Free Forever With You (Bayou Dreams Book 5) by Farrah Rochon

privileges—was stupid. However, she could think of a million more appropriate names for a female Yorkshire terrier with pink ribbons at her ears.
    The screech of the school bus’s tires set them all into motion.
    “Okay, okay, get going,” Leslie said, ushering the girls out of the house. She gave them both pecks on the cheeks and stood on the porch steps to watch them board the bus. She waited until it made a right on Oak Street before going back into the house to grab her laptop.
    The time it took to deal with Kristi’s tantrum over Cassidy using the strawberry-scented lotion that Shayla had given her for a birthday present had stolen any chance Leslie had of sitting at the table for a nice breakfast. She would have to find something she could eat on the road.
    Just as she was pressing the button on the single-serve coffeemaker, Leslie caught a whiff of a foul but familiar odor.
    “Dammit, Buster! You
would
wait until the girls were gone, wouldn’t you?”
    The puppy, which was currently dancing around her feet, let out a squeaky bark.
    Leslie followed her nose to the pile of dog poop in the arched entryway that led from the kitchen to the rarely used formal dining room.
    “Looks as if you’ve got a new favorite spot.”
    She cursed under her breath as she returned to the kitchen for paper towels. One of the contingencies for getting a dog was that the girls were supposed to be responsible for cleaning up after her. Leslie was convinced they had made some sort of pact with Buster. The dog never made a mess when Cassidy and Kristi were around.
    Just to rub salt in the wound, Buster followed after her, yapping and jumping up and down at her legs, as if taunting her. Leslie gave her the meanest stare she could muster.
    “I’m not a violent person, but sometimes I really want to strangle you.”
    The dog yapped again and then started to pant, her tongue hanging out in the most adorable way. Leslie exhaled a tired laugh. It was either that or choke the little fur ball.
    After cleaning up the mess and scrubbing her hands like a surgeon before surgery, Leslie grabbed a granola bar from the healthy-snack basket she kept on the counter and her travel mug from the coffeemaker.
    Buster’s accident had put her another ten minutes behind, but at least the early risers who worked at the local concrete factory and oil refineries had made their way out of Gauthier by the time she got on the road. Her smooth sailing came to a screeching halt when she hit the tiny town of Talisheek and encountered a wall of traffic.
    Leslie’s head fell back against the headrest. She’d forgotten about the restriping work that started today. It was scheduled to last two weeks.
    “Reason number one hundred and twelve to move to Houston.”
    She’d grown so weary of the forty-minute commute into Slidell—forty minutes if she didn’t get stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle along the twenty-mile stretch of one-lane-only highway, that was. Thank goodness for her boss and his giant, understanding heart. After a decade of getting caught behind school busses with a dozen stops or tractor trailers hauling sugarcane during harvest season, Stewart Campbell no longer batted an eye when she walked into the office a half hour late.
    But she was tired of handing Stew excuses. And she was tired of this long, solitary drive that gave her too much time to think. Too much time to reminisce about the life she’d once led, to contemplate a future that was no longer possible.
    A familiar pain tightened Leslie’s chest.
    Never again would she witness the joy on her daughters’ faces when they hugged their dad after a year-long deployment. Never again would she rest in Braylon’s arms while they swung lazily on the porch swing and made plans for the day he reached his twenty years with the Army and was able to retire.
    This frustratingly long drive gave her too much damn time to remember. Remembering hurt too much.
    Leslie swallowed the lump of emotion