Sleepless in Las Vegas (37 page)

He heard the thought and laughed at himself. Josie the eternal optimist, forever talking about signs, had turned his brain to mush. He was thankful he was alone and hadn’t said the words out loud.

As if on cue, the wind picked up again and the small star disappeared behind the whirling snow.

Boyd turned on the propane and went back into the aging RV.

Josie had Carl unbuckled, and as Boyd picked him up, his son stayed asleep. “I’m sorry,” he said softly as they walked toward the bed in the back of the RV.

“Boyd Myers, you’ve got nothing to be sorry about.”

He gave voice to his thoughts this time. “If I hadn’t lost my job, then we wouldn’t have lost the house, and we wouldn’t be out here in the middle of…”

“Snowmageddon,” she supplied with a grin. “We could play ‘what-if’ all night, but that’s not going to get us anywhere.”

“We’re going to spend the holidays in a RV. We’re driving away from everything we know. We’re driving across country, not knowing if there will really be a job waiting for me.”

“We’re going to spend the holidays with each other. With Carl. With the new baby.” She patted her stomach. “We have a roof over our head, and we have each other. For Thanksgiving next week, I have a whole list of things I’m thankful for. You’re at the top of it. You’ll find a job,” she finished with utter conviction and certainty. “Everything happens for a reason. Plattsburgh wasn’t our real home. We’re on our way to finding the town we belong to, but no matter what, we’re already home as long as we have each other.”

“My little optimist,” he said as he shucked his jeans and sweatshirt and crawled under the covers.

Josie tucked the sleeping, pajama-clad Carl into the middle, then climbed into the bed on her own side.

“We’re lucky, Boyd. We might not have much money…”

He snorted at the understatement.

Josie continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “And you could make a long list of what we once had and were forced to sell, but we’ve got the RV. We’ve got Carl and soon we’ll have this new baby. We have each other. Everything else will work out.”

“You really believe that?” He reached over and stroked her fine, soft hair that lay spread on the pillow next to his.

“I really believe that. Life is funny. One moment, you think you’ve lost everything, the next you discover that you’ve found something even better.”

The image of that lone star shining in the midst of the blizzard flitted through his head. He leaned across their sleeping son and kissed Josie’s forehead.

She was right. He’d lost his job, but so had many other people in recent years.

He’d also lost the house because he couldn’t afford the payments, but again, so had many others.

Even though he was in the same boat as all those other folks, he had one advantage. He had Josie. He’d loved her ever since meeting her on their first day of kindergarten.

She always denied that and insisted he’d never even noticed her until high school, but she was wrong. He’d noticed her all right. It had taken him the nine years between kindergarten and high school to work up the courage to approach her as anything more than a friend. But he’d known as a five-year-old that Josie Bentley was someone rare and special, just as he’d known she deserved someone so much better than him. But to his utter amazement, she loved him. She’d picked him.

They may have lost everything, but somehow, he’d find a way to get it all back—if for no other reason than because Josie believed in him. And that thought, like one lone star in the midst of a blizzard, burned bright as he closed his eyes. Somehow, he’d get it all back for Josie.

No matter what it took.

Copyright (c) 2013 by Holly Fuhrmann

ISBN-13: 9781460323250

SLEEPLESS IN LAS VEGAS

Copyright (c) 2013 by Colleen Collins

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