Rock Star Cowboys (McLendon Family 3)

by D. L. Roan

  He and Carson pulled out their cellphones to see who was calling, but before they could answer, a rush of muted shouts and scuffles exploded inside the house.

  “Breezy!” At the sound of Gabby’s scream, they rushed from the office and down the long hallway toward the front door. What they saw when they got there turned Connor’s blood to ice. “Can you help him?”

  “Jonah?” Breezy rushed to meet Grey as he carried Jonah’s limp, bloodied body through the door.

  “Dani found him at the end of the driveway,” Mason said as he passed by in a blur.

  “What happened?” Carson shouted as they followed their dads into the dining room.

  Connor ran to their mom and pulled her into his arms as Matt cleared the dining table with one sweep of his arm, sending their mother’s china crashing to the floor. “Lay him on the table,” Mason ordered. “Did anyone call 9-1-1?”

  He looked on in horror as they laid his brother out on the table. Both his eyes were swollen shut. His nose was broken. Blood trickled from his mouth and other cuts on his face. His clothes were unrecognizable. Someone had beaten the life out of him.

  “Is he breathing?” his mom asked, pushing at Connor’s arms, prying at his hands to get free.

  Jonah coughed, his body contorting against the pain as his groan became more of a gurgle.

  “He’s choking on his blood. Turn him on his side.” Breezy ordered. “Jonah? Can you hear me?”

  “The ambulance is in route, but it will be at least fifteen minutes,” Daniel shouted from the doorway.

  “Get me a pair of scissors,” Breezy ordered. “Someone come around and hold up his head or get a stack of towels. We need to keep his spine as straight as possible but still keep his airway clear.”

  “I shouldn’t have moved him.” Grey’s voice trembled as he helped hold Jonah steady.

  Carson rushed around to the far end of the table and held Jonah’s head in his hands until Mason returned with a pair of scissors and a stack of towels.

  “Jonah if you can hear us, squeeze my hand with your fingers,” Breezy shouted. “That’s good.”

  His mom’s knees buckled when Jonah responded and Connor tightened his embrace, steadying Gabby on her feet. “He’s going to be okay, Mom.” He repeated the line again and again as he watched Breezy cut away what was left of Jonah’s bloody shirt.

  A collective gasp echoed around the room when his shirt fell away to reveal several boot-shaped bruises on his side. “Son of a bitch,” Connor cursed.

  Jonah said something unintelligible that turned into another choking cough.

  “You’re okay, Jonah. Don’t try to talk.” Breezy inspected his chest and then rushed to the other side of the table to look at his back.

  “I’m not a doctor, but I don’t see any stab or gunshot wounds to his chest or abdomen,” Breezy said a few moments later. “Judging by the bruising, I’d guess he has some broken bones and internal injuries. We need to monitor his breathing and pulse until the ambulance arrives.” She motioned for their mom to come over to the table and Connor let her go. “Keep talking to him, Gabby. Let him hear your voice.”

  For what seemed like an eternity they waited, their mom leaning over the table talking and trying her best not to cry. Their dads stood like stone statues around the table, each with a hand somewhere on Jonah’s broken body, shock evident in their ghostly faces as they prayed silent prayers.

  Breezy cut away as much of his pants as she could reach and unfastened his belt. By the time the ambulance arrived she’d inspected every part of him she could. Cool as a cucumber, she rattled off a bunch of medical terms to the paramedics and explained that she didn’t know what had happened.

  The family filed behind the stretcher as Jonah was wheeled outside, the paramedics already working on him. When they stepped out onto the porch, they found their grandparents huddled around Dani, who was still only wearing her bikini. As soon as she saw Jonah, she burst into sobs. Carson ran to her side and gathered her in his arms.

  “I’m going to run up to her room and get her a fresh change of clothes to take with her,” Breezy said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He nodded and watched Breezy hurry up the front steps, stunned and amazed at how calm and collected she’d been. He didn’t know what they would have done had she not been there.

  “Car, get my truck keys,” he heard Grey order. Connor turned to see him helping their mom into the ambulance; Mason was already seated inside.

