by Vivian Wood
Into The Sunset Anthology
Into The Sunset
An Erotic Romance Anthology
Edited by Vivian Wood
Containing Stories By:
Livia Alba
Harley Baker
Veronica Hardy
Miranda Lawrence
Aleena Stark
Vivian Wood
Smashwords Edition, All Rights Exclusive
All rights are held exclusively by the individual authors, copyright 2014. These stories may not be replicated or used in any manner without express permission from the author.
A note from editor Vivian Wood:
Romantica - (v) Erotica writing with a strong emphasis on romance and romantic relationships between characters, or romance writing centered around sexual themes and situations.
Greetings, fellow romantica lovers. Your search for a sweet, steamy story has no doubt led you many places. Today, I’m glad to say that it has brought you to this collection of short stories by featured Smutwriters authors, some established and some up-and-coming. Cowboys, lady plumbers, werewolves… you name it, we’ve got a little of everything happening. No matter what you like, I think you’ve made a great choice and I’m glad you found your way here.
If you like what you’ve read, please don’t hesitate to click the links to the authors’ other works. We Smutwriters have a lot of stories and a lot of fun fantasies to share with the world, which is why we decided to do this very collection.
Thanks again for downloading our little book, and I very much hope you enjoy it, rate it, and tell your friends about it.
THE COWBOY’S DILEMMA
by Livia Alba
Rose McGovern looked over her list. Packing to visit her parents back in Fricksville, Texas was pretty easy. She dumped the bag of men’s jeans and soft button-up shirts onto her bed. Socks, underwear, T-shirts, and a few nighties took care of her wardrobe.
The sundries—her fancy face-wash, moisturizer, and French-milled soap, plus a few trashy romance novels—took a little longer. Five, maybe ten minutes. Normally, she would be done. This time though, there was a new section on her list, ominously titled Paperwork.
Rose shook the manila folder out on her bed and grimaced. There was a cashier’s check for one hundred thousand dollars made out to her father, Thaddeus Claude McGovern, known to the entire world as Tad.
She had given her parents money before, and even though she asked that they not, they had always paid her back. It had been two, three thousand. When a disease had wiped out a lot of their livestock, she’d had to lend them ten thousand. She got it back in installments over the next year.
A serious amount of money meant a serious problem. Before she had used hand-delivering the checks as an excuse to go home. Now she really was worried. She wanted to see what was going on.
Fearing the worst, Rose had begun frantically researching. It’s what she did for a living, so it was second nature to her. Her normal subject was American art. She worked for a big museum in Boston, and she was damn good at her job.
Rose determined how much her parents’ ranch was worth, who would be interested in buying it, and what their options were for moving to New England, to be closer to her. She had apartments and houses in the suburbs to show them. She valued her life too much to suggest a retirement home. She had looked around at homes in the Austin area too. She included a plan that allowed the ranch hands to buy them out. Her friend Jill had drafted a few legal documents for her over a bottle of wine and some expensive cheese. All her bases were covered.
She went over the Paperwork section twice, as if double Xs could soothe the roiling in her stomach. No, she wasn’t wrong for thinking she should be firm with her parents. Yes, it was a testament to their place in the community that the H-E-B in Fricksville carried very little beef. Most people preferred to buy cattle from the Crown of Thorns Ranch, eat the best meat fresh, and freeze the rest. People buying houses in the area always asked what the chest freezers were for, at which point Peggy assured them that they were in for a real treat.
The thought of Peggy, haggling over the price of her silence (a pair of Jimmy Choo pumps) made Rose laugh. After all, she couldn’t ask about real estate in Fricksville without consulting the only real estate agent in the area, commercial and residential. Since Peggy was also one of her best friends, she’d picked up some strappy black sandals to go with the cherry-red pumps.
