Beefcake & Cupcakes

by Fennell, Judi

  He also wanted a repeat.

  But when they’d seen her booth, the comments had started.

  “So? Did you talk to the cupcake lady?” Bry, his business partner, tossed his cop’s hat onto the table. The two of them hadn’t been in costume—or, rather, out of it—in months, but when it came to drumming up business at trade shows, they were on display just as much as the guys.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  Bry pried the cap off a soda. “And?”

  And… nothing. He’d expected… He didn’t know what. Something. Some explanation about why she’d run out.

  He shrugged, but, it still bothered him. He would’ve thought he’d get points for not taking advantage of her. “She was working. Not exactly the best time to check her out.”

  “That never stopped you before.” Bry poured some soda down his throat. In the good ol’ days it would have been doctored with Jack, but they were businessmen now. Jack was only on the menu after hours.

  “Maybe I didn’t have as much to lose before.”

  Bry spit the soda across the booth. “Lose? Her? What the fuck, man? What happened that night?”

  Not a damn thing, unfortunately. Not even a kiss.

  Gage grabbed one of the guys’ beaters and mopped up the mess. They’d spent a fortune on the promo materials; no way was he letting it get ruined. “Not her. This. Our business. I don’t have time to sweep some woman off her feet while I’m trying to earn enough to put this place behind me.”

  “Are you still on that? Seriously, Gage, you might want to rethink it. It does pay the bills.”

  Not all of them. The ones for his nephew’s surgeries, therapy, and medications were looming before him right now in big, gaudy, painfully garish stage lights, the zeroes seeming to multiply exponentially every time he thought about them. Which was a lot.

  “Bry, I got into this for the money.” At first, it’d been a way to supplement his contracting income when the economy had tanked over a year ago. He and Bry had made some decent bucks stripping back in college. But then, with the surgeries Connor needed and the fact that Gage was the de facto head of the Tomlinson clan, the money had taken on a whole new meaning.

  He and Bry had hired more guys and booked more gigs, him with the idea that this was a stop-gap measure. A means to an end. It wasn’t as if he loved taking his clothes off for crowds of drunken women at his age—thirty-four wasn’t over the hill, necessarily, especially because he kept himself in shape, but around the younger guys… Yeah, he didn’t want to dance anymore. Especially after the mess with his last girlfriend, Leslie. Nothing killed a relationship faster than jealousy—even though she’d had no reason to be jealous.

  But it made him cautious. He needed the money too badly to give it up and if a woman couldn’t handle his job, well then, there was no sense having her in his life. Not until he got things with Connor under control.

  But he’d been working the floor that night two weeks ago, keeping the women from throwing themselves onto the stage at the dancers—it happened more than he cared to think about, which was why he usually steered clear of women at the shows—when he’d seen Lara. All bets had been off. He hadn’t understood it, but he’d had to talk to her. Dance with her.

  So he had. Then one thing had led to another and—

  “Did you get the info for Gina’s spa’s grand opening?” Bry asked.

  Gage nodded. “I lined up Tanner and Carlo. It’s just an hour gig. Two ought to be enough.”

  “An hour gig and half a thou. I love those short, sweet shows. Our bread and butter, baby.”

  Even with the discount they were giving Gina, Bry’s cousin, the five hundred minus two bills for the dancers and another one for overhead left him and Bry a hundred each. Not bad for a few phone calls.

  He looked at all the business cards in the fishbowl. There were a lot of phone calls to be made in there. If only twenty percent of them panned out, he could be a good part of the way toward his goal by the end of next month. And if the benefit for his nephew came through with what he was hoping it would, well, they’d all be able to breathe a little easier for Connor’s next surgery.

  Bryan refilled the basket of bow tie key chains with their website emblazoned across the strap. “So you ever going to tell me what’s so special about this chick that you broke our iron-clad rule about staying away from paying customers?”

  “She wasn’t paying.”