  “I’ll get them,” Connor said and ran to fetch them from the table inside the front door. He jogged back to the bottom of the steps and tossed them to his dad.

  “You boys can take my truck,” Matt hollered over his shoulder as he jogged around the front of Grey’s truck. “Keys are in it.”

  “We’ll be right behind you!” Connor shouted back.

  “I want to go with you!” Dani ran after their dads, not giving a care about her bare feet or wet hair as she opened the back door and climbed in behind Matt.

  “We’ll lock up the house and meet you there,” Daniel said. “Cade and Nate will ride with me, but Hazel and Jake are going to stay at the house with Joe and Cory.”

  “Keep us updated,” Jake insisted.

  “I will,” Connor said and gave Papa Jake a hug.

  Breezy closed the front door and Connor ran to help her with the armload of clothes and shoes she was carrying. “I tried to grab something for everyone.”

  “That’s okay, baby. You did great.” He led her to Matt’s truck and helped her inside before hopping into the passenger seat beside her. Carson fired up the motor and took off down the driveway.

  “What the hell happened to him?” Carson finally asked a few miles down the road.

  “Someone beat the hell out of him,” Connor said. “Didn’t you see those bruises?”

  “Someone?” Carson raged. “It would take more than one person to bring Jonah down like that.”

  “Who found him,” Connor asked, “if everyone was down at the creek?”

  “Mason said Dani came up to the house for something and saw the horses gathered up by the front gate, making all sorts of noise,” Breezy explained. “When she went to investigate, she found Jonah lying in the gravel beside the road.”

  “Where is his truck?” Carson asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, letting out a long sigh. “I didn’t hear if they said.”

  Connor reached for her hand and was shocked to find it cold and trembling. “Aw, come here, baby.” She curled into his arms, a wave of bone-rattling shivers running through her. “I love you,” he said, kissing her temple. “And I love that I can finally say it.”

  “I hope he’s going to be okay.”

  Carson reached over and took her other hand. “He’ll be okay,” he assured her. “Thanks to you, he’ll be just fine.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The initial pandemonium that ensued in the emergency room waiting area calmed to a slow boil when everyone was moved to the surgical floor. Still recovering from the adrenaline crash that had left her shaken and cold, Breezy sat in a chair in the corner of the crowded waiting room, Connor at her side, and sipped the hot cocoa Carson had brought her earlier.

  An hour had passed since Jonah had been taken into surgery. Thankfully he showed no signs of spinal or brain injuries and his lung had only been bruised, but a CT scan revealed that one of his broken ribs had lacerated his spleen.

  Poor Jonah. How could anyone have done something so vicious to him?

  “The Sherriff is here,” Grey announced and abandoned his watch at the window. Matt quickly followed him into the hallway.

  “Go,” she heard Gabby say to Mason. “I’ll be okay.” Mason gave her dad a nod and Daniel took his seat after Mason left to join his brothers.

  “How much longer?” Dani asked, raising her head from Carson’s chest long enough to take another glance at the patient status board. Breezy looked too, but she knew it hadn’t changed in the ten minutes s
ince she last checked.

  “At least another hour.” Carson sighed, his hands rubbing comforting circles on Dani’s back. “He’ll be okay, Dani. I promise.”

  Breezy’s heart ached. Returning to the same hospital, seeing Jonah’s young body so mangled, the loss of her own brother felt as raw as ever.

  She looked over to Daniel. The way he held Gabby evoked more memories of that night, memories of his kind words and the strength of his arms holding her together as she’d cried for Ford. He’d been nothing but a familiar stranger to her then, but now she knew him as a true angel of mercy. Dani was so blessed to have him and her brothers, an entire loving family, surrounding and comforting her.

  “Hey.” Connor gave her hand a distracting squeeze. “Are you holding up?”

  “Yeah,” she sighed, her weak smile not convincing enough to dispel the worry she saw in his eyes. “A lot of memories here,” she explained.

  “Aw, baby.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him. “With all that’s happened I didn’t think—”

  “It’s okay,” she assured him. “I was just thinking how blessed you all are to have one another.”

