Taming the Country Star: A Hometown Heroes Novella (Entangled Bliss)

He’ll do anything to win her heart. She’ll do anything to keep him away.

Country star Cole Grayson is in town, and Kylie Andrews is less than thrilled. As if months of changing the radio station and tearing down his posters weren’t bad enough, now she has to deal with a town of fans swarming toward the man who deceived her the year before. But when Kylie’s eyes meet Cole’s again, she can’t deny the electric chemistry that drew her to him the first time around.

Cole Grayson is on a mission. Ever since Kylie left him, he hasn’t been able to forget her sweet country smile. After writing a song just for her, he sets off for her hometown to prove he’s not the player she thinks he is. But as much as Cole can’t forget her, Kylie wonders if she can forgive him…

Taming the Country Star

a Hometown Heroes novella

Margo Bond Collins

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Margo Bond Collins. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.

Bliss is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC. For more information on our titles, visit
http://www.entangledpublishing.com/category/bliss

Edited by Allison Blisard

Cover design by Jessica Cantor

ISBN 978-1-62266-166-4

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition June 2014

For Glenda Collins, who taught me to love stories.

Chapter One

Kylie Andrews’s Texas-themed gift shop, Cowbelles, sat on the very outer edge of Fort Worth’s Stockyards District, not far from Jimmy’s Honky Tonk. And much to her dismay, no matter how often she cleared it, the wall adjacent to her store remained covered with announcements for local events.

Like, for example, concerts.

She stared at the latest layer of advertisements.

From the topmost poster, Cole Grayson stared out at her, leaning against the edge of an old barn door, guitar at his feet. One booted foot was kicked up against the wooden wall behind him. His dark-blond hair curled around behind one ear and fell down across his eye on the other side. A cowboy hat rested on the ground next to the guitar.

Her hand drifted up toward the image, hovering several inches from the picture of his face. She glanced around. None of the other shopkeepers were outside. No one was watching.

“Bastard,” she whispered to herself, and ripped the poster off the wall.

At least, she tried to. It was thicker than she had expected, attached more firmly, and it resisted her pull.

Chewing on her lip, she took another look around, dropped her bag to the ground, and reached up to grasp the edge with both fists, jerking at it in opposite directions. A tiny tear opened up along the side, and she yanked harder. Finally, the poster ripped—right across Cole Grayson’s lying eyes.

She tugged at the image some more, glancing around surreptitiously every few moments and dropping ragged pieces of paper on the ground at her feet, until there was nothing left on the wall but a few fluttering strips.

Gathering the mutilated shreds together, she opened her bag and shoved them inside until they overflowed, bright ribbons of color in the morning light.

She shook her head and moved back into the store, trying not to think about the fact that Cole’s concert was only a few hours away, right here in the Stockyards, less than five blocks from Cowbelles.

He was probably already in town.

She would have nothing to do with Cole Grayson. He was a liar. And she didn’t care if he was going to be nearby for the first time since she had walked away from him in an airport in Mexico. She crumpled a shred of poster into her fist, then shoved it into the stockroom trash can. The rest of the narrow strips followed.

If only avoiding his likeness were that easy.

Heading to the back of the store, she flipped on the stereo system, tuning it to a country station. Cole’s voice sang out at her—something about lost love. She knew the song had been climbing the charts, but she had made a point of refusing to learn the lyrics. Snarling, she hit the switch. She could turn on her own playlist. Listening to country music didn’t have to mean listening to Cole.

She pulled a box out of the stockroom and started unpacking it. The turquoise necklaces were every bit as pretty as they had looked in the catalog. She spent the next half hour changing out the display. It was still early in the day. The tourists wouldn’t really hit until midmorning, but a few customers came in to browse.

Kylie wandered through the stands of merchandise, refolding T-shirts and straightening the
Cowboy Cookbook
display. Usually, being in the store made her feel calm. It might be small, but it was all hers, and finally, after three years, she was starting to see a real profit. She was even considering hiring someone to work weekends—it would be nice to have someone other than her friend LeeAnn to cover for her occasionally.

She loved her store.

But today, all she felt was restless.

She reminded herself that she liked her life. It was quiet and simple, and most of all, anonymous. Nothing at all like her childhood as the daughter of a local rodeo celebrity.

She stared up at the group of framed pictures hanging on the far wall. Grouping stock with images of her father and Cole under the heading “Talk of Texas” had seemed nicely ironic when Kylie had first created the display almost a year ago, right after she got home from her vacation in the Mexican Caribbean.

The center picture, enlarged to poster size, was of a cowboy on a bull—the camera had caught the man’s exhilarated grin, his left arm thrown up and his hat flying into the air as the animal’s feet left the ground.

Several of the other photos were of the same man, smiling into the cameras as he moved through crowds, into restaurants, around rodeo grounds. In about half of them, he carried a young girl, three or four years old, who stared up at him adoringly.

Kylie could barely remember a time when she thought her daddy was the most amazing man ever. She remembered the flashes as reporters had taken pictures of the national rodeo champion everywhere he went. She remembered the excitement of the rodeo arena, the cheers as he moved past the stands, the way he smiled and talked to everyone.

But Kylie also remembered the way the ink from the cheap tabloid print smeared across her mother’s fingers as she flipped through paper after paper, staring down at the pictures of Kylie’s dad with other women. The strained lines around her mouth deepened with every new picture, every new issue, but she never cried, not even after he packed a single suitcase and loaded it into his pickup to drive away from them for good.

Talk of Texas. Yeah, right.

The display worked, though. She sold more items from that single part of the store than almost anywhere else. Even the framed prints of her childhood sold like crazy—after the first few times people had asked about them, she had copies made to sell. And Cole’s concert was sure to bring in even more customers. She supposed that was its own irony.

