by K. M. Scott
HARD AS STONE
K.M. SCOTT
Hard As Stone is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
2019 Copper Key Media, LLC
Copyright © 2019 Copper Key Media, LLC
Google Play Edition
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
Published in the United States
ISBN-13: 978-1-941594-98-8
Cover Design: Patricia Maia at Maya’s Teasers & Designs
Adult Content: Contains graphic sexual content
Hard As Stone
Trouble. Playboy. Heartbreakingly gorgeous. Ethan Stone, the only son and spitting image of billionaire Tristan Stone, has a long line of women who would kill for a night with him, and rumor has it he’s more than happy to oblige.
But Ethan has a problem. His family wants him to settle down. Why, he can’t understand. But he needs to figure out a way to convince them he’s given up his wild ways while at the same time living his life the way he wants to.
He has a plan, though, and Summer Carmichael, the quintessential girl-next-door, is perfect to help him. But Ethan better watch out or he might just find himself falling for exactly the kind of woman his family wishes he’d bring home.
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Click on the covers below to learn more about the series:
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Book
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Excerpt from Set In Stone
About the Author
Books by K.M. Scott
Books by Gabrielle Bisset
Chapter One
Ethan
“Call me,” the gorgeous blonde purred, smiling as she leaned over my chest to plant a soft kiss on my lips.
“Of course.”
She rewarded me with a sexy wink before she turned on her heel and strutted out of my hotel room. My gaze drifted down her back, and I watched her beautiful ass sway seductively with each step, making my body come alive after far too little sleep.
Running my hand over my abs, I slid my palm over my hard cock and moaned. “Mmmm…if there was any justice in this world, I wouldn’t have to get out of this bed and work.”
I thought about the woman I’d spent the night with and a tiny lick of guilt nipped at me that I couldn’t remember her name. Even if I wanted to call her, which I probably never would, what was I going to say? “Hey, gorgeous blonde with the great ass, what’s up?”
Not exactly the way to get a woman in your bed. I mean, I’m good, but even I’m not good enough to tell a woman I can’t remember her first name and have her back underneath me.
All the better anyway. Some things were meant to be momentary. I wasn’t ready to settle down with any one woman yet, so why pretend?
I folded my arms behind my head and looked out at the world beyond my hotel room. I had to give my father credit. The man knew how to pick the best locations for his hotels. I’d never been in a single one of them that didn’t have a view to die for. Today’s offered the beach and the beautiful ocean water I planned to enjoy after a few hours of work.
Tristan Stone’s Richmont Hotel on the southeast coast of Australia. Beautifully overlooking the crystal-blue waters of the Pacific.
I chuckled, imagining the marketing team Stone Worldwide paid to come up with that. The ads never mentioned my father’s name, though. I added that part in because, in the end, that’s exactly who the entire Richmont Hotel line belonged to.
Tristan Stone.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I pushed out any thoughts of my family from my brain. Lying in bed with a hard-on after a night of great sex was not the time to be thinking of them.
And then from the other room I heard the sound of the video phone alerting me that at any moment someone planned to ruin this perfect morning for me. Damnit. I forgot to turn on the away message before I fell asleep.
“Ethan? Are you there? I need to speak to you.”
I scrubbed the last remnants of sleep from my face and rolled out of bed. Quickly, I slipped into a pair of shorts before I headed into the other room of the suite.
“Ethan? I know you’re there. You didn’t put on the away message, which I know you always do when you aren’t around.”
My sister’s impatient voice echoed throughout my hotel suite. This was no way to begin the day.
As I turned the corner into the living room, I saw her. Tressa. With her dark hair up in a bun like she wore it so often, she reminded me of some librarian who spent her days in a stuffy back room poring over old books.
If only I’d put the damn message on before whatever her name was and I fell asleep.
“What do you want, Tressa?” I asked as I flipped on the screen so she could see me.
My sister opened her mouth and then closed it, grimacing at me. “Jesus, Ethan. Did you get another tattoo? I don’t think there’s a square inch of skin left untouched on your torso.”
Leave it to my bossier sister to be the one to call me. Too bad Diana wasn’t the one staring back at me. Her I loved talking to.
“I’m guessing you didn’t call just to comment on my tattoos. What do you want, Tress?”
She drew her dark eyebrows in and shook her head. “No, I don’t give a damn what you do to yourself, Ethan. What I do care about is our mother and father, and that’s why I called you.”
