by Missy Lyons
Stud Service 3
Strictly Business
As an heiress to a Texas oil baron, Susannah Gibson’s future is secure. A hefty trust fund has allowed her to live out her dreams and pursue every desire of her heart but one. All that money got in the way of finding love. She had a collection of fortune hunters that could stretch the length of Texas, but she wouldn’t settle for anything less than love.
Susannah needs a suitable stud fast. Time is running out for her parents' ultimatum—give them grandchildren or lose her trust fund.
Some guys have all the luck. On a business trip to the Caribbean, Colt Vance is propositioned by a beautiful woman, every guys’ dream date. Red. Hot. Sex. No strings attached. The problem? The more he knows about her, the more intrigued and less willing he is to keep things strictly business and let her go at the end of their bargain.
Genre: Contemporary, Western/Cowboys
Length: 47,785 words
STRICTLY BUSINESS
Stud Service 3
Missy Lyons
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
STRICTLY BUSINESS
Copyright © 2012 by Missy Lyons
E-book ISBN: 978-1-61926-824-1
First E-book Publication: June 2012
Cover design by Missy Lyons
All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
Thank you so much for buying my book, Strictly Business. It is the third book in a series, which came into its existence after four writer friends got together for lunch one day and brainstormed this idea of four sisters who had to find a stud.
Writing isn’t easy. There are deadlines, and for the most part it is a very solitary and lonely existence.
Most days it is just me and my computer. I love my friends, and treasure their love and support and our friendship. Thank you Cherie, Sandy, and Tonya for allowing me to be part of this great series, and to everyone else I am sorry it took me so long to finish my Gibson sister story, but I hope you enjoy it.
STRICTLY BUSINESS
Stud Service 3
MISSY LYONS
Copyright © 2012
Prologue
“Welcome home, honey!”
Dropping by without calling first was a risk, and Susannah felt lucky her parents were both home at the same time. Since the kids all moved out, they travelled a lot, spending six months out of the year on a cruise ship.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.” Susannah stepped into the foyer of her parents’ home, taking off her rain-drenched coat and hung it on the nearby coatrack. She kissed her mom and dad on the cheek in turn, at the same time giving each one a quick hug. She could barely contain her enthusiasm and she was glad she could finally share her secret with her family. “I am so excited! I had to drop in because I have good news and I couldn’t wait to share with both of you.”
“Susannah, I am so happy you did. So what’s the big news?” Maria’s easy smile made Susannah nervous.
Susannah entered the house but waited to speak. She didn’t expect her mother to take her news well. Family was important to her mother, and Maria clung to her Mexican heritage, valuing every moment she could spend with her children. She also made it no secret that she expected every one of her daughters to become mothers. Soon.
“Are you finally going to get married and give us some grandchildren to fill our house again?” A smile tugged at her mother’s lips, but her voice was deadly serious.
Susannah tried to not let her mother’s constant prodding get to her, but she felt the weight of a stone drop to her stomach.
“Now, now.” William patted his wife on the shoulder, and stepped close to her side. “Let Susan tell us what’s so important that she had to drive here in the middle of a rainstorm.”
“Sí, go on and tell us, baby.” Her mom tried her best to be patient, fisting her hands at her sides.
Thunder rumbled from outside the home, and the gentle pitter-patter of rain suddenly became more intense as if the storm had waited just for Susannah to arrive before really beginning. It wasn’t unusual in the month of May to get some pretty heavy thunderstorms, including ones wild enough to spout off tornados, but no one could stop living their life because of the weather. Dangerous weather might slow a Texan down, but it would never stop her father or Susannah.
“I’m not going to let some water stop me from living my life.” She shook her dark hair from side to side, spraying droplets on the tile floor. “I had planned on trying to come see you two.”
“That’s not a little water, baby, you’re drenched!” Her dad helped her take off her jacket and hung it on the cherry-wood coatrack. “It’s raining cats and dogs out there.”
“Which is why I’m even happier to be in here.” Susannah laughed.
“Come on in and sit a spell. Whatever news you have can wait a minute.” Dad was always so much more easygoing than Mom had ever been, just happy to let things be. While she did encourage Susannah and her sisters in other things, she didn’t like
that their career choices got in the way of them getting married, settling down, and giving her grandchildren. As if they couldn’t ever be truly happy or have a family without getting married and getting pregnant. The careers and success they experienced in other areas of their life just got in the way.
“Well, it is kind of important.” Butterflies took flight in Susannah’s stomach. She didn’t expect them to understand, but her life was changing dramatically and very soon.
“Life-changing important or forgot to get the coffee at the store important?” William asked.
“The life-changing kind of important.” Susannah swallowed hard. Under her parents’ scrutiny, she felt like she was the prime suspect at a lineup, but she needed to get this out. She needed to pursue her dreams.
“Well, then, tell us already!” Maria’s lips pinched together tightly as she tried to repress her smile. Her thinly plucked eyebrows waggled suggestively. “You aren’t…are you?”
Susannah could feel the heat of her mother’s scrutiny on her belly. “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not pregnant, Mom.”
“I don’t want you to get pregnant without a father.” Maria’s thin, delicate eyebrows pulled together in a frown. She was tiny, her size-three body was barely over five feet tall, but every gesture was filled with excess drama, and Susannah was sensitive to her moods. Growing up was like a soap opera in the Gibson house. Her mother had tried to set up her four daughters with every eligible bachelor in the Yellow Rose Valley. “Don’t tell me that was the big secret you’ve been keeping from us—that you aren’t pregnant?”
“No, Mom.” Susannah rolled her eyes. She was twenty-six years old, but her mother never stopped mothering. She’d always be her little girl, no matter how independently she lived her life, and she understood her mother just wanted to see her happy. “I quit my job as a research assistant at the pharmaceutical company in Houston.”
“Oh, good!” Her mother’s brilliant white smile lit up the room. Maria wanted nothing better than for Susannah to quit her job. Her mother had been hounding Susannah to quit since the day she started working at the research facility. Maria would rather see her daughters settle down and have babies than to pursue careers. Susannah’s suspicions were confirmed when Maria spoke. “Now you can finally get down to business and begin dating again! Stop all that nonsense with the lab rats and monkeys and get yourself a man.”
Ugh. Here we go again. Her mother had a one-track mind that wouldn’t give up.
It seemed pointless to argue, but she needed her mother to back up and give her some space. Nagging was not the way to get grandchildren.
“You have to trust that I’ll find the right man when it’s time. You can’t rush falling in love. It just happens.” Susannah shook her head. Living out her dream just didn’t include a man right now. She had gone to school to become a marine biologist and somehow ended up in a research lab testing new drugs on lab rats. She did not go to school for eight years so that she could be whacking rodents and dissecting them to examine what kind of affect a new drug had on their brain. She needed to be out in the field, and that meant being near the ocean. Not landlocked, living out of a laboratory and off vending machines.
“So what do you plan on doing with all this free time on your hands, now that you don’t have a job?”
“I am going to the Caribbean to study the declining population of predatory fish on the coral reefs.” She felt a sense of smug satisfaction telling them that little tidbit of information. She always dreamed of making a research trip to the Caribbean reef, and her dreams were going to be finally realized.
“What?” Her mother’s alarmed face did not bode well.
“English, dear. Why are you going to the Caribbean again?” her father interrupted.
“The scientific community thinks the shark population is—”
“Why me?” Hand to her forehead, Maria sang out a few prayerlike curse words in Spanish. It was times like these that made Susannah happy she did not take Spanish in school. She knew most of those swear words, but there were a few new ones thrown in there, all of them bad. “How long do you plan to be gone?”
“It will take at least six months, maybe longer.” At least her father was taking this well, but it wasn’t him she had been worried about. He was always levelheaded and logical in his decision making.
“Six months seems like a long time to play with fish.” One shaggy eyebrow shot up curiously as if he knew she was holding something back.
“It’s not a project I can do overnight. I have plans to prove that the large predatory fish, like the Caribbean reef shark and the barracuda, are dying off near the larger cities because they are competing for their food source with the people. If I can do that, then I can get funding to help protect—”
“Susannah Alexandra Gibson!”
The words paralyzed Susannah. Uh-oh. Mom only used her full name when she was really angry. “Tell me you did not just say that you are going to a foreign country to swim with sharks?”
“If I don’t, then I’d be lying.” Her mother was always like this. Why couldn’t her mom just understand and feel happy for Susannah instead of criticizing every move she made? This kind of attitude made Susannah feel like she had to defend her decisions and her choices to gain her parents’ support. “The Caribbean reef shark is endangered just like the coral.”
“Madre de Dios!” A litany of Spanish words left her mother’s lips so fast Susannah’s head spun. She could only understand a few key words. Although she had heard them before, she never bothered to ask what they meant. She knew instinctively that she wouldn’t like the answer.
She blinked, waiting patiently for her mother to calm down, but she never did.
Little red-faced Maria turned to her husband, her hands landing on his chest and pushing him at least a foot away from her. “I blame you for this, William!”
“Me? What did I do?” Her father was as surprised as Susannah was.
“Always encouraging the girls to follow their heart. Go to school you say! Go to college! Get yourself a job. Where does that leave me?” Her mother’s eyes were filled with unshed tears.
“You’re not making any sense, dear.” He was too stunned by her sudden verbal assault to form a really good defense.
“I make perfect sense, if you’d just listen.” She made some wild hand gestures in the air toward Susannah. “All four of my daughters are so driven by their careers that they forgot to have families of their own. I have no grandchildren, and if they wait much longer, they will not be able to have babies. Angelique is two years younger than me, and she has twenty-one grandchildren already. I am going to grow old with no one to care for me.” She fell to the fainting couch in the foyer with a dramatic sweep of her arm over her head. An actress on Dallas couldn’t have done a better job of overdoing the drama.
“That’s silly, Mom.” The oil money could care for their every whim. They could hire caretakers for their old age off the interest without ever touching their nest egg. “You can pay for the best care when you get old. You won’t have to worry about anything.”
“Do you see how she talks back to me?” her mother asked her father before berating her daughter. “Where is the respect for your mother?”
“Maybe you should go upstairs and clean yourself up while I talk to your mother.” William nodded toward stairwell in the foyer, signaling Susannah should go there now.
No problem. She would rather not be in the middle of this at the moment. She came to say good-bye and tell them about her plans, not to start World War III. She hurried up the winding steps, past her parents’ bedroom, and to her old bedroom, which had been turned into a guest room.
She tried not to listen into their final words, but she couldn’t help but overhear.
“I want you to be the man you promised to be. This should not be so hard to get the girls to see what is important in their life. We need all four daughters here so you can talk some sense into them. In my country we would have arr
anged for them to be married. Then there would be none of this silliness. None of this—agh.”
“I can’t force the girls to marry, but I can promise you that I’ll take care of it, dear.”
Those fateful words sent a chill up her spine. She hadn’t felt so helpless since childhood when she was kidnapped and isolated from her family. Since then they had been overprotective, but her parents never forced her to do anything she didn’t want. She both loved and respected her parents, but they couldn’t tell her to get married.
It’s not like this was the Dark Ages anymore.
Chapter One
Visiting her parents had not gone as smoothly as she hoped. They called a powwow, requesting every one of her sisters come home for the weekend.
All she wanted to do was say her good-byes and get out of town, but now she had to delay her plans until after this weekend. Not that she would mind a visit with her sisters. It had been a long time since they all got together, and she was the only one who remained anywhere near to their hometown. They all moved out of state to go away to school and stayed there. Serena was in Georgia working as a physical therapist, and Savannah was in her last year of training to becoming a doctor in middle Tennessee, while her other sister Sabrina was up to her elbows in taxes about this time of year.
Now she would see them because of her faux pas, and none of her sisters would be happy to find out she brought this on all of them. Although it wasn’t her fault entirely. Not one of her sisters had a man on their target, and her mom wasn’t going to be happy until every one of them was barefoot and pregnant with a ring on their finger and a man in their bed.
