Owner of a Lonely Heart (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  Owner of a Lonely Heart

  She’ll guard you, but she’s no angel. Curvy, well-seasoned U.S. Marshal Bettina Crenshaw has landed a spicy assignment—protecting hotshot, tough-as-nails biker Taos Hopewell from the thugs he’s testifying against.

  Sheriff Crispin Marwick has isolated himself on his horse ranch since a divorce and a tour of duty in Las Vegas’s vice squad went sideways. Aristocratic and hot enough to melt steel, straight shooter Crispin finds himself reeled in by the spitfire marshal and the bad boy she’s guarding. Crispin surprises himself by suggesting a few risqué rounds of cops and robbers, and the chase is on.

  The only break Taos ever had was the shelter of his motorcycle club. But that haven has turned to hell, and he’s on the run, scrambling to build a new life. The forbidden temptations of his bodyguards are about to turn, falling off the face of the earth into a little slice of heaven.

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

  Length: 52,476 words

  OWNER OF A LONELY HEART

  Karen Mercury

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  OWNER OF A LONELY HEART

  Copyright © 2014 by Karen Mercury

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62741-555-2

  First E-book Publication: April 2014

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2014 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 Owner of a Lonely Heart by Karen Mercury 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 Karen Mercury’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Mercury’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  For John Collins—“Mr. C”

  Thanks for the books on how to blow stuff up. You will survive.

  And Siobhan Muir—Thanks for being a location scout.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  OWNER OF A LONLEY HEART

  KAREN MERCURY

  Copyright © 2014

  Chapter One

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  “I woke up at six, and you were gone.”

  What a whiner. Bettina had no respect for whiners. Or for most other types of spineless, crawling losers. She answered him in her normal rapid-fire voice. “Yeah well, you snooze you lose. I didn’t want you to see what I look like without eyeliner on.” It was already comfortably warm on this lovely April morning as she sped west on State Highway 604. The searing howl of three Thunderbird fighter jets in formation passed over her as they took off for training exercises in the wild blue sky. This was a good opportunity for Bettina to say, “What? I can’t hear you. I’m at the airport.”

  The goofball on the other end of the phone stuttered, already covering up his shattered ego by acting brusque and cold. Bettina knew this step in the breakup procedure well. It always amused her when the men pretended they hadn’t cared anyway. She let them off the hook this way. “I said I had a real good time last night, Bettina. Let’s do it again.”

  Ken had that falsely lighthearted tone of hope. Bettina was about to shoot him down like an ailing Thunderbird jet wobbling out of formation, where the pilot ejected but was too close to the fireball and perished anyway. Hmm. She congratulated herself. Nice simile. “I can’t see you again, Ken. My job requires too much travel. For instance, this afternoon I’m off to Corpus Christi to sell some ball bearings. I’m gone half the time. You want someone who is more convenient.” That gave the guy an out. He didn’t lose face if he could tell himself, “Well, I need someone more convenient, someone who is here when I need a hookup.”

  “Ah, I don’t care,” said Ken, blowing Bettina’s theory all to hell. “I travel a lot, too, in my job, Betts, selling paper products.” Yeah. He sold Ronald Reagan party hats—ass gaskets. Ball bearings were even more macho than that.

  She barked, “Look, I’m almost to my building, Ken. I’ll be gone at least two nights. Why don’t we discuss this when I return.” She hung a right off the state route onto Beale Avenue. Her office was in a decommissioned part of Nellis Air Force Base. Noisy, yes, but also below the radar. Another squadron of three F-16s screeched deafeningly over her defenseless Charger. They were in full force this morning. She cranked her wheel and parked precisely next to her partner’s Explorer.

  “Damn, Betts!” wailed Ken. “Why do you work at the airport anyway? How do you get any work done over the phone?”

  She didn’t want to tell him that this was unusual. The jet training exercises were so infrequent that now, even after two years in this airplane hangar, it was still exciting to watch and listen to the streamlined planes. “We wind up yelling a lot,” she
yelled as she cut the engine. I really don’t need this right now. Why did I answer the phone for this guy who sells Texas T-shirts and whines about his lousy childhood while watching Dr. Oz? Her partner Park had already ruthlessly ribbed her in the short month she’d dated Ken.

