The bogey was damned persistent today.
Julia spiked her fingers through her short blond waves. A flicker of confusion shifted through her dewy green eyes before she turned from him. "Ivy's card will look just right tucked between the roses from the Clarks and the plant from the squadron."
Zach exhaled. "They're...uh...nice."
"All those flowers are wonderful for masking the hospital smell." She inched across the private recovery room, bracing a hand on a rolling tray for support. Leaning to place the card between a vase of yellow roses and a spidering fern, she rambled about who had sent each card and arrangement.
What the hell was he thinking letting his eyes wander right back to those legs the minute she wasn't looking? The woman had just given birth, for crying out loud. She was a widow of less than a year.
He should bash himself over the head.
The lack of sex must be cutting off oxygen to his brain. That and the whole awkward way he'd walked into the room messed with his control. Her glow of maternal beauty, the subtle curve of her breast had stopped him dead, stirring him more than any flagrant exposure.
He forced himself to turn away.
Zach secured the baby against his shoulder and walked to the window. The half-empty parking lot made for safer viewing anyway. "See that clear sky, Patrick? It's a great night for flying." He patted the baby's back, speaking softly in his ear. "Sun's going down, but that's okay. We're just about the only Air Force in the world that flies and trains at night.
We like the protection, the stealth of a dark sky. Day or night, it's all the same in the cockpit thanks to our electronics."
Lance Sinclair had died at night. His instruments had been in prime condition and still he'd hit a mountain.
Zach carefully pushed aside the thought, continuing to mumble about planes and flying, all the things Lance would have told his boy. "When you go to flight school, little fella, they're gonna try to talk you into one of those pretty fighters. But don't you listen. You want to fly the heavies. You want to fly with a crew. With guys to watch your back.
Friends to share their cookies."
The baby stirred against Zach's shoulder, one thin leg kicking free of the blanket. Julia stepped forward as if to grab her son back.
Zach shifted Patrick from his shoulder to the crook of his arm. "It's okay. I have him."
He slid his finger along the tiny palm for the baby to grab hold and tried not to think about how the boy's father should be here.
Instead, the boy would only have a few medals and war stories as mementos of his dad.
Zach owed it to this child to clear Lance's name so those stories were good ones. "Your daddy was a great guy, Patrick. Top-notch flyer. A friend to everyone. He always shared his time and his cookies."
The baby blinked, staring up with that unfocused newborn gaze Zach recognized. Yeah, he remembered those first days with his girls, talking to them, walking the floors, repeatedly counting fingers and toes to check yet again that all was well—
Zach frowned.
He looked at Patrick again, closer. The parental alarm in his head went on red alert. He'd read every baby book on the shelves during both of Pam's pregnancies. Even now he had a book on troubled teens by his bed. He would be prepared for anything, know all the warning signs....
Like the flat facial profile beneath a white hospital cap. The excessive space between the front and second toe of the little foot kicking outside the blanket. The small skin folds around upward-slanted eyes peering back at him.
Already certain what he would find, Zach crooked his finger to open the small fist—and traced a single, deep crease across the center of the baby's palm.
All characteristics of—
"Down syndrome," Julia said softly, standing just beside him. "Patrick has Down syndrome."
Her words thundered in Zach's head as he studied the newborn staring so trustingly back up. His arms tightened protectively around this boy who would never fly planes, but would face battles far tougher than any Zach had seen.
He'd made it his mission to protect, defend, even put his life on the line for others when called upon. Yet now, when it mattered most, he had no idea what he could do.
But by God, he would do something.
He faced Julia. "What do you need?"
"Excuse me?"