Tressa always made it sound like she was the only one of the three of us children who gave a damn about our parents. As if, because I didn’t live a stone’s throw away from them, I’d somehow given up having any feelings at all about Tristan and Nina Stone.
“Since you’re still being a royal—”
She leaned in and growled at me. “Don’t you dare finish that statement, dear brother of mine, or I’ll just have to tell Mom and Dad what I heard.”
My mind immediately raced with the possibilities of what she could have found out about what I’d been up to. Lots of women. Nothing wrong with that, though. I was a healthy, red-blooded American male. A little too much partying. At least too much for my parents’ tastes. Nothing wrong with a man having a good time while he could, right? That fight in that club a week ago. That wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t like I got arrested or anything. God only knew what she could be referring to.
Best to play it cool. Saying much of anything would likely give away my guilt.
“Uh-huh. So about Mom and Dad?”
Tressa grinned like a cat who’d just swallowed a canary. Obviously pleased with herself about something, she wiggled her eyebrows and asked, “So, how was your shoot last week?”
I plastered a smile on my face as once again my mind raced to piece together just what the hell she meant. Shoot last week? Nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I’d done my job, got some nice shots, and had a great time that night.
Same as always. So what the hell was Tressa getting at?
“Don’t you have a job or something? I mean, you’re twenty-five years old. Shouldn’t you be at work now?”
My sister’s face twisted into an expression of disgust. “It’s six o’clock at night here in New York. You do understand that it isn’t the same time around the world, don’t you?”
I’d had enough of her for one morning. Reaching toward the screen to turn her off, I said, “Okay, bye. Nice chatting. Let’s do this again in, say, another decade or so.”
Before I could get rid of my sister from my hotel room, she said in her trademark snide way, “Imagine me hearing the awful news at the Morrison Gallery opening that our mother was dead and her dear son was in mourning over losing her so young.”
Cringing, I stopped just before I turned her off. Damn.
“What do you want, Tressa? What’s it going to take to make sure you don’t say a word about this?”
A smile slowly spread across her lips. “I can’t believe it. You actually used that line to get some bimbo into bed. Is nothing sacred to you, Ethan? That’s our mother you’re killing off to get a piece of ass.”
“It wasn’t like that. It was a misunderstanding, actually.”
As I sat down in the chair in front of the screen, she laughed at my feeble attempt to lie my way out of this. If only Diana had been the sister to attend that gallery opening.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t, and the sister who had stood staring at me with that look of judgment she seemed to always wear when it came to me.
“Let me see if I can figure out how it went down. You were talking to the flavor of the day and somehow the topic of your mother came up, and oops, you mistakenly said she died. Or maybe it was something more like bimbo du jour wasn’t completely falling for your charms and you figured you needed a little something extra to convince her to jump into bed with you. Was that it, Ethan? What’s killing off one of your parents if it means you get laid, right?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose to forestall a headache that was beginning to form behind my eyes. “I said it was a misunderstanding. The person I was speaking to was talking about losing her mother, and I was consoling her when I said I’d be lost without my mother. That was it. She must have misunderstood.”
Tressa laughed at my explanation. “And then you two just happened to spend the night together consoling each other.”
The truth was far less appealing than my excuse. The model I’d shot that day had told me over a few too many drinks that her mother had died recently, and I’d sort of implied that I understood how that felt. Well, I’d done more than implied.
But not to get her into bed. Christ, I was a man-whore, but I didn’t need to kill off my own mother to get a woman.
Closing my eyes, I asked, “What do you want to keep your mouth shut about this, Tressa? Tell me so I can get back to my life.”
Just then I heard another voice and knew things had just gotten so much worse. “Why is it every time I see you, Ethan, you aren’t wearing a shirt? Doesn’t your job require you to wear clothes?”
I looked up at the screen and saw my mother staring back at me. Her blue eyes seemed to sparkle just like they had when I was a little boy. A hint of a smile told me maybe she wasn’t furious with me.
“It’s not even nine in the morning, Mom. Remember, I’m not in the country at the moment.”
She nodded and gave me a warm smile. “Oh, that’s right. How is the shoot going, honey?”
Smiling, I tried to stifle a chuckle. I’d had a great time, and very little of it had to do with taking pictures.
“Great, Mom.”
She began to talk about the next time I’d be back in New York and abruptly stopped. “Did you get yet another tattoo?”
I looked down at my arms and torso and smiled. Lifting my left arm, I pointed to the sleeve I’d just had completed in the past month. “Yeah. What do you think?”
