Chapter 5
Joelle opened her door to her bedroom at the Gaylord and stepped into her room, which was two floors up from the other two rooms that Nita had booked for them. Two queen beds, a chair and a desk, and a gorgeous view of the atrium greeted her from out the window.
“This is pretty fancy compared to the floor of the VW bus,” Ford said as he pulled his suitcase into the room. “Are you sure you’re comfortable with us sharing the room?”
“We are two adults, and if you haven’t noticed, there’s about three feet between the beds. We’re probably less than six inches apart on the bus,” Joelle reminded him. “And we shared a room at the dude ranch, remember?”
“But that seems different. I was up before everyone else, so I’m not sure they even knew that we were sleeping in the same room back there, and camping out is a whole ’nother story, as Grandpa says.
” Ford crossed the room and looked out the window.
“Looks like this is another city that never sleeps.”
Joelle left her suitcase and went over to join him. “The view is beautiful. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have time to do a walk-through while the others take a nap.”
“Maybe after supper, which Grandpa says we’re having here in the hotel.
The tour bus picks us up at the front entrance at nine in the morning.
We won’t be back until evening. It’s one of those stop-and-go things.
We can get off at the Ryman, spend as much time as we want there, and get back on to go to the next place,” Ford said.
“Aunt Sharlene says that we will meet them for breakfast at seven, and she told me to be ready to leave,” Joelle said. “Truth is, I’d rather stay right here and read a book or sit down there in the atrium and watch the people as spend a day on a tour bus.”
“Me too.” Ford covered a yawn with his hand. “But they might get into trouble if we aren’t there.”
“Amen!” Joelle said. “I’m calling dibs on the bathroom. After sitting out in the open and fighting mosquitoes, I’m ready for a shower.”
“Don’t use up all the hot water,” Ford teased.
Joelle turned and walked away. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She picked up what she needed from her suitcase—glad that she had brought shorts and tank tops for sleeping.
She usually slept in the nude, but not knowing if she would be sharing space with her aunt and Nita, she had tucked in sleepwear.
She went into the bathroom, adjusted the water in the shower, and then dropped her clothing on the floor.
Ford’s statement about not using all the hot water went through her mind as the pulsating stream pounded her stiff back muscles. “That’s easy,” she muttered as she washed her hair. “The tank in a hotel this big probably looks like the water tower in Whitewright, Texas.”
She had really thought she was over the teenage infatuation with Ford Holt, but the hot water coming out of the shower wasn’t nearly as hot as the attraction she had for him, and it was getting stronger every day.
***
Ford slipped under the covers and wondered again if Joelle was the magic that grounded him and made his nightmares disappear. Maybe it was simply the fact that he was on a road trip and was finally moving away from what he had seen in the military—not only physically, but mentally.
He turned over on his side to find her staring right at him. “Having trouble settling down and going to sleep?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “I can’t get my thoughts to stop running around like a hamster on a wheel. How about you?”
“I’ve hated closing my eyes for months,” he admitted.
“Why?” she asked.
“Nightmares,” he answered as he shifted his position to sit up and use the headboard for a backrest.
“Can you talk about them or is it classified?” she asked.
“I have talked to the VA therapists,” he answered.
She sat up and shifted both her pillows around to lean against. “Did it help?”
Ford shrugged. “Not so much.” Did he dare tell her that it wasn’t just his grandfather’s snoring that sent him to sleep beside her after that first night?
“Want to get it off your chest now?” she asked.
“You go first. What was keeping you awake?”
“Decisions I’ve made and ones I need to make.” She pushed back the covers and crossed the room to pick up two bottles of water. She handed one to Ford and twisted the cap off hers, then sat down on the edge of his bed.
“Want to elaborate?” he asked.
“I’m going to resign my position at the school where I teach.
We’ll probably work on moving Aunt Sharlene’s things over to Nita’s place most of the summer.
I can’t imagine letting our family land be sold to a stranger, and none of them are getting any younger.
” She took a long drink of her water. “But I’m wondering if this is really the right path for me, or if I’m doing it to please Aunt Sharlene.
