Beefcakes

by Katana Collins

  Copyright © 2020 by Katana Collins

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, 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 Art by: Sean Gordon Murphy

  Cover Design by: Julianne Burke at Heart to Cover

  Edited by: Erin Marenghi, Rachel Mason

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Thin Mint Cupcakes

  Maple Bacon Cupcakes

  Looking for more books in Maple Grove?

  Want to see more of Neil, Jude, and Ash?

  Chapter 1

  About Katana

  My Jeep hit a bump in the road, and my brother Liam and I bounced up off our seats, nearly hitting our heads on the top of the car.

  “Fuck! Easy, Neil!” Liam shouted, turning around in his seat and trying to get a look at the two dozen decorated cupcakes that were carefully stacked in the back.

  “Sorry,” I grunted. “Fucking potholes. You’d think New Hampshire would be on top of fixing them after winter.”

  “Or,” Liam rolled his eyes, “you could just drive carefully.”

  I leaned my bare arm out the window, enjoying the hot sun against my skin. “Why the hell did Mom book a cupcake delivery that was forty-five minutes away?”

  Liam’s silence was deafening—if silence could ever be such a thing. I snuck a glance to my right, catching the hard set of his jaw before he finally huffed a sigh and answered, “Because,” he said, “while you were on the other side of the country working on that tan of yours, she and I, along with Addison and Finn, were doing everything in our power to keep her bakery afloat. And that included taking deliveries outside of the normal zone.”

  Damn, he got me there. Liam, Finn, and Addy had taken care of Mom while I was trying to get my ducks in a row to move back home to the East coast. Even still… it wasn’t my fault that a cross country move can’t be done in a day. It’s even slower when your arm is in a sling.

  “Hey—I packed up and moved back home as soon as I could after Mom’s diagnosis.”

  Liam leveled me with a glare that I only caught out of the corner of my eye, opting to keep my attention on the road.

  “And what if you hadn’t hurt your shoulder?” He lifted his chin in the direction of my arm, which was stronger now, though not entirely healed yet. “What are the chances you would have moved back to help if you hadn’t lost your job?”

  Damn. Harsh.

  “I would have packed a bag if I’d known we’d be going on this guilt trip,” I mumbled.

  “It’s not a guilt trip,” he said. “It’s the truth.” He paused, fiddling with the seatbelt cutting across his chest and wrinkling his shirt. “But if you must know, bachelorette parties and weddings pay exceptionally well. It’s worth the extra driving time.”

  “If they pay so well, remind me again how you guys got so deep into debt?”

  He didn’t answer me, even though I knew he heard me.

  Liam’s gaze flicked to my bare torso. “Remind me again why you have to drive with no shirt on?”

  Right. So, there’s a few things you should probably know about me:

  1) I was Mr. Universe, Mr. Zeus, Mr. Olympia and Cosmo’s most Eligible Bachelor three years in a row. I’m not bragging, I swear (okay, I might be bragging a little).

  2) I left bodybuilding because the scene in Los Angeles was the fucking worst and I never want to set foot on another stage again. I still work out—just not as often. And I don’t gloat as much about it.

  3) After leaving competition life, I worked as a stuntman in Hollywood for Silhouette Studios until I tore my rotator cuff three months ago. Stuntman career basically over.

  4) I’ve never taken steroids. Lastly,

  5) I don’t believe you must deprive yourself of delicious food to look and feel your best. That’s just bullshit.

  Okay, that was a lot, I know. But it’s important.

  I gripped the wheel tighter as Liam asked again, “Well? Why exactly are you driving shirtless?”

  I loved my little brother. I really did. I just wish I knew why everything I did—literally, everything—seemed to annoy him. I shot him a pointed look. “Dude, look at your shirt.”

  Liam glanced down, running his palm over the white button down he wore. It was already littered with wrinkles, and we weren’t even there yet. Based on the huff he gave, he saw them too.

  “I drive without a shirt to avoid those wrinkles you’ve got going on there.” Also, it’s summer in New Hampshire. The most amazing season for this state, and I’d be damned if I didn’t soak up every incredible second of summer before the God-awful winter rolled back in. If there was one thing, and one thing only, I missed about California… it was the weather. Well, if I was being honest, I missed my job as a stuntman, too. If only I didn’t have to be based in LA to do it.

  “Fine, whatever.” Liam gave me his signature eye roll. Because he knew I was right. And he was probably wishing he too had thought to take his shirt off before hopping into my passenger seat. He was a good-looking guy. Hell, he was my brother… of course he was. He had a good torso, muscular. Not as muscular as me of course, but then again, he didn’t exercise as a profession for almost a decade. We worked out together at the gym a lot. Despite the fact that he always seemed annoyed with me, we still spent most of our time together. He was my best friend—even if I wasn’t his.

