The Billionaire Cowgirl’s Christmas, A #Romance #NewRelease from Kris Bock

I’m thrilled to welcome Kris Bock back to the blog this week with her new book, The Billionaire Cowgirl’s Christmas, book 5 of The Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series .

Playing the lottery was just for fun, but with the one-billion-dollar win, life gets complicated.

The Billionaire Cowgirl’s Christmas

It’s been nearly a year since widowed Texas rancher Ava Tomlinson won the lottery. And while her four adult sons have found love, Ava feels unsettled as the holidays approach. She’s adjusting to giving her sons more privacy and lonely due to a rift in her once tight circle of friends. Romance is the last thing on her mind when a handsome, younger survey geologist arrives on the ranch to work through the holidays. Their friendship is unexpected and delightful, but she won’t risk a broken heart by starting a romance with a traveling man – even if she could trust he’s not a gold digger.

 

North Rabe’s career keeps him on the road. His plans of working through Christmas are derailed when Ava includes him in family dinners and holiday events in Last Stand. For the first time, he has a glimpse of a family life long missing. Ava is sweet, smart, generous and hard-working, and he’s quickly smitten. Is it finally time to put down roots? And if so, how can he prove he wants Ava’s heart, not her money?

Background on The Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series

Who wouldn’t want to be a billionaire? Turns out winning the lottery causes as many problems as it solves.

In the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys sweet romance series, a Texas ranching family struggles to maintain their privacy and work ethic after an enormous lottery win. Can they build new dreams and find love amidst the chaos?

Find the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series at Tule Publishing, Amazon US, Amazon UK, B&N/Nook,  Apple, and Kobo. Available in ebook or paperback.

Which comes first for you – characters or plot?

It depends! For this series, I noticed lots of billionaires, lots of cowboys, and a few billionaire cowboys in the romance bestseller lists. How does a cowboy become a billionaire? I came up with a family of four brothers (the heroes of the first four books). Their mother plays the lottery, not expecting to win, but simply so she can spend an hour dreaming about being rich. And then she wins. The characters came out of that premise, and the individual plots came from the characters’ goals. I was delighted that the publisher wanted to include Ava’s story in the series, since we don’t see too many romance novel starring in almost 60-year-old woman.

Seeing the growing trend of cat cafés– where people could hang out with adoptable cats in a café setting – inspired the Furrever Friends cat cafe sweet romance series. The characters are the people who work at the café or visit it regularly (plus plenty of cats).

For The Accidental Detective humorous mystery series, I started with a character who is trying to reinvent her life as she turns 50. She spent 30 years as a war correspondent, so she’s pretty fearless, but that doesn’t always help her with the challenges of aging. She’s dealing with elderly parents who have health problems, a resentful sister, her own lack of retirement planning, and a body that doesn’t recover as quickly as it used to. These challenges provide humor as she narrates her attempts to solve local mysteries and build a new life.

For some of my other novels, plot came first. My romantic mystery, What We Found, was inspired by finding the body of a murder victim while hiking in the woods. True story! (Learn more here.)

In my treasure hunting adventure Desert Gold the heroine and her best friend hunt for the lost Victorio Peak treasure, a real Southwest legend. I drew on personal experiences hiking in the desert for Erin and Camie’s adventures – though fortunately I’ve never stumbled on a rattlesnake nest or gotten caught in a flash flood!

The Felony Melanie: Sweet Home Alabama romantic comedy novels started when my brother, the movie scriptwriter, realized he had novelization rights. He had the idea of writing prequel novels about the characters as teenagers. We drew on references from the movie referring to “Felony Melanie” and some of their high school shenanigans. From the movie, we know that Melanie did beauty pageants and Jake played football. We built one book around another around high school football. Readers have enjoyed seeing these familiar characters as rowdy teenagers!

The Felony Melanie series follows the crazy antics of Melanie, Jake, and their friends a decade before the events of the movie. Sign up for the romantic comedy newsletter to get a short story preview, or find the books at Amazon US or All E-book retailers.

In short (too late), you never know what will inspire a novel.

An Excerpt from Kris Bock’s The Billionaire Cowgirl’s Christmas

Ava settled back on the sofa with her sweet tea and smiled at the friends she had known for decades. Their group of five had supported each other through divorces and the deaths of husbands, worries about children and grandchildren, droughts, illnesses, injuries, and more. Only one thing had almost destroyed the friendships: Ava had won a billion-dollar lottery. Apparently it was easier to commiserate in times of trouble than resist envy over good fortune. But they’d worked through that, and the group was strong again. It had been a hectic year, but as Texas Hill Country shifted into autumn at the start of November, it was nice to relax with friends over tea and knitting.

