So she’d been in Iraq, had she? Were those the demons that made her get drunk? He thought of his sister and the night she died because of a drunk driver. He fell asleep with his sister on his mind and a strange woman in his arms.
* * *
A sliver of sunshine poured into the room in a long uneven line through a split in the draperies. Sharlene grabbed a pillow and crammed it over her head. She hadn’t had such a hellish hangover since she got home from Iraq. They’d had a party to celebrate her homecoming and they’d really tied one on that night. The next morning her head had been only slightly smaller than a galvanized milk bucket. Her head had throbbed with every beat of her heart and she’d sworn she’d never get drunk again. But there she was in a hotel room with the same damn symptoms.
She needed a glass of tomato juice spiked with an egg and lemon and three or four aspirin. Somehow she didn’t think raw eggs and tomato juice would be on the free continental breakfast bar in the hotel dining room. She peeked out from under the pillow at the clock. The numbers were blurry but it was nine o’clock. Two hours until checkout. That gave her plenty of time for a shower. Maybe warm water would stop her head from pounding like a son of a bitch.
She and her friends had hit four…or was it five bars? She didn’t remember dancing on any tabletops or getting into fights. She checked her knuckles and they were free of bloody scabs. No bruises on her arms or legs. She wiggled but didn’t feel like she’d been kicked or beaten. Either she didn’t start a fight or she won. She frowned and in the fog of the hangover from hell she remembered arguing with a man. Then the helicopters were overhead and she told him that Jonah was dead.
Then they all left and the man brought her to the hotel. She sat up so quickly that her head spun around like she was riding a Tilt-A-Whirl at Six Flags. She was hot and sweaty, barefoot, and her skirt was missing. She was still wearing panties, a T-shirt, and a bra, so evidently the man had put her to bed and left.
The newspaper reporter in her instantly asked for what, when, who, and how. She drew her brow down and remembered the what. She’d been drunk and passed out in his truck. The when involved after all the bars closed. The rest was a blur.
She moaned as she sat up on the edge of the bed and the night came back in foggy detail. Four of her girlfriends who’d served with her in Iraq had come to Weatherford for a reunion weekend. One from Panama City, Florida; one from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; another from Nashville; and the fourth from Savannah, Georgia. Sharlene could only get away for Sunday so they’d flown into Dallas and saved the best until she arrived. One beer led to another and that led to a pitcher of margaritas and then the tequila shots. She vaguely remembered a tequila sunrise or two in the mix. Her stomach lurched when she stood up, and the room did a couple of lopsided twirls.
She leaned on the dresser until everything was standing upright and her stomach settled down. If she waited for her head to stop pounding, she’d be there until hell froze over or three days past eternity—whichever came first.
She held her head with both hands as she stumbled toward the bathroom. Hangovers had been invented in hell for fools who drank too much. Or maybe the angels developed them. A good hangover would keep more people out of hell than a silver-tongued preacher man ever could.
“Holt Jackson! Dear God! That’s who brought me home. Lord, he’ll think I’m a drunk and a slut.”
She’d slept in his arms and had not dreamed. Even with a hangover, she knew she hadn’t dreamed. She hadn’t seen Jonah’s eyes the night before, and she’d slept for the first time in years without the nightmares. She looked back at the tangled sheets on the king-sized bed, and the rush of what might have happened made her even dizzier than the hangover. She grabbed the wall and scanned each corner of the room.
“Did we? I can’t remember. Oh, shit! I can’t remember anything but getting into his truck,” she whispered. She reached for the knob to open the bathroom door. It swung to the inside and there stood Holt Jackson, drying his hands on a white hotel towel. She had to hang onto the knob for support or she would have fallen into his arms.
“Good morning,” he said.
She rushed inside, shoved him out, and hung her head over the toilet. When she finished, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She heard deep laughter and bristled. Sure, she was in misery, but he had no right to laugh at her unless he was a saint or an angel and had never had a hangover. When she opened the door, he was sitting on the end of the bed, putting on his boots and watching cartoons. He ran his fingers through his dark-brown hair, and green eyes looked at her from beneath thick, deep, dark eyelashes. His face was square with a slight dimple in his chin and his lips were full.
The anger left and was replaced with remorse. “Sorry about that. I haven’t been drunk in many years.”
“Not since Iraq, huh?” he said.
She glanced at the bed. “We didn’t… Did we?”
“You snored and I fell asleep. Didn’t mean to, but it had been a long day with the moving and then driving to Fort Worth for supper. I apologize. Other than that, nothing happened.”
“How did you know about Iraq?” she asked cautiously.
“You tried to convince me that if you could drive an army jeep
