Ray, Helena - A Bride for Two Roughnecks [Male Order, Texas] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Helena Ray

  Male Order, Texas

  A Bride for Two Roughnecks

  Alexis Darnielle is fed up with her life as a ballerina in Kansas. She travels to Male Order’s world-famous dance hall, the Twirling Lasso, to learn how to relax. Roughneck Tristan Burke is eager to help the sheltered virgin learn to lower her guard in more ways than one.

  However, there’s more to Tristan than meets the eye. He and Jeremiah Pierce, the Twirling Lasso’s handsome owner, are the heirs to the Burke Pierce Energy fortune. When Jeremiah falls for Alexis, too, she finds herself the object of two sexy oil billionaires' affections.

  But big trouble is brewing at Burke Pierce. Before Alexis can start loving Tristan and Jeremiah, the three of them need to find their way out of big oil’s biggest legal scandal. Alexis sees a way to save the day and her two men, but first she needs to overcome her past and learn to let go.

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

  Length: 39,879 words

  A BRIDE FOR TWO ROUGHNECKS

  Male Order, Texas

  Helena Ray

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  A BRIDE FOR TWO ROUGHNECKS

  Copyright © 2011 by Helena Ray

  E-book ISBN: 1-61034-596-7

  First E-book Publication: June 2011

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2011 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 A Bride for Two Roughnecks by Helena Ray 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 Helena Ray’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Ray’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  To Sarah, for sticking with me through the worst and two-steppin’ with me through the best.

  A BRIDE FOR TWO ROUGHNECKS

  Male Order, Texas

  HELENA RAY

  Copyright © 2011

  Prologue

  I fell. I fell on stage. I fell while dancing Juliet.

  Alexis Darnielle relived the night’s performance over and over again as she headed toward the stage door of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. All her life, she had waited for the moment when she could dance in front of thousands of people and share her passion. And to do it while dancing the lead in Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, her favorite ballet by far…It made every tear, every bead of sweat, and every droplet of blood drawn in breaking in a new pair of pointe shoes worth it.

  She pushed through the stage door, a tattered pair of those damned shoes clutched in her fist. Instantly, the crowd reacted. The gasps, whispers, and high-pitched complaints of tiny ballerinas still optimistic about the world were deafening. Alexis kept her head down and watched a pair of military boots fall into line next to her dainty flats.

  A few days ago, the crowd’s reaction had been joyous, and she’d been overjoyed to receive them. She’d smiled and gracefully accepted all their praise. She’d signed old shoes and programs, telling each little hopeful girl that her dream would come true, too, someday.

  How wrong she’d been.

  “Alexis, this way.” Her bodyguard took her by the upper arm and guided her toward the black town car awaiting her. She blinked the tears out of her eyes as she scurried past the row of bystanders that she knew had come to gawk at the fallen prima ballerina.

  Well, she would make sure their glimpse was brief. The bodyguard opened the door to the town car, and she dove in. They pulled away from the crowd in silence, and Alexis rested her forehead against the window as she watched the lights of downtown Kansas City flicker by.

  “Rough performance tonight, huh?”

  Alexis shook her head against the glass and didn’t bother to turn to Clint, her driver.

  “You saw it?”

  “Uh…” He paused, and Alexis’s gut twisted a bit more. He had heard about it. Already. “I’m sorry, Miss Alexis. Everyone waits outside the Kauffman Center and—”

  “No need to apologize, Clint. They were right.”

  God, she never would have given the performance of that night only a few weeks earlier. Before her stalker. Before the attack. Before the paranoia and the police reports and the arrests. Not that any of it mattered now. Her understudy would dance for the rest of the ballet’s run. Receiving that news had twisted like the knife she pretended to stab herself with night after night in the ballet, but she understood her artistic director’s reasoning. Since the attack, she hadn’t been the same dancer he’d hired as a principal in the Kansas City Ballet, and she hadn’t been worthy of Juliet.

  Watching the town fly by, Alexis wondered what exactly she had achieved in her life, aside from dancing. An objective inventory of her life produced fairly dismal results. She was twenty-five years old and lived by herself. She had friends in the ballet, yes, but she was fairly certain they weren’t like the friends most girls had. It was such a competitive environment, and each always had a dagger handy should one of the girls slip and turn her back.

