Life is Sweet Read Online Free

Leesburg friends was like having a big family for the first time in her life. Cal had been part of that, and along with romanticizing her new life, she’d romanticized him.
    Until she’d flown home from Vegas and realized to her shame that she’d just married someone she liked a whole lot, but didn’t really love.
    â€œPeevish Pam working out as a helper?” he asked between bites.
    Pam was a real estate agent by trade, but the Realtor she’d worked for had folded during the last economic slump. Pam now worked part-time for Becca and picked up real estate commissions on a freelance basis.
    â€œIt’s been great. I can actually catch my breath during the day.” The first year Becca had tried to go it alone, which had been stressful. “And she’s trying to get me to improve my people skills.”
    He almost choked on his brownie. “ People skills? Is that what they call bullying these days?”
    â€œShe doesn’t treat everyone the way she treats you.”
    â€œThat makes me feel special.” He lingered another moment as if there was something he wanted to say. Their encounters always seemed to end this way now. Awkwardly. Because, a year on from their divorce, there was nothing left to say. They’d made a mistake, and righted it, and now it was a lucky thing they remained friends.
    â€œWell . . . I guess I’d better go and see what else I can screw up today,” he said. “Sounds like I’ve already made a head start and I didn’t even know it.”
    He gazed at her. She looked away.
    â€œAre you coming out to the stables today?” he asked.
    â€œI’ll be by after work, around seven.”
    When he was gone, she wondered if she should have given him some personal encouragement, told him that he wasn’t as hopeless as he pretended to be. She still felt a residual protective impulse. And, pathetic as it sounded, her ex-husband was the closest thing she had to family now, real or televised.
    But if she thought about that too long she would do desperate things . . . which was sort of why she’d ended up marrying Cal in the first place.

Chapter 2
    â€œHurry, Matthew, I’m starving. ”
    Olivia’s pencil-like, ten-year-old frame long-jumped down the sidewalk ahead of him. She was the most energetic starving person on the planet.
    â€œHow can you be hungry?” Matthew asked. “I packed your noontime smorgasbord myself.”
    She turned, jutting her lower jaw out so that her lower teeth protruded like a little monster. A food monster. “That was hours ago. And I gave the cookie away.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause Grover wanted it. He never gets cookies.”
    Matthew had to think twice to remember that Grover was a real child, not a Muppet or an imaginary friend. Kids these days and their weird names. Back when he was in elementary school, half his friends had been named Jason. Life had been simpler then.
    â€œWhy are you smiling?” Olivia asked him.
    â€œNo reason.”
    â€œAnd why are you moving sooooo slow?” She took his hand and tugged him down the sidewalk, nearly knocking them into a woman maneuvering a baby carriage out the door of the card shop.
    Matthew murmured an apology and, too late, darted to hold the door for the harried mom, with whom he felt a newfound kinship. Before, he’d often wondered why Nicole wore a hunted look some evenings, but now he knew. Dealing with your own messy work-life problems was exhausting enough without another little person’s schedule and headaches to squeeze in, too. To Matthew, Olivia had always seemed like an easy-care kid. But that was before she’d been left in his sole care for longer than, say, a trip to the hairdresser’s.
    A month. He pushed the thought out of his mind when Olivia dropped his hand and skipped the last ten feet to the door of the bakery, ending with an impatient hop. “This is the best