Paying Their Piper with Passion and Love [Loving in Silver 6] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read online

  Loving in Silver 6

  Paying Their Piper with Passion and Love

  The daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the world, Piper Barrows is guarded accordingly. Her only freedom is when she travels to rodeos to protest the treatment of the animals being used. That’s where she meets Merck Rushton, a hot cowboy. Everything is uneventful until she is attacked at a rodeo by an unscrupulous stock contractor.

  Her father restricts her life even more. She can go nowhere alone. It’s a life in a gilded cage. Even having her quirky pets and a drop-dead gorgeous bodyguard in the form of Jace Hunter can’t lessen her heartache.

  When Piper can no longer bear being trapped without having a life, she escapes and heads for a place she had been very happy at on visits. When she gets to Silver she discovers the freedom she has always craved and two men to love.

  Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Western/Cowboys

  Length: 88,622 words

  PAYING THEIR PIPER WITH PASSION AND LOVE

  Loving in Silver 6

  Lynn Stark

  MENAGE AMOUR

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Amour

  PAYING THEIR PIPER WITH PASSION AND LOVE

  Copyright © 2013 by Lynn Stark

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62740-028-2

  First E-book Publication: June 2013

  Cover design by Christine Kirchoff

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 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

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Paying Their Piper with Passion and Love by Lynn Stark from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Lynn Stark’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Stark’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  My thanks to my husband for helping make all of this possible for me.

  PAYING THEIR PIPER WITH PASSION AND LOVE

  Loving in Silver 6

  LYNN STARK

  Copyright © 2013

  Chapter One

  “You could feed that damned bull sunshine and roses for the rest of his life, lady, and he’d still be the mean, crush-you-into-the-ground rank bull that he is today.”

  Merck Rushton glared at the woman he towered over by more than a foot. Hell, it was probably closer to two feet. She was all of about five feet tall with the face of an angel and a voice which sounded like silver bells on a warm summer breeze. Her silver-blonde hair was a mass of twisting curls, but her brows and eyelashes were considerably darker. She was stunning.

  His gaze ran over her from head to toe. She was petite with pert little breasts under her T-shirt and a sweet little ass. Under other circumstances he would have asked her what she was doing after the rodeo, but as it was he wanted her as far away from him as he could get her.

  “I don’t doubt that, being a bull, he’s aggressive, Mr. Rushton. What I am protesting, questioning, is the need to tighten straps around him, throw a rider on him, and then subject him to a blaring PA system, bright lights, a noisy crowd, and a jangling bell? Wouldn’t it be better to let him live in a pasture where he could just enjoy life?”

  Merck managed not to roll his eyes and sigh. Or laugh. Her naiveté was refreshing, but irritating as hell, too. It made it nearly impossible to explain to her, or those of her kind, what was really in store for these animals if they weren’t lucky enough to be given a career.

  “I’m sorry, lady, that’s just not how the lives go for these bulls. If they don’t have potential as a rodeo bull, then their future is questionable. Nobody’s going to feed an animal which doesn’t pay its way.”

  Gray eyes burned a hole through him. The sweet little pink lips tightened as she glared up at him. He idly wondered if her neck was getting stiff and if she would let him massage it. His cock twitched at the possibility of touching her.

  “How would you like it if I pulled a strap tight around your private parts and rode you?” she snapped, obviously running out of patience with him and her inability to convince him to change his “evil” ways.

  They both realized what she said at the same moment. The double entendre was glaringly obvious. The hot color rushed into her cheeks as he grinned like a lascivious wolf.

  “Would that be with or without the bell, Miss Barrows?”

  “Oh, fuck, that didn’t come out right! Excuse me one moment,” she told in a strained voice, her eyes looking everywhere but at him.

  As she spun around on her high-heeled boots, her shapely ass twitched in her fancy jeans. Merck watched her go, twice as interested in the pretty little pest as he had been five minutes before. If he could get her to stop preaching at him, he thought they could have a lot of fun together. It would be fun of the hot, sweaty, tangle-up-the-sheets kind, of course.

  It had been a while since he’d been with anyone and his balls were starting to suffer for it. Shaking his head, Merck grinned and turned back along the aisle between the pens holding the bulls. It was a real shame that Miss Barrows was a pain in the neck. With all that passion, as misguided as it was, he’d like to see what other passions she possessed.

