For good measure, I smacked the hood of my stupid useless car.

  Not that I believed in them, but this was not a good sign. And of course, this happened to me. Not Grady, who'd know what was wrong with his car. Me.

  I couldn't tell a socket wrench from a tube sock.

  The move to Tennessee was about a fresh start, and this bullshit was not what I had in mind.

  Trees everywhere.

  Mosquitoes everywhere, I thought grimly, right after I smacked a monster one off my arm.

  Poorly marked roads everywhere.

  The one thing that was not everywhere was a strong cell signal. I would've smacked my now useless cell phone against the hood of the car too, but I couldn't risk it breaking, as it was my one connection to any sort of civilization.

  If I closed my eyes and harnessed my very active imagination, I could pretend like I was in a really good session of hot yoga. Channel my breathing, turn my focus inward, and allow the stress of the moment to fall away.

  The frustrated burn of tears along the bridge of my nose is what broke that little fantasy.

  I didn't know where I was.

  I didn't know what was wrong with my car, loaded down with every earthly possession I owned.

  I didn't know how far away I was from Green Valley, so it's not like I could start walking.

  And now, I was waiting for a serial killer to pop out of the woods and chop me up into little pieces. Sliding my hand into the front pocket of my frayed jean shorts, I stroked the edge of my pepper spray.

  I might've been stranded in the middle of nowhere, but I was no idiot, okay?

  I blew out another slow breath and held my cell phone up in the air, desperately wishing for one teeny tiny bar of service to appear so I could call Aunt Fran. It's not like my brother would be much help. Grady was one day behind me, after some weird techie blah blah emergency at work held up his departure.

  No big deal, I'd said. I can drive by myself, I'd said. Who needs to caravan in the day and age of Waze? I'd said.

  An exhausted laugh burst out of me, and I tipped my head back, let the sun beat down on my face and shoulders. At least I had the sun. If it was gloomy, or raining, or (shudder) snowing, I'd be curled up in my car wiping snot off my face from all the helpless tears.

  Something my mom taught me and Grady was that in every situation, every single one that life could throw at you, there was something to be thankful for. Even if you felt beaten down, lift your chin, open your eyes and find that one thing.

  And for me, right now, I was thankful for the sun.

  Maybe the humidity should have shoved me right into irrepressible anger, but it didn't. The damp air, heavy and hot and strangely comforting, felt like one of those trendy weighted blanket things. I was a California girl, so heat didn't scare me. And on top of that, I had an unruly mop of hair that refused to be tamed, so I didn't care if it added a bit of curl to the waves that were already there.

  Still, I slid my hands into it and lifted it off my neck while I soaked up some Vitamin D.

  A bead of sweat slipped down my back and I sighed.

  Grady thought I was crazy for it, but I felt more comfortable in the heat than any other kind of weather. That's why I almost always wore my trusty black combat boots, even if it was ninety degrees out.

  My blood ran hotter than most people's, my memaw liked to say.

  Instead of cursing up at the sky again, I dug a hair tie out of my back pocket and piled my hair on top of my head, then marched to the front of my car and yanked the hood open.

  The ticking engine and other shit I couldn't name stared back at me while I braced my hands on the car and stared right back.

  My stomach rumbled ominously, and I cursed the fact that a couple of hours earlier, I'd eaten my last apple, not worried in the slightest that I was out of food, because I'd be just fine until I pulled in at Aunt Fran and Uncle Robert's.

  So, to top everything off on the shit sandwich, I was officially hangry.

  I could feel it inching up my body, from my hollow, aching stomach, along my spine and into my head in the form of a pounding headache.

  "What the hell am I going to do now?" I muttered, glancing over my shoulder at the empty stretch of tree-lined road.

  Honestly, even if my only option for help was some un-bathed redneck in a rusted-out pickup truck, I'd probably greet him with open arms and a big fat kiss at this point.

  Another thirty minutes or so, and my stomach would probably start ingesting my spleen just to keep me alive.

  "Everything is fine," I whispered. "You will be fine, Grace Bailey Buchanan."

  Everything would be fine, because damn it, I was going to will it that way.

  It was not my destiny to die along the side of the road before I could cross the city lines. Or maybe I had. I glanced behind me, and just over the crest of the hill, I could see the back of a road sign.

  Great. I made it past the city limits of Green Valley, and the universe decided to dump me.

  Right as I was about to pass out from starvation.

  The sound of a rumbling engine had my head snapping up and a weary sigh of relief blowing through my lips. Over the slight rise in the road, I saw the dark-colored truck appear slowly, a veritable mirage in the backwoods wilderness.

