He hooked his hands on his hips, one boot forward as if formulating the most effective tactical approach. Damn it, she wasn't some strategic campaign. "How do you think it made me feel finding out you'd lied? That's the one thing I can't take, having a husband lie to me again."
Zach reached.
She backed.
He held up his hands, flight suit stretching across his broad chest. "I'm sorry Lance hurt you then, and I'm sorry you're hurting today. But you know there are things I can't talk about in my job and it's damned unfair to call that lying."
How dare he turn this all around on her? "Life isn't that clear-cut-and-dried. You could have told me something instead of making some commander-like unilateral decision for me. I hoped from those calls during your TDY that maybe we'd begun to work as partners somewhere other than with the children and in bed."
Or on the office sofa.
Julia kept her eyes firmly fixed on his face, no wandering to tempting brown vinyl. "You couldn't tell me anything to prepare me? Can you even imagine how scared I was having this drop out of nowhere?'
"You'd just had a baby." Scratching his jaw, he paced in front of her like a stalking wolf.
"How the hell was I supposed to tell you then? You already had enough on you without hearing the Inspector General had reopened the investigation into Lance's crash."
The betrayal went deeper than she'd thought. "You've known since Patrick was born?"
He stopped. His eyes narrowed, hardened. "How does it feel to be kept on the outside, Julia?"
Confusion put a temporary hold on her anger. "What?"
"You didn't tell me about Patrick having Down syndrome until after he was born. Hell, you didn't even tell me then. You left me to figure it out on my own."
Guilt seeped through her. She couldn't dodge her own culpability. She'd hurt him with that omission and he'd been carrying that around for months, perhaps an unacknowledged pain like the one Pam had dealt him, but lingering all the same. "You're right. I should have told you when the test results came back."
"Were you hoping I would say or do something wrong that day in your hospital room?"
He sauntered toward her, muscles rippling beneath his flight suit with each muffled thud of his boots. "Then you would have all the more reason to push me away. You could say,
'What an insensitive ass' and throw me out of your life so you wouldn't have to face whatever the hell it is we have between us."
"That's not true at all." Or was it?
"When have you ever stopped searching for reasons to shut me down?"
Julia started to apologize again, then paused. How had he sidetracked her? Maybe he'd been right to hold back initially, but later he should have told her. "When have you ever stopped trying to control everything around you?"
He stopped in his tracks. "Run that one by me one more time."
His totally clueless look stirred the embers of her anger. How could he understand so little about her and still expect her stay with him? "If you want me to call you something besides Colonel, then quit treating me like one of your troops."
His eyes heated from brown to molten gold as they swept over her. "Believe me, Julia, I've never wanted to do to anyone under my command the things I want to do with you under me."
The fire within her combusted into a blaze.
Julia trembled from the effort to hold herself back. Although she would gladly trade the confusing swirl of emotions for something she understood perfectly.
Lust.
Zach advanced a step, the hungry wolf aura returning. All those memories rose from the sofa and taunted her with everything she was giving up by pushing him away. She backed from the couch until her legs bumped the edge of his desk, all the while knowing she was lying to herself. She wanted Zach Dawson any way she could have him.
And right now she wanted him in at least fifteen different ways.
He closed the last inches between them, flattening his palms to the desk until his arms bracketed her. One lean, muscled thigh insinuated between her legs, his face only inches away. "What the hell do you want from me, Julia?'
"Everything," she blurted the truth she couldn't hide from herself any more than from him. "I want a man who's honest with me even when it hurts. I need a man who'll give me everything of himself and expect the same from me."