  “Seriously? That’s how you justified it?” Bry flung a keychain at him. Winged him right in the solar plexus. Damn plastic was sharp. “She was with the party that was paying. Same difference. I haven’t seen you make a move on a chick like that since college. It was like she had a tractor beam on you.”

  Gage rubbed his abs, trying not to look at Bryan. Yeah, he’d had it bad for her. Still did. Only his bruised ego had prevented him from calling her in the two weeks since their night together. Well, that and the fact that he barely had time to take care of all he needed to take care of without tossing dating into the mix.

  But that didn’t mean he hadn’t thought about it. She’d been pretty darn proud of her and her cousin’s bakery, Cavallo’s Cups & Cakes, that night.

  She’d been so adorable when she’d confessed to supplying the “designer” penis cake for the bachelorette party. If he could’ve brought himself to eat part of a cake penis, he might have tried it, but there was just something utterly abhorrent about taking that first bite.

  He wouldn’t have minded taking a bite out of her, though. That’s why he’d danced with her.

  But, hell, he hadn’t even gotten a kiss. He’d held on to some scruples and hadn’t made out with her on the dance floor, and then she’d gone bottoms up on him in the elevator so that’d been out of the question.

  “Yoo hoo, loverboy.” Bry hit him in the cheek with a paper airplane. “Reliving your night of splendor?”

  Gage wished, but it hadn’t been so splendid. He’d been left hard and aching all night while she snored next to him.

  He smiled then and didn’t care if Bry thought it was because of a particularly “good” memory. She’d been adorable when she snored.

  “So what’d she say when she saw you? Get all flustered and embarrassed or hot and bothered?”

  Gage looked up. “Ya know? Neither.”

  “Whoa. Losing your touch. You used to have them creaming their pants before you even touched them back in the day.”

  Crude but true. God had given him the face and the gym had given him the body, and he’d enjoyed the fruits of both. Life had been a party back then. Stripping had only added to the pot of available women.

  Bry pulled out more of the guys’ body shot postcards to replenish the stacks on the booth. So many times their bookings were by special request; it’d been a marketing bonanza to hand out mini portfolios of the dancers. A couple of them were developing their own following, which could only help business.

  “Maybe she’s gay.” Bryan waggled his eyebrows.

  Gage choked. “She’s not gay.” Though, for all he knew, she might be.

  The thought was a sobering one. Was she gay? Was that why she’d taken off so quickly the next morning? To save them both that awkwardness?

  Was that why she hadn’t reacted to him at her booth?

  Gage had to admit, even if she were gay, her non-reaction stung. He knew what he looked like; hell, in his business he had to. His looks were a commodity. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had been that unresponsive to them or his charm. And he’d tried very hard to be charming back there, all cowboy-polite and alpha male. The drunk guy had given him the perfect opportunity, but Lara had only been interested in trading barbs, not phone numbers.

  “Or maybe she just has standards.”

  Gage flipped his hat at Bryan. “Asshole.”

  “That’s Mr. Asshole to you.” Bry stuck the hat on his head and tilted the brim back. “Maybe I’ll have better luck with this than you did. Which booth did you say was hers?”

&n
bsp; “Eleven twenty-four. Over there.” Gage pointed to the far corner of the venue. Away from where Lara was. No way was he sending Bryan after her. The guy got just as many women as Gage did and Gage’s ego wasn’t up for the competition. Not until he figured out why she hadn’t been interested in him.

  “Uh huh. That’s what I thought.” Bry headed in the opposite direction. Right on a collision course with the cupcake lady.

  Shit.

  And with the guys gone, Gage was stuck manning the booth.

  Chapter 3

  “Jesse, can you cover for me? I need a break.”

  The grapefruit juice she’d had for breakfast was demanding attention, but Lara hadn’t wanted to do so until she’d talked to every one of those women who’d followed the cowboy over. She ought to hire him to come to every trade show with her. It’d be worth the cost.

  Especially if she saved a few pennies by letting him bunk with her...

  “Sure, Miss Cavallo.”