  Chuckling at his own nonsense, he went looking for a friend wanting to sell a young animal which was showing
a lot of promise as a potential bucking bull. An hour later he had a new bull. The animal was eighteen hundred pounds of real bad attitude and he was currently without a name. He grinned as he looked at the white-and-red-spotted bull.

  “Sunshine ‘n’ Roses,” Merck said with a grin, talking more to himself than to those standing there admiring his newest acquisition.

  “What was that, boss?” Ross Bennett asked, sounding truly horrified. “Did you just call him Sunshine ‘n’ Roses?”

  Merck nodded, pleased with his choice. It was perfect. “Yep.”

  “Why don’t you just call him Daisy? Or Marshmallow?”

  “Because, Ross, I’m naming him in honor of our beautiful little pest, Miss Barrows. I tried to tell her that she could feed these bulls sunshine and roses and they’d still be mean.”

  Ross laughed heartily, slapping his friend and employer on the shoulder. “That’s a good one, boss! I saw the little lady running out of here like her ass was on fire.” Merck told him what had caused her swift departure, which made the man laugh so hard the tears poured down his weathered face. “Oh, man, wish I could have been there for that one. It’s too bad she’s so bent on saving these bulls from something that isn’t happening.”

  Sobering for a moment, Merck looked at his longtime friend and employee. “Well, that’s not quite true. You know there are a few bad apples out there. I’m just hoping she gets discouraged and doesn’t try to take one of them on. She could get hurt.”

  “Maybe you should warn her?”

  Merck shook his head. “I believe that would just send the passionate Miss Barrows right out there after them. No, it’s better we police our own. We’re better able to handle it. There’s no telling what could happen if she took on the wrong man or woman.”

  He sent up a prayer that Miss Piper Barrows would stop what she was doing. As irritating as she was, he didn’t want to see her get hurt. He thought about calling her father, and then thought better of it. He only knew the man by reputation, but he doubted he would welcome Merck butting into his family’s business.

  Three weeks after her last protest, when she had tried to convince the stock contractor Merck Rushton to stop supplying bulls for competitions, Piper came face to face with a man who didn’t have Rushton’s sense of ethics. Only now did she see it, recognize it, and wish she had taken his advice. She also wished she had brought some backup with her.

  There was a moment of disbelief as the cattle prod made contact with her body. Disbelief, agony, and a sense of falling down the proverbial rabbit hole engulfed Piper as she collapsed into the sawdust at the furious man’s feet.

  “That’ll teach you, you meddlin’ little bitch! You’re not gonna come around here and tell me how to do things.”

  Piper wouldn’t have to. The moment she was able, she was calling the police. And then when her father found out, if she couldn’t keep it from him, the man was really going to wish she hadn’t caught him in the act of using the prod on a bull. He had stung it over and over again, before the animal was supposed to be readied for the next rider. Oh, her father wouldn’t particularly care about that. But no one harmed something which was his, mainly her.

  The bull was amped up and furious. They were dangerous enough, but she guessed he would be ready to kill once he wasn’t confined to a pen. She didn’t envy the man who got tossed from his back.

  “Lady, I sure wish you’d listened to me,” the man told her in a vicious voice.

  As she stumbled weakly to her feet, strong hands grabbed her, lifting her high. A second later her life took a turn for the worse when she was tossed over into the pen with the bull the cowboy had been abusing.

  “I told you not to go in there!” he shouted, sounding truly horrified, but obviously not for her benefit.

  It was the last thing Piper heard. The last thing she saw was the beautiful red brindle bull with the stumpy horns coming at her as she pushed herself up off her stomach.

  “Do you have to stand so close to me?” Piper asked in weary tones. It had been three months since she’d been attacked by the man and the bull. Her father would no longer allow her to go anywhere alone. So she stood there with her sign out in front of the arena, protesting the use of bulls as entertainment.

  “Yes, ma’am, I do. It’s one of the orders from your father.”

  Piper knew that. She’d heard it a hundred times, both from the man behind her and the man claiming to be her father. He might be her father, but he treated her just as he would treat everyone he employed. Sighing, she turned back toward the street, hating her dismal thoughts.

  It was hard to keep her mind on what she was doing. The man standing behind her, her official bodyguard, was hot as hell. Probably about as hot as the damned cowboy she couldn’t forget. Neither man was for her, of course. One thought she was a total joke, the other saw her as a job.