I don’t like to think about it, but if I put the pencil to the paper so to speak, it’s not hard to figure out that if they all three live to be a hundred, I would only be fifty-three when they were gone.
That’s not old in today’s world, and I would have made them happy for twenty years.
” She took another drink and smiled. “And I’d get two vacations a year. ”
“Are you willing to give up your hopes and dreams for twenty years?” Ford asked. “What’s the top item on your bucket list?”
“To have a family,” she answered.
Ford shifted one of his pillows over to the other side of the bed and propped it up against the headboard. “You might as well get comfortable.”
She slung her legs up onto the bed and changed her position. “I can have both. I’m only thirty-three, and Aunt Sharlene is giving me her house. A ranch would be a good place to raise kids, don’t you think? But we’re talking too much about my insomnia. What’s keeping you awake?”
“Of course, a ranch would be a wonderful place to raise a family. I was happy when I got to spend time there and often wished that I could live on the ranch with Grandpa and Granny.” Ford could have listened to her read the dictionary or even the Bible for hours, just to hear her voice. “When are you going to tell the folks?”
“Not until we start home. I want to think long and hard about it and be sure. If I told them now and then changed my mind, it would break Aunt Sharlene’s and Nita’s hearts. I can’t do that to them,” she answered.
“I understand.” Ford could feel the electricity between them and wondered if she was getting the same vibes. “I’m still thinking about the whole idea. Maybe whichever way we each swing, we could tell them together.”
“We’ll see, and now enough procrastinating on your side of this conversation,” she said with a smile. “Tell me about the nightmares.”
Ford took a deep breath and opened his mouth, but then he didn’t know where to begin.
He took a drink of water and looked over at Joelle.
“The last mission that I went on is what keeps me awake. I don’t want to relive it again and again every night and wake up in a cold sweat while I’m frantically trying to figure out what I could have done different. ”
“In your heart, do you honestly think anything you could have done would have affected the outcome of whatever happened?” Joelle asked.
“It was like this,” Ford answered. “My whole team was strung out on high ground in…” he paused, “in a black ops mission. We were in camouflage and thought we were hidden well, just lying there with the wind creating little dust devils in the sand. The target that we were there to take out was coming down a valley, and our fingers were on our rifle triggers. I heard the whir of a helicopter above the loud beating of my heart, and for a split second, I thought it was one of ours. Then I realized it wasn’t a chopper coming to take us away once the mission was completed.
Bullets began to rain down on us. It was over in seconds, but I was the only one to walk out of there alive.
If I hadn’t been so focused on my job, I might have warned the others and we might have been able to roll down off that high spot to hide behind the rocks. ”
“And this is your recurring nightmare?” Joelle reached over and laid her hand on his.
Ford inhaled deeply and thought twice, then three times, about admitting that she was his lucky four-leaf clover. He turned to watch her expression before he spit out, “Except when I’m sleeping close to you. I think maybe you have magic powers.”
“The only power I have is that I don’t snore.
That lets you fall into a deep enough sleep that you don’t dream.
You’ve been on alert for so many years that your nerves are strung up like a tight barbed-wire fence,” she said and then added, “But, Ford, I’m so sorry you lost your team.
Losing my folks was tough, so I understand your pain in a measure.
I still have dreams about them, but they are not nightmares.
And in my opinion, for what it’s worth, you could have done nothing to save them in that split second.
Just think of it this way—you were saved for a reason.
Find it and move on. Your team members would want you to be happy. ”
“Have you ever thought of being a therapist?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t.” She squeezed his hand. “I think maybe we’ve both had a therapy session tonight, but morning is going to come around in just a few hours, so we should get to sleep.”
She scooted down in the bed, turned on her side to face him, and closed her eyes. “Sweet dreams.”
“‘Sleep tight, and don’t let the bed bugs bite.’” He finished the old saying.
He eased down in the bed and wished that he could kiss her good night—even if it was just on the forehead.
Before he could do that, he had to get a clear vision of what his future path looked like.
There was no use in starting something that couldn’t be finished and could end up with broken hearts and hard feelings.
He finally closed his eyes and dreamed that he was an old man sitting on the porch at the ranch and watching his grandchildren play with puppies out on the front lawn.