Spotlight & Giveaway: The Billionaire Cowgirl’s Christmas by Kris Bock

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Kris Bock to HJ!

Hi Kris and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Billionaire Cowgirl’s Christmas!

To start off, can you please tell us a little bit about this book?:

Ava Tomlinson started playing the lottery just “for dreams” – for a few hours she could imagine what it would be like to be rich. The fantasies were fun, but when she actually won a billion dollars, the reality was more complicated.

Books 1-4 feature her four sons as they start pairing up and planning families of their own. Ava doesn’t want to grow old alone, but she’s skeptical of men who claim they want a 59-year-old woman for herself and not her fortune. She has friends and work managing the family charitable fund, but love seems out of reach.

Survey geologist North Rabe came to the Tomlinson family ranch on a one-month contract. He has no time for a useless rich woman. Over time he realizes Ava is actually sweet, funny, and as hard-working as they come. She almost makes him want to give up his traveling ways. But he has to overcome the bad first impressions he made.

Ava and North find a lot to like in each other, but she’s a woman with deep roots in her community and he’s a man who loves the road.
 

Please share your favorite lines or quote(s) from this book:

“It’s just I’m turning sixty soon, and I don’t feel sixty.” Her face heated, but she wanted to get that out there in case he had any incorrect notions about her age.
“How old do you feel?” North asked.
She pondered the question as she watched the milk swirl in the pot, turning darker as the chocolate melted. Life had rushed by, decades gone in a blink. Inside she still felt like a young woman, even if the outside didn’t match.
“Twenty-seven?” she said. “Except at twenty-seven I had young children and I was frazzled and sleep deprived all the time. Eighteen? But I was completely different then, full of hope and nerves and dreams of starting a family. When I was fifty my husband died, and that was the worst year of my life.” She gave a reluctant laugh. “Maybe I do feel sixty, because maybe this is how sixty feels.”
“I guess all of those ages are still inside you.”

What inspired this book?

I noticed lots of cowboy books and lots of billionaires among the romance bestsellers, with a few cowboy billionaires. How could a cowboy find the free time to run a billion-dollar business? That got me thinking about how a ranching family might wind up that rich – by winning the lottery. But sudden fortune brings many challenges, such as envious friends, scammers and gold diggers, and getting mobbed in public.

How did you ‘get to know’ your main characters? Did they ever surprise you?

Since this is book 5 in the series, I’ve had four books to get to know Ava. I also did an exercise on characters at a writing retreat. It asked about strengths and weaknesses. I realized Ava’s strength is that she’s cheerful, and her weakness is the same thing. She’s used to putting everyone else first and doesn’t let other people see when she’s hurting. That helped me understand her character growth in the story, and I enjoyed showing her from her perspective, which is different from her sons’ views of her.

What was your favorite scene to write?

Ava and North are playful with each other, which leads to some fun banter, as in this snippet from their Thanksgiving meal at the ranch:

North managed to find a spot on the couch next to Ava. “Thanks for including me,” he said.
“Oh, did someone invite you?” She smiled. “I assumed you snuck in when no one was looking.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to keep out riffraff at an event like this.”
“Good thing we like riffraff.”
“TC might change his mind when he overhears the plans for llama racing. How much weight do you think a llama can carry anyway?”
“Oh that sounds like a bad idea. For the riders, that is. Those llamas can be ornery.”
“I’m pretty sure they were joking, but around here I’m never quite sure what will happen next.”
Someone asked Ava a question, and North got drawn into a different conversation. People got up to get seconds and shifted to different places. Before he quite realized it, a couple of hours had passed. An occasional group roar from the “media room” said the sports fans were staying entertained in front of the big TV. Shouts and laughter from outside suggested people were enjoying the corn hole and ax throwing. Musicians were tuning up on the porch.
It was nice. No one treated him as an outsider. No one suggested he was after the Tomlinson fortune.
He was rummaging through the drinks cooler when movement at the corner of his vision told him Ava was near again. Funny how he recognized her so easily already, from a denim clad hip or the way she gestured with her hands. He stepped up next to her.
She turned and almost crashed into him. “Oh! Sorry.”
“My fault,” he said. ”Anyway, I’ve been meaning to apologize.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “For what?”
“I don’t know, but there’s usually something. An apology a day keeps the anger away?”
She nudged him. “You’re not that bad.”
“Careful. Flattery like that goes right to my head.”
Her smile flashed, the real one that showed amusement and happiness instead of the polite smile she so often had around people outside her family. “Have you had dessert yet? Three kinds of pie and a sopapilla cheesecake!”
North groaned. “I’ll have to wait on that. I was thinking about strolling out to see the wild critters and let the meal settle.”
“Wild critters? All the people and dogs are probably keeping the wildlife away. Do you mean the llamas and ostriches? They’re not exactly wild.”
“I meant the folks playing corn hole and throwing axes. But the domestic animals might be more interesting. Care for a moonlit stroll out to the ostrich barn?”