That’s right, just think about all the good things about going home and don’t think about the bad. You’re not going to be the fattest woman in every room anymore because women down there aren’t all a size four. Their diet consists of more than tea and protein bars. You’re going to get your haircut short. No one cares about how much money you make.
Not that she was doing bad by that last parameter. Rose had saved up forty thousand for her and Robert’s wedding. They were only talking about what venue to choose when he died of a congenital heart failure. She had mourned him, her sweet burly fireman. Instead of finding another beau, she’d invested her money, and was now a wealthy single woman.
A tear fell onto a printout she had made of a quaint saltbox house not too far from the coast. Roses grew wild around it, and you could hardly tell that a few petals had been smudged. Sometimes Rose thought she should get a house like that, or at least switch to part time at the art museum, instead of staying up all night and waking up with a pot of coffee the next day. It was what was expected of an up-and-comer, that she treat her job like her husband and child.
Rose dabbed the moisture away from the paper and her eyes.
* * *
She always felt harassed the moment she got the airport. The tension would only unwind when she was back at the ranch. It didn’t take her long to get off the plane. All she had was her big honking purse and a shiny silver duffle bag. No, her luggage didn’t match with the peasant blouse, espadrilles, and circle skirt she was wearing (in case they went to the nice Mexican restaurant in town), but she could wedge her duffel anywhere on a plane. Since she kept her toiletries in her giant purse, she didn’t have to worry about anything leaking.
I fly too much. She paid half a mind to the crowd around her as she weaved her way through the Austin airport. With her job, she often had to travel to rare books too fragile to move from the archives. It averaged out to a domestic trip a month, sometimes two. Again, about half of that, and maybe that tight knot in her chest would loosen. It had been there ever since Robert died. She’d tried to squeeze it out with work, with friends, but it just wrapped itself around her heart tighter.
“Rose!”
“Josh!”
His smile was a slash of white in his suntanned face. His dirty-blond hair was traced with gold, and he dressed every inch the cowboy. Plaid shirt, sturdy jeans, Crown of Thorns belt-buckle, and pointed boots, their color indeterminate underneath the dust. He’d been the high school heart-throb. Only Rose had been immune to his charms. They grew up together, playing in the mud, getting into the goats, and every now and then, having a spat where punches were thrown, and a few kicks landed in tender places.
She hugged him tight and inhaled. Straw, animal, sun: The scent of the ranch.
“All right. Are you done being creepy? Peggy said to make sure you and your luggage made it back safely. I thought I heard something about shoes. Am I going to like them?”
Rose pulled a face. She didn’t want to think about her two best friends doing it. Intellectually, she understood they were married and had two kids, a boy and a girl, but she refused to think about it.
While she was distracted, Josh plunked something down on her head.
With a scowl she yank
ed it off. She was about to throw the traditional pink cowboy hat in the trash, when Josh stopped her.
“Now, hold up there, missy. That’s no ten dollar hat from some costume store in Austin.”
Rose looked at the hat. It was well shaped, firm in her hand, with a tight even weaving of straw, a grosgrain ribbon band and matching feathers, all in contrasting shades of dusty pink.
“That hat, that hat right there,” Josh said, putting it back on her head, “cost seventy dollars. Custom-made, just for you, Rose.”
While Rose had no problem spending money, she hated wasting it. The hat even fit well. “I guess I can ignore the color. I don’t want to get sunburned.”
Josh smirked at her. “Or tan. Can’t have you anything other than New-England-white.” He took her bag from her and her big purse.
It hit her like a slap in the face. If she got her way, Josh would be out of a job. A lot of good men and women would be out of jobs. People might even have to move, looking for work. The Crown of Thorns Ranch was part of the community.
“Excuse me, but I need to…” Rose looked around for the nearest restroom and made a beeline for it. She turned the cold faucet on full blast and stuck her wrists under the rush of water. Keeping her head back, she waited for the tears to recede. Thank goodness she had on waterproof mascara. A little dabbing with a paper towel, and she was back to looking like she had just flown in from Boston.
