Beefcake & Retakes

  Beefcake and Retakes, Copyright 2015 Judi Fennell

  Published by Mergenie Books

  Cover and interior design by www.formatting4U.com

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  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—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author at JudiFennell@JudiFennell.com. This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  For more information on the author and her works, please see www.JudiFennell.com

  This book is also available in print from online retailers.

  Table of Contents

  Beefcake & Retakes

  Excerpts:

  Beefcake & Cupcakes

  Beefcake & Mistakes

  Beauty and The Best

  About the Author

  Books by Judi Fennell

  Prologue

  “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss your bride.”

  Tanner stared at the woman before him. His wife.

  How the hell had he gotten himself roped into this?

  “Tanner?” Juliet said his name so softly with a little curl up on the end to make it a question.

  He didn’t know how to answer her.

  “Uh, you may kiss the bride.” The Justice of the Peace coughed as he said it.

  Yeah, yeah, Tanner knew the drill. He just didn’t know why he was standing here having to do it.

  But he leaned in anyway, intending to make it nice and quick.

  Juliet made it more than nice and definitely not quick.

  Damn her.

  She knew just how to kiss him. Knew just how to get the heat started in his groin. Knew how to wrap her sexy-as-hell body around his and send all the blood rushing south.

  Damn her.

  Tanner speared his hands into her hair as he thrust his tongue into her mouth. She wanted to make him hot and horny as hell? Fine. Then she better be ready to deal with the consequences because, as his wife, she’d be dealing with a lot of consequences.

  No she wouldn’t.

  Tanner wrenched his mouth from hers, his breathing ragged, and he looked into those blue eyes he’d lost himself in before. Back when he’d believed in love and happily-ever-afters between them.

  God, he was such a schmuck.

  “May I be the first to offer my congratulations?” The damn Justice just wouldn’t get off the married-for-love kick. Of course, that’d been Tanner’s stipulation. Bad enough he had to do this; he didn’t want people knowing the real reason he was doing it.

  So long as Juliet did.

  He pulled his fingers from her hair and grabbed the marriage certificate from the clerk. There. Done. Next.

  Luckily, he also remembered to grab his wife’s hand before striding out of the courthouse office with a brief—very brief—wave to their respective families.

  He dropped her hand the minute they were outside.

  He had to, for his own well-being.

  Because every time he touched Juliet, his heart ended up getting ripped to shreds.

  Juliet had to run to keep up with Tanner. Not that that was anything new; she’d always been trying to keep up with him. From the first moment she’d laid eyes on him—okay, maybe not then given that she’d been two weeks old, but ever since she’d been old enough to notice him—she’d been running after him.

  It’d started with hide-n-seek, and had progressed to skateboarding and bike-riding and swimming. She’d had to keep up with him her entire childhood because he’d been her best friend. Their parents had been best friends, their ranches butted up against each other, and Tanner had been larger than life.

  ‘Course, that body was big enough as it was. Tanner had the build of a linebacker, the abs of a swimmer, and the face of a Greek god. He’d been beautiful to her since puberty and the feeling had only grown with age.

  They’d been the golden couple. Homecoming king and queen. Best-looking. Most likely to succeed. The yearbook staff had even added his last name after hers under her senior picture because of course they would get married.

  “Tanner, wait.”

  He didn’t even break his stride. “We’re on a schedule.”

  No, he was on a schedule. He was always moving these days, always busy. It was to avoid spending any alone-time with her, she knew that. He thought so little of her that they never had a chance to catch a breath together lately.

  Tonight would change that. This next week would change it. She’d used the only thing she could think of to get some alone-time with him and she wasn’t proud of it. But dammit, they needed to be alone. To have time to talk and sort out what had happened—the scene she’d set up for when her father would walk in…

  It’d gotten them to the courthouse and on the plane to Fiji where Daddy had shelled out a fortune for the honeymoon hut on the water. If she had to take her husband to the ends of the earth to get some time alone with him, then that’s what she’d do.

  “Tanner, please. I can’t run in these heels.”

  “So take them off. They don’t look like they were designed for walking anyway.”

  She choked back the angry retort. She didn’t want to start their honeymoon with a fight. There’d been too many harsh words between them already.

  She took a few extra seconds out of their “schedule” to remove the shoes, then ran after him, wishing she’d trained for that half marathon Tricia had tried talking her into.

  She made it to the limo a few seconds after he’d opened the door for her, barely enough time for the frown to form.

  “The plane’s not going to wait, Juliet.”

  Actually, it would. Her father’s money said it would, but she wasn’t going to argue with him.

  He pulled the door shut behind him then took out his phone the minute the driver pulled away from the curb.

  He was on the thing the whole damn way to the airport, through security, and right onto the tarmac. He even had it on when the flight attendant handed them the champagne.

