TAKE THAT RIDE

 

 

TAKE THAT RIDE

by Meg Benjamin

GENRE:  Contemporary Romance

They’ve only got a week. They need to make it count.

Coy Blackburn is an up-and-coming country singer, but right now he feels more like he’s down-and-going. He’s at the end of a long tour, and his band is dragging. A week-long gig at the Faro tavern in Konigsburg, Texas, may get them back on their feet or it may be a disaster. For Coy, it feels like it could go either way.

Lexi Markham is living life on auto-pilot at the moment. As the main driver at her family’s tour business, she spends her days taking tourists around the Texas wineries and trying to get over her breakup with her lying fiancé. Now her sister has booked her to drive a country band around town, and she’s definitely not feeling it.

When Coy and Lexi meet, sparks fly—and not it a good way. Still, trust the power of music (and a back country cloudburst) to overcome a few bumps in the road. But can they even think about the future when they’ve only got a few days together?

Read an Excerpt:

“What’s going on, Lex?” He sounded more puzzled than angry, which made things easier.

She took another moment, trying to order her thoughts. “A lot of stuff has been going on. I just wanted some time to think.”

“You mean the Marcia Mills stuff?”

She nodded, then realized he probably couldn’t see her that well. “Yeah. I saw all the things she posted.”

“Marcia posted stuff? Where did she post it?” He sounded confused.

“You didn’t see Marcia’s posts?” Then how did he know about it?

“No. I didn’t know anything about this until Clem showed me some article online tonight. Then I fielded some phone calls from writers at gossip sites and my manager’s PR rep, which didn’t make things any clearer. I’ve been rehearsing all day, and I haven’t had time to look at anything.” He sighed. “So Marcia posted stuff, too?”

“Yeah, on her Instagram. June showed it to me this morning. And then there was that video interview with you. The kid who did it seemed to be saying there was something more between the two of you no matter what you said to him.”

“That kid was about fifteen, and I’d never seen him before today. Whatever he thinks he knows, he actually knows squat. Plus, I think he’s trying to come up with stuff to get people to follow his blog. Same thing with the gossip sites, to tell the truth. They’re always just looking for the next headline.”

He sounded confident, but he’d always sounded that way. Trusting him made a lot of sense, but she wasn’t sure she could do it. She didn’t know how to return to where they’d been before—before this nagging doubt had been planted in her brain.

About the Author:

Meg Benjamin is an award-winning author of romance. Meg’s Konigsburg series is set in the Texas Hill Country and her Salt Box and Brewing Love trilogies are set in the Colorado Rockies (all are available from Entangled Publishing and from Meg’s indie line). Her new cozy mystery series, Luscious Delights from Wild Rose Press, concerns a jam-making sleuth based in the mythical small town of Shavano, Colorado. Along with contemporary romance, Meg is also the author of the paranormal Ramos Family trilogy from Berkley InterMix and the Folk trilogy from Soul Mate. Meg’s books have won numerous awards, including an EPIC Award, a Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Holt Medallion from Virginia Romance Writers, the Beanpot Award from the New England  Romance Writers, and the Award of Excellence from Colorado Romance Writers.

A Word from the Author:

Roadhouses and Honky Tonks

I live in Colorado now, and I love it. But before that I lived in San Antonio, and I loved that, too, for different reasons. One of the main reasons I loved South Texas was the wide-ranging and eclectic Texas music scene. I’m a big Americana music fan, and it was wonderful to be able to go up the road to Gruene for performances at Gruene Hall or down the road in the opposite direction to Helotes and Floore’s Country Store. Then there’s Luckenbach with the Dancehall and Hondo’s in Fredericksburg and the Continental in Austin and Cibolo Country Club in San Antonio and, well, you get the idea. South Texas is full of music venues, and on any given night you can hear musicians ranging from unknowns to Joe Ely or Steve Earle or James McMurtry or Terri Hendrix and beyond, sometimes sitting under a live oak tree with a beer and a grin. 

I knew I wanted to write about that music scene in my Konigsburg, Texas, series. I already had a setting: a tavern call the Faro where my musician heroine played in Fearless Love. And I had a heroine, Lexi Markham, who drives tourists around in her family’s tour buses and drives a few visiting musicians, too. 

My hero is a musician touring around the US, but he’s at the end of the tour and close to the end of his rope. Coy Blackburn comes to Konigsburg not sure that he’ll be able to make it to the end of his week-long gig without having a meltdown. His band is falling apart around him, and he’s too tired to care. 

What brings him back? Partly, it’s Lexi’s record collection, inherited from her late folk-rock-loving mom. Listening to some favorite songs he’s forgotten brings Coy back to what got him into music in the first place. But he also finds his footing thanks to Konigsburg and the Texas Hill Country. Like me, he falls in love with Texas music and Texas music fans. One Texas music fan in particular, of course: his beautiful Texas driver. Playing outside under the stars, surrounded by enthusiastic listeners, he starts to get his groove back. And by the end of his week-long gig, he and the band are flying. Not without a few bumps in the road, mind you, but they get there.

All he has to do after that is figure out a way to hang onto his Texas babe, even though he’s got another month of touring to go. 

But anything’s possible in Konigsburg. Even love on the road.

Website: http://www.MegBenjamin.com

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Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Take-That-Ride-Konigsburg-Texas-ebook/dp/B0CB9BZBGT

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