Josh was waiting for her, looking only slightly less manly for her luggage. He was on the phone, and given his goofy grin, he was talking to Peggy. He hung up as Rose approached.
“There are two boxes in your bag. Peggy was only expecting one.”
Stay on the sunny side. “Just a present for my best friend.” And not something to assuage her guilt.
Josh put his hand on her shoulder. She smiled back at him, even though, inside, she was all black twisted knots.
* * *
Rex Waits felt the Crown of Thorns Ranch slowly slipping into holiday mode, much like it did at Christmas. The animals would be well tended, but everything else would be sloppy, or if possible, put off until next week. He did not approve. In fact, Fricksville’s love of its native daughter was the only thing that made him question investing in the ranch. He did his best to recognize this as a personal prejudice, not to be confused with business acumen.
Still, he’d been listening to their yammering for two months now. Rose McGovern researches forgeries at her museum job in Boston. Her fiancé died tragically and she’s remained true to him. She’s the apple of Tad’s eye, but her mother’s daughter through and through.
She was childhood friends with Josh, Rex’s right-hand man, and befriended Peggy when Josh started dating her, so Rex got no respite from those two. Peggy kept talking about some man, Jimmy something….
Rex knew these were all respectable people, with respectable judgments. Rose was likely a lovely woman.
That didn’t stop his heart from lurching every time he walked by Rose’s picture. Good God did she look like his ex-wife Nancy. She just needed blond hair and blue eyes and pink puked all over her, and she’d be her doppelganger. Even Annie noticed.
“She really looks like Mommy. Are you sure she isn’t Mommy?”
“It’s not Mommy,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“When’s Mommy coming back?”
His heart gave a hiccup. One day, he’d have to stop lying to her. He hadn’t known how to explain to a four year old that mommy ran off to LA with her hairdresser. There had been just a moment, when Nancy had been crying and stomping around (thank God Annie had been in pre-school) and throwing things in a bag, all the while screaming that she was leaving with her hairdresser, that he’d been sympathetic. He thought she was a gay.
She snorted, the laugh she hated but he loved. “My hairdresser is a man. A straight man. His name is Chad. How the fuck did you get a Master’s in Business but stay so fucking country?”
Each fuck was an explosion off her lips—Nancy knew how much he hated swearing. He took a deep breath and walked away. What he wanted to do was bellow, rip her suitcase in half, but such behavior was uncivilized. If he’d been at a ranch, he would have gone and mucked a stall or chopped wood. Living in an apartment in Dallas, it wasn’t really an option.
Now he was on a ranch. There was plenty of work to be done. He still didn’t know how to explain to his daughter, now eight, the truth.
“Maybe next Christmas,” he said.
“Maybe not,” Annie replied.
He ruffled her hair. She had his brown hair, his sense, her mother’s eyes, and the rest was a muddle of the two of them. “Maybe not,” he repeated. Maybe he was making this all more complicated than it needed to be.
The dogs started kiiyiing, a high-pitched excited sound Rex had never heard before.
“Yes, yes, I missed you too, Elmer and Olive and Bugs and Popeye.”
Crouching in the middle of the four hounds, letting them lick her ears and nuzzle her face, was Rose McGovern. The dogs knocked her pink hat loose and she grabbed it, holding it above the fray.
Josh saw him standing there and gave him a friendly wink. The man never pried into Rex’s life, but he wasn’t stupid either. Josh had taken time to reassure him that Rose really was a wonderful woman. He’d sensed Rex was uneasy about her.
Josh took Rose’s hat from her and she gave him a perfunctory thanks. Fur flew everywhere as she rubbed the dancing dogs. Rex admitted to himself that she acted normal, but so had Nancy.
Like a tea-kettle whistle, Lily came flying out of the kitchen, shrieking her delight. Rose was ready for her, arms open, big smile on her face. The two women squeezed each other and then everyone politely ignored Lily while she wiped her eyes.
