Free Saving Alyssa (Mills & Boon Heartwarming) by Loree Lough

Troy. She had been too caught up in work to even notice the time. Billie grabbed a slice of pizza and bit into the now congealed cheese. Not bad. She took another bite. She’d risk the heartburn.
    * * *
    B ILLIE   SHOULD   HAVE taken Troy’s advice. She’d tossed and turned all night, waking up and falling asleep more than a dozen times, thanks to dreams of those life-altering moments under the glaring delivery room lights.
    She got up and trudged into the kitchen to start the coffeemaker, then grabbed Troy’s sweatshirt jacket from the hook beside the door and carried a slice of pizza onto the deck. A light rain was falling, so she pulled up the jacket’s hood. A motorcycle buzzed by out front, and on Main Street, the squealing brakes of a school bus pierced the otherwise quiet morning. It had rained hard last night and she inhaled the scents that rode the autumn breeze: of roses, planted all around the deck. Damp leaves, fluttering against the fence. Bud, her elderly neighbor, frying bacon. Her coffee, spewing into the carafe.
    Leaning into the railing, Billie watched a chipmunk scamper through the mulch surrounding the sunflowers, its cheeks puffed to three times their normal size as it prepared for the winter. She loved it here, in this place she’d bought and paid for with her half of the settlement, arranged by Chuck’s attorney.
    An odd feeling engulfed her, something between resentment and melancholy. Even after all this time, Billie still didn’t fully understand why her ex had left. She’d loved everything about being married, even the things that most women complained about, like socks on the floor and toothpaste tubes squeezed from the middle. Living alone all through college had taught her that she wasn’t cut out for a solitary life, so having someone who shared her views on politics, menu changes at their favorite restaurant and what to save their money for had felt like a fairy tale come to life.
    She frowned as the same old questions resurfaced.
    If Chuck felt that strongly about not having kids, why hadn’t he said so when she’d told him about her dream of having a big family? Had he expected her to change her mind once she saw how delightful her life could be with him at the center of it? If she hadn’t pressed him to have a baby, would he have stayed? Would she have wanted him to...?
    Bud’s cat, Inky, padded up and wound figure eights around her ankles, alternately purring and meowing in the hope Billie would share a pepperoni slice. Stooping, she fed him a sliver of meat, then stroked his glossy fur. The coffeemaker hissed, signaling a full pot. She peeled off a tiny blob of mozzarella, and the cat licked it from her fingertip. “Life,” she said, “is a little bit like you. Soft on the surface, rough and raspy when you look a little deeper.”
    â€œI hope writing greeting card verses isn’t on your bucket list,” Troy said, joining her on the deck, “because that was awful. ”
    Meowing, Inky rubbed Troy’s calf. “Sorry, pal,” he said, hands extended. “I got nothin’.” He met Billie’s eyes. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you, because as any sane person knows, if you feed a stray cat, it will keep coming back.”
    â€œInky isn’t a stray.” Billie stood up. “He belongs to Bud.”
    As if on cue, Inky sauntered toward the corner of the yard, leaped onto a fence post and disappeared.
    Troy nodded toward the half-eaten slice of pizza in Billie’s hand. “That’s a horrible breakfast. I’m telling Mom.”
    â€œGo ahead,” she said, smirking, “and I’ll tell her...” The joke fizzled even before she completed the thought. If he ever found out that she’d heard him crying himself to sleep, he’d be mortified.
    He followed her into the kitchen. “Tell her what?”
    She filled two mugs with