  “Just please drive—”

  We hit another pothole, jostling the Jeep once more. This time, even I winced.

  “—carefully,” Liam sighed.

  Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the beachfront rental. I didn’t quite know what to expect from the bachelorette party, but Mom said she knew the family of the girl getting married and we had to be extra nice to them.

  I wasn’t sure I trusted my mother’s opinion on this, though. She didn’t see the side of these “sweet girls” that I saw after midnight downtown. Four shots in, and those sweet, faithful brides turned into amateur strippers, egged on by their friends, who were also downing lemon drops.

  I put the Jeep in park and climbed out, opening the backseat and inspecting my dress shirt hanging there—not a wrinkle on it.

  Liam, on
the other hand, looked like he had pulled his shirt out of the dirty pile in his hamper. He moved to the back of the Jeep, throwing open the hatch. “Son of a bitch, Neil!” he hissed with a careful glance over his shoulder toward the house behind him.

  I made my way to the back of the Jeep, still shirtless, and grimaced as I saw what he was pissed about.

  Shit. I guess he was right that we should have taken the highway, not the bumpy back roads. At the very least, I guess I shouldn’t have been going fifteen over the speed limit.

  The back of the car looked like a food fight had erupted. There were cupcakes scattered everywhere. The icing, which earlier that morning had been beautifully piped into various flowers, was now smeared throughout the interior of the box we had so carefully placed them into.

  I gulped. “Maybe it’s just the top row of cupcakes ruined?” I offered, but even I knew that wasn’t likely. Not from the sight I saw in the trunk. Somehow, despite our most careful packing, my snowboard had fallen over on top of the cupcakes, smashing them to oblivion.

  Shit.

  Think, Neil, think.

  “Why do you even have your snowboard back here?” Liam snapped. “It’s fucking May!”

  “The snow only just melted a few weeks ago, asshole. I just haven’t found a place to store it in my cabin, yet.” My small, one-bedroom cabin.

  Liam shook his head, and I tried my best to ignore the heavy, disappointed sigh that came from my right.

  I tugged my snowboard off the cupcakes and looked at the hook I was certain had been so secure when we left. Yet again, Liam had been right. He had begged me to clear out the back of my Jeep before we left. But I swear, I’d been driving with that snowboard clipped there for two months, and it’d been fine.

  “One, two, three, four…” I counted the salvageable cupcakes, “… and a half.”

  “Four and a half?” Liam spat through gritted teeth. “Are you fucking kidding me? What are we supposed to do with half a cupcake? That’s not even enough for each girl at the party to have one cupcake!”

  I drew in a deep breath and lunged for the industrial sized Tupperware we had packed alongside the damaged cupcakes. “Look, this is why we always bake extra and bring more buttercream.”

  “We only ever bring a few. We have maybe six undecorated cupcakes as a backup.”

  I swallowed. That wasn’t quite true. “I have the dozen sugar-free, grain-free cupcakes I baked for Mom in here,” I said. “We can use those and decorate another dozen or so now, out here, before we go in. This will be fine.”

  “Aren’t those meant for Mom because of her cancer?”

  “Well, yeah. But they’re healthy for anyone to eat.” Linda Evans loves her sweets, but the chemo took its toll on her appetite. And since cancer cells feed on grains and sugar, I started making these so that she wouldn’t have to give up her beloved cupcakes. “Besides,” I sighed. “They’re delicious. I doubt the party will even know.”

  “So… you want us to serve creatine cupcakes to ten bachelorettes?” he hissed.

  “They’re baked with protein powder… not creatine.” I pursed my lips together and squeezed my eyes shut briefly. “And unless you have a better option, I think this is our only shot right now at saving this for Mom. Are you going to help or not?” I asked, holding out the icing bag toward him.

  He snatched the bag from my hands. “It took us hours to frost those cupcakes in the shape of peonies,” Liam said, his voice rising.

  I glanced to the front door of the beach house, and through an open window, I watched the silky curtains billow as a light breeze caught them.

  “Shh,” I hissed. “They’ll hear you.”

  “This is your fault,” Liam said, his voice back to a whisper. “When are you going to take responsibility? Things were fine before. We were doing fine, just Finn, Addy, Mom, and me.”

  Yeah, right. Mom had called me three months ago practically begging me to come home and help Liam. Her cancer was taking its toll on her. She had thought she could handle treatments and keep her business afloat, but she’d been wrong.

  I rolled my eyes in spite of my brother and massaged the cold buttercream in my hands to warm it up. “Can we save the lecture for later? Right now, let’s focus on salvaging this delivery.”