  Connor shifted in his seat, turning to face her, grasping her hand in both of his. “Breezy, you have us, too. You’re a part of us now. You know that, right?”

  Was she? Would he still feel that way when she told them about the other things in Ford’s letter to Charlotte? The warmth in his touch said yes. She wanted more than anything to believe him.

  Another painfully slow hour ticked by. Dani had fallen asleep, her head propped at an odd angle against Carson’s shoulder, by the time their dads returned to the waiting room with the Sherriff. Carson gave her a gentle nudge and she woke with a start, her eyes blinking away sleep even as she searched the status board for information.

  “He’s in recovery,” she said, sitting upright in her chair. “Why didn’t someone wake me?”

  “We haven’t seen the doctor yet, but we should soon,” Carson assured her.

  “Dani, Sherriff Gunnar needs to ask you some questions,” Grey said, squatting down beside her chair.

  Dani ran through what she’d told them earlier, and the Sherriff took everything down in a notepad. When she told him that she’d first thought one of the media reporters had climbed the fence again, the Sherriff said he’d look into who might have been there and what, if anything, they might have seen.

  As he was talking, a voice crackled over his radio. Breezy didn’t understand all the codes at first, but whoever it was had found Jonah’s truck parked behind the agricultural arena, alongside Pryce Grunion’s.

  “He was there to help set up for the rodeo next week,” Grey confirmed. He pulled his keys from his pocket, clearly intending on going to the scene, but the Sherriff shook his head.

  “It won’t do you any good. We have to process the scene.”

  “I need to do something!” Grey said with a frustrated grumble.

  “Fucking Grunions!” Carson said. “I knew that kid was trouble.”

  “You don’t know that!” Gabby snapped. “What if Pryce is hurt, too? Has anyone heard from him?”

  “We’re working on it,” the Sherriff insisted. “Let my guys handle this, Grey. Stay with your family and wait for Jonah to come out of surgery. If there’s anything there, I promise you we’ll find it.”

  “Mr. McLendon?” All of the McLendon men turned to face the doorway. Covered head to toe in dark blue scrubs, the silver-haired man she recognized as Jonah’s surgeon began to speak. “He’s out of surgery and doing well,” he said as the family advanced on the doorway and encircled the doctor.

  Gabby let out a sigh of relief. Carson and Connor stood behind her as they listened to the doctor’s update. “I was able to save his spleen, but he will have a rough few weeks until his ribs heal. I want to keep him here for a couple of days to monitor for infection and make sure he doesn’t develop pneumonia, but overall he was very lucky.”

  “Thank you,” Gabby said, reaching out to take the doctor’s hand. “Thank you so much. When can we see him?”

  The doctor’s gaze traveled apprehensively over the numerous faces in the circle. “Well,” he nodded, “obviously we can’t let everyone in at once, but I understand the dynamics of your family. Give him another hour or so and we’ll see about getting you and your husbands back for a short visit.”

  “Call me as soon as you think he’s well enough to give us a statement,” Sherriff Gunnar instructed Grey. “I’ll let you know if we find anything of importance at the arena.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Grey shook the Sherriff’s hand, his tired eyes showing the first sign of relief in hours.

  Daniel, Cade and Nate called to update Hazel and Joe, then decided to make a trip home to retrieve a fresh change of clothes and other personal items that had been forgotten in the earlier rush and confusion. Breezy offered to go with them, but Connor and Carson were worried about the small media presence already building out in front of the hospital.

  She no longer gave a damn about the press or what they did or didn’t know about her, but the last thing she wanted to do was cause them more trouble. Throughout the evening, Connor fielded calls from their manager and the band members about everything from Jonah’s condition to their recording contract.

  The rumors had already begun to circulate that their label was dropping them. Social media was trending with every hashtag imaginable: #DoubleTrouble, #McLendonMania, #TwinSin, #IHeartRockStarCowboys

  Carson sat doubled over beside her, his head cradled in his hands, as Connor paced the hallway talking to their manager. “I’m such a screw-up,” he sighed. “I can’t believe I’ve ruined both our careers.”

  “Car, stop,” she insisted. “No, it wasn’t one of your finer moments, but we all make mistakes.”