  “Mr. Wentworth, we’ll be departing shortly,” she said when he waved for her to put the flute on the table between them.

  Tanner punched another couple of letters into his text or email or, hell, maybe he was just playing some stupid game so he wouldn’t have to talk to her, but then he turned off his phone.

  Finally. Juliet couldn’t hold back her smile. Their honeymoon could finally start and the healing could begin.

  But then Tanner stood up.

  “Tanner? What are you doing?”

  “Hang on, Juliet.” He stuck his phone in his pants pocket and headed toward the cockpit.

  Juliet stared after his broad back that tapered so incredibly nicely down to a narrow waist. Tanner’s looks and physique were just icing on the cake of the man she’d fallen in love with so long ago—

  The same man who was getting off the plane.

  Chapter One

  Seven years later

  The man ha
d a beautiful body.

  And Juliet Chambers-Wentworth remembered every single ridge, plane, and muscle. Especially how it’d been wrapped around her—how he’d been wrapped around her—the night she’d set him up to trap him into marrying her.

  “That’s him? Are you kidding me?” Her friend Sandy took a sip of her drink as they sat in the dimly lit dining room of Tanner’s gig, BeefCake, Inc. “No wonder you want him back.”

  Her husband had an amazing body and knew what to do with it, but, no, that wasn’t why she wanted him back. But she’d let him and everyone else think so. Because it was convenient. Because it worked.

  Because the truth was something too heartbreaking to think about.

  The dancers up on the stage hip-actioned their way into a straight line, all the black pants with the silk stripe down the side just itching to come off. Juliet had seen enough strip shows to know what was coming, and she’d seen enough of Tanner beneath his clothes to know what was coming, but still, when it did, when they ripped off those Velcro-ed pants, her heart fluttered like it had the first time his pants had come off.

  “Sweet mother of God.” Sandy fell back against her chair, tossed the straw from her drink onto the table, and guzzled the rest of it down. “Please tell me he knows what to do with that.”

  Yeah, Tanner knew. Juliet’s thighs tingled in remembrance. So did another part of her. And her breasts ached. There hadn’t been anyone since Tanner. Eighty-seven long months of no-interest-in-anyone-else-induced celibacy. Probably not a good idea showing up here like this. Not when she had to do what she had to do.

  The six oiled-up, muscled guys on stage, each one as delicious as the other, swiveled around, their hips and other, um, parts, ensuring that no one was looking at their faces.

  But Juliet was. She was watching Tanner’s every expression. Watched him look at the audience but not really see them. Granted, the stage lights probably had a lot to do with that, but when she looked at him in comparison to the rest of the dancers who were trying to interact with the audience, to make that connection and zero in on each woman to create the fantasy that they were dancing for her alone, Tanner didn’t have it.

  Until he saw her.

  She knew the minute he did. He missed a step. Tanner never missed steps, not in dancing, not in life, not in the romance department—until she had, and it’d been the biggest misstep of her life. She’d lost him.

  But now she needed him back.

  “Uh, did he see you?” Sandy leaned over and whispered in her ear. “He’s staring right at us.”

  Juliet swallowed. She wasn’t ready for this. She’d thought she was, but she wasn’t.

  Tanner’s eyes narrowed and he quickly got back into step with the other guys, but he didn’t stop staring at her, with his mouth a flat line—those gorgeous talented lips that could curve into the most beautiful smile right before they delivered the most cutting remarks of her life.

  His broad chest and even broader shoulders glinted in the stage lights. He’d waxed his chest. Not that she minded, but she had enjoyed curling her fingers in the just-enough amount of hair he normally had, all golden blond like the rest of him.

  The scar was new. She winced when she saw it. Looked like an appendectomy scar. And she hadn’t even been told.

  Well, what could she expect? She was his wife in name only. Though if that had been an emergency appendectomy, she could have been his widow and she’d never have known.

  She shivered. She couldn’t think about a life without Tanner in it. Even if he was a thousand miles away.

  He’d let his hair grow. Wouldn’t his father have something to say about that if he saw him… But then, his father had always had a lot to say about Tanner.

  Hers, too.

  Juliet shut off those thoughts. Her father was the main reason she was here and she didn’t want to think why.

  Another reason would be the person staring at her from across a dozen stage lights.

  The solo dances started. Tanner was in the background, hips rotating, abs clenching, a muscle in that square jaw of his keeping time with the music. He was distracted. She could always tell with Tanner. She knew every one of his moods, had for the whole twenty-nine years she’d known him. There’d never been any question in her mind who’d she’d end up with in life. The Chambers and the Wentworths. They went together like peanut butter and jelly, though her father would have a coronary if she used such a mundane comparison. But the Chambers and the Wentworths had been friends socially and partners in business for three generations. She and Tanner were the first two to join the families.

