Montana Blues [Sins of Silver Creek 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read online

  Sins of Silver Creek 1

  Montana Blues

  When a tumble down stone steps whilst on duty lands his partner, Detective Steve South, in a coma, it’s not just a wake-up call for LAPD Detective Nick North. It’s the start of a new life that sees them both transferred out of Hollywood and into the arms of another police officer, the lovely Jez Sucre.

  The slow pace of living in Silver Creek, Montana is a world away from the crime-ridden streets and smog-filled air of Los Angeles. It’s a life that Nick and Steve like, especially when Jez tells them she wants them as much as they want her. However, their MMF ménage relationship isn’t going to be easy, not when Jez runs from their bed, reluctant to show her face in the mornings. Can Nick and Steve make Jez understand that they love her no matter what secrets she’s hiding from them?

  Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre

  Length: 46,798 words

  MONTANA BLUES

  Sins of Silver Creek 1

  Marie Jermy

  MENAGE AMOUR

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Amour

  MONTANA BLUES

  Copyright © 2015 by Marie Jermy

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-042-8

  First E-book Publication: March 2015

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2015 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

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About the Author

  MONTANA BLUES

  Sins of Silver Creek 1

  MARIE JERMY

  Copyright © 2015

  Chapter 1

  If it were possible, he would turn back time. Two years, seven months to be exact. Although now as he faced the deceptively polished aura of Tomas Verdi and the even nastier piece of shit standing behind, two minutes would suffice. Why had he opened the damned door? Obviously moving thousands of miles away hadn’t been enough to escape Verdi’s clutches.

  “Well, aren’t you going to invite your old friend in? After all, I did fly to this armpit of a place to see you.”

  Where he now resided wasn’t an armpit, not that he dared say that to Verdi. The criminal activities of the Verdi family made the Mafia’s look like a teddy bear’s picnic in comparison. He swallowed hard and tried not to wobble. “I don’t know why. I don’t owe you anything.”

  “Wrong!”

  The wedge that was the Verdi’s bodyguard palmed the door and shoved it inward. The door caught him in the shoulder, throwing him backward and causing him to lose his balance. He fell into the room, landing on his ass with a thump.

  Verdi sauntered in as if he owned the place, looked around at the furniture with disdain before allowing his Armani-clad ass to drop itself into an armchair and stuck his Italian-made wingtips up on the coffee table with a loud smack. He reached for the TV remote and the documentary the man had been watching went black and silent. With a wave of his other hand, the bodyguard closed the door and stood there like a sentry, his tree-trunk arms crossed over his chest, the scowl on his hardened face as black as the TV screen.

  The man went to get to his feet but stopped when Verdi barked.

  “No!”

  Verdi’s benign smile offset by the ice-chip glare made his spine tingle with nerves. He’d paid every single dime. He was sure he had.

  “Now to business. You owe me five grand…” Verdi held up a hand when he opened his mouth. “I see you disagree. Carol, please explain.”

  He almost laughed at the bodyguard’s name. Carol was his ex-wife’s name, and she’d been a hell of a lot better looking. But then again it had been down to the unfaithful, money-grabbing bitch that he’d found himself in this mess in the first place.

  “You defaulted on your final payment.”

  “Bullshit!” The cuss dropped out before he could stop it. “I paid every last cent,” he said to Verdi, bravado taking over for a moment. “You said, ‘Nice doing business with you. Now fuck off, I never want to see you again.’ You even gave me a fucking receipt, for Chrissake!”

  “The interest rate had gone up,” the bodyguard said, carrying on regardless and as if that explained everything.

  His mouth dropped open. “What? You can’t be serious?”

  Verdi didn’t look up from inspecting his manicured fingernails. “Deadly.”

  He gulped and ran a hand over his mouth, his blood running cold.

  “Don’t look so worried, my friend. I can be benevolent. You can have one week to pay me back. S
ay thank you.”

  The words of gratitude failed him. Instead the warmth and wetness of his pants told him he had pissed himself.

  Chapter 2

  Los Angeles

  “North! My office. Now!”

  Detective Nick North looked up from the case file grabbing his interest and angled his head in the direction of the bellowed voice. Lieutenant Joe Richards stood in the doorframe of his office, sporting a glowering expression that was as sour as a dozen rotting lemons.

