Welcome to Barren Hill—where the rolling Hill Country hides more than just breathtaking views. In this small town full of big hearts, grumpy yet irresistible men find unexpected love with spunky heroines in stories brimming with warmth, healing, and second chances. From wounded warriors to everyday heroes, each contemporary romantic short by Willow Sanders delivers swoony moments, small-town charm, and emotional depth. These bite-sized reads are perfect for devouring in a single sitting.
Beard on Tap
Copyright 2025, Willow Sanders
Usually it was songbirds and toads that greeted me, not a foul-mouthed woman.
“Hello?” she called again. “Please tell me those are human footsteps crunching on the gravel. Though it would totally be my luck if I met my demise being some bear’s post-hibernation meal.”
“Do you always talk to yourself?” I called into the air.
“Oh, thank god. Hi! I honestly thought I was going to die down here.”
Down. As in the ravine. Hell’s fire, she was in the ravine.
“Do I need to call an ambulance?”
“No, I’m okay. I think I twisted my ankle though. I tried to stand on it a second ago and it was not having it.”
I shot a text off to Emmett to keep him on standby, then climbed down.
Her smile when I got to her exploded in relief.
“Yoga pants and flip flops?” I helped pull her to a stand. “Did you get dropped on your head? What makes you think that is acceptable attire for these trails?”
“Excuse me?” she shoved away, nearly losing her balance until I caught her. “Was I dropped on my head?”
“There are snakes out here,” I pointed at her toes. “You startle them, they’ll be revoking your birth certificate.”
She was already pretty pale, but at the mention of critters her face blanched to near white.
“You miss the mountain signs all over town? Ski in the winter, hike in the summer? What part of the word ‘mountain’ implies you can skip around here in those?”
“We gotta get some ice on that.”
“After you just insulted my intelligence, do you honestly think I would have any inclination to accept help from you?”
I extended my hand. She stood there like a damn flamingo. I lost the last shred of patience I had and scooped her up.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She kicked in my arms like a wet cat. My palm had strict directives from my brain to stay right the fuck where it was tucked beneath her knees. The yoga pants she wore had to have been painted on her body, because every curve brushed against me like she wore nothing at all.
“Are you insane? What kind of a person just picks someone up without their permission?”
She pitched her fit all the way to the top. Thankfully, The Old Lady was less than fifty meters from the ravine. She’d get over it real quick.
Copyright 2025, Willow Sanders
With the exception of the seasons, not much changed in Barren Hill. The same people who lived there when I was a kid, still did. Most of them lived in the same houses, or on the same plot of land. We all shopped at the local Pack n’ Sack, got our cars serviced by Jared and his pop, Larry Flynn. Flynn was their last name. I don’t know why everyone called him Larry Flynn as if we were in Georgia and that was his first and middle name. That’s just how we did it up here, I guess.
If you weren’t a mining family, you were a rail family. That is, unless you lived in the Abilene portion of Barren Hill. That’s where the fancy gated community folk hailed from. The ones whose parents were suit and tie people who drove fancy cars to whatever job they had.
Abilene was the place you rode your secondhand bike past their gates on your way to school. They were the people you fantasized about being.Their Christmases surely were a parade of new suits and dresses, patent leather shoes and fur lined jackets, and oversized boxes wrapped up in gorgeous gold and silver wrapping paper containing video game systems or Cabbage Patch dolls.
My pop and I were rail folk. He was a foreman for the rail yard. As soon as I graduated high school, he lined me up to start my career path at the good old BNSF. Finn’s dad owned the town’s watering hole, so like the rest of us, he too was born into his role. College? No one talked to any of us about that.
When I lost my arm, I just had to deal. That’s what we did. We dealt with the hands we were given. We figured shit out. Adapted. Found ways to continue spinning on the hamster wheel.
Sometimes the best solution for rain clouds, is the sun demanding to be seen.
He wants silence, she wants his signature. Their battle of wills turns into a dance neither one saw coming. When traumas are uncovered, and feelings unearthed, will these opposites finally give in to their attraction?
Copyright 2025, Willow Sanders
“What on earth is all of that?”
We hadn’t even made it out of the city limits yet. I stopped to top off my gas after picking Remle up from the Inn. She’d said she wanted to grab a few things from the gas station—but a few things apparently were the entire snack aisle.
“I’m pretty sure the rules of a good road trip state regardless of time or distance, if you are driving with friends for an extended amount of time, you must grab all the things from the gas station like you’re a kid with a twenty-dollar bill and no supervision.”
She proudly displayed the chips, Twizzlers, water bottles, Red Bull, and Reese’s Pieces she purchased.
“Do you have any idea what food like this does to your insides?”
“Count on Doctor Raj to come swinging with the Debbie Downer health facts.”
Every molecule of my insides which had been feeling pretty relaxed hardened in the frozen tundra of flashbacks to my past life.
“Wow, in a matter of three days, you’ve done your due diligence on ferreting out all the details about me. Interesting sales tactic.”
I watched her face go from beaming with excitement to chastened in a millisecond. Shit. While I didn’t mean to make her feel uncomfortable, she had no right digging into my past. It was mine to tell her. Something I planned on touching on in the simplest terms when we arrived in Barren Hill.
“It wasn’t a sales tactic,” she replied, wrapping her arms around herself. “People in this town are super chatty. A few of them have mentioned you used to be a doctor, that’s all.”
“Which is neither up for discussion nor examination.”
I felt exposed. Seen in a way which made my skin crawl and sent panic exploding through my nervous system. The people of Sycamore Mountain knew nothing about how I’d come by their tiny town. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had scrubbed my past life from the search engines, guaranteeing no one would find out.
She didn’t respond. Instead, she turned toward the window and watched the landscape change. It worked just fine for me, too. The last thing I needed was to engage in a dialogue with someone I barely knew, recounting the worst days of my life.
A marketer by day, and author by night, Willow Sanders is a best-selling author of sweet with heat Contemporary Romance and Romantic Suspense. She loves to write spunky, take no shit women, and understanding men with a strong side of sarcasm and an extra helping of BDE. When not writing you can find her torn between her loyalty to the Fighting Illini and her husband’s loyalty to Michigan State, bemoaning traffic, feeding her caffeine addiction, and trying to find the connection between her and the Gilmore Girls–because she is certain she is a long-lost family member.
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