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RELEASE BLITZ ~ A Cowboy Christmas Miracle by Carolyn Brown
It will take a miracle bigger than the state of Texas for these two feuding families to survive the holidays!
Opposites might attract…
The Brennans and the Gallaghers put aside their one-hundred-year feud every Tuesday for their weekly poker game. This week, the stakes are sky-high. Goaded to recklessness, Declan Brennan bets one thousand dollars that he can woo the next woman to walk into the saloon. A minute later, fiery-haired Betsy Gallagher pushes through the doors. If Declan can tame this wild Gallagher, he’ll have earned every penny.
If they don’t kill each other first…
Betsy can outshoot anybody in Burnt Boot and loves ranching more than anything—until she falls for Declan. He’s fallen for her too. But when she discovers what sparked their courtship, Declan will need a Christmas miracle to save his hide—and his heart.
NY Times and USA Today Bestselling author and RITA Finalist, Carolyn Brown, has published more than seventy books. These days she is concentrating on her two loves: women’s fiction and contemporary cowboy romance. She and her husband, a retired English teacher, make their home in southern Oklahoma.
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Excerpt:
Even with all that, Betsy was so jealous of Angela that she could feel her soul turning neon green. It’s a wonder she didn’t glow with envy like an alien life force.
Angela wiped tears away with a soggy tissue. “It’s a boy, and I’m naming him Christian because he’s arriving during the Christmas season, and he’ll be too old to be baby Jesus next year, and I wanted him to grow up to be a preacher like my daddy and my brother, John, and now he’ll grow up to be a… Oh no…”
“What?” Betsy tensed. “Is it labor? Do I need to call Jody?”
Angela grabbed for more tissues. “No, it’s worse. Burnt Boot isn’t going to have Christmas. It’s an omen. Christian will grow up to be an outlaw and put shame on the Gallagher name.”
Betsy patted her on the arm and wished she had a shot of whiskey, but there wasn’t even a beer in Jody and Angela’s house. Angela abstained from anything that had a drop of liquor in it—she didn’t even have a slice of butter rum cake at the family holiday parties.
“It’ll be okay,” Betsy said. “It’s a season of miracles. Something could happen so that we’ll have Christmas.”
Angela’s blond hair covered her tear-streaked face when she bent forward, head in hands, and wept. “That would take more than a miracle. It would take magic the way the Brennans and the Gallaghers have both set their heels and refuse to give anything to the church for new Christmas decorations.”
“What about the other folks in town?” Betsy asked. “Those who aren’t part of this feud?”
“If they help out with the program, then the feudin’ folks won’t do business with them, so they’re between a rock and a hard place.” Angela lifted her head and threw a handful of soggy tissues in the trash. “I want a Christmas program at the church, and I want my son to be baby Jesus, and I know you can make it happen, Betsy Gallagher.”
Betsy’s emerald-green eyes widened. “I’m not a magician.”
Angela inhaled deeply, straightened her back, and crossed her hands over an enormous baby bump. “I’m depending on you, Betsy. If anyone in the whole state of Texas can put my Christian in that manger for the Christmas program, you can do it.”
“Come on, Angela, you know that Granny would disown me if I lifted a finger to make Christmas happen. You’ll have to be content with the Christmas tree lighting on Main Street,” Betsy said.
Angela held up a finger and sniffled. “No! I won’t be satisfied with that. I want my Christian to be wrapped in swaddling blankets in a manger, and I want the wise men and the shepherds to come and see him.” The finger shifted to point straight at Betsy. “And you are going to talk those two old women into letting it happen.”
Betsy flinched. “Granny will go up in flames if she hears you call her old.”
“I’m sick of this feud. It’s time to bury the hatchet or sign a treaty in blood or spit in their hands and shake like a couple of kids—whatever it takes to end this shit,” Angela said.
“You said a bad word,” Betsy whispered.
Tears started in earnest again. “That should”—hiccup—“tell you”—hiccup—“how much Christmas means to me?” A final hiccup.
Betsy patted her shoulder and handed her the box of tissues from the coffee table. “I’ll do what I can—I promise.”
Angela blew her nose loudly and hauled herself off the sofa. “Time to go to the bathroom again. All I do is cry and pee. It’s a wonder Jody stays with me.”
Betsy quickly pushed up out of the recliner and said, “I should be going anyway. It’s getting late.”
“I hear Jody driving up in the yard. He’ll be excited that you are going to fix it so that we have a Christmas program.” Angela smiled brightly. “Why don’t you stick around and have a glass of tea with us?”
Betsy needed something a hell of a lot stronger than sweet tea at that moment. She really, really needed a strong shot of good old Irish whiskey, preferably Jameson or at least a beer. “No thanks. I really do have to go, but you hang in there, girl. It’s only another week until that baby boy will be here. Then, according to what I hear, you won’t get any sleep for a few months.”