  And her love life…What love life? She had devoted every waking moment to dance for as long as she could remember. And while the occasion
al heterosexual male wandered through the doors of Kansas’s ballet studios, eligible bachelors were few and far between. Alexis knew that she was in her sexual prime, and it irked her to no end that she had not yet burst into the world of carnal exploration. In short, as much as it intimidated her, she was damn ready not to be a virgin anymore.

  An idea began to form in Alexis’s head as Clint pulled to a halt outside her apartment. She and her college “friends” had planned a road trip to California to audition for the Los Angeles Ballet that wove through famous dance locations in the Midwest and Southwest. They had, of course, gone on the trip without her as soon as she was cast as a principal at the Kansas City Ballet, but she still had the scribbled-on road maps stashed in the glove compartment of her Jeep.

  Clearly, her life in Kansas City wasn’t working. Maybe it was time to shove a few dresses and leotards into a bag and head out. Maybe it was time to start a new life and shed her image as the sheltered, helpless ballerina.

  Maybe it was time to become a woman.

  Chapter 1

  Dusk had just settled on the outskirts of Male Order, Texas when Alexis steered her beat-up Jeep off the farm-to-market road and down a small dirt road. Signs on the highway promised this would take her to the Twirling Lasso, an establishment claiming to be “Home of the Finest Country Dancing in the World.” After too many hours on the road, Alexis was itching to partake in some of that dancing herself.

  She parked in the dirt lot surrounding the building. For an establishment of so much notoriety, it was certainly unimpressive. The whole thing comprised of a rickety building with rusting aluminum siding, a neon sign with a cowboy and a flashing lasso, and an old bus out front rustier than the building itself.

  Just when Alexis was about to give up on this stop on her road trip, the sound of a live band playing country music seeped out of the cracks in the building, calling to her. Ever a country girl, the sound of a banjo and a pedal steel always had her running to the source. She surveyed the parking lot. Nothing looked too shady here, so she could leave her luggage in the car, right? She spared a glance to her belongings and laughed inwardly at her uneasiness. As if anyone would want to steal her two bags packed with nothing but clothing and dance shoes.

  She stretched one denim-clad leg out of her Jeep, then hauled the rest of her tall stature to the ground. Her height was always a concern when dancing with a partner. Being five foot eight wiped out a good portion of the male population as partners, and the rest fled, preferring to dance with a more diminutive woman.

  Alexis determined not to dwell on the predicament and focused on knotting her long blonde hair in a ponytail before she entered the dance hall. It was so nice to dance without her hair plastered back in a perfect ballerina bun. Hell, it was blissful just dancing without constantly thinking about her technique, her turn-out, her extension… She shook her head free of those thoughts and bounced toward the entrance.

  As she approached, a man and a woman burst through the poster-covered wooden door, laughing and hooting, already a little drunk even at the early hour.

  “Well, hello there, little lady,” the man said, turning his sight on Alexis.

  “Hey, darlin’! My, my, aren’t you cute?” His female companion joined in greeting her.

  “Um, hi.” She shifted from foot to foot, uncertain what to do in the face of such exuberance.

  “You’re new ’round these parts, ain’t ya?” The man took off his black cowboy hat and took a little bow in front of Alexis. He was handsome in a dignified sort of way, with black hair peppered with silver. He stood a few inches above Alexis and his female companion. She was tall, with dyed brown hair in a braid that fell to the middle of her back.

  “Well, I’m just on a trip across—”

  “Ooh, we got us a tourist!” The woman clapped her hands and jumped a little. “Welcome to The Twirling Lasso, hon. I’m Janet Willis, and this here’s Winston Fairchild.” She indicated the man next to her, and he tossed one arm around Janet and extended the other toward Alexis.

  “Alexis Darnielle.” She tentatively took the hand offered to her and shook it. All of this was a little much for her. After all, she had promised herself not to develop any attachments on this trip.

  “Well, Alexis, you pretty thing, come on in.” Janet turned and walked through the door, pulling Winston along with her. “You don’t mind going back in, honey?”

  Winston sighed and followed Janet. “Whatever you say, darling.”

  Alexis looked around at the suddenly empty entrance and decided to follow them through the door.

  “ID, please.” A man in a cowboy hat sat perched over an old cash register with a beer in hand. Alexis handed him her driver’s license, and his eyes widened. “Well, I’ll be. Kansas!” He stood up and leaned over the register, calling out to someone behind Alexis. “We got us an out-of-towner, Max!”

