Strictly Business [Stud Service 3] (Siren Publishing Classic) (2 page)

“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 arranged 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.

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.

She paused, her fingers running over the thin lines of the bikini she was about to pack for her trip. There were certain things she wouldn’t need because the fish wouldn’t care what she looked like. She could go swimming in an old tee shirt and have just as much success, or naked for that matter.

Still, she might be able to enjoy lounging by the pool this weekend when her sisters came. It might even allow her to get a head start on her tan.

She closed the suitcase and zipped it shut. It took an enormous amount of energy to fight her parents on what they wanted, but she needed to stand up for herself. She had to have some sort of independence in her life. Susannah took a long breath and sat down on the closed suitcase. She wanted to be ready to leave as soon as she was done with this silly meeting, and no matter what her mom threatened to do to her to make her change her mind, she was
still
going to the Caribbean.

A long-haired, black-and-white kitty with whiskers as long as its front paws jumped on top of the closed luggage and meowed at her. She rubbed him under his chin, and he purred loudly. “No, you can’t come, Whiskers.”

He rubbed his chin on her hand forcing her to pet him.

“Who would take care of Jessica if I take you along?” Getting him onto the island for such a short trip would have been far too much trouble. The island chain had strict rules about allowing plants and animals onto it, because an uncontrolled foreign life-form could destroy their ecosystem. So Whiskers would have spent six months being kenneled at the airport just to see if he had a disease, and by that time she would probably be ready to leave and he would have to do it all over again stateside.

It was much better to get her neighbor, Jessica, to look out after him. He would get plenty of love and attention and all the kitty kibble he could eat.

But even knowing he would be well cared for, she knew she would miss him.

* * * *

The phone rang, and she instantly recognized the number of her sister Savannah. She hit talk, not wanting to miss the call. Vannah was so busy, it wasn’t often she could call without waking her up or interrupting her in the middle of a surgery.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Sis.”

“What’s up, Vannah?”

“You got the call from Mom and Dad, right?” Savannah paused for her response.

“Yeah. You’ll be there?” Susannah exhaled slowly. She didn’t want to say it was probably her fault they were all being called home.

“Of course. Do we have a choice in the matter?”

“No.” Susannah laughed deeply while her fingers traced lazy circles just below Whisker’s ears.

“So what’s your take on this?” Savannah was always one to get to the point and skip the small talk.

“You mean, what do I think the lecture is about this time?” Susannah did not want to talk about this now. If she could avoid it altogether she would, and she was only showing up this weekend because of the love and respect she felt for her parents.

“Yeah.”

“Same thing, different year I would imagine.” It was always the same thing. She could almost hear her mother’s voice grate in her ears, repeating the same thing over and over.
When do you girls plan on settling down and having babies?
She was getting tired of hearing that every single time she visited.

“I’m thinking that way, too. I just wish they would give up already.”

Mom? Give up? Never!

She would expect Napoleon to wave the white flag before Mom!

“Me, too.” She sighed.

“Any prospects on your end?”

“If you mean prospects by a husband and father to their grandchildren…” She thought for a moment to try and imagine a man in her life that could take up the role of father and husband, and none came to mind that weren’t already married or fatally flawed. When had things gotten so bad in her love life that there was not a single man she would consider for a long-term relationship? “Then I got nothing.”

“I know what you mean. Me either.”

“Have you heard from Sabrina or Serena?”

“I called them earlier today to make sure they were coming. I don’t want to be the only one getting chewed out because I don’t have a steady boyfriend.”

“They don’t have any prospects either, huh?”

“Nope.”

“Mom and Dad aren’t going to be happy about this.”

“Are they ever?”

Susannah’s deep laughter scared the cat away. He ran to the door then slowed to a walk, his tail wrapping around the doorjamb on his way out. “No. I know they want us to be happy, but dang it! This is ridiculous! We’ll find the right guy when the time comes.”

“And one that isn’t after the money.”

“That’s why it has to be someone who doesn’t know who our parents are. Don’t you have any cute doctor friends over there in Nashville?”

“A few, but nobody I’m interested in having children with. Besides, there are tons of cowboys here, and you know how much I
love
cowboys.” Sarcasm dripped from her voice, but Susannah didn’t have to hear the sarcasm to know it was a lie. When Savannah got her heart broken by a cowboy, she became a whole lot more cynical toward love and cowboys.

“Well, then, why the hell did you move to Nashville? The home of country music?” It was the last place she ever thought Savannah would end up. She could have done her last year of training anywhere, but she chose Nashville.

“Just because I like country doesn’t mean I necessarily want to hook up with a cowboy. I had enough of those at home. Being raised in Texas, you tend to be surrounded by them, you know?”

“I know.” Oh, boy, did she ever
know
. “Listen, Sis, I need to go. I’ve got an appointment this afternoon before I head for home this weekend.” She still had to drop the cat off at her friend Jessica’s house. Someone had to watch him and feed him while she was gone for the next six months.

“Yeah, me, too. I’m almost home myself, and I’m hoping for a quiet night, but I’m on call so you never know.”

“I guess I’ll see you on Saturday at the ranch.”

“Yep. Be careful, Susie, and I’ll see you in a few days.”

“Love you, Vannah.”

“Love you, too, Susie. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Click.
 

“Don’t tell me you traded in your cute car for this?” Savannah blinked in disbelief at the minivan parked curbside.

Serena just gaped, and Sabrina actually dropped her luggage on the sidewalk. Speechless.

“You don’t like the minivan look?” Susannah did a Vanna White gesture toward the rented, golden Honda Odyssey. There was no way her little, two-door sports car could have fit them and all their luggage in one trip.

“Ha!” Savannah set her carry-on in the back before closing the hatchback.

It wasn’t cute or sporty, but it was practical and it drove nicely. She could imagine driving one regularly one day. After she was married, of course, with the typical two-point-five kids and a dog, she could be happy being a soccer mom and give up her Bugatti Veyron.