“Did you hear about the new gentleman in town?” Teresa was the youngest of the group at fifty-six and kept her hair a startling shade of red.

“Oh, do tell,” Glenda said. “And by gentleman, do you mean someone our age?”

“Well, give or take a year.” Teresa glanced up from the purple scarf she was knitting. “Maybe a decade for some of you. But he’s definitely a silver fox.”

“A what?” Rhonda snorted.

“You know,” Teresa said, “a man with white or gray hair who’s handsome.”

Glenda patted her perm, which was as blond as it had been thirty years ago, thanks to regular trips to the hairdresser. “I don’t know why men get to be handsome when they go gray and get wrinkles, and we don’t.”

“Who says we don’t?” Ava set down her tea and picked up her knitting. “I stopped dying my hair ten years ago, and Rhonda never started.” Granted, she’d stopped when her husband died, because it didn’t seem worth the effort. But gray hair was in, according to the younger generation.

Glenda looked from Ava to Rhonda, pursing her lips. “Mm. But you know some people will say you look old.”

“We are old!” Ava said. “I’m turning sixty in a couple of months.”

The years had flown by. It was hard to believe her four sons were grown men, getting married and thinking about families of their own. It was even harder to believe her husband had died ten years earlier. He’d worked hard his whole life and had a heart attack at fifty-two, when their youngest was only seventeen.

Rhonda shook her head, her steel-gray hair held stiffly in place with hairspray. “That’s not old. Sixty is the new forty or something.” Rhonda was several years older than Ava, which might have influenced her opinion.

“I don’t mind turning sixty,” Ava said, “but I wish I still felt forty. I used to roll out of bed and head right out for chores. Now with my arthritic hips, I hobble around until the anti-inflammatories kick in.”

“As I’ve said, you need to start doing yoga.” Teresa was sitting cross-legged on the couch, the showoff.

“I am!” Ava said. “With a video. I don’t want to go to a class.” Last Stand had generally settled down after the excitement over the lottery win, but Ava was still careful about where she went in public, especially on a schedule, like a regular class. Plenty of people wanted a chunk of the Tomlinson fortune and weren’t afraid to interrupt a class, a restaurant lunch, or even church to ask for it.

“Aaanyway.” Glenda drew out the word. “New gentleman in town! I can’t believe you’re more interested in yoga and bad knees than that.”

“I can’t believe you’re panting over a new gentleman,” Barbara said. “It’s not like any of us would hook him. Well, maybe Ava, but that’s different.”

Ava focused on her knitting and ignored the comment. It wasn’t a compliment, since clearly Barbara meant Ava might hook a man with her money, not her personality or looks. Granted, the fortune was probably the most enticing thing about her.

Sometimes Ava tried to imagine how Kirk would have handled the lottery win. Would they have given the ranch to Josh and traveled the world? Moved into an expensive retirement community with a golf course, pool, and tennis courts? Joined a country club?

Probably not. More likely they would have bought land for the boys, and Kirk would have kept running the original ranch. The money meant they didn’t have to work, but none of them knew what to do with themselves if they didn’t have big projects.

The other women were still waiting for her reaction to Barbara’s statement. They had remained friends this long precisely because Ava was willing to ignore that kind of comment. “I’m not looking for a gentleman friend.”

“Heavens, I gave up looking long ago. But that doesn’t mean I won’t look.” Rhonda waved a hand. “You know what I mean. I can look without wanting to share my home with a man again.”

“That’s the only way to go about it.” Barbara’s divorce had been brutal.

“Be honest,” Glenda said. “Don’t you ever wish you could have another romance?” When no one immediately answered, she added, “Ava?”

Ava sighed. “Sure, sometimes. I do miss having a husband. It isn’t even about the sex.”

“Yes, it is!” Teresa said. That started a wave of laughter.

“Well, I’m not saying I’d turn it down,” Ava said, “but it’s not just about sex. Besides, imagine being naked in front of somebody for the first time now. It’s one thing when you can say, ‘I bore your children with this body. Of course it doesn’t look like it did when we met.’ And he’s seen you change over the years. But with someone new?”

Glenda ran a hand down her side and frowned. At a glance, it appeared Glenda had the trimmest waist of any of them, but that owed as much to sturdy foundation garments as it did to her exercise regimen. “Surely a man our age wouldn’t expect a woman to have the body of a thirty-year-old,” she said.

Rhonda scoffed. “Most single men our age seem to think they deserve an actual thirty-year-old.”