  She turned around to see an opening carved in one wall with a precariously balanced wooden beam serving as a bar. A mustachioed bartender waved in her direction. “Out-of-towners get a free beer!”

  The band started back up, drawing Alexis’s attention to the dance floor. It was a wide concrete dance floor, and as the band played on, more and more men and women crowded the floor to dance the Texas two-step to an upbeat country number. After paying her cover, Alexis headed toward the tables covered in red-checkered tablecloths jammed in the corners of the dance floor. Even though the evening had cooled, the low ceiling trapped all the humidity coming off the dancers and raised the temperature throughout the hall.

  Janet waved, and Alexis joined her and Winston at a table. The music blared at such a volume it made conversation nearly impossible, so she focused her attention on the dancers gliding across the floor. Their movements appeared effortless, no attention to the arch of their feet in the cowboy boots, no obsessive spotting of their turns, just people dancing and having a good time. She sighed and placed her chin on her hands, wishing that for herself.

  “Well, aren’t you a wistful little one.” Janet interrupted her thoughts. “They really weren’t kidding about that ‘Finest Country Dancing’ thing.” Her smile was proud.

  “But those of us not blessed with such ability are just fine, as well,” Winston said from across the table. “Before meeting this one, I was all left feet.” He gestured at Janet, and she slapped him on the back.

  “And don’t you forget it!”

  Winston laughed and gave Janet a quick kiss.

  “You fancy man with your fancy car and your fancy house,” Janet teased, although Alexis didn’t quite understand.

  The band started back up with a mid-tempo number laden with pedal steel. She watched as dancers once more crowded the floor. Looking around the bar, she noticed more men searching for partners than women. And from the looks of the men, that didn’t bother her at all. She noted the work-toned arms as men led their partners out onto the floor, and their tight, boot-cut jeans showed off several perfectly formed asses. These were real mean, unlike those Alexis knew back home. She felt herself flush just looking at them, but clamped down on any arousal. She couldn’t let herself go there, not yet.

  A hand landed on Alexis’s shoulder, and she turned around to see the finest specimen of rugged attractiveness she had ever seen. He wasn’t terribly tall, but he made up for it in the muscular mass of his arms and chest. A sweep of dark blond hair shaded disarmingly bright blue eyes. His features were perfectly chiseled with a strong jawline and a small cleft in his chin. Just looking at him, Alexis couldn’t breathe.

  “Would you like to dance?” Oh, god. His voice was a slow Texas drawl that made Alexis feel like honey was running through her veins.

  She cleared her throat and dared to look directly into that startling gaze. “I’ve never two-stepped before…” She paused and looked at Janet and Winston, who nodded their encouragement. “But there’s a first time for everything, right?”

  “Yes, indeed. There is.” Something darker in his tone made her pussy zing to li
fe, wanting a certain first time to happen, and soon.

  She accepted his extended hand, and he led her to the center of the dance floor. He arranged her body in a dance hold, and Alexis noticed that he was the perfect height to partner her.

  “Okay, do you know the basic step?” he asked, settling one hand on the small of her back. Something inside of Alexis cried out for him to move his hand lower. Again, she tried to silence that base voice.

  “Kind of. Slow, slow, quick, quick?”

  He laughed at her description and began the dance. She struggled to force her feet to comply with the rhythm and found herself dancing on her toes, even though that was entirely unnecessary.

  “Whoa, just relax there.” He slowed their dance. “You just gotta feel it. Stop worrying about your feet.”

  “I’m a ballerina. My feet are my life.”

  A smile spread across the man’s face. “Well, well. A ballerina.” He stopped dancing and held her at arm’s length. “I’m becoming quite the fan of the ballet.”

  She felt her entire body erupt in a blush at his latent admiration of her assets, such as they were. She had always thought of herself as quite plain-looking, but clearly this cowboy thought different.

  He brought her back to his body and resumed the dance. “I’m Tristan,” he offered, giving her a sly smile that revealed a set of perfectly white teeth.

  “Alexis.” Her face burned with the power of her blush. Just being around him made her heart beat faster and sent a jolt straight between her legs. Never had a man affected her this way. She didn’t feel like the inept virgin around him. Instead, she became a creature of need, dominated by carnal desires she never knew she had.