Beefcake & Cupcakes

by Fennell, Judi

“So was Jeff.”

  “Different league. Lar. Completely different league.”

  And so far out of hers that this discussion was ridiculous.

  Luckily, Gage came back to the table just then.

  “Everything all right?” asked Cara.

  He nodded. “Yeah, mini family crisis averted. No biggie.”

  “You have a family?” Cara leaned forward.

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  Now would be the perfect time to clue Cara in about Gage’s nephew, but Cara, never one to miss an opportunity, was flashing some ta-ta-age as payback for keeping him a secret. And since Gage was tall enough to have a perfect beeline view right down Cara’s ta-ta-age, it would work, except that he was looking at her, so excuse her if she wasn’t into sharing anything with Cara right now. Especially Gage.

  “You okay, Lara? You look like you had a couple of shots of Zambuca.”

  She glared at him. Not fair.

  She put on her sweetest smile and crossed her arms under her breasts.

  That got his attention.

  “Why, no, Gage, I’m feeling just fine.”

  “Want me to be the judge of that?” he whispered.

  Uh, yeah, she did.

  Cara tapped the table to get his attention back on her, a move for which Lara was profoundly grateful. “I meant a family like a wife and kids and stuff?”

  Gage jerked his head around. “A wife? Kids? No. Not me. Not now.”

  Interesting answer. So he didn’t have any but might want some down the road? Lara tucked that away for future reference.

  The waitress, praise be to God, showed up then with their food. Cara’s little ol’ salad looked pretty darn pathetic next to the two steaks, baked potatoes with the fixin’s on the side, and two orders of slaw.

  “Hey, you got my favorite meal,” Gage said, stealing one of her onion rings.

  She grabbed one of his back. “No, you ordered my favorite meal.”

  “Well you’re both making me kind of sick with all that food. Maybe I should get my own table.”

  Cara, thankfully, knew when she’d lost. The ta-tas went off display and her tractor beam eyeballs started roaming the room instead of Gage’s shirt, and she got up to “get herself a drink at the bar,” code-phrase for see-if-you-can-make-this-hook-up-happen-cousin.

  Lara shouldn’t be inordinately pleased by that, but she was.

  “So everything’s all right with your family?” she asked after Cara left.

  “Yes. Connor needed me to tell his mom that he didn’t need her help with, um, some personal needs.”

  “Can he do that by himself?”

  Gage shrugged. “Not my place to second-guess him. He’s old enough to want his privacy and, yeah, I get it. My sister tends to hover.”

  “Can you blame her?”

  “Hell, no. I hover, too. It’s been… rough.”

  He’d said that before and Lara had a feeling there was a lot more to it that he wasn’t saying.

  Gage cleared his throat and drummed his fingers on his table. “He needs two more surgeries and a lot of PT, but we’re hoping for a full recovery.”

  “I hope the benefit raised a lot of money for him.”

  The smile Gage flashed wasn’t exactly full of happiness and light and Lara’s heart went out to him. She put her hand on his arm.

  He didn’t move it away. “The final tally isn’t in yet, but more than the money, it was the outpouring of support from everyone. When something like this happens, you tend to want to turn inward and block everything out. But you can’t. We need help, even if it’s just meals or a few hours for someone to sit with him to give us a break. That was the surprising part of Saturday. I didn’t expect it, but my sister now has a list of people she can call when she needs a break and I’m not able to be around. It’s tough with two jobs.”

  “Two?”

  He covered her hand with his. “BeefCake is just for after hours, but it takes up as much, if not more than my day job. But my sister needs more money than either of us have coming in for Connor’s care.”

  And right there, Lara fell a little bit in love with him. And she wasn’t even going to give herself a hard time over it because if someone didn’t fall in love with such a selfless guy, there had to be something wrong with them. And no matter what Jeff wanted her to believe, there was definitely nothing wrong with her.

  But falling even a little bit in love with him was a huge problem.

  “So are you really going to eat all of that?” Gage waved his fork over her plate.