  In that moment, my entire body slumped in relief before I stepped out from behind the hood of the car.

  "Please don't be a murderer, please don't be a murderer," I whispered. "If you are friendly and helpful and know about cars, I just might kiss you."

  I propped my hands on
my hips and attempted a smile that screamed, please help me because I might have a mental breakdown if you don't and also, I'm very sane and well-adjusted.

  With the shadows from the trees dappling the road, I couldn't see the driver through the windshield until they slowed almost to a stop just in front of me.

  The window rolled down, and the first thing I thought was Hallelujah, Captain America just appeared in front of me. The sexy, bearded version of Captain America too, complete with massive shoulders and mirrored aviators.

  There were no thoughts of curses, no butterflies fluttering through my belly at the sight of his cheekbones and facial hair.

  I almost had a real, true smile on my face, when he opened his mouth.

  "Well now, you're not having a very good day, are you? Couldn't've picked a prettier spot though."

  Folks, if I could properly explain what happened to my body the moment his voice hit my eardrums, I would do it. Any descriptions, any clever analogies would fall woefully short to the skin-shriveling, heart-pinching, pursed-lip, narrow-eyed hatred that I felt when that deep, slow voice tickled the insides of my ears.

  I'll tell you this much, not once in my twenty-six years on this beautiful earth had I experienced the phenomenon of hate at first sight. I didn't even know it existed until that moment.

  Not until him.

  And because it was so strong, so real, so tangible, I felt insane. Like that voice reached into my head and flipped the off-switch to my sanity.

  Most days, I was a nice person. I smiled at strangers, I held doors open for the people behind me, and on occasion, I’d helped little old ladies in the grocery store.

  So this—whatever took over my body at the sound of his voice—was not normal.

  My eyes narrowed dangerously, even as I couldn’t fully understand why. "Excuse me?" I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him the full weight of my glare. "My car broke down and I don't have any cell service, and you're talking about how pretty it is?"

  The glare was wasted on him, because a wide, white-toothed smile spread over his face. "No need to get up in arms, miss, just meant that it's an awfully pretty place to be broken down, isn't it? I've always loved this stretch of road."

  Had I been hot before?

  Scratch that.

  An icy tidal wave of hatred cooled my blood posthaste, and I cocked a hip out to the side. "It's simply divine. Now could I please use your phone to call my aunt? I want off this awfully pretty road, if you don't mind."

  The words, acidic and rude, poured out of my mouth so quickly, I couldn't even stop to analyze how terrible I sounded. This wasn't me! I was nice to strangers! one part of my brain screamed, but the overwhelming vitriol I felt toward him and his handsome face muted that shit pretty fast.

  His truck door popped open, and when he unfolded out of his seat, to his full height, I swallowed heavily. Captain America was easily six-five, and as broad as a tree trunk. Bearded though he was, his hair was immaculate, same as his truck, which gleamed like it'd been freshly waxed.

  His thick legs were covered in dark denim, and the simple white T-shirt stretched over his broad chest was as blinding as his poster boy grin.

  "I'm Tucker, pleasure to meet you." He held out his hand and I narrowed my eyes at that too.

  A bitchy-faced alien had taken over my body because every part of me was responding without a single conscious thought on my end.

  I’d never narrowed my eyes this frequently in my entire friggin’ life.

  "Uh-huh. Can I borrow your phone, please?"

  With a rueful grin, he pulled his hand back. "You can try to get through to your aunt," he said, pulling his phone from his front pocket, "but pretty as this stretch is, it doesn't get much in the way of service, no matter which carrier you have."

  "Great," I mumbled, pulling up Aunt Fran's number on my phone so I could dial it into his. While I did that, he ambled over to the opened hood of my car and braced his arms in the same way I had.

  Except I didn't have bulging forearm muscles or veins that popped.

  Not that I was looking.

  I screwed my lips up when his phone wouldn't connect the call either, finally punching the red button on his screen a little bit harder than I needed to.

  The way my body was reacting to his presence could only be described as weird. Really, really weird.

  Have you played with magnets? You flip one of them the wrong way, and they instantly repel each other. No matter what you do, you’ll never get them to snap in place.

  There’s a force field between those incorrectly flipped magnets—invisible and impenetrable—that you’ll never be able to overcome with your mind.

  I wanted to take a step closer, see what he was looking at in my car, and try to start over.

