Make Me Yours, Cowboy (Cowboys in Paradise, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 2: Cowboys in Paradise

Crush, Dylann

 
9780593438756: Make Me Yours, Cowboy (Cowboys in Paradise, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593438752 ISBN 13: 9780593438756
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A country music star escapes to Paradise Island and discovers a muse beyond his wildest dreams in this sexy romance from the author of Kiss Me Now, Cowboy.
 
Knox Shepler is a country superstar in his prime, but each release takes him further away from the classic country of his roots. His agent suggests a compromise: if Knox writes another pop-crossover album, he can cut a single playing the music he’s passionate about. Paparazzi make inspiration hard to find on the road, so Knox heads to Paradise Island, posing as a contractor to hide his true identity.
 
Claudia Alvarez went viral several years ago for all the wrong reasons. Since then, she’s been keeping a low profile by working at A Cowboy in Paradise. The bar’s finances aren’t what they used to be, so in order to save the only place she feels safe, Claudia proposes renovating the bungalows on the property to generate extra income.
 
When Knox and Claudia are forced to work together, he finds inspiration and she discovers it might be time to open her heart. But as the truth surfaces, Claudia must decide if she can face her fears for a chance at the love of a lifetime.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dylann Crush is the USA Today bestselling author of the Tying the Knot in Texas series, as well as All-American Cowboy and Cowboy Christmas Jubilee. A romantic at heart, she loves her heroines spunky and her heroes super sexy. When she is not dreaming up steamy story lines, she can be found sipping a margarita and searching for the best Tex-Mex food in Minnesota. Although she grew up in Texas, she currently lives in a suburb of Minneapolis/St. Paul with her unflappable husband, three energetic kids, a clumsy Great Dane, a rescue mutt, and a very chill cat. She loves to connect with readers, other authors, and fans of tequila. 

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1

Knox

Knox glanced at his phone as he headed into the glass-walled building that held his manager's office. Even though his publicist joked that he was a big enough star now that he didn't have to be on time, he still hated being late. The photo shoot his publicist had booked for him had run over, though, and he hadn't had time to head home and change before making the drive into downtown Austin for the meeting with Tripp.

The receptionist looked up when he passed through the entry. Her eyes widened in recognition, and she said something into the phone before hanging up.

"Mr. Shepler, it's nice to see you again."

Knox nodded. "Nice to see you again, Sienna."

"You know my name?" Her hand went to her chest, and Knox could almost see the heart clouds float from her eyes to hover over her head.

"Of course. I know the names of everyone on my team." He'd learned long ago that it was just as easy to be nice to people as it was to be a dick. And being nice got him a hell of a lot further in life, especially with people like Sienna, who didn't expect it.

"Come on back. Mr. Sanchez is expecting you." Sienna rounded the edge of her desk and led him through the closed double doors to the inner sanctuary of Sanchez Management.

Knox leaned forward to catch the door as she pushed through the doorway. He caught a whiff of something peppery as she passed. Her perfume made his nose itch, and he fought the urge to sneeze.

"There he is." Tripp Sanchez rose from his desk. "I'll take it from here, Sienna. Thank you."

She nodded and cast a longing glance toward Knox. Unfortunately, he was used to it. Even though the girls in high school wouldn't give him a second look, now he had more women throwing themselves at him than he'd ever imagined. Young ones, women old enough to be his mama or even his grandmother. Women of every shape and size propositioned him on a regular basis.

It's not like he wasn't ever tempted. He was a man, after all. Even though his heart had stopped working years ago, the rest of him still responded instinctively-sometimes embarrassingly-to a woman's advances.

He turned his attention away from the receptionist and focused on his manager. Tripp held out his hand and Knox took it.

"How's my favorite client doing today?" Tripp asked as he pumped Knox's hand up and down.

"I don't know. Tell me who he is, and I'll find out." Knox was joking, but there was a kernel of truth to it. Tripp was one of those guys who changed his mind faster than the weather in Texas could swing from one extreme to the other.

"Still cracking bad jokes, I see." Tripp gestured for Knox to take a seat at one of the chairs in front of his desk. "Tell me, how are the songs for the new album coming?"