  “I wouldn’t have ordered if I wasn’t going to.”

  “Seems like an awful lot for a tiny thing like you.”

  He just had to keep giving her reasons to fall in love with him, didn’t he?

  “Trust me, I can put it away.”

  “Care to make a wager on that?”

  “Seriously? You’re going to bet me that I can’t eat all of this?”

  “Yup.”

  “You’re on.” She dug into the potato, ready to get started. “What are we betting?”

  “A lap dance.”

  She spit out the bite of potato. “A what?”

  He wiped the blob up. “You heard me. First one done wins a lap dance from the other.”

  “I’m sensing a theme with you.”

  “Can’t put one by you, can I?”

  No but he could lay one on her.

  “So are you in or are you going to chicken out?” He slid a piece of steak into his mouth, and yes, she did see the tongue action that ensued, and yes, it did make her hot.

  What the hell would a lap dance do if just watching him eat turned her nerves to mush?

  Be adventurous. Cara’s words mocked her.

  Kind of like Cara was doing from the bar. The woman’s eyebrows were going a zillion miles a minute. God only knew what they’d do if Cara could actually hear this conversation.

  Fine. He wanted to be all sexy with the lap dance dare? Two could play at that game.

  She picked up an onion ring and broke it in half. Then she slid one end between her teeth. “I’m in.” And she worked that onion ring into her mouth with her lips inch by tasty inch.

  Gage swallowed.

  Twice.

  She looked down at her potato and oh-so-nonchalantly swirled some cream cheese into it, then licked a forkful off one tiny lick at a time.

  Gage shifted in his seat.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” she asked him, giving her lips a quick lick.

  “Uh, yeah. I am.”

  That was definitely hunger flaring in his eyes, and she’d bet a lap dance it wasn’t for food.

  Good God, what had come over her? Lara almost choked on her next helping of potato. Who was this woman who’d invaded her body and jump-started her libido into hyper drive?

  This wasn’t her. Not at all. Inviting carnal thoughts in the middle of Donegan’s by virtue of a baked potato? That was as unlike her as taking a dare for a lap dance.

  Yet she had.

  She swallowed the potato. She’d taken it because she didn’t want to look back on this years from now and regret not taking a super hot guy up on his invitation. It didn’t mean anything, wouldn’t amount to anything, but now, in the moment, it was fun.

  Yeah, and that’d probably been her last coherent thought at Jenny’s bachelorette party, too, and look at how that’d ended up.

  “You slowing down already?” He nudged her elbow.

  “Hell no.” She shoveled in another forkful of potato.

  “All the fixin’s, too.”

  “Well of course. There’s no other way to eat a baked potato.” She dipped her tines in the butter then licked them off. One at a time.

  Gage reached for his beer and took a chug or two.

  Lara cut a piece of steak and lovingly wrapped her lips around it. Oh, and oops—she just had to catch that tiny little drop of juice that dribbled out of the corner of her mouth with her tongue.

  Gage reached for his b
eer again.

  She nodded at the glass. “I think you ought to eat something.”

  His beer froze halfway to his mouth. So did her fork. She hadn’t meant… She didn’t want him to think…

  She shoveled a heaping forkful of potato in. Then another. And, hell, why not a third?

  She downed half of her soda on top of it.

  Seriously, when was the floor going to crack open and swallow her up?

  ***

  Gage swore his heart had stopped.

  Lara was flirting with him. Hell, she was doing a lot more than flirting—eat something?

  No. Hell no. She didn’t mean what he wanted her to mean. She couldn’t. The woman couldn’t keep a blush off her face when he merely looked at her. Doing that…

  He drank another mouthful of beer, took his time swallowing it, then set his glass down. Then he carefully picked up his knife and fork, sliced another piece of steak, and put it in his mouth, concentrating on how good it tasted.

  She’d taste so much better.

  He shoved an onion ring in.

