Under Seige (25 page)

John's eyes flickered with ill-disguised fear. His baggy clothes hung from his body like multiple sweatshirts and jeans on a hanger. A pulse throbbed in Zach's neck.

She didn't recognize this man, but suspected those who'd followed him into war would. "Fighting won't solve anything here, Zach. Let's hear what they have to say. You can even shout all you want."

Desperation clawed at emotions already raw. "This isn't like you. Please, just put him down."

Zach's fingers flexed, then relaxed as he lowered John. Julia allowed a sigh of relief to shudder through her for one self-indulgent second before she stiffened her shoulders and resolve.

"Okay, everybody listen up. We need ground rules here. No one talks without permission." She pointed to Shelby before shifting her gaze to John. "Everyone gets a chance to be heard." She saved the last for Zach. "And no one gets physical. Understand?"

A car swooshed by in the disgruntled silence.

"Good." Julia nodded. "I'll take that as a yes."

The teen backed, flicking a strand of hair from his face. "Sir, I know it looks bad, but nothing happened."

Zach loomed forward a step. "Can't you come up with something better than that?"

"Zach," she warned, her arm shooting between them. It sounded like a stretch to her too, but no need to toss gasoline on the fire. "They do have some clothes on. We probably arrived just in time."

What would have happened if she hadn't insisted on searching with him? Horror nipped at her. She saw one last chance to help Zach and his daughters, a way to heal the rifts in their family. "Shelby? What's going on, hon?"

"John's telling the truth. We didn't do anything." The silver stud in her brow winked above a defiant glare.

"But I wanted to. He's the one who stopped."

Zach's brows slammed down into an even darker scowl.

Whoosh.
Direct hit of kerosene on those embers.

"Okay, Shelby, you win." Julia charged past Zach into the hotel room, forcing the teens to back deeper inside.

Putting distance between them and Zach.

Confusion momentarily replaced defiance on Shelby's pale face. "What?"

"You win." Julia pinned her with a give-no-quarter stare. "You hurt your dad. Isn't that what this is all about? Hurting him?"

Shelby tugged the hem of her overlong jersey, her brown eyes gleaming with a battlefield fervor she'd no doubt inherited from her father. "You're all ganging up on me." She swung an accusing finger toward John. "First him telling me I'm not ready for sex. Now you telling me what I'm thinking too. I'm so tired of everybody deciding my life for me."

Zach stepped further into the room, his eyes hardening as they scanned the rumpled bedspread, then shifted back to Shelby. "Nothing happened?"

John skimmed a finger inside the neck of his sweatshirt. "No, sir."

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."

Julia waited and wondered if Zach would pull it together. She willed him to be the father she knew he could be.

Slowly, he closed the distance between himself and his daughter, absently circling his wedding band round and round. "Your mother and I started seeing each other when we weren't much older than you two."

"Oh, great." Sarcasm dripped from Shelby's words like water condensing on the ice bucket. Flopping on the edge of the bed, she swept up a pillow and clutched it to her stomach. "Thanks for the big, fat endorsement, Colonel."

"Remember what Julia said, Shel. Everyone gets a turn. So hush up and listen to mine for a minute." Zach pulