Rock Star Cowboys (McLendon Family 3) Read online

  The McLendon Family Saga – Book Three

  By

  D.L. Roan

  Copyright © D.L. Roan

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Rock Star Cowboys (The McLendon Family Saga, #3)

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Description

  The McLendon Twins are all grown up and - oh my gawd - are they ever a double handful! The perfect combination of reckless and charming, the golden boys of Grassland have become country music gods. Carson is the life of the party. Connor loves their music, but he's had it with Carson's antics and life on the road. He's ready to call it quits when their beloved Papa falls ill and they are called home to their family ranch on Falcon Ridge; a place that holds both their hearts and the painful secret that changed their lives forever.

  Occupational Therapist Breezy Youngblood once loved Connor and Carson to the moon and back. She was a mere girl when her world was shattered and she was forced to leave Grassland with only her broken heart. When she's asked to return to help the McLendon patriarch recover, she's forced to face the tragedy that destroyed her dreams of ever calling Falcon Ridge her home. Will Connor and Carson embrace the second chance they've been given, or turn their backs on the one person who can make them whole again?

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  Rock Star Cowboys Copyright © D.L. Roan, 2016

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without prior written permission of the author and publisher.

  www.dlroan.com

  All characters, events, and locations in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or living, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover Design by JAB Designs

  Copy Editing by Kathryn Lynn Davis

  Interior eBook Design by D.L. Roan

  Photo contributors: Hot Damn Stock

  Chapter One

  It was the most beautiful afternoon. The sun was hot and high in the sky, but the tall trees cast dark shadows along the well-worn path through the woods to the McLendon’s swimming hole. Breezy Youngblood’s skinny legs pumped as fast as they could carry her below the canopy of summer leaves, towards the sounds of laughter she’d daydreamed about all week. The ground beneath her bare feet was cool and damp. The brown earthy scent of the soil fermenting under the fallen leaves washed away the stench of booze and sweat that lingered in her nostrils from the air inside their trailer.

  Her pa had left for his Sunday poker game at the American Legion club in Clarkston. He wasn’t a member or a veteran, not by a long shot. The club served the cheapest booze in the county, or so he said. Since her momma died, Pa was always looking for the cheapest way to stay drunk.

  More often than not, his perma-inebriated state led to losing his paycheck at their weekly poker game, betting on some silly arrangement of cards. Breezy figured he probably couldn’t see straight enough to know if he was holding a pair of twos or four of a kind. She might not be old enough to gamble, but at fourteen, even she could outplay her pa on a sober day.

  The second the dust from the dirt road had swallowed the taillights of Pa’s rusty pick-up truck, she tossed the empty laundry basket under the stoop and made a beeline for the trees, leaving the fresh wash hanging on the clothesline to dry in the summer sun. It would be crisp and ready for folding in an hour, but there would be no one home to scold her for leaving it on the line.

  Pa wouldn’t stumble in until at least ten o’clock. Normally he didn’t come home until well after midnight when she was fast asleep. Sundays were his early nights because he worked the first shift at the feed mill on Mondays. She often wondered how he remembered what day it was at all.

  Her brother, Ford, worked until nine when the grocery store closed, and then took a second shift at the Super-Mart three nights a week stocking shelves. At seventeen, he’d dropped out of school to get a job so they could pay their uncle rent on the rusty, single wide trailer that had sat abandoned on his farm for years prior to them moving in.

  After the rent was paid, Ford’s meager wages didn’t cover the electric bill some months. She didn’t understand why. There were a total of three working light bulbs in the whole place, four if you counted the one in the refrigerator. She never used the oven. Everything they ate came from a box she could mix together and cook in a pot on their gas stove.

  Their microwave had been a total loss since her pa tried to reheat some macaroni and cheese, but in his semi-sober state, forgot to remove his fork. The melted, useless box still sat in the yard where her brother threw it over a year ago, after it caught fire and almost burned the trailer to the ground.

  They also didn’t have air conditioning, which made her Sunday afternoon escapes to the McLendon creek worth every risk of getting scolded by her pa, if he came home early enough to catch her. Add in the bonus of getting to see Connor and Carson McLendon without their shirts, and there was nothing that could have kept her from that creek, short of tying her to a tree with the clothesline.

  A playful feminine screech echoed in the distance. Breezy’s legs pumped faster, catapulting her from the edge of the dense woods into the vast sunlit clearing that stretched into the creek. The wind in her hair, the sun on her face as she sped down the slope and over the edge of a large boulder that jutted out over the water’s surface, the freedom she felt each time she stepped onto McLendon land, were the best feelings in the world!

  She tucked her knees into her chest as she flew through the air. One second later the water gave way like a cool down pillow and swallowed her up whole, washing away all the worries and fears no fourteen-year-old should ever know.

  Instead of surfacing for air, she stayed on the bottom of the creek bed, listening to the sounds of the water and the other kids playing in the shallows. For those few seconds she could imagine she was a part of the McLendon family.

  She could pretend she didn’t have to go back to her run-down trailer and fold a week’s worth of laundry or cook a late dinner for a brother who would be too angry at the world to eat it, or a father too drunk to want it. She could pretend that she had a mother who made her eat healthy food and at least one father who asked her how her day was going, the way Connor and Carson’s father, Mason, did every Sunday. She always gave him the same answer, telling him she’d had a fine day. Sundays were always fine days.

  As her lungs
began to burn with a need for oxygen, five long fingers snaked around her wrist and jerked her towards the surface. She spit and sputtered as she took in a surprised breath, her hair clinging to her face. She pushed it from her eyes just as a thick arm banded around her waist like a steel trap. Carson McLendon’s dimples came into focus before she turned to see Connor McLendon’s worried scowl.

  Breezy froze. Her heart beat so fast it made her chest hurt. Her barely formed breasts tingled and pressed embarrassingly against her shirt. She didn’t own a bathing suit. Cut-off jeans and a tank top were all she had to wear for swimming. She might as well have been naked for all the good the threadbare garments were doing to hide her reaction to them. They were touching her. Carson and Connor McLendon were touching her! For three years she’d watched and fantasized about this very moment.

  For years of summer Sundays, since she was eleven, Breezy could remember watching the McLendon family at the creek that ran between their ranch and her uncle’s farm. They would swim and play and eat fresh sandwiches and berry pie from the picnic lunch Mrs. McLendon undoubtedly made for them.

  There were so many of them. Brothers Mason, Matt and Grey McLendon, were all married to Gabby McLendon. The Mr. McLendons had three fathers too. Jake, Josiah and Nate were all married to Connor and Carson’s grandmother, Hazel. She’d also seen Mrs. McLendon’s father, Daniel, once or twice.

  When they were all together it was overwhelming. So many people at once made her nervous. Coupled with the awful things she’d heard her great uncle Tom, and his son Dirk say about them, she’d been satisfied to watch them from the safety of the woods for the first two years.

  One Sunday the prior summer, one of the Mr. McLendons caught her hiding just inside the tree line. She’d been so scared that she turned tail and ran home as fast as her scrawny legs could carry her.

  Curiosity drew her back to the woods the next Sunday, back to the secret place where she could allow her dreams to be real for a few precious hours. Breezy hadn’t expected to see Mrs. McLendon waiting at the edge of the woods for her.

  “Come play with us,” she’d offered with an outstretched hand and a disarming smile, inviting her to swim in the creek with her children.

  Breezy cautiously followed as Mrs. McLendon led her to the creek bank and took a seat on the enormous picnic blanket spread out amongst a scattering of summer wildflowers that only seemed to grow on the McLendon’s side of the creek.

  The youngest McLendon boy, Cory, and his twin siblings, Dani and Jonah, were taking turns on the rope swing that hung from the stout branch of an ancient tree. Breezy watched with innocent yearning as they flew over the surface and splashed into the water, right into their big brothers’ arms.

  “Go play,” Mrs. McLendon had urged with a wave of her hand.

  Breezy’s stomach had been tied in knots as she waded into the shallows, too nervous to even look in Connor and Carson’s direction. She’d met them, of course. Well, not met them proper, but everyone in town knew the tanned, carefree twins that constantly jostled for the title of most popular boy in school. It was a pointless battle. They were a tie in her mind. Always would be.

  One year after that first day at the creek, Connor and Carson were seventeen, beautiful, layered in thick muscles, and not a single boy in Montana stood a chance of taking their place on the pedestals on which she’d placed them. And now their arms were wrapped around her, their bodies pressed against her, moving and shifting as they kicked to stay afloat in the deeper water. Carson’s full lips were only millimeters from hers.

  “Jesus, Breezy, you scared the hell out of us staying down there that long. We thought you’d hit your head and were drowning or something,” Connor said angrily behind her.

  “Huh?” She turned her head and found herself nose to nose with him. Stunned, her mouth opened on a shy gasp and she sucked in half the water in the creek.

  She may not have been drowning then, but she sure as heck was now. Drowning in the water she’d inhaled, drowning in embarrassment, drowning in the flood of strange feelings that their touch elicited. She was devastated and elated all at the same time as they pulled her to the bank.

  Spit and creek water spewed from her mouth and nose as she coughed and coughed, all the while thinking about the hands that touched her, hands that were attached to the thick arms that had lifted her from the water as if she weighed no more than a sack of groceries.

  “Dear god! Is she okay?”

  Breezy recognized the concerned feminine voice belonging to the girl now standing above her. Any elation she’d been feeling came crashing down around her, the weight of reality threatening to drag her to the bottom of the creek for good.