Jody pushed through the door, letting a blast of cold November air into the small house. Angela gave him a kiss. “Hello, darlin’. I want to hear about the meeting with Granny Naomi right after I get out of the bathroom. Bundle up, Betsy.”
Jody held Betsy’s coat for her and whispered, “Whatever you did, thank you. She seems happy.”
Betsy raised a shoulder. “I’m supposed to work miracles in the middle of the worst feud war we’ve ever had. She wants me to talk Granny into having a Christmas program at the church. Might as well try to talk a donkey into changing into Cinderella.”
“If anyone can do it, you can.” Jody grinned.
Betsy took those words out the door and into the cold night air, wishing she was as mean and tough as everyone thought. Tanner, her favorite cousin, said she was ninety percent bluff and ten percent mean.
“But you don’t want to test that mean part.” He’d laughed when she’d given him the old stink eye.
Light shined out from the living room window, giving the brown grass a yellow glow, like the star that used to hang from the ceiling at the Christmas program. What Angela wanted was totally impossible, but Betsy would try to think of something. Maybe they could have a Gallagher program at the Christmas dinner, complete with a nativity scene.
She sat in her hot-pink pickup truck for several minutes. Through the window, she saw Jody hug Angela. Their body language said they were in love, and the way Jody’s hands went to Angela’s rounded tummy left no doubt that they couldn’t wait for their son to be born.
Betsy blinked the tears back, refusing to let them fall. She wouldn’t cry for what she couldn’t have. She finally started the engine but sat for several more minutes, staring at the house. It was one of a dozen small log cabin homes scattered about Wild Horse Ranch. They’d been built one by one as first homes for the newly wedded Gallagher couples. When the couple got on their feet and had enough money to buy their own land, they then moved to another section of the ever-growing ranch. She wanted a house like they had. She didn’t care if she never had a big spread of her own. She’d be content to work for her granny and live in a little log cabin the rest of her life if she could have a husband who loved her as much as Jody loved Angela.
BLP REVIEW ~ Tracy
A great end to the series. I must admit I wasn’t a huge fan of Betsy after the nonsense with her and Tanner in Leah & Rhett’s book but she definitely grew on me whilst reading A Cowboy Christmas Miracle. I liked that she thought for herself, wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she believed in and wanted to be more than just a clone of her granny, running the Wild Horse ranch.
I really liked Declan, for someone with the reputation he had as a real womaniser, he was actually quite a sweetie – a really smokin’ hot sweetie at that – despite his crazy bet with Tanner!! He’d had a crush of Betsy for years but due to the fact that she was a Gallagher and he was a Brennan he never considered approaching her. A modern day Romeo to her Juliet!!
Besty and Declan were really great together. They had a lot in common – especially when it came to cray-cray grandmothers who just wouldn’t let the feud between the two families go.
Gods, if we thought things were bad before when it came to Naomi & Mavis and they’re never ending one-upmanship, could you just imagine how bad they were bound to get if anyone found out that our lead characters were secretly working together to pull off a Christmas miracle, never mond that they might be interested in each other!!! I loved how they came up with novel ways to keep in touch and how they decided to ‘suspend’ the feud when they were away from Burnt Boot.
I loved that the rest of the families & friends were involved throughout the story and I really liked Kyle, the new preacher – he felt like Betsy and Declan’s secret weapon!! 😉
Funny, sassy, sweet and extremely hot when these two got together, A Cowboy Christmas Miracle was a really entertaining, well written read. I can’t wait to see what Carolyn brings out next!!!
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About the Author 
NY Times and USA Today Bestselling author and RITA Finalist, Carolyn Brown, has published more than seventy books. She has written historical single title, historical series, contemporary series and single titles, cowboy romance and women’s fiction. These days she is concentrating on her two loves: romantic women’s fiction and cowboy romance. She and her husband, a retired English teacher, make their home in southern Oklahoma. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren to keep them young. When she’s not writing she likes to spend time in her back yard with her two cats, Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw and Chester Fat Boy, and watch them protect the yard from vicious critters like field mice, crickets and spiders.
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PRE-RELEASE SPOTLIGHT ~ One Texas Cowboy Too Many (Burnt Boot, Texas #3) by Carolyn Brown
Title: One Texas Cowboy Too Many
Series: Burnt Boot, Texas #3
Author: Carolyn Brown
Pubdate: March 1st, 2016
ISBN: 9781402296116
Carolyn Brown’s New York Times and USA Today bestselling
cowboys prove that love is bigger in Burnt Boot, Texas
She’s got too many cowboys on her hands
Leah Brennan has always been the good girl of the Brennan family, groomed to become the matriarch of the clan. When a dark-eyed, tattooed, ponytailed bad boy saunters into her life, Leah knows he’s off-limits—but his mesmerizing gaze makes her forget everything she used to think was important. As town-wide tension rises, Leah wonders if love really can conquer all…
And the whole town’s taking sides
When Rhett O’Donnell roars into Burnt Boot on a hot July evening, the first thing he sees is a beautiful blonde. She puts a little extra giddy-up in his heartbeat, but when Rhett’s desire throws him into the middle of a love triangle and a hundred-year-old feud, he realizes that winning his cowgirl’s heart will be a lot more complicated than he thought.
