Into The Sunset: An Erotic Romance 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 yanked 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.