A sigh heaved through Zach. "Okay, then. Shelby, put on some..." He waved toward her crumpled jeans on the floor. "Put something on and let's go."
The commander had spoken.
No wonder Shelby was pulling her hair out to get her father's attention. Just leave? Julia wanted to scream. How like a man to think this was only about sex, Zach and John both, when nothing had been solved. She knew too well sex only complicated life all the more.
Shelby yanked on her jeans, muttering as if already planning her next great escape. She grabbed a brush off the bathroom counter and yanked it through her tangled hair with brutal swipes.
No way were they leaving until Zach and Shelby battled this out once and for all. Julia shut the door and plunked down in a chair.
He frowned. "Julia?"
She ignored his question and plowed ahead. "Shelby, what's really going on here?"
Shelby hurled her brush into the sink. "John and I were running away to get married."
"Like hell." Zach moved in front of the door, boots braced apart, the officer standing sentinel.
Why couldn't they see past what the other said to the real meaning? "You had to know we'd find you before then."
Shelby charged across the room and pitched a half-eaten pizza in the trash. "At least I'd get a few hours away. Then maybe he—" she paused in the midst of shoving the leftover six-pack of sodas into her suitcase to shoot a glare at her father, "—would understand that John and I are in love."
Zach's low snort sparked defiance in Shelby's eyes. She shot an exasperated eye-roll Julia's way. "See what I have to put up with?" She flung a handful of T-shirts on top of the sodas. "John's the only one who understands."
Julia leaned forward, hoping to defuse the tension by enticing them all to relax their toe-to-toe battle stances. "Understands what, Shelby?"
"What it's like living in a gypsy caravan on high speed. Pulling into some Podunk town just long enough to make friends you'll miss forever when you have to haul ass to another hole in the wall for your father's I-Must-Save-the-Planet freaking job."
Shelby stopped in front of her father, fists jammed on her hips. "Most of all, I hate living with everybody always watching me."
Julia nudged Zach's boot with her foot. Twice.
Finally, he uncrossed his arms, working the back of his neck with his hand. "That's what parents are supposed to do. Watch their kids."
Shelby's shoulders raised and lowered with a beleaguered sigh, which carried some weight for once when coupled with her trembling jaw.
Her frenzied ranting tempered to restless pacing. "I don't mean all that parent garbage."
She flicked the trailing edge of the spread up onto the bed. "I mean everybody. I can't go anywhere without people knowing who I am, watching everything I do and telling you about it. Being a military brat is like living in some kind of fishbowl." She waved a hand to encompass her father's flight suit. "Except everybody wears green."
Zach stepped closer, head dipping as he listened. "Go on."
Knee bumping the bed, Shelby picked at the polyester spread, flicking aside one fuzzy pill at a time, an endless task on the cheap coverlet. "I don't get a say in anything. Ever.
Nothing stays the same. You're already making plans to haul us all to another state this summer. Just when I get to liking it somewhere, we move. You change jobs. You change wives."
Julia kept her eyes fixed on Shelby. The weight of Zach's insistence that they give the marriage a try whittled away at her already shaky and weary resistance.
Shelby tugged at the hem of her jersey. "It's like I don't count. John understands." She angled a wobbly smile his way. "I mean, geez, it's even worse for him. He's a military brat and a preacher's kid.">There may never be enough time to make you understand. We have to look for Shelby.
And I do mean we, Colonel. Now get moving. We have to find your daughter before she proves she's as thickheaded as her father."
* * *
Zach shifted gears on his motorcycle and shot up the asphalt shoulder to avoid the jam-up of rush hour. Julia had insisted the bike would be faster and easier to navigate through traffic, well worth the slight delay it had taken to stop by the house for her to change and for him to fire up the Harley. If—when—they found Shelby, he would decide how to get her home. For now, speed was essential. Time equated miles of distance between him and his child.
Julia's arms locked around him, Zach whipped down another exit ramp, tearing through the parking lot of a cheap hotel, the twentieth in forty-two minutes. He cruised past the small square pool with a tarp stretched over it for winter. A lone umbrella table listed to the side.
No sign of John's car.