  Nick silenced an oath. Nattily dressed in a white buttoned-down shirt and black chinos, neat combed brown hair with only a hint of gray over a thin, dour face, Richards rarely smiled, and laughing was rarer still. Nick held a deep respect for Richards, who was firm but fair, and he cared about all the detectives under his command. So Nick knew why his commander was pissed. Yet the incident that had taken place at the start of Nick’s shift a mere hour ago, he thought, would be worth facing Richards’s wrath. Three junked-up assholes were now in custody where they belonged.

  Nick slowly rose to his feet, swigged the dregs of his third mug of hot chocolate and marched smartly over to Richards. It was an act that he knew wouldn’t mollify his commander one iota. Richards stood aside and jabbed a finger at one of the hard-backed wooden chairs opposite his desk.

  “I’d rather stand, Sir,” Nick said while the office door was slammed, the half-glazed panel rattling in its woodwork.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Before another word was spoken, Nick suddenly found himself propelled around to face the door.

  “What do you see?” Richards’s tone was sharper than a tall glass of freshly squeezed lemon juice.

  Nick stared at his reflection in the glass panel. Clean shaven as a rule, yet for the past month, he sported beard growth that made him look much older than his twenty-nine years. His normally short, layered raven hair was an unruly mess, the ends of which furled beneath the collar of his uniform shirt. Any longer and he could join the cast of Spartacus. Okay, he needed a haircut and a shave.

  Over the brooding dark blue, red-rimmed tired eyes, the scar that bisected his right brow often made him smile. He’d acquired it as a horny fourteen-year old falling flat on his face while chasing Lisa Copland, a girl he’d fancied. He didn’t feel like smiling now, instead forcing back a yawn.

  He ran an eye down his creased uniform shirt and pants. It had always been a source of locker room camaraderie at the station that Nick and Steve wore their uniforms, though they were detectives and could wear what they liked so long as it was smart. Neither gave a fuck what people thought about their attire. They were good at their jobs and that was all that mattered. “I see me,” he finally answered without turning.

  “Yeah? Well, I see a wreck!” Richards’s battered chair, which quite possibly had come out of the Ark, creaked as he settled his wiry frame behind his desk. “When’s the last time you slept?”

  Nick turned and shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve slept.”

  Richards raised a mocking brow. “Catshit! Your lack of sleep is making you reckless, Nick. Take this morning for example. Since when has it been a good idea to stand in front of a Chevy-load of coked-up assholes reenacting the Fast and the Furious? If Adams hadn’t shot the tires out, we’d still be scraping you off the sidewalk!” He expelled a deep breath. “I don’t want to lose you, too, Nick. You, along with Steve, are two of my best detectives. I—”

  The shrill ring of Richards’s telephone interrupted him. He held up a hand and answered. During the ensuing conversation, Nick tuned out and turned his thoughts to Steve.

  Detective Steve South was more than Nick’s partner, he was his brother-in-arms, a friend so close that Nick would die for Steve, and vice versa. That was how tight-knitted they were. They’d joined the academy at the same time and had clicked straight away. After graduation, they’d both been posted to Hollywood Police Station. They’d been together ever since. It was often said that Steve’s easygoing, sunny disposition evened out Nick’s terse testiness.

  But Steve wasn’t by Nick’s side—he was in a coma—and Nick, however tough and kick-ass he was, had to confess he felt lost without the man he loved the bones of.

  Steve’s accident had occurred a month ago. It was after a drugs raid on a warehouse down in LA Harbor, when one of the collared yet-to-be-handcuffed felons had decided to make a run for it. Steve had chased him. What they hadn’t known was that the felon, known as “Mr. Hollywood,” had a switch knife secreted on his person. Steve had just caught up with the guy on a set of concrete steps when Mr. Hollywood suddenly turned and lashed out at him with the knife. The blade had deflected off of Steve’s bullet-proof vest, which saved his heart from being ripped in two, but in turn hadn’t stopped his backward tumble down the steps to the bottom, where he’d smashed his skull against the hard surface. He’d been in a coma ever since.