  Lara winced. Nothing like having a teenager make her feel like her grandmother.

  “You gonna go check out the hottie?”

  Lara choked back… what? A snort? Embarrassment? Big ol’ red-hot bunch of yearnin’?

  Yeah, that last one.

  “No. Mother Nature is demanding a visit.”

  “Oh.”

  Funny how the intern could jabber on about hotties, but mention a bathroom break and the kid got as red as, well, that big ol’ red-hot bunch of yearnin’.

  Still, she did box up two cupcakes; she’d promised him after all. And booth 263 was close to the bathroom…

  Oh, who was she kidding? She wanted to see him, and the cupcakes were just an excuse.

  She almost laughed at herself. Almost. Apparently, the hot monkey sex from two weeks ago had taken the edge off some of her inhibitions.

  She could only imagine what others it’d released that night—and she could only imagine because she still didn’t remember a single thing once she’d left the dance floor with Mr. B.N.A.

  Never again. She was never doing shots of Zambuca again. That stuff was lethal.

  So what explained this idiocy she was now exhibiting by going to check the hot guy out? Hadn’t she sworn off guys?

  She had. Really. She’d had enough of guys with her ex-husband. Still, she did owe him the cupcakes for helping her out…

  Once she finished up in the bathroom, she took a ridiculous amount of time checking her face in the mirror. Her makeup had melted off in the heat—and she was going with the heat in the convention center, not the heat generated by Mr. Cowboy Gage—and her hair was starting to frizz out of the up-do she normally wore. Normally, she didn’t care. Her clientele were brides and their families, and if the occasional groom came along, he only had eyes for his fiancée. No one ever checked her out.

  Mr. Cowboy Gage had. God, even his name was sexy.

  She ran her fingers under the faucet and tried to stem the frizz with a liberal application of water. Which made her hair look greasy.

  Sigh.

  She grabbed a paper towel and tried to soak up the excess, but that only made it frizz again.

  Lara gave up. He wasn’t really interested in her; he’d been playing a character. Had had most of the women swooning every time he’d opened his mouth with that sexy-as-all-get-out drawl.

  But still, she had a debt to pay, so she picked up the box of cupcakes off the ledge by the mirror and set out for his booth.

  Booth two fourteen, two twenty-two, two thirty-six… After that, she didn’t have to keep looking at numbers because there, at the end, in a booth covered in black velvet with smoking hot pictures of guys and their abs plastered across the back beneath the BeefCake, Inc. banner, was Mr. Cowboy Gage.

  With a harem of women hanging on his every word.

  The only reason they weren’t hanging on him was because the booth separated them. Smart guy, otherwise there’d probably be a stampede. It was a good thing there weren’t a lot of grooms in attendance because, with the way the women were fawning all over him, there could end up being a lot of broken engagements.

  She ought to go back. Seriously, he didn’t need her thanks; most of those women were the ones he’d lured to her booth. He’d known exactly what he was doing when he’d tossed out his booth number.

  She turned around to leave.

  “Hey, Cupcake!”

  She looked up. Gage the cowboy was staring right at her, waving her over.

  Her face went to flambé almost as fast as her heart rate went into triple time.

  But it didn’t stop her from heading his way.

  “Make way, ladies. Make way,” he said as she approached his throng of admirers who parted like the Red Sea at his command.

  “Here.” She thrust out the box. She was way out of her league with him. Probably had been even before Jeff had raked her self-confidence over the coals. “These are for you. Those cupcakes I promised you. Rocky road and peanut butter swirl.”

  He grinned, and while his eyes didn’t flicker downwards, she just knew that’s what he was thinking.

  Or maybe that was wishful thinking on her part.

  “Thanks. And welcome to BeefCake, Inc.”

  It certainly was. With a prime specimen now wrapping an arm around her waist and tugging her into the booth.