Ava nodded sadly. She’d had a few chances to date over the years since her husband’s death. At first, she wasn’t ready. When she managed to look up from her grief and glance around, the pickings were slim. She’d gone on a few dates with a man from church, but they hadn’t had a spark. A widowed farmer with teenage children showed some interest, but he seemed to want a laborer, for farm work and child rearing, more than a lover.

Should she tell them about the cute geologist? Her youngest son, Xander, had hired the man to survey the ranch land and determine the best place for windmills. Something about his picture had interested Ava. Enough that she’d done a little research—nothing creepy, just a basic internet search—and found out North Rabe was divorced and at least in his fifties. If she mentioned the man to her friends, they’d want to see the photo. Would they think he was cute too? Ava had kind of odd taste sometimes.

And of course he knew her family was rich, since Xander was hiring him. Mr. Rabe might have done a detailed financial check of the Tomlinsons, which would be fair if he was going to accept their contract work. Or maybe he’d simply heard about the family’s fortune, as most of the state had. Either way, no doubt he was perfectly aware of who she was and how much money she had. Or at least how much they had in theory. They’d put most of the money into the family fund, in order to keep people from asking any of them individually for charitable donations, loans, or whatever. But Ava was on the family fund board and active in determining who got the money, so even if it wasn’t literally hers, she got pestered by people who wanted a chunk of it.

Anyway, it wasn’t like she was interested in him romantically, or at least like she expected anything to come of it. It was only that with most of her boys moving out, she got lonely sometimes. She didn’t need a man though. She had her friends, she could visit her sons whenever she wanted, and now she’d even have Daisy’s baby to cuddle and spoil.

But once in a while, she still wanted someone of her own. She missed crawling into bed next to Kirk, waking up and hearing his snores—not something she’d ever expected to miss, but the bedroom seemed too quiet without it, even now so many years after her husband’s death. She didn’t want to complain. She’d never been a complainer, and she certainly couldn’t start now that she had more money than she knew what to do with. Being rich meant no one sympathized with you about anything, even if money didn’t buy love.

What Kris Bock’s Readers are Saying…

Praise for the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series:

“I had fun here, this is one of those unexpected windfall stories that was handled very realistically, but also with a good bit of laughter, confusion, family, and a town that just wants to celebrate one of their own making it big.”

– Happily Ever After Romance

“I really enjoy this series. It is well written and the characters are very likable.”

– GoodReads review

“I love returning to this little Texas town and the Tomlinson family. It’s like reconnecting with old friends. This is such a fun book series.”

– BookBub review

After an attack left Hallie Armstrong with a brain injury, she moved from Houston to Last Stand to recover and help her aunt with her wild animal rescue, where they helped wolves, mountain lions and bears, just to name a few.

TC Tomlinson’s family won big on the lottery and now he is living his dream of raising bison, ostrich and llamas on his ranch. He wasn’t quite sure what to think of Hallie when they first met. At first, he thought she was trying to steal on of his baby ostriches that had escaped. Could it all be an act and she was just after him because he was rich? TC started to fall for Hallie after getting to know her better, but he wasn’t sure how to go about making a move as he was trying to protect her after the incident in Houston left her weary of men. With a little compassion and patience from TC, him and Hallie finally get their happily ever after.

I really enjoyed this book and can’t wait for the next installment in the series.

– Miss_Kiki (Charming the Billionaire Cowboy Book 2 in The Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series)

The Billionaire Cowboys Proposition by Kris Bock is Cody’s story. He is the youngest of the Tomlinson brothers. Also, he is the one foundering the most with his self-identity and self-worth. Being the third in the Accidental Billionaire series, there is not much of the backstory concerning the mother winning the lottery ticket. It is not actually needed to enjoy this story.

Since Cody has returned home, he is still looking for his life plan that was derailed over ten years ago because of an accident. Winning the lottery did not suddenly give that to him. I found it quite interesting seeing the perspective of how much life changes and the problems involved in winning such a huge sum of money could be.

This is actually a second chance romance with a strong female lead, Mallory Moore who is not interested in his money. Yeah, for her. She is what Cody needs since she asks the hard questions, leading him to reflect, replan and get on with his life.

All of these books have been marvelous, but The Billionaire Cowboys Proposition has something just a little extra. My favorite book of my favorite series by Kris Bock. I would give it more than five stars if I could.

– pw reader (The Billionaire Cowboy’s Proposition, Book 3 of The Accidental Cowboys series)

Meet the Incredible Kris Bock

Kris Bock writes novels of romance, mystery, and suspense. Her Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café. In the Accidental Detective humorous mystery series, a witty journalist solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty.

 

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Where you can find Kris

Kris Bock at Tule Publishing

Website

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Amazon US page or Amazon UK page