  But my body wouldn’t. A steel wall between us couldn’t have been more effective, because when my brain screamed at my feet to move, at my tongue to say something nicer, sweeter, with a bucket-load more gratitude, I couldn’t do any of those things.

  The signals being sent to my hands and arms and feet and facial expressions was an all caps command that WE DO NOT LIKE THIS PERSON.

  Maybe this was a really extreme case of hangry. I rubbed my forehead and tried to remember the last time I ate. Was the apple an hour ago? Or two?

  Was I hallucinating this entire exchange? Because that would be a loss of sanity I could accept.

  "Where's your aunt from?" he asked, eyes down while his large hand checked a few knobs or belts or whatever.

  I held my snort at his question, because this was the south. In California, we went out of our way not to ask stranger's questions for fear that they might engage us in conversation.

  "Can you see what's wrong?" I asked in lieu of an answer.

  He wasn't fooled, judging by the way his cheeks lifted, as if he was smiling.

  "Not yet." He glanced up, eyes dark, dark brown in his face. "Might be your alternator, or your distributor sensor, if it just died while you were driving."

  "Dead as a fucking doornail," I muttered, resisting the urge to kick the back tire of my car.

  He whistled softly.

  "What? Did you find what's wrong?"

  "No, ma'am, just don't usually hear a woman curse like that in front of a stranger."

  "Yeah well, I'm not from around here, if you hadn't fucking noticed," I said. "I curse in front of whoever I damn well please."

  Oh

  My

  Good

  Lord

  what was wrong with me?

  "Good for you," he said, completely unruffled. He stood and crossed his arms over his chest and let his eyes roam my face, unhurried and without any attempt to hide his curiosity.

  Why didn’t he say anything else? Why was he hanging out in front of my car like he had nowhere better to be?

  "Yeah, it is good for me," I said, marching closer to him, barely stopping my finger from poking him in that chest of his. "Do you even know what year it is? If I want to drink, or swear, or screw someone I just met, that's my prerogative, and I don't need some southern asshole judging me for it. You don't know me, buddy, so back off."

  Just once, oh-so-briefly, his eyes flashed hot and his hard jaw tightened when I said screw someone I just met. In the space of one breath, I got a sweaty, tangled, moan-inducing vision of him and I in the front of his truck, clothes barely removed, me sprawled across the bench and him hovering above me, braced up by his massive arms as he moved between my legs.

  Which would've been an awesome mental image, if I didn't hate him with every annoyed, hangry, exhausted cell in my body.

  Yes, I liked the idea of hallucinating, the more I thought about it. A heat-induced mental breakdown. I’d take any sort of explanation, because even as I heard the words come out of my mouth, I desperately wanted to stop them, but I couldn’t.

  Like a child might if they started spilling a jar of tiny beads, I wished I could slap my fingers across my mouth and hold all the individual letters forming eac
h individual word and keep them in where they were safe and couldn’t make a horrible mess.

  "Lemme guess," he drawled, "you're either from New York or LA"

  Beads. Beads were flying everywhere as the jar tipped past the point of no return.

  "Bite me. Women like me live all over this country, maybe not in Green Valley, Tennessee, but just about everywhere else."

  He scratched the side of his jaw as he watched me. "Oh, I'm sure we've got 'em here too, Angry Girl."

  My chin jerked up. "That is not my name."

  "I wouldn't know, now would I? You chose not to tell me." He tsked. "Not very friendly of you, if you ask me."

  "I didn't ask you," I snapped. I rolled my lips between my teeth, because honestly, I was ready to slap myself across the face. “S-sorry,” I forced the words out, even though it physically hurt my jaw to do so. “I’m a little … hungry. I haven’t eaten in a while.”

  A nightmare, I thought desperately. Let this be a nightmare.

  But no, even in my nightmares, I wouldn't have conjured this. So maybe I wasn't little miss sunshine with everyone, but my mother would rip my ear off if she could hear me speak to a stranger the way I was speaking to him.

  But … I couldn't stop.

  Why couldn’t I stop?

  On the verge of absolute hysteria, I thought about what I’d said to my dad, about a man falling prostrate before me as soon as I got into town.

  Instead, here I was, channeling every hidden psychotic shred of my DNA into this one entirely innocent person who had the terrible misfortune of being the first one to find me on the side of the road.

  He walked toward his truck, only pausing to hold out his hand for his cell phone, which I slapped down onto his palm. Inexplicably, it made him grin.

  "You're heading to Green Valley then?" he asked, opening the driver's side door of his truck and leaning against the frame.

  I slicked my tongue over my teeth, cursing that little slip. "Why do you need to know?"