  Until she’d made the fateful decision that had landed them here.

  “So come on, Juliet. Spill. You can’t tell me that whatever you two fought about can’t be cleared up with a conversation. I mean, look at that, will you?”

  She was looking at it. At him. That was the problem. She should have remembered how she turned to mush around Tanner. The hell with their families’ wants and needs; what about hers? She’d been fantasizing about Tanner her entire teenage, college, and adult life, and when she’d finally gotten him to the altar—er, Justice of the Peace—it’d been a fantasy come true.

  For about an hour until he’d gotten off that plane.

  “Oh baby!”

  Sandy whooped beside her when Tanner hung his thumbs where a belt buckle should have been but wasn’t and did enough of a two-step to get every woman’s mouth watering. Then he rotated slowly, the skintight spandex shorts hiding n-o-t-h-i-n-g from anyone’s eyes. Jesus, she could tell his religion in those things.

  And then he shook his ass, and oh, man, did the crowd go wild. Sandy was slapping her on the shoulder so hard Juliet had to move her chair or she’d end up with a bruise.

  “Please tell me he has a brother. A cousin? Hell, I’ll take his pool boy.”

  Tanner didn’t have a pool boy. Not anymore. He didn’t have anything. Not since his father had gambled it all away—and hers had picked up the pieces.

  One more nail in the coffin of their marriage.

  Tanner swung his hips and shook his ass so hard he would’ve worried about throwing his back out if he didn’t want to lay one more sin at Juliet Chambers’ feet. What the hell was she doing here?

  Little Miss Juliet Chambers, spoiled beauty queen. He’d given her a second chance when she’d begged him, thinking she’d changed.

  He’d been wrong.

  Again.

  He slapped his ass then, knowing women found it sexy. He posed, flexing just enough to keep their interest—and their screams—then he rotated slowly, giving them all a good look at the abs he worked out two hours a day, and the pecs he could make dance like his grandfather had taught him. He’d always laughed, but the women? They screamed.

  He held another pose, making eye contact—or so they thought—through the smoky stage lights, winking a few times. At any woman but Juliet.

  She was watching him, though; he could feel it. He’d always felt her eyes on him. From the moment they’d decided to be each other’s first kiss, he’d always known when Juliet was looking at him.

  He’d looked at her just as much. The woman was gorgeous, and unfortunately, she knew what effect she’d had on him.

  Well no more. He could stare at her for the rest of the night and it wouldn’t erase the disillusionment he’d suffered at her hands.

  Juliet was a piece of work. He’d never seen it before, never realized how selfish and shallow she was until the moment he’d found out—

  Shit, he missed a move. Tanner pulled his head back into the routine and got in sync with music. He wasn’t about to let Juliet Chambers-Wentworth—and he cringed when he attached his name to hers—disrupt one more part of his life. Forty-five days and then she’d be gone for good.

  The final stanza of the song started and Tanner tilted the cowboy hat down over one eye, all part of the routine. It worked every time.

  Did it work on Juliet?

  Why the hell did he care?
>
  He turned around again, his ass front and center. That was truly his money-maker and normally he used it as such. Tonight, he was shaking it for all the wrong reasons.

  Let her eat her heart out. If she’d only kept her secret to herself, he’d never have known and Juliet could have had him tied around her little finger for life.

  He bent his knees and pelvic-thrusted as if he were pole dancing, playing with the waistband of the shorts. He had the banana sling on under them; the temptation to just rip them off and flaunt exactly what she was missing out on a really strong temptation.

  She’d destroyed what they could have had. First, with her lie, then with coming clean about it. All while he’d still been reeling from the worst shock of his young life.

  He could never forgive her for putting him through not one loss, not even two, but so many he’d lost count over the years.

  The catcalls kept coming, so Tanner kept working the imaginary pole, flashing his signature smoky-eyed gaze back over his shoulder. He knew the power of that look; knew the tips it would bring in, so when he turned around and slid forward on the stage on his knees, hat in hand, he wasn’t surprised to find it filling with bills.

  Eat your heart out, Juliet.

  Chapter Two

  “Hey, Tan, there’s a hot chick out here to see you.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Dude, she’s hot. As in smokin’.”

  “Still busy.”

  Adam shook his head, muttering as he walked away. Tanner shrugged. The guys ought to be used to it. He never picked up one of the guests—Gage and Bryan’s cardinal rule on the job. Once they were in street clothes in someone else’s club, however, anything could happen. And it often did. But not with him. Juliet had put her brand on him as securely as that wedding ring he’d pried off his finger not five minutes after she’d put it on him. But he was still married and the thing about Tanner: he actually lived by his word. No subplots, no subterfuges, no little side plans.