  I looked at Liam, his emerald eyes scrutinizing me before they widened, looking to the house and back to me. “I have an idea,” he said. “It’s sort of out there, though.”

  At this point, I’d take a fucking crazy idea if it saved our asses. Because as much as I hated to admit it, Liam was right. This was my fault.

  He set down the pastry bag, holding his hands out, looking at the stuff we had brought. “Did you bring butter and confectioner’s sugar?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “In the cooler. Why?”

  “I’m having what I think is a genius idea,” he said. “We do this two-fold. The girls can decorate their own cupcakes… learn from me how to pipe flowers and peonies onto their own cupcakes.”

  My brows lifted. “That could work,” I said. “Women love DIY and Pinterest shit, right?”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “Pinterest shit. Right.”

  “What’s the second part of the idea?”

  Liam chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment before he grabbed one of the demolished cupcakes in the back seat and swiped the icing onto my bare chest.

  I blinked, taking a step back in shock. “What. The. Serious. Fuck.”

  But he didn’t stop. He grabbed a second cupcake and did the same thing.

  “Dude,” I said again. “I’m going to kill you. What are you doing?”

  He grinned wickedly at me. “It’s a bachelorette party,” he said. “They can learn how to pipe flowers from me, but also decorate their own cupcakes off of Mr. Universe’s chest."

  “Ex-Mr. Universe.” My hand went to my hair and a sudden heaviness landed in my chest. I pushed it down, ignoring the empty feeling that came whenever someone mentioned my title.

  We each hoisted the cupcakes and cooler out of the Jeep. “It’s not like the Mr. Universe competition broke up with you. You just passed the title on to the next winner.”

  He had no idea how abusive that contest was. How much they pushed you and forced you to change your body in the most unnatural ways. Mr. Universe wasn’t about being the healthiest… it was about being the largest. I happily passed that title on to the next person. I shook the thoughts away, leaving thoughts of my previous life behind as the gravel crunched beneath my loafers. Even though I hated wearing anything but my sneakers and flip flops, Mom would have whupped our butts if we had shown up to deliver cupcakes in flip flops.

  I glanced down at my bare chest, covered in frosting. Jesus. Imagine what she’d say about this?

  “Look,” Liam whispered, “We need something to get us out of this mess. And a bachelorette party that gets to decorate cupcakes off a man’s chest? They’ll go nuts for it.”

  Shit. I wanted to be mad for being treated like a piece of meat… but he was right. It was a genius idea—a genius idea to get us out of the mess I’d gotten us into in the first place.

  I paused in thought for a brief moment as he looked at me, brows raised. “Fuck,” I hissed and dove my hand into the demolished cupcakes, following Liam’s lead and spreading more icing all over my torso. “I hate you,” I said.

  “I know.” He paused a few steps away from the door. Setting the cooler down, Liam unbuttoned his shirt, sliding it off, then tied an apron on over his bare torso.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Brand consistency,” Liam answered quickly.

  Once I had what I thought was an adequate amount of icing on me, I stopped, wiping my hands clean with a bottle of water and a spare towel. “Good thing my abs are saving our asses.”

  “As I recall, it was your ass that got us in trouble in the first place.”

  Don’t remind me. With buttercream beginning to melt down my chest in the warm summer sun, we walked the final f
ew steps to the front door and rang the bell.

  “I feel like I’m violating about a million health codes right now,” I muttered below my breath.

  “Shut up and look pretty for the girls,” Liam whispered.

  “Wait… didn’t Mom say she knew the bride’s family?” Because if Mom knew the bride’s family, chances were, we knew her too. But Liam didn’t get to answer me as the door opened in front of us.

  A woman wearing a veil covered in condoms opened the door, her eyes going wide as she first saw Liam, shirtless in his apron… then me. Her gaze raked my body like a person in the desert entering an oasis. Thirsty. For me… or my icing. Not sure which.

  I tilted my head, studying her briefly. She looked familiar. Very familiar, but I had no idea why or where I might have known her from. I squinted my eyes, trying to place her in my memory. The little lake town in New Hampshire where we grew up was small… but not that small. We had two high schools. And the one I went to had over two hundred kids. Enough that you could recognize everyone… but not know everyone.

  Spinning, she turned her back on us and screeched to her friends. “I told you guys no strippers!”

  There was clomping as half a dozen women came charging toward us at the door, and my smile turned brittle.

  “We’re not strippers,” Liam said, suddenly sounding very authoritative. So much so, I almost didn’t recognize my little brother. “We’re here for your cupcake delivery.”

  The bride narrowed her eyes at Liam. “Liam Evans? Is that you?”