  “I knew better,” he insisted. “I was so caught up in everything—in myself—I didn’t stop and think about how any of it affected him or our family...or you.”

  Breezy snorted. “I’m sure I was the least of your concerns.”

  Carson lifted his head and turned to look at her. “Breezy, things would be so different had I not been such a complete asshole—to you, to everyone. None of this would be happening.”

  “Exactly,” Breezy said, taking his hand into hers. “Sometimes, our greatest moments in life are a direct result of our biggest mistakes.”

  Carson squeezed her hand, the motion more reflexive than intentional. “You honestly believe that, don’t you?”

  “I believe in you,” she said, praying he could do the same for her when he knew the truth. After his outburst over Pryce’s possible involvement in Jonah’s beating, she was as nervous as ever to tell them. Please believe in me.

  Carson tugged her into his lap and captured her face between his hands. “I love you so damn much,” he said before he crushed his lips to hers.

  “Car, your parents!” she whispered against his lips. They can’t know. Not here. Not yet. Not until they knew everything.

  “I don’t care,” he said between kisses. “I want the entire world to know how amazing you are and that you’re mine.”

  “Ours,” Connor corrected. Breezy broke away from Carson to see him standing in front of them, his brow arched in a challenge.

  Behind him, Gabby gasped. Connor turned and Breezy saw her teary, happy smile. “Oh Breezy. I knew it!” She rushed over and pulled Connor into her arms, reaching for Breezy and Carson. “This is...oh gosh.” She wiped away her tears and pulled Breezy into her arms. “I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.”

  “Mrs. McLendon?” a feminine voice interrupted before Breezy could reply.

  Gabby started and turned to see a nurse in the doorway. “Yes,” she said, her three husbands gathering around her.

  “I’ll take you back to see Jonah now.”

  Grey and Mason retrieved Gabby’s things from her seat. “We’ll talk more when I get back,” she said, giving Breezy another quick hug before she
rushed to join the nurse. Grey, Matt and Mason gave her an approving smile before following Gabby and the nurse from the room.

  Breezy sank into the seat behind her. She had to tell them.

  “What’s wrong, darlin’? You look pale.”

  Breezy clutched her stomach, her nerves a riotous wreck.

  “She’s probably starving,” Connor suggested. “I know I am. I’ll run down to the cafeteria and get us something.”

  “Good idea,” Carson said before she could protest. “I’ll go with you.”

  “I’m not hungry,” she insisted. “I—”

  “Can you get me a ginger ale?” Dani piped in. Breezy had all but forgotten the girl was there. “And a slice of pizza if they have any. Wait. Never mind,” she huffed and tossed her blanket onto the chair beside her. “I’ll go with you. No telling what the two of you will end up bringing back.”

  “Good call,” Carson said with a wink. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?” he asked Breezy.

  “Yeah,” she said with a reluctant nod. “I’ll wait here for your mom.”

  Carson and Connor gave her a quick kiss before they left with Dani. Alone in the waiting room, Breezy took a deep breath, collapsing back into her chair. How was she going to do this? They had to know the truth, but the timing was horrific. She had no idea how they would react, Carson especially. Waiting any longer to tell them seemed wrong, but so did telling them now.

  She debated back and forth as she picked at the fruit bowl they brought her, but dawn approached and the room once again became crowded. Daniel and Nate returned from the ranch, their arms laden with bags of clothes and things Hazel had packed for them.

  “Where’s Uncle Cade?” Connor asked as he peeled off his shirt and pulled on a fresh one.

  “He was a dead man walking by the time we got home,” Daniel explained. “He’s grabbing a few hours sleep and will be along later with Hazel and Cody.”

  Gabby’s husbands returned and Dani was allowed to visit. Grey had received a call from Sherriff Gunnar in the meantime. His deputies were questioning Pryce at the Grunion ranch, but they hadn’t heard back about his condition or involvement, if any. She couldn’t imagine him having anything to do with something as blatantly vicious as Jonah had endured. Carson and Matt, on the other hand, seemed convinced of his involvement on some level, their disdain for the Grunions obvious in their tone.