Taming the Country Star: A Hometown Heroes Novella

By Margo Bond Collins

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 werent bad enough, now she has to deal with a town of fans swarming toward the man who deceived her the year before. But when Kylies eyes meet Coles again, she cant 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 hasnt been able to forget her sweet country smile. After writing a song just for her, he sets off for her hometown to prove hes not the player she thinks he is. But as much as Cole cant forget her, Kylie wonders if she can forgive him

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jun 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781622661664

Book preview

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