She circled the display, moving items around. A reproduction of the cover of Cole’s latest album hung over the display of CDs, key chains, T-shirts, and coffee mugs, all featuring his smiling, lying face.

If Kylie couldn’t trust the men in her world, she could at least make money selling those men—in effigy, anyway. Selling a key chain with Cole Grayson’s image on it didn’t change her past. But if she sold enough of them, maybe it would change her future.

She ran a finger along a row of CDs, stopping to push one or two back into line. Cole’s eyes stared back at her from a dozen items. Picking up a mug, she returned the stare.

He certainly was beautiful. She fought back conflicting urges to smash the mug and to brush her thumb across his image, instead placing it down gently, back into the display.

Destroying the merchandise wouldn’t make her feel better.

Neither would caressing it, for that matter.

And as much as she might sometimes want to stop carrying Cole Grayson items entirely, customers snapped up the damned things almost as fast as she could stock them. She wasn’t willing to give up the revenue in order to get rid of his image. She never looked at the pictures of Cole longingly.

At least that’s what she told herself.

She turned her back on the photos.

A quiet life is so much better than all that.

She hefted the heavy box of jewelry onto the ceramic tile, then kicked it toward the rack for good measure.

Much, much better.

…

Cole Grayson stretched his arms over his head and gazed around his room in the Worthington Hotel. Nice enough, even if it was fairly typical. He pulled aside the curtain and stared out. Downtown Fort Worth, Texas.

The brick-paved streets crisscrossed through the historic Stockyards District before ending in a tangle of highways, the rest of the city stretching out past it.

Kylie Andrews was down there somewhere, probably tending the shop she had described to him. He could find her if he tried.

If.
That was a word he’d tried to ignore a lot in the last year.

If he hadn’t gone to Mexico in the first place.

If he hadn’t taken his manager’s suggestion to go totally incognito on his vacation.

If he hadn’t met Kylie.

If he had been honest from the moment he met her.

If he didn’t have the kind of career that required him to be on the road much of the time—a career that was doing well, that left little room for anything more serious than the kinds of flings that ended after only a few days, at most. The kind of fling he had with Kylie, but hadn’t had since.

He sighed and flicked the curtains closed again.

If.

If he tried to explain again, she might decide he was a stalker, and wouldn’t that be great for his career? He laughed bitterly.

Actually, it might be good for his career.

And that was the whole problem. As soon as Kylie had found out who he really was, she cut off all contact.

No
, he corrected himself. She cut off all contact when she saw pictures of herself with him in the tabloids. That just happened to correspond with figuring out who Cole really was.

He could find her. But he didn’t want to hurt her again. He never again wanted to hear the kind of catch in her voice she’d had when she told him good-bye.

And it’s not like he could offer anything new—his career still took up the bulk of his time. All he had ever wanted was to make it as a musician. His latest album,
Call Me Tomorrow
, was set to go platinum soon. He was still on the road, still followed by photographers everywhere he went.

Besides, she had walked away from him. There were plenty of women who wouldn’t walk away, who would love the flashy life he could offer.

But Cole didn’t want any of those women.

He wanted Kylie.

A knock on the door interrupted his circling thoughts, and he moved to open it.

“Hey,” said Billie, his manager. “Ready to check out the venue?”

“Sure,” Cole said, grateful for the distraction.

Focus on the work. Ignore how close he was to Kylie.

Yeah, right
.

…

Kylie was sitting on a stool behind the register eating a chicken fajita salad when her best friend LeeAnn rushed in at lunchtime. Her face glowed with excitement.

“You are never going to believe what I won.” LeeAnn spun around in a circle, her blond hair twirling out around her. She grinned and slapped her hand down on the counter in front of Kylie. “Check it out.”

Kylie’s answering grin faded. Under LeeAnn’s palm were two tickets to Cole’s show. Kylie set her fork down and slid the salad away, no longer hungry.

“Were you listening to the radio yesterday? Did you hear? They played the song, and I called in, and I was the fifteenth caller, and I
won
. Two front-row tickets. I went and picked them up after class last night. You know you want to go with me.” She scooped the tickets up and spun around again. “Ooh, that Cole Grayson is a hottie.”

Kylie’s stomach clenched. “Cole Grayson?” she asked. She stalled, trying to come up with an excuse not to go. “Um. When is it?”

A frown appeared between LeeAnn’s eyebrows. “What do you mean, when is it? There are posters all over the wall outside. It’s tonight.” She finally seemed to notice Kylie’s reluctance. “You okay? I thought…” Her voice trailed off.

“Don’t you want to take Darrell?” LeeAnn’s boyfriend might not be Kylie’s favorite person, but at least if he went with LeeAnn, she wouldn’t have to.

Her friend pulled a face. “Nope. He was supposed to go, but now he has to work late. Again.” She paused. “So does that mean you don’t want to go with me?”

“No, no,” Kylie said quickly. She couldn’t stand the disappointment threatening to take over LeeAnn’s face. “Of course I want to go.”

Her friend’s sunny smile returned. “I knew you would,” she sang out, dancing across the hardwood floor toward the door. She stopped halfway there, took a deep breath, and stood up straight. She closed her eyes and tented her fingers in front of her, the concert tickets between them.

“I am calm and centered,” she intoned after a moment. She glanced up at Kylie. “I’m covering my yoga instructor’s class at two,” she said in her normal voice. “I’m hoping they’ll hire me for real.” She grinned. “I’ll come back when I’m done and we can figure out what to wear tonight. See you later.” She waved the tickets in the air.

Kylie forced a smile and returned a halfhearted wave as LeeAnn swung out past the doorframe.

“Crap,” Kylie whispered. She couldn’t even stand to listen to Cole’s new hit on the radio. How was she going to get through a whole concert?