What was the most difficult scene to write?

This series has allowed me to explore dreams by asking, What would you do if you had the money to do anything? But there are definitely things money can’t buy, and Ava’s story is a reminder of that and of the difficulty of starting over later in life:

He was watching her, and he slowly smiled, lazy and comfortable standing in her kitchen. “If I’m going to be here for Christmas, there’s a very important question.”
“Oh?” She sounded breathless. She cleared her throat and paused her ladling so she wouldn’t spill anything. “What’s that?”
“What do you want for Christmas?”
She laughed, some of the tension draining away. “You’re asking the woman who has everything, or at least far more than I need or ever imagined I could have. We struggled with that last year, the boys and I. We all have enough money to get ourselves whatever we want, so what do you do for a gift? It’s easier with my friends. I got them weekly housekeeping last year, and if I don’t extend that this year, it will probably start a riot.”
“Hm. ​So either I have to find something you’ve never thought of wanting, or something you want but didn’t yet get for yourself. Tricky.” He smiled, his eyes twinkling. He wasn’t handsome, not the way what’s his name from the party was, but North was awfully cute, and his smile made her lightheaded.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“You don’t have to get me anything.”
“Now even I know that would be rude.”
“But . . . Really . . .”
A kiss. She couldn’t say that. But it had been so long, and being around him was making her wish for things again. Or maybe that was a peculiar side effect of the lottery too. After Kirk died, she’d been in mourning for years, any interest in romance thoroughly muted if not completely erased. Then she’d had enough stress running the ranch and dealing with the boys, worrying about them as they argued and tried to figure out how the ranch could support them all.
She hadn’t kissed in years. Even in the last decade of her marriage, they’d kissed all the time, but quick pecks hello and goodbye and goodnight. Not real kisses with tongues and heat. She wanted that hunger and desperation, but she was afraid of it too. She wasn’t a hungry and desperate person. She was sensible and cheerful, and sometimes it felt like a trap.
The lottery had given her the freedom to relax enough to dream again. Why did she have to dream about one of the few things she couldn’t buy?

Would you say this book showcases your writing style or is it a departure for you?

I write a lot of different things, but I think my writing is generally “tight” (not wordy or rambling or repetitive, unlike this sentence). My mystery novels have more plot, while romance is more character oriented. In both, I tend to write lower angst books.

I had a friend tell me, “Work is so stressful I’m just rereading the cat café novels over and over.” I like writing those kinds of comfort reads.

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

A BookBub Reviewer said, “This book proves you’re never too old for love.” That’s pretty good.

I guess now that I’ve passed fifty, I’m exploring more later in life stories of people reinventing themselves (including a couple of the Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series featuring the employees and customers at a cat café, and my Accidental Detective series, about a witty journalist who solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty.)

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

I’m working on the next Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series, which will be Pride and Prejudice in the Cat Café. As you can probably guess, it’s an Austin retelling set in my small-town cat café.

The next book I have scheduled to release is book 6 in the Accidental Detective series, titled Someone Rotten Riding the Rails. Kate and her gang of eccentric senior sidekicks go undercover at a Russian crime family wedding taking place on the Grand Canyon Scenic Railway. So much fun to write! It comes out January 14.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Winner will receive one ebook copy of THE BILLIONAIRE COWGIRL’S CHRISTMAS plus one additional ebook of the winner’s choice from Tule Publishing.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Have you had to reinvent yourself in work, love, or other? What do you think are the challenges of starting over later in life?

 
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Excerpt from The Billionaire Cowgirl’s Christmas:

Chapter One
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. Josh had taken over the original ranch, with the herds of beef cattle and bison. TC bought a neighboring property and filled it with llamas and ostriches for his experiments in alternative livestock. Cody came home—the best thing about the lottery win—and was doing charitable work with the two small planes he’d bought. Those three had found women worthy of them, and Ava was confident the women weren’t after the money.
Xander, her baby at twenty-five, handled the finances for the ranch and took care of the other ranch animals—his rabbits, the horses, the dogs and cats. He hadn’t officially found a partner yet, but Ava had thoughts about Xander and Daisy, Rhonda’s niece who now worked in their office and lived in the ranch house. She’d just had a baby a few days ago, but the father wasn’t in the picture. Ava already thought of Daisy as a daughter and baby Avery as a grandchild, so if Xander got his rear in gear and courted Daisy, they could make it official.
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.
She wouldn’t tell the ladies about North Rabe. They’d get the wrong idea, and ask about him every time they saw her, and nag her into doing things she didn’t want to do, or things she did want to do but didn’t have the nerve to do.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ava said. “I don’t expect another romance. For one thing, I had mine.”
Her marriage had been good. Not perfect, but generally satisfying. Not everyone got that. She should be grateful for the years they’d had together. She was grateful. A decent marriage, four healthy sons, and now millions of dollars? She’d had more than her fair share of luck. It seemed to be tempting fate to even wish for more.
“What’s the other thing?” Teresa asked.
“Huh?” She’d gotten caught up in her thoughts.
“You said for one thing, you had a good marriage,” Teresa said. “What other things make a romance impossible now?”
“Well, as Barbara hinted, my money might attract a man. I don’t want a man who’s primarily interested in my money.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Barbara said. “You could hire a young gigolo. All the fun and none of the stress!”
Ava obligingly gave a weak chuckle as the others laughed.
“But how will you know?” Teresa asked. “I mean, if you assume a man is only interested in your money, you’ll never give him a chance to prove otherwise. I, for one, believe in love!”
Unfortunately, Teresa had a good point. Ava didn’t want to believe no man could possibly be interested in her for herself. And she didn’t want to believe the worst of all men. How could she, having raised four sons?
Barbara leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what you need to do. You need to go incognito! If they don’t know you’re rich, you won’t have to worry about interest only because of your money.”
Ava’s laugh came more easily. “That’s not a bad idea. People in Last Stand know me by sight, but the boys grabbed most of the attention from magazines and newspapers.” Billionaire Bachelor Brothers grabbed more media attention than Widow Wins Fortune. “A few old photos of me got published, but nothing recent.”
Nothing that showed her gray hair and the last ten pounds, not to mention the wrinkles that multiplied after she hit fifty.
“You should totally do that!” Glenda said.
“But where would I find men who don’t already know me?” Ava asked. “It’s not like I want to join a dating site or go to a singles mingle in Austin or someplace.”
Teresa clapped her hands. “I know! We’ll have a little tea for the new guy, to introduce him to the neighborhood. We’ll have twenty or thirty people, and that way you’ll blend in and he won’t know you’re anyone special.”
“I like it,” Glenda said. “We’re just welcoming him to Last Stand. It won’t be an obvious setup.”
“Uh-huh,” Rhonda said. “And the rest of you definitely won’t be trying to grab him for yourselves, right?”
Glenda patted her blond hair and avoided eye contact.
Teresa shifted in her seat, smoothing her tie-dyed skirt. “I mean, it’s not like a contest.”
Rhonda leaned toward Ava. “They’re gonna move faster than a toupee in a hurricane.”
“If one of you can get him, you can have him,” Ava said.
“I just want to see what happens.” Barbara grinned. “It will be a social experiment.”
The other women immediately started discussing who they’d invite, what they should serve, and so forth. Okay, it looked like this was happening.
Ava knew what she had to do. “Y’all will let me pay for the catering,” she said.
They nodded, not making even a token protest. When you had millions of dollars—many, many millions of dollars—even your friends took that kind of thing for granted. How could a man do otherwise? She couldn’t imagine falling in love with a man who wanted to live off her money. She couldn’t imagine a man wanting to date a super-rich woman and still pay for everything himself. She wasn’t old-fashioned—she was fine with women paying their own way, especially since it gave them freedom to make their own choices. She didn’t think men had to make more money than their wives. Josh and Carly were perfect together, and if it weren’t for the lottery win, Carly would have made more as a lawyer than Josh ever would have through ranching.
But it was hard to imagine a man who wouldn’t be interested in her purely because of the fortune, intimidated by her fortune, or disappointed that she was so entirely ordinary despite her fortune. It was a conundrum. Oh, well. As Barbara said, she could always look. Looking was free, and so was dreaming. As for the rest, well, she’d simply be grateful for what she already had.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Book Info:

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

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 this Christmas. She’s giving her sons more privacy, but she’s especially lonely due to a rift in her once tight circle of friends. Ava’s not anticipating a romance when a handsome, younger survey geologist arrives at the ranch to work through the holidays. He’s sexy and fun, but only offering temporary.

North Rabe’s career keeps him on the road. His plans of working through the holidays are derailed when Ava includes him in family dinners and festive plans in Last Stand. He’s quickly smitten and finally has a glimpse of a family life he lost long ago. Does he dare attempt to lay down roots? And if so, how can he convince Ava and her protective sons he’s after her heart, not her money?

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Meet the Author:

Kris Bock writes romance, mystery, and suspense. Learn more about Kris and her books at the Kris Bock website. Get a free cat café novella, mystery stories, recipes, and more when you sign up for the Kris Bock newsletter.

In Kris’s mystery series, the Accidental Detective, a witty journalist solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty. This humorous series starts with Something Shady at Sunshine Haven. Her romantic suspense novels include stories of treasure hunting, archaeology, and intrigue. Readers have called these novels “Smart romance with an Indiana Jones feel.”

As for romance, in the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series, a Texas ranching family wins a fortune in the lottery, which causes as many problems as it solves. Kris’s Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café falling in love with each other and shelter cats. Kris also writes a series with her brother, scriptwriter Douglas J Eboch, who wrote the original screenplay for 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 the romantic comedy newsletter to get a short story preview.
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