  “I’m fine,” Breezy said, clearing her throat one last time as she sat up and wiped the water from her eyes, squinting through the rays of sun to see Connor and Carson’s flawless girlfriend standing beside her in the cutest hot-pink bikini.

  “Are you sure?” Charlotte Lakeman asked. “I have some fresh water over on the blanket. Want me to get you a cupful?”

  Right, because water was exactly what she needed. “Yeah, sure,” she said anyway, her voice a bit scratchy from coughing. She tried and failed miserably to not let her disappointment show in her tone. She didn’t hate Charlotte. Not at all. She just...wasn’t her.

  She’d known Charlotte since before her family had moved into the trailer on her uncle’s farm after the bank took their home. Charlotte was also Ford’s ex-girlfriend. She and her brother had gone together all through Junior High. At ten years old, Breezy hadn’t paid much attention to her brother’s life, but something happened to him when Momma got sick.

  Her brother changed completely after Momma died. Everything changed after that, but Ford’s transformation had left them less like siblings and more like strangers. He’d never told her what happened the night he and Charlotte broke up, and she never asked.

  Whatever had happened, it was clear to her and everyone else in school that Connor and Carson McLendon were the teen gods of Grassland and Charlotte was now their new goddess. Breezy loved Ford, but given the angry, empty shell he’d become, she couldn’t blame Charlotte for choosing them over her brother.

  She sighed helplessly as she studied the girl that commanded the attention of both of the oldest McLendon boys. Charlotte was the homecoming queen. She had long blonde hair, several shades lighter than Breezy’s. Her eyes were as blue-green as the ocean. Her lips always looked like they’d been kissed for hours, and probably had been. Everything she wore looked tailor-made for her full hips and flat stomach, and she had the most plump, perfect boobs.

  Breezy glanced hopelessly down at the flat abyss beneath her mud-colored tank top. She would never have a chest like that. Her legs were skinny and too long for her body, her face covered in embarrassing freckles she’d inherited from her momma, and she wouldn’t wear a bikini, even if her life depended on it.

  Despite her sometimes crippling crush, she understood full well that boys like Carson and Connor would never be interested in a girl like her. Oh, they treated her nice and always waved anytime they saw her in town, even offering her a ride home from school a time or two when she missed the bus, but she never mistook it for anything more than being polite.

  She’d hoped, prayed, fantasized in bright neon colors about walking down the aisle one day and promising to love them both forever, but she never truly let herself believe the butterfly-inducing smiles and secretive, flirty winks she’d watched them exchange with Charlotte would ever be meant for her. And that was okay. She could watch them and dream, and her dreams would always be hers; something nobody could take away from her.

  “Breezy, honey, are you okay?” She turned to see Mrs. McLendon and her three husbands walking towards her. “Charlotte said you were choking.”

  “I’m fine, Mrs. McLendon.” Their mom had told her a dozen times to call her Gabby, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She didn’t remember much about her own momma before she got sick, but she’d alwa
ys been strict about respecting one’s elders. Calling Mrs. McLendon by her first name seemed far too familiar. “Got a little choked when I hit the water is all. Sorry if I scared you.”

  “As long as you’re all right.”

  Breezy nodded and thanked her for asking. It was the kind of caring gesture she’d come to expect from Carson and Connor’s mother.

  “I made an extra sandwich for you as usual. A piece of apple cinnamon cake, too. Don’t let the afternoon get away without eating something. Okay?”

  “I won’t. Thank you.” The three Mr. McLendons offered her a nod before they all left for a stroll along the bank. She watched them until they disappeared around the bend in the creek, imagining for a minute that they were stealing away to sneak a few romantic kisses as Charlotte watched their youngest children play in the shallows.

  She knew about sex and kissing. She knew boys and girls fell in love and got married and made babies. She wasn’t sure how it all worked with the McLendons, having three husbands and all those kids. She’d overheard Pa and her uncle saying one day that it wasn’t natural for three men to be with one woman. From where she sat, it looked a heck of a lot more natural than any family she’d ever known.

  Breezy waded back into the creek, determined to have as much fun as she could pack into the next few hours. She decided to stick to the shallows this time, though, and ignore the silent flirting between the boys she loved and the girl she could never be.

  Chapter Two

  Six days later, Breezy woke up at six-thirty in the morning, as she did every Saturday, to get the first of four loads of weekend laundry washed and on the line before she hitched a ride into town with her brother to pick up groceries for the week.

  Ford could have saved her a trip and brought them home the night before, but because Pa worked the late shift on Fridays, he didn’t get paid until after the grocery store closed. The mill didn’t offer direct deposit, not that it would have helped. They didn’t have a bank account. If Breezy didn’t go shopping Saturday mornings, their pa would spend all the cash on booze or poker on Sunday and they’d starve by week’s end.