  “So, uh, how long did it take you to make all those cupcakes?” He really didn’t care but he needed something to get his mind off the image of her in his shirt and that skimpy little pink thong she’d worn in his bed the first night they’d met.

  The image had been seared into his brain with a branding iron.

  “Making them doesn’t take all that long. We have two commercial ovens. It’s the decorating that does. I worked on the sports team ones for three days straight.”

  “They were a big hit.”

  “So was Greeley’s.”

  They laughed, remembering the boys.

  “So what’s your other job?”

  Gage cut another piece of steak. “I’m a general contractor by trade. Remodeling, carpentry, that sort of thing. Times are a little tough in that arena right now, so BeefCake, well, every little bit helps.”

  “It can’t help that you’ve taken on the burden of paying for your nephew’s medical bills.”

  “Connor’s not a burden. Ever.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  He blew out a breath. “Sorry. I’m on edge when it comes to him. My sister is a single mom—his father’s a jerk—and I’m all she has.”

  “It’s just the two of you?”

  “No, we have another sister. She’s a college freshman, thankfully on a scholarship. She was going for teaching, but this thing with Connor… She’s changing her major to medicine.” He was so darn proud of Jayna. When their parents had been killed in the accident three years ago, she’d channeled her grief into becoming the best student she could be and applied for every college and scholarship she could find. After seeing what Missy hadn’t done with her life, she’d decided she wasn’t going to follow in her big sister’s footsteps.

  “So what about you? Just you and Cara? And what’s with the rhyming names? Are you twins?” They could be; they looked enough alike and were about the same age. But where Lara’s curvy petite-ness clocked him six ways to Sunday, Cara’s blatant sexuality didn’t.

  “No, we’re cousins. Born three weeks apart. Our moms thought it’d be fun to do that with our names. They were best friends growing up who married brothers. One big happy family who like to snow-bird it in Florida on the golf course. They’ll be migrating north in the next few weeks.”

  “No siblings?”

  She shook her head and scooped some coleslaw between her lips. “That’s why we’re so close. Not only were we raised like sisters, but we’re each the only one either of us will ever have.”

  A sliver of carrot lingered on her lip.

  Gage wanted to suck it off.

  “You slowing down?” He didn’t care which one of them won the bet; it was a win-win any way he looked at it. And actually, he could have won it by now; this amount of food was nothing to him. But he was enjoying the conversation and how she was so determined to win, and hey, losing wouldn’t be any skin off his back… side.

  “Slowing down? Me?” She scooped more potato in—damn, the butter slicked her bottom lip. “No way. I’m going to win.”

  Good. He’d love to resurrect his old moves just for her.

  “What happens if we have a tie?” She polished off the last of her slaw.

  “We give each other a lap dance.”

  She dropped her fork. “What is it with you and lap dances?”

  “You don’t like them?”

  “I don’t know; I’ve never had one.”

  It was his turn to drop his fork. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. It’s not exactly something I’ve put on my bucket list.”

  “No ex has ever done that for you?”

  There was that hot-as-hell blush again. “Hardly. My ex-husband wouldn’t have been caught dead doing that. Yet he says I’m the one who’s vanilla.”

  Ex-husband? Shit. And vanilla? “That hot pink thong you had on at the bachelorette party wasn’t vanilla.”

  She turned the same shade as that thong. God, she made it so easy.

  “I didn’t wear thongs with him. It was my post divorce liberation statement. Seemed the thing to wear to a bachelorette party.”

  “How long’s it been since the divorce?”

  “Not long enough.”

  Shit again. He didn’t want to be Rebound Guy. Not with her.

  “Two years.”

  “How long were you married?” He pegged her at twenty-nine—he pegged all late twenty/early thirty something women at twenty-nine. Made him a hero most of the time. So that’d put her divorce at twenty-seven, a year for the marriage to go bad…

  “Three years. I was young and stupid. He was older and shallow. I never saw it until he was up for partner in his law firm and decided a partner should have a willowy blonde mistress to complete the stereotype.”

