Shelby swatted his arm with her overlong sweater sleeve. "You are so bad."
Julia rested her chin on her knees and watched the two teens move to the refreshment table. She loved moments like these best in the meetings, times when the universality of human nature transcended disabilities and birth defects. The way she wanted it always to be for her son.
The door swung open, rain sheeting inside and startling Patrick. She patted his tummy and wished someone would close the door soon. Zach sprinted through, slamming the door shut.
Zach? What was he doing here? He'd attended Patrick's doctor and therapy appointments when in town, but he'd never gone to the family support groups.
Until now.
He must be trying to tell her again how he wasn't giving up in his quest to build a family together. Heaven help her, he was making progress.
Zach whipped his hat off and swiped water from his flight suit while he looked around the room.
Finding her.
How could he make her body come alive with just the sweep of his eyes?
Zach paused to speak with Rena, before stepping around the playing children on his way to Julia. "Sorry I'm late, Jules. Mission planning ran long."
He scooped Patrick from the mat and held him high overhead. Patrick squealed, then chortled through his wide-open smile.
"Howdy, Bruiser. What did you do today? Huh? Win a bottle-chug contest with your pals over there? Play a little ball? Watch some cartoons?"
As Zach rambled on with nonsensical chitchat to Patrick, realization seeped into her.
Genuine affection for Patrick shone from Zach's eyes. Pure adulation radiated back from Patrick's smile. There was a bond between the two of them that had nothing to do with her.
Julia's throat closed as the meaning of that simple, so beautiful shared smile swept over her. Zach hadn't come to the meeting for her at all. He'd come for Patrick, and the spontaneous gesture proved far more tempting than a calculated buy-out of a hardware store.
If only she could follow her own advice to Shelby about trusting that Zach would always be there for her.
If only she could be content with nothing more from him than friendship and awesome sex.
If only she didn't love him.
Chapter 14
God, he loved flying.
But today's mission wasn't about flying.
The crew bus jarred along the South American runway. Zach scanned the horizon, morning sun cradled between two mountains. He would take to the skies soon. Today, come hell or high water, he would find answers to Lance Sinclair's crash.
As the Squadron Commander, Zach accepted he would live with the weight of that crew's death on his shoulders for the rest of his life. But through this flight he hoped to find a sort of closure, lay Lance Sinclair's ghost to rest in his own mind so he could claim Julia as his own.
Nothing from the past between them.
Rows separated each member of his crew as they spread throughout the bus. No normal pre-flight banter or laughs rang through the tin can of a bus rattling along the asphalt.
The runway stretched ahead of them alongside a string of mountains, control tower perched to the left. Lush green peaks characteristic of the tropical landscape made flying through this airspace challenging—and potentially deadly.
Silence echoed. A funeral-like solemnity fogged through the compartment.
Grayson "Cutter" Clark, co-pilot for the mission, sprawled sideways in his seat, back against the window. The renegade flight surgeon, one of the few who flew as well as healed, had packed away his do-rag and CDs. No practical jokes or impromptu concerts today.
In the middle of the last row, normally chatty Bronco Bennett sat, looming stone-silent, boots planted, hands on knees and staring straight ahead. With his prior experience as a C-130 navigator, he would plot a detailed longitude-latitude log. Forget relying solely on computerized data. And finally the loadmaster, Jim Price, senior in service years, but still an enigma around the squadron when it came to anything other than work. The man lived for the Air Force and would go to any lengths to protect military honor.
Zach could identify with that.