  Nick silently drew a ragged breath. Every spare minute, when he wasn’t on duty, day or night, he would visit Steve and sit beside his bed holding his hand. He’d talk to him, tell him about work, and read him the sports news. He’d tell him what was happening in the glitzy and often trashy world of Tinsel town and played Steve’s favorite songs on his iPhone. He’d done everything he could to try and revive his friend—had even cut Steve’s face while shaving him—but nothing so far had worked.

  “…Actually, Jess, Nick’s standing before me right now, looking like he wants to chew my ass off.”

  At his name, Nick refocused on Richards’s conversation. Who was Jess? The woman must be pretty special, because, shit, was that a smile bracketing his commander’s mouth? Nick continued to stare—bug-eyed if he were honest—then decided he didn’t like it when that smile bloomed into a wide grin. He sensed Richards was building up to something big. Something he wouldn’t like one little bit.

  “I’ll be sure to tell him. Take care, Jess. And say hello to Ross.” With a loud guffaw that made Nick’s guts flip uneasily, Richards replaced the receiver. A grinning and laughing Richards spelled trouble, of that Nick was sure. The wide grin still plastered across his commander’s face, he reached into the top drawer of the desk, removed an envelope, and tossed it across to Nick.

  Almost gingerly, Nick picked it up and slid his forefinger under the flap. He slowly edged it open, half-expecting a letter bomb to explode. Instead, he found two airline tickets. What the fuck?

  “I’m transferring you to Silver Creek in Montana.”

  Nick wasn’t sure if he’d heard right. “You’re doing what?”

  “Transferring you to Silver Creek, Montana,” Richards repeated matter-of-fact, the grin now gone. “It’s between Butte and Dillon. About eleven hundred residents, I do believe.”

  The room fell silent. The faint discussion between a group of detectives regarding an impending drugs raid and the persistent ringing of a phone on one of the desks could be heard through the office walls.

  Behind Richards, sunlight filtered through partially closed blinds, casting shadows across his dour face. Shadows that now matched the storm brewing within Nick. Those airline tickets had equaled a letter bomb in their meaning. A transfer? A fucking transfer? Nope, he definitely didn’t like it. Usually his friendship and the deep respect he had for Richards stopped him from sounding off at him. Today, however, or indeed as the case had been for the past month, his emotions were stretched to breaking point.

  “I don’t care where it is or who lives there. I’m not going.”

  “Nick, this isn’t a request. It’s an order.” Nick opened his mouth to protest, but Richards interrupted him. “Don’t think. Just go. Not just for your sake, but for Steve’s, as well. Steve’s in the best possible place. You know he is. You, however, are not.” Richards eyed him sternly when Nick again opened his mouth to object. “Don’t make me suspend you, Nick. Because that’s exactly what I’ll do if you refuse the transfer.”

  That warning made Nick stop and think. Suspension or transfer to Silver fucking Creek? Shit. Talk about being stuck
between a rock and a hard place. Nick loved his job as much as he loved Steve. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to be by Steve’s side, not in a different fucking state. But did he have a choice? For several long minutes, he wrestled with his decision before finally asking, “How long is this transfer for?”

  “Six months. Maybe longer. That depends on you. Who knows? You may actually like it there. Meet the future Mrs. North, settle down and produce a clutch of rug rats.”

  Nick seriously doubted that. He and Steve had decided a long, long time ago that ménage relationships were for them. He would also be the first to admit he definitely wasn’t out-and-out gay. He enjoyed sex with a woman just as much as the next straight man. Indeed, friends and colleagues thought he was as straight as an arrow—Steve just as straight, too. He wouldn’t even class himself as bi. Yet he wanted Steve, who fortunately felt the same way about him.

  They didn’t live together as such, though they lived in the same apartment block. While they did have the hots for each other, the opportunity for just them to share a bed hadn’t arisen because they were always focused on the woman and her needs and wants. However, he and Steve were like one. Any woman who came into their lives took on the pair of them.

  Not one person at the Hollywood Police Station knew of this or indeed the fact they desired each other, and that was the way it would stay. It wasn’t that they were ashamed or embarrassed. They didn’t give a shit what people thought of their sexual preferences, it was just their private business and nobody else’s. Well, apart from the woman in the middle, of course. Actually, Nick suddenly decided, from now on theirs would be a male-male-female ménage relationship. Why waste a moment longer to make love to Steve? He’d already waited too long and had nearly lost the man for good. “My cases?”