  She needed to end this quickly and gracefully. She locked her Charger remotely and strode efficiently on heeled boots to the outer metal staircase of the old hangar, swinging like a young girl around the handrail before bounding up like a clanging elephant. “We like the ambiance, Ken. Now, listen, I’ve really got to go. We’ve got important ball-bearing work to do today.”

  When she yanked the heavy industrial door that led to the hangar offices and jumped inside the hall, it boomed shut behind her with a prison-like sound. Building 86 was their home, the US Marshals Service field office for the District of Nevada. Freezing in the winter so they had to type with fingerless gloves, and so broiling in the summer meetings were an exercise in sweat tolerance—one visitor from the Attorney General’s office had actually fainted last August. But it was their home sweet home where Bettina and Park felt more at ease than they did in their own houses. It was much safer, for one.

  “Let’s make a date,” said Ken.

  “I’ll text you,” said Bettina, her voice echoing down the long empty hallway. There weren’t many other people in this decrepit old hangar. A company of nerdy chemists who were mostly out in the field taking soil samples from old stockpiles and underground storage tanks. They were harmless. There were a few crusty old Corps of Engineers guys waiting for retirement. It was the ideal command center for the US marshals who ran the Witness Security Division.

  She swiped her cardkey through the sensor and bashed the heavy door open with her hip. “Oh, hey! Inspector Brown!” She knew she appeared overly excited to see her swarthy, handsome partner, already sitting at his desk with his feet up on another. She had explained to Ken that they called each other Inspector because they inspected ball bearings. Park Bechtel became Inspector Brown for the ears of outsiders.

  Park, used to such shenanigans, tickled the air with his fingers. “Hey. Inspector Cruikshank.” Sharp on the uptake, he picked up on the script that she required right now, and used Bettina’s pseudonym. In a rather mechanical and resentful voice, he said louder, “I am glad you are here. There is a big shipment of screws and washers that we urgently need to inspect. You must get off the phone.”

  Shitty acting skills. My ass. Park acted in plays at Stanford. He’s so full of it. “Yes, Inspector Brown. We must get down to the warehouse immediately. Later, Ken.” Tapping her earpiece to turn it off, Bettina unsheathed her forty-caliber Glock and stored it safely in her desk drawer. She exhaled sharply, giving Park a tiny look of thanks. “Thanks, buddy. Alone again. Gratefully.”

  Park was the only person in the world she allowed to know anything about the inner workings of her life. Well, there weren’t many workings to know about in the first place. Bettina went to the gym and dealt with her brother and their mother. The rest of the time she was such a gung-ho, pedal to the metal US marshal that she rarely even took time off to go horseback riding anymore. It was actually Park who had encouraged her to go out with Ken, the ass gasket salesman they’d met while blowing off steam at the Drawing Board. They had never really sparked. She had only known Ken a month, not long enough for him to call her Betts, that was for sure. Bettina just felt she should go along with Park’s admonition that if she didn’t get laid, her lady parts would atrophy. But the sani-seat salesman had done nothing for her. It was no big loss.

  She headed for the red beacon of the industrial-strength coffee pot. They had situated it underneath the wall of old metal windows that opened outward like airplane flaps. Already at eight in the morning Park had the overhead fans running—no one had bothered installing air conditioning in the decrepit hangar where it would’ve disturbed more asbestos than was worth it—and a sheen of sweat coated Bettina’s back underneath her tight-fitting leather jacket. She paused to look over the landscape because it was the subject of their conversation, their work today.

  Rusty oxide layers of the Sunrise Mountains presented ever-changing patches of black “desert varnish” and rich sandstone. Bettina would never tire of watching the shifting strata where whole hillsides of rocks had been thrust upward over the millennia. When clouds passed over, the colors muted and blazed, like in those geology movies they’d shown her as a kid. It gave her a secure, comforting feeling. Although she’d had a rough-and-tumble childhood, school had been her safe haven, a place where she was taken care of instead of the other way around.

  “I’m wondering, Bettina.” Park never called her Betts. “My conscience started getting the better of me in the middle of the night.”

  Bettina didn’t look at him. “Must be the frozen Stouffer’s you had for dinner.”