Knox adjusted his cowboy hat as he leaned his back against the chair. "They're coming."

So what if he hadn't actually written a single, solitary word yet? He had some ideas about what he wanted to write. He just hadn't carved out the time to make it happen. Turns out people had missed him while he'd been on tour over the past year and a half. His mother expected him to catch up with everyone while at home.

Then there'd been Justin and Emmeline's wedding. It wasn't like he could have skipped that. He was just a little behind. With a little focus and some uninterrupted work time, he'd be able to come up with the material before the label needed it.

"I'm going to be honest with you here." Tripp eased into his chair. "The label's not sure about the direction you want to take the next album."

Knox had been waiting for this. He knew the label had a vision for his career. One that sounded a whole lot more like a sugar-coated rhinestone cowboy than the gritty, raw songs Knox wanted to hear on radio station playlists around the world.

"What do you mean?" Playing dumb might get him enough info to figure out the angle the label was working.

Tripp steepled his fingers under his chin. "I'm going to give it to you straight."

"By all means." Knox crossed his cowboy boots at the ankles.

"The label wants more of what you did on the last album." Tripp had broached the subject before, but Knox had avoided it.

The label wanted to turn him into the country-western version of a pop star. They'd even sent a stylist on tour with him who kept making gentle suggestions that he might want to cut his hair a certain way or wear a specific shirt that somehow found its way into his closet.

Halfway through his tour, they'd changed his opening act from a guy with a voice like Hank Williams Jr. to a trio called the Strum Sisters. They sounded like a country-light version of Britney Spears and gyrated all over the stage in their matching glittered miniskirts. It took him two nights before he realized the women weren't really sisters. They just all wore the same long red wigs. It had fooled him from five feet away. He was pretty sure the public would never know the women weren't even related.

"What if I don't want to go in that direction?" Knox asked. He already knew the answer to that question as well. He'd used his first week at home to research attorneys.

"They can sue you for breach of contract." Tripp shrugged. "You get a bad rep for being a high-maintenance performer and possibly get blacklisted. I don't typically recommend that as a frontline strategy."

Knox figured as much. "So what do you recommend?"

"If you want to make music at the level you've been working at, you need to play by their rules."

"And that's your professional opinion?" Knox asked.

"You want to know what I think off the record?"

Knox nodded.

Tripp leaned forward. "Suck it up for another couple of years until you're so big even they can't touch you. Then you can do whatever the hell you want."

Another couple of years. Knox had heard the same refrain for most of his career. No matter where he was or who he was working with, everyone's advice seemed to be the same. Give it another couple of years. Don't quit now. You might only be one more gig away from being discovered.

Clearly the joke was on him. He'd been discovered, but the rules of the game hadn't changed with his success.

"What do you think?" Tripp's chair creaked as he leaned back and rested an alligator cowboy boot on his knee.

Knox could almost taste the greed in the air. Tripp had stated his opinion. If Knox balked, he'd be on his own. Maybe there was room for a little bit of negotiation, though.

"If I give them more of what they want, can I have one single that's more in line with the direction I want to go in?" In the grand scheme of things, getting a say in one song was such a minor win. It probably didn't deserve to be classified as a victory at all. Surely the label wouldn't care as long as 99 percent of the album gave them their razzle-dazzle cowboy tunes.

Tripp took in a breath so deep that his shoulders lifted at least two inches. "I don't know what they'll say. They're behind you all the way, but I know they'll want to make sure whatever you put on this album is a solid fit with where they want to take this."

"Yeah, of course."

"It's that important to you?" Tripp asked. His eyes softened. But Knox wasn't about to mistake the look for Tripp having a moment of remorse. The man had suckered Knox in, probably knowing full well that he'd never be able to play the kind of music he wanted to once a label got ahold of him.

"You know it is." Knox cocked his head and ran his gaze over the gramophone-shaped awards lining the shelves. He'd hoped to have at least one of those on his mantel by now, but singing the watered-down crap he'd been forced to over the past couple of years would never earn him that kind of recognition.

"Let me see what I can do." Tripp rose from his chair,...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593438752
ISBN 13 
9780593438756
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
304
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

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