  “I’m sorry.” That her ex-husband was an ass, not that she was divorced.

  “I’m not. I’m over Jeff. I’m focusing on making the bakery a success.”

  Probably to rub it in the ex’s face, but Gage got that. He’d like to rub his fist in the guy’s face, though he should probably thank him for putting her back out there so Gage could find her.

  She finished the baked potato before he’d even made a dent in his. He shoveled two more small bites into his mouth, taking his time. Every woman was entitled to at least one good lap dance in her life.

  He was planning on at least two for her.

  “Hey, guys.” Cara walked back to the table. “Nick’s here, and well, we’ve got some stuff to clear up, so I’m gonna head out. Is there any chance you could take Lara home, Gage? I don’t want to have to rely on Nick after our, um, discussion.”

  “Car—”

  “Absolutely. Not a problem.” He lowered his voice so only she would hear. “Perfect time for the bet pay-off.”

  “That’s okay with you, right, Lara?” Cara asked.

  He had to give her credit for caring about her cousin, but no way was he letting Lara go tonight.

  Lara looked at him, finally some heat in her eyes instead of embarrassment. “You’re sure?”

  “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.”

  She picked up her last onion ring. He prayed she didn’t do that shimmy-it-between-her-lips thing again. He’d barely been able to stay upright when she’d done it the first time.

  “Yes, it’s fine, Cara.”

  “Great.” Cara waved—with a smirk.” Have fun you two.”

  Gage wanted to smirk back. Fun was exactly what he was planning to have.

  Chapter 12

  “So I guess I owe you.” Gage opened the passenger door and held out a hand to help her into the cab. He was glad he hadn’t splurged on running boards. He was tall enough that he didn’t need them, and though Lara could use them, he’d prefer to just wrap his hands around her waist and hoist her inside.

  But when she hopped up on her own and her breasts jiggled every bit as impressively as her cousin’s had back in t
he pub, he decided he’d rather watch her get in by herself.

  “No, really, Gage, you don’t owe me. It was just fun making the bet.”

  He didn’t let go of her hand once she was in the cab. “Paying it off will be a lot more fun. Trust me.”

  Her eyes widened again and she slicked her tongue over her bottom lip.

  God, he wanted to do that.

  One little tug on her fingers had her leaning toward him, and hell, Gage couldn’t help himself.

  Just a nibble…

  Her lips were as soft as he’d fantasized, and she tasted of butter and steak and soda. Even the onion rings tasted good in her mouth. And the tight little breath she took… It had his blood steaming through his veins.

  Then she touched her tongue to his and it blew the roof off his composure.

  Gage snaked his arms around her waist and dragged her across the seat as he positioned himself between her thighs, and the kiss went carnal. He swept his tongue into her mouth and plastered her breasts against his chest and if he could have crawled inside her right there without getting arrested for public indecency he would have.

  The only indecent thing about this kiss was that it had to end. Making out in a parking lot was so fifteen years ago and Lara deserved better. A lot better.

  He pulled back—not too far because he was still not letting her go—and rested his forehead against hers, their heavy breaths matching each other’s rhythm.

  “I’m not going to apologize for that.” He couldn’t because he wasn’t sorry.

  “Good.”

  And she managed to surprise him.

  He pulled back, this time his eyes were the wide ones. “Really? I thought you’d turn pink again and start stammering.”

  “I don’t stammer.”

  “Then I haven’t done a good enough job of rendering you speechless.”

  She tugged his hair. “You certainly have a high opinion of yourself, don’t you?”

  She was teasing, but still… She could take him down a few pegs if he let her. “I’d say a good opinion, not high. I know that I affect you; that’s not bragging. I can see it in your widened pupils and the flush on your skin, and the way you’re breathing.”

  She followed his gaze as he looked at her chest. Her breasts were damn impressive. Just the right size for his hands—if he could ever get them on them—and they were moving very impressively, causing a correspondingly impressive (at least he liked to think so) bulge in his khakis.