  Park ignored her, as usual. “This Rescue idea for this Tim Hartley witness. Maybe we got carried away. Maybe we had one too many brewskis. Maybe we got swept away by the humor of sticking a federal witness into a town that doesn’t even have a bookstore, a town whose main community is the Surf ‘n’ Turf Trailer Park. A town where even the archery range was closed down. Isn’t that a bit too cruel, even for us?”

  “The Drawing Board has that effect on everyone.” She finally tore herself from the mountain painting and walked toward her partner. “Sure, we probably had one too many when we came up with that plan, Park. But you know what? Rescue is perfect because of the reasons you just listed. It’s actually an up-and-coming town, getting tourist traffic from Lake Mead and the Grand Canyon. And there’s no casino, so it’s bound to have less of a criminal element.”

  Park’s handsome face still had that shadow of doubt. Bettina set her coffee on her desk and folded her arms. “What’s bugging you? You’re afraid that the outlaw biker will get bored with no casino, no gun running, no drug muling to occupy his time? I assure you, Rescue gets all three hundred cable channels including the monster truck channel, Duck Dynasty, and Pit Bulls and Parolees. Tim Hartley won’t lack for educational opportunities while pondering which outhouse or pest abatement company to apply at. Actually, being a biker, he’s probably a good mechanic. Let’s check out possibilities in that direction.”

  Park yanked his feet off the desk and twirled in his chair to face Bettina. “Actually, Pit Bulls and Parolees is about prisoners rehabilitating dogs. It’s therapeutic for both of them.”

  Bettina crinkled her face. “You watch that show? I can’t believe you watch that show. That’s so, so…so lowbrow of you.”

  Park Bechtel had a highbrow reputation, coming from a branch of the engineering empire family, having attended Stanford and having actually gotten a PhD in Criminal Justice from Rutgers. Bettina’s own background wasn’t nearly as fancy, but more streetwise. She had worked in the Vegas PD for many years, coming up in the ranks from a dispatcher. “Unlike you, Bettina, I take time out to get cultured. Now listen. This Tim Whatley—”

  “Tim Hartley.”

  “—is coming from a background where he’s accustomed to bullying people, to being top dog, to being in control.”

  Bettina smirked. “Sounds like me. Maybe I do like him.”

  “We put him into this little Rescue trailer park and he’s going to be sorely tempted to start up another gang, to rally people around him, people who look up to him and worship the ground he—”

  “You’re making him sound like a preacher, Park. He’s a gun runner, a drug mule, not a televangelist. He didn’t even graduate high school in Texas.”

  Park pointed a stiff finger at her. “He’s an innocent man if you don’t recall, Bettina, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “That’s right.” Bettina narrowed her eyes and smirked. “He was on his way to the Make-a-Wish Foundation when he tripped over a shipment of AK-47s.” It often irritated her how they had to handle these witnesses with kid gloves. The majority of the witnesses that entered the program were criminals them
selves, but thanks to trading on their testimony had gotten off without any charges. Bettina had done her due diligence reading up on Tim Hartley and there was nothing to indicate he wasn’t just another garden-variety biker thug who had decided to turn on his brothers. Those MC assholes always pretended to be so tightly knit, but really, they were in it for themselves just like any other gangster.

  “Since we’re supposed to be molding his new identity,” Park continued levelly, “it’s best to assume he was on his way to a Ryan Seacrest concert when that cartel stormed their arms warehouse. I’m just concerned he might gain too much confidence in Rescue, you know? Start feeling like a big fish in a little pond.”

  Bettina shook her head earnestly. “No. No. Rescue is the perfect place to hide in plain sight. He’ll blend in with all the other misfits, losers, and slightly ‘artistic’ types there.”

  Park spread his hands in surrender. “Your witness, your call. I’m just saying he might not be overjoyed when he sees his palatial new digs in Rescue.”

  “Since when is it our job to kowtow to witnesses, Park? We’re not supposed to incentivize them and lavish them for their testimony. Besides, I doubt he’s accustomed to Southwest Modern architecture with marble counters. He seems more a vinyl floor guy than a laminate.”

  Park’s expression tightened. Bettina knew he thought that she often jumped to conclusions about the morality and quality of witnesses’ characters. He changed the subject. “So which sheriff has jurisdiction over in Rescue, anyway?” It was their duty to notify local law enforcement that a protected witness was moving into his territory, and Bettina knew most of the cops in Vegas.