  Lara seriously thought about swooning. Which probably meant she wasn’t going to, given that most people didn’t think before they swooned—or they wouldn’t do it—but right now, her thought processes were quickly disappearing as his fingers did riotous things to her skin and the scent of him—male and sexy, and a little perspiration which could only work on a hot guy—turned her insides upside down and had her thighs quivering.

  Oh, God, who knew it was actually possible to have quivering thighs?

  “So what do you think?” he asked with that slow drawl he could command at will.

  Well, if she had to think, she’d think he was absolutely hands-down the hottest guy she’d ever been hugged by. And that she never wanted to leave his arms. And that she definitely would never forget him if she ever was lucky enough to spend the night with him.

  “Um, impressive.”

  And, man, that grin. And those dimples in his cheeks. The guy was pure fantasy come to life.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  As well he should.

  “After all, my ego could use a little stroking.”

  She’d sign up to be first on that list. Oh wait. Ego.

  “Especially after you ran out on me.”

  It took her a few seconds to make sense of his words. And even then, they didn’t make sense. “Um, what?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, I’m not exactly used to women running off before a ‘good morning.’ Etiquette, you know?”

  Uh, no. She didn’t. “Etiquette?”

  He leaned in and her skin shivered when he whispered in her ear. “You know, when I took you back to my room after that party two weeks ago?”

  Oh. My. God.

  Holy shit.

  Un-freaking-believable.

  Cowboy Gage was Mr. Bare Naked Ass?

  Chapter 4

  Interesting that Ms. Lara Cavallo didn’t have a snappy comeback. Which meant either he’d pissed her off, she didn’t care, or she hadn’t expected him to call her on her gross miscarriage of etiquette.

  “How much for a lap dance?” One of the women stuck a twenty in the business card fishbowl.

  Lara stiffened beside him.

  Gage was going to go with pissed off.

  He tightened his grip. She wasn’t going anywhere until he got some answers.

  “I’ll give you twice your price.” Another woman stuffed a few more bills in the fishbowl.

  Then the dollar bills came out.

  Gage had to put a stop to it. Fastest way to get thrown out of the expo was to incite a riot. The event organizers had specifically spelled out in his contract there was to be no solicitation. No solicitation. As if a group of mal
e dancers—who weren’t dancing—were a bunch of gigolos. He’d bet every phone number in that fishbowl that Lara hadn’t had to sign a waiver for selling sex by cupcake.

  He glanced at her t-shirt. Her cupcakes definitely made him think of sex.

  He snorted. God, was he really so hung up on himself that he couldn’t deal with a woman running out on him? Did he have to prove to himself that he could affect her?

  Apparently he did.

  He set the box down, then grabbed the fishbowl off the booth with his free hand and locked it between his knees. He wasn’t letting go of Lara.

  He fished the money out and handed it back to the depositors. “Sorry, ladies, but we’re here for advertising only. Not entertainment.” And he really didn’t need this shoved down Lara’s throat the first time he was with her—well, her first sober time they were together. Leslie had only been able to put up with the attention he’d gotten for five months.

  One woman dragged her twenty across her lips. “Oh, I don’t know. Just looking at you is pretty damn entertaining.”

  If Lara got any stiffer beside him, he’d think she were dead. Her wide, gorgeous dark eyes weren’t helping that impression either.

  Thankfully, Murph and Tanner showed up just then, catching sight of the throng, and came in through the back of the booth.

  “Jeez, boss, we leave you alone for a few minutes and you drag ’em in like the Pied Piper.” Tanner picked up his bow tie and clamped it around his neck.

  “Guys, can you handle this, please? I need to have a few words with Lara.”

  “Sure thing. Knock your socks off.”

  Socks weren’t the article of clothing he wanted to knock off.

  “Lara?” He held out his free hand toward the opening at the back of the booth. No way was he letting go of her. “Shall we?”

  She looked at him with narrow eyes. “Shall we what?”

  Ah, the possibilities that question unleashed. He couldn’t help smiling. “Well, first I thought we’d start off by discussing that night. Then, hell, I’m open to whatever you want.”