“Rose, I want you to meet our new foreman, Rex Waits.”
Rose’s open friendly face turned hard. Goddamnit did she look like Nancy. A spit-fire in and out of bed. All those curves, they’d feel just right in his hands, hot and soft. In college his friends had teased him for liking big girls, but all he saw were women—full red-blooded women. The type of woman that could take a man and make him forget that there was a world outside of her arms.
“Rose McGovern,” she said, sticking out her hand.
Brown eyes and brown hair—not like Nancy. Steel under all that softness, just like Nancy, but like her mother, Lily, too. “Rex Waits.” He knew the reason for her chilly demeanor. Tad had insisted they not tell Rose what they wanted the money for, but rather show her. Rex thought it was a bad idea, as needing that amount of money was likely to concern their loyal daughter, and he had been right. Clearly, in her head, what was wrong was the new foreman, and she was going to raise a ruckus about it.
“Let’s go say hi to your father. He’s out back.” Lily put her hand on Rose’s shoulder, and like a door slammed shut, the ice was gone. She was all warmth and sunshine for her daddy. The fire and brimstone, she’d save for an appropriate time.
“No, say hi to me first.” Everyone turned and looked at Annie. And now Rex had forgotten about his own daughter, so consumed had he been with Rose.
She smiled and squatted down, just as she had with the dogs. “Rose,” she said, her hand held out to Annie.
“Annabelle Lee,” his daughter said, pumping Rose’s hand up and down with a grin. She turned to smile at him, and Rex wiped the scowl from his face. That ridiculous name, her mother and her romantic notions. Not that there was anything romantic about Poe. Annie tolerated a nickname from him, but to the rest of the world, she was Annabelle Lee, all four syllables.
“That lives by the sea?” Rose asked.
“In a kingdom by the sea.”
Of course she knew the whole morbid poem by heart: She was named after it. Rex bit back a groan and Lily got everyone moving. Annie had attached herself to Rose’s side and Rex wasn’t worried about her—the ranch hands treated Annie like their mascot. They wouldn’t let her get hurt.
“How you holding up, boss?” Josh asked.
; Rex grunted at him and stalked from the room.
“That good, huh?”
Rex could hear the laughter in his voice. Now he was grateful the ranch hands had been lackadaisical about their work. There were plenty of chores to keep him busy.
* * *
The little girl, Annabelle Lee, had grabbed her hand and followed her mother and the dogs out back to see her father.
Rose was more confused than ever. Given that her parents needed one hundred thousand dollars, she would expect there to be signs of neglect, of poverty, on the ranch. If anything, it looked nicer than the last time she’d been there. As soon as she spotted Rex Waits, she thought she had located the problem. He was embezzling and being mighty sneaky about it too. The way he’d been looking at her, like he didn’t know whether to eat her up or tell her off, had just confirmed her opinion. Then little Miss Annabelle Lee had wanted to shake her hand. She was having difficulty reconciling Rex Waits the scumbag to Rex Waits the devoted father.
Her father was in the shade of the barn, working leather conditioner into the horse tack. It was his favorite chore. As a little girl, Rose would help him, and she learned to love the smells and the soothing movements just as much as her father.
He turned and grinned at them. They could have been on the set of a John Wayne movie. He belonged there like the cattle and the barn. “Well, if it isn’t all my girls.” He gathered them up for a hug and her mother started crying again.
“Can I help?” Annabelle Lee asked.
Her father patted the stepladder he’d brought out, the rungs padded with an old horse blanket. Annabelle Lee picked up a bridle and a soft brush. She smiled as she cleaned the leather. Rose went to the other side of the saddle to help her father. She soon lost herself in the familiar task. Seeing Annabelle Lee’s head bent over the bridle, her tongue stuck out of her mouth in concentration, Rose thought about how as a small child she used to sit on that stepladder and do the very same thing.