  But thinking about them naked, in a bed, and making love to her, was about as perfect a fantasy as she could ever get her fevered brain to form. Even now she could feel her body warming to the idea. She could close her eyes and see it so very clearly.

  Piper jumped when a car horn blared in either agreement to what was on her sign or as a protest for her being out there to begin with. She straightened her sagging body and sign and scowled at nothing in particular. It didn’t do any good to have fantasies and dreams. Her father would squash them all.

  Not for the first time Piper wondered what it would be like to be ordinary, without the billionaire father, without the shadows following her around to pick up after her, to feed her, to be certain the bathroom tissue never was less than half on the roll.

  She wasn’t stupid, however. There hadn’t been a moment of her life when she didn’t have the best of everything. It was the only life she knew. She even had a top-notch education she wasn’t allowed to use. Nope, her father wanted her to do nothing. The only thing he allowed her was her little “missions” to try to make people aware of animal cruelty. It was all rather patronizing, but it was better than nothing. She would take it since it gave her a very small measure of life outside the walls of her parents’ estate.

  The man whom had attacked her had been dealt with. If he hadn’t thrown her in with the bull she could almost feel sorry that he had to face her father’s wrath. If she had met him before speaking with Mr. Merck Rushton, the stock contractor, she wouldn’t have believed a word Rushton had said to her. Sure, he seemed to have bulls which were treated right. They were in good weight with healthy coats, but not everyone played by the rules. She had learned that.

  Piper had watched as Merck’s animals had been moved back and forth between the pens and the arena and none had been abused. He had shown her the ropes the cowboys used as they left the arena, had helped her inspect everything she had wanted. She had found nothing to indicate the bulls were reacting to any stimulus other than wanting to rid their back of a man having the audacity to get on it. That and the rope winding beneath him, pulled tight in front of its hips. That couldn’t be comfortable, but the more she learned about the value of the bulls it was unlikely that the majority of the men and women providing these animals for rodeos would put them at risk. If she knew about anything, it was business.

  After packing up her sign and getting in the car her shadow called for, Piper stared out the window with unseeing eyes. She shouldn’t have one complaint about her life. How many people had every material thing they could possibly want? How many had a father who gave them more money for an allowance a month than most people made in a year? Tabloids had labeled her the “Pampered Princess.” They had followed her around for years, making her absolutely miserable. Unlike a few others she could think of, she didn’t want the attention. The worst time had been when she’d been in college, her very first taste of freedom. It had taken an entire year to convince her father to allow her to attend school on the opposite end of the country.

  When all she wanted to do was study, there was always someone hanging around with a camera. She could ne
ver understand it. She was a nobody in the scheme of things. It was her father who was Mr. High-tech, the man who created wondrous gadgets to fascinate and drain hard-earned money from people led to believe they needed the latest technology.

  Ironically, when Piper had begun her activist work, everyone seemed to lose interest in her. She wasn’t interesting enough when she actually needed the exposure.

  Sighing, she turned from the window to look at the man sitting beside her. He was the size of a football player. Tall, broad-shouldered, with muscles popping out all over the place, the man’s sheer size was intimidating. It was a fucking turn-on. Being held by him would make her feel protected. And he smelled damned good, too.

  Piper’s father had told her he was ex-military and that he had worked for private security contractors. Yeah, she could see that. He must be trustworthy, she thought, because her father would have had his past checked out all the way back to conception.

  “I would like to stop at Reggie’s for fries and a sandwich.”

  The other thing she didn’t like about having a shadow was that this one was in charge. They were always in charge, but this one was unyielding.

  The man shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Miss Barrows. Your father gave strict instructions that you were to be home by five. There are guests coming at six-thirty.”

  Piper didn’t even argue with him. What was the point? Even if she could overrule or overpower him, she still had the driver to contend with. He was another man completely loyal to her father. A weary sigh escaped her as she leaned her head against the window. Why did people always treat her as if she had no brain? No voice? And was completely without choices? She was twenty-six-years old and had no future. Her gaze was drawn outside the window again as a little bit more of her soul withered and died.

  Supper in the Barrows household was a formal affair. She wasn’t always required to attend, but when she did it was only to fill a chair. It wasn’t as if her father wanted the contact with her. Beyond a greeting, he said little to her. Her mother was slightly warmer, but the two of them had never been close. It was regrettable, but she was years beyond feeling sorry for herself. She analyzed it all now, seeing the weak and strong points to her relationship with her parents.