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An Excerpt:
The Burnt Boot Bar and Grill was not exactly what Rhett expected. The parking lot was gravel, or at least it had been at one time. Now it was thinly distributed gravel on top of dirt with only one streetlamp to illuminate the whole place. The building was weathered wood that didn’t look as if it had ever seen a drop of paint applied. Hell, it might have even been petrified, as old as that sign swinging above the entrance. The roof was rusty sheet metal, and the only window in the place was the one in the door.
“Not what you thought it would be?” Sawyer asked when Rhett got out of his truck.
“Looks more like a barn than a bar,” he said.
“The inside is better—air-conditioning, jukebox, and even paint on the walls.” Jill laughed.
“I like the air-conditioned part best of all.” Rhett followed them inside.
The bar itself was only eight stools long and had a small area for grilling burgers and making fries behind it. There were no pool tables, which surprised Rhett. But not as much as the shelves holding loaves of bread, hot dog and hamburger buns, and a small assortment of prepackaged pastries, or the refrigerated section beside that, with milk, beer, wine, and soda pop behind sliding glass doors. The other end of the long, rectangular room sported a jukebox, a few mismatched tables with chairs around them, and a small area for dancing.
“After the store closes in the evening, folks can get milk and bread or beer in here,” Sawyer answered the unasked question.
“And I thought Comfort was a small town. I’m not sure this qualifies as a town.” Rhett chuckled.
Sawyer clamped a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll get used to it. Besides, you know what Grandpa says. To be a town, the place has to have a church and a place to buy beer or get a shot of whiskey. So by the O’Donnell qualifications, Burnt Boot passes the test.”
At nine o’clock, he’d filled a few pitchers of beer for folks who’d drifted in and out, and Sawyer had shown him the process of making burger baskets. Sparks danced around Jill and Sawyer every time they brushed against each other. It damn sure didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that their honeymoon wasn’t over.
Two lonesome, old cowboys sat in a back corner drinking beer and telling tall tales. The jukebox had gone quiet and Rhett had wiped down the bar so often that it was shiny clean. If every night was like that, he’d have to bring some rope to make a bridle or something to keep himself from dying of complete boredom.
“Why don’t y’all go on home? I can handle it for the next couple of hours,” Rhett said.
“If you’re sure, we won’t argue.” Jill removed her apron and hung it on a nail.
Sawyer didn’t waste a bit of time hanging his apron right beside hers. “We damn sure won’t. Can’t remember the last time we got to go home before midnight. Sweep up and put the chairs on the tables. We don’t do mopping unless there’s major spills. Here’s the keys. Be sure to turn off the grill and the lights.”
“Will do.” Rhett rolled the sleeves of his white T-shirt and wiped down the bar one more time.
Jill and Sawyer were gone less than five minutes when the door flew open and suddenly the bar was crowded to capacity. Someone plugged money into the jukebox, and in seconds it was going full blast, playing “Boys ’Round Here” by Blake Shelton. Folks wasted no time getting out onto the dance floor and making a long line to do a line dance. The noise level went from zero to one hundred so quick that it took a while for Rhett’s ears to adjust.
“Hey, Rhett, we need three pitchers of beer and about six red cups,” Kinsey yelled from the end of the bar.
He quickly filled the pitchers, set them on the bar, and stacked up six plastic cups. Kinsey handed him a bill and he made change.
“And when you finish that, I need two longneck bottles of Coors,” Betsy said from the other end of the bar.
It kept him hopping, keeping the beer orders filled, the money straight, and making a few pitchers of margaritas. Then there was a lull, and there she was, sitting on a bar stool, her light green eyes watching him. His heart threw in an extra beat and his chest tightened.
“Well, hello, did you just fall from heaven?” he asked.
“I’ll have a double shot of Jack on the rocks, so the answer is no. I don’t think angels drink whiskey, but it is a fine line,” she answered.
“So you are a Tennessee whiskey lady?” he asked.
“Tonight I am,” she said.
About the Author
NY Times and USA Today Bestselling author and RITA Finalist, Carolyn Brown, has published more than seventy books. She has written historical single title, historical series, contemporary series and single titles, cowboy romance and women’s fiction. These days she is concentrating on her two loves: romantic women’s fiction and cowboy romance. She and her husband, a retired English teacher, make their home in southern Oklahoma. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren to keep them young. When she’s not writing she likes to spend time in her back yard with her two cats, Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw and Chester Fat Boy, and watch them protect the yard from vicious critters like field mice, crickets and spiders.
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One bundle of the complete Burnt Boot, Texas series.
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