She didn’t answer and instead simply smiled for a moment. “I remember when you were a baby. You had the softest skin. I used to blow raspberries on your belly and arms, and you’d giggle so cute.”
Her reminiscing about my time as a baby made me roll my eyes. Twenty-five years old and she’d never accepted that I was a grown man. She seemed fine with my sisters, but with me, I was still her baby. Even though we were all the same age.
“Well, I better go, Mom.”
Her expression turned dark, and she shook her head. “Not until we have a conversation about how disturbing it is for me to hear of my untimely demise, Ethan Stone. Imagine my surprise when I heard at the art museum opening last week that my son is telling people I’ve passed on. Perhaps you can explain what that’s about?”
I sat silently, so she said, “You know, your father would be furious if he heard about this. He still thinks you should go back to school and finish getting your business degree so you can take over Stone Worldwide. I’ve made excuses for you because I like to think you’re taking after me with your photography, but I’m not a fool, Ethan.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sure the person simply misunderstood what I meant. I promise it won’t happen again.”
She smiled and shook her head. “Ethan, your father never resorted to these kinds of antics and never had to worry about attracting women. You’ve been blessed with his looks, so you don’t have to act that way either to find a nice girl.”
The last thing I wanted was a nice girl. Nice girls were boring. Time for some charm to get myself out of this.
“From the way he talks, there wasn’t anyone before you.”
She twisted her face into a disapproving grimace and shook her head again. “Don’t try that flattery on me. I know you better.”
So much for charm. “Things were different back then, Mom. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Things like that don’t change, Ethan. I’ll keep this latest issue between us, but if I get the sense that you aren’t taking your job seriously, I will tell him.”
“What about Tressa? She probably called him at work to tell him.”
“She won’t say a thing. Now be a good son and tell me we’ll see you back home here soon.”
“I will be, Mom.”
She leaned in and frowned. “And tell me you’ll find a nice girl and settle down.”
I didn’t want to lie to her face, so I smiled and said, “Love you. Tell Dad and Diana I said hi and I’ll see them soon.”
“I love you, honey. See you soon.”
My mother walked away and Tressa’s head popped up onto the screen. “I’ll just add this to the list of things I can blackmail you with. Don’t worry. I won’t tell Dad. Unlike you, Ethan, I love our father.”
Once more, I rolled my eyes. “Did I ever happen to mention that you’re my least favorite sister?”
“It’s less favorite, and yes, you’ve mentioned it once or twice. Now be nice and stop killing off our mother or you should expect the long arm of Tristan Stone to reach across the ocean and pluck you right off whatever beach you’re spending your days lounging around on.”
The screen went dark and I cracked my neck and shoulders before sighing in disgust. This was why I spent my time on another continent.
I knew my mother well enough to understand that her request for me to find a nice girl to settle down with was more than a hopeful wish. It seemed that my time as a single man enjoying life now had an expiration date.
The answer to that was simple. I knew all too well what could happen if I didn’t appear to be conforming to the life I was expected to live as the only son of Tristan and Nina Stone.
I also knew that perception was reality, so maybe all I had to do was look like I was settling down. My parents would be happy, and that would mean I could continue living my life like I wanted.
Pleased with my brilliant plan, I walked out onto the balcony and looked down on the beach below filled with gorgeous women in barely there string bikinis. All I needed to do was find one who could pull off the nice thing and make my family believe I was living the life they wanted me to.
And if she was anything other than a nice girl in private, all the better.
Chapter Two
Summer
For the third time in five minutes, Julia Carmon, the editor of Belle magazine and my boss, explained how important the beach shoot that day was to the May swimsuit issue eight months from now. I didn’t need to have her lecture me yet again, but I knew better than to interrupt her. I’d done that once and had no intention of making that mistake a second time.
“I don’t want any screw-ups, Summer. You make sure the models are on time for this shoot or you’re going to have a lot of time on your hands. Do you understand me?”
She didn’t have to threaten me with unemployment. I understood her just fine.
“Yes. You don’t have to worry. The models and the photographer and everything will be perfect. I have this, Julia. You can relax and know that things are under control here.”
“You better,” she snapped. “If I have to jump on a plane and fly nearly a goddamned day to that damn beach, heads will roll, and yours will be the first one.”
“You don’t have to worry. I’ll call you when it’s all over, and I promise you’ll be thrilled, Julia.”
