I’m beyond excited to welcome Kris Bock back to the blog this week with her new book, The Billionaire Cowboy’s Proposition. You already know I am a big fan. I know you will love this enticing sneak peak into the mind of Kris and her Billionaire Cowboy’s romance series.
The Billionaire Cowboy Series Background
I was looking at the most popular romance novels and saw lots of cowboys and lots of billionaires, with a few billionaire cowboys. Wait, how would a cowboy or even a ranch owner become a billionaire? In most billionaire romance novels, the guy got rich developing an app, but I doubt many cowboys have the free time to run a billion-dollar business.
But what if they won a lottery?
Who wouldn’t want to be a billionaire? Turns out winning the lottery causes as many problems as it solves.
When a Texas ranching family wins a billion-dollar lottery, they’re overwhelmed. The standard advice is to go into hiding, but how can they when they have animals needing care? They’ll have to stay and fend off envious friends, scammers, and fortune hunters. Can they build new dreams and find love amidst the chaos?
The Billionaire Cowboy’s Proposition, Book 3 in the series
She’s ready to put on the performance of a lifetime.
Cody Tomlinson and Mallory Moore have struck sparks off each other since high school theater, where she was sunny and talented while he was injured and angry. A decade later, Mallory is working to save Last Stand’s movie theater and convert it into a performance space for live theater and music. Thanks to his family’s lottery win, Cody has plenty of money to help. But Mallory’s the only woman in town who doesn’t want Cody’s charity.
It’s bad enough that Cody is sexy as sin with his tough, scarred cowboy looks. Now he’s rich and Mallory refuses to be another woman fighting for his attention. She won’t accept a financial gift for her business, but she’s not above a fair trade. Mallory offers a deal: Cody can invest in the theater if he volunteers on the renovation. Meanwhile, she’ll play the part of his fiancée to ward off fortune hunters.
But Mallory immediately realizes her mistake. Cody’s always driven her crazy, and now they’re spending all their days—and nights—together.
An Excerpt from Kris Bock’s The Billionaire Cowboy’s Proposition
Cody paused to look across the street at the old movie theater. When movie distributors stopped making films on actual film, hundreds of small-town theaters had closed because they couldn’t afford the new digital projectors. Last Stand’s theater was one of the victims. Under normal circumstances, Cody might vaguely think Someone should preserve that cool old building and then go about his business.
Someone was already trying to do just that. Mallory Moore. Her name ran through his mind like a song chorus. Cody’s history with Mallory was complicated and included one of his best memories alongside several of his worst. Mallory was in there, which made him want to find her and also made him want to walk past quickly.
A flurry of movement and voices from down the street caught his attention as a group of women headed their way. Cody recognized most of them from high school. One raised her arm high and waved. “Cody!”
Great. He didn’t look at the women. He’d gotten good at pretending he didn’t see people or hear his name called. His mama would scold him for being disrespectful, but really, when you couldn’t even stop in the diner for a cup of coffee without being mobbed, you had to learn to ignore people.
He walked across the empty street, or maybe scurried or fled were better words. He’d check in on the work party, see how the renovations were going. Merely to avoid the other woman, of course. Not because he wanted to see Mallory. He had things he ought to say to her, but he couldn’t say them in front of her students.
He pushed open the theater door. Music, voices, and occasional banging announced people at work farther into the theater. He ducked into the short hall and stepped out into the main theater, a large room by small town standards, the ceiling soaring high above seating for about two hundred.
Mallory stood center stage, talking to a skinny kid in a denim jacket. Dust swirled around them in the blue-tinged beams of the stage lights, giving the scene an otherworldly effect.
Cody blinked. Memories flooded his mind, overlaying the current scene. He’d spent so much time in theater his senior year. He hadn’t been a theater kid before that. He’d been rodeo all the way. Riding bulls and bucking broncos gave him the adrenaline rush he craved as he waited to get old enough to join the military and become a fighter pilot. The kids interested in acting and stage crew practically spoke a different language and called themselves theater geeks, which was reason enough to avoid them.
Then his accident had disrupted those dreams. He’d crashed his daddy’s truck, so he didn’t even have the cool factor of a rodeo injury. He’d spent weeks in the hospital and had a long recovery. He’d been bitter about his ruined dreams, resentful of the therapy he needed, and angry at everyone. Looking back, he could see how his bad attitude had frustrated his physical therapist. She’d finally suggested theater as a form of physical and speech therapy. He’d agreed, because it had to be better than tedious sessions at the hospital, repeating the same exercises dozens of times.
With theater, he’d entered another world, one more fascinating than he’d ever expected, but still not his. That year almost felt like an entirely different life.
Back then, Mallory had been a quiet, anxious girl who crept around the school hardly saying a word. But in the theater, she blossomed. She slipped into roles as easily as someone else tried on clothes. She went from mousy to fierce or tragic or sultry, and that one time, after she’d been so flirty and friendly as they performed The Importance of Being Earnest . . .
He shook his head. Those years were long gone, and he shouldn’t go there again, even in his mind.
Women’s voices came from the foyer behind them. How did celebrities handle fans? Cody didn’t flatter himself that the attention was about him. It was about the billion-dollar lottery the family had won. Still, the result was the same: no privacy and everyone wanting a piece of you.
He gave a grunt of annoyance and strode down the aisle toward the stage. They were halfway there when Mallory glanced their way. Her posture went from loose and expressive to stiff.
Cody lifted a hand in a casual wave and tried to smile. “Hey.” He raised his voice to carry over the murmurs of the women behind them. “Heard about the work party. Need more help?”
Mallory crossed her arms. “You’re here to work?”
“Yeah, definitely.” He stopped at the stage, looking up at her. He’d seen her now and then on his visits back home, but he still thought of her as the girl he knew in high school. Her face was thinner without the softness of adolescence, but her expression had changed most of all. Instead of eyes wide with apprehension and vulnerability, her narrowed gaze and the twist of her lips suggested she could handle a classroom full of rowdy teenagers with a look, and chew and spit out a couple of Tomlinson brothers in her spare time.
What Kris Bock’s Readers are Saying…
Reviewer Praise for book 1, The Billionaire Cowboy’s Christmas:
“What a wonderful book! I loved every word of this book and highly recommend it.”
“I really enjoyed this book and can’t wait to see where these characters go next.”
“I highly recommend this book. Kris has a winning series here.”
Reviewer Praise for The Billionaire Cowboy’s Proposition:
“It was so much fun to read.”
“This whole series has been fun, but this story really made me think.”
“The storyline pulled me in from the beginning. The character development was perfect for storyline and I loved the added animals to the story. Heartwarming. I look forward to reading more by author.”
The series will have five books, all published by the end of this year. The Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series is available at all retailers.
Catching Up With Kris Bock
Kris Bock writes novels of romance, mystery, and suspense. Kris’s Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café. Visit the Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series page on Amazon US or Amazon UK.
In the Accidental Detective series, a witty journalist solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty. This humorous series starts with Something Shady at Sunshine Haven.
Learn more about Kris and her books at the Kris Bock website. Get a free cat café novella, mystery stories, and more when you sign up for the Kris Bock newsletter.
Kris also writes a series with her brother, who wrote the movie Sweet Home Alabama. 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 their Rom-Com newsletter and get Felony Melanie Destroys the Moonshiner’s Cabin. These first two chapters from the novel Felony Melanie in Pageant Pandemonium stand alone as a short story.
[…] the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys Book 2 – Charming the Billionaire Cowboy as well as Book 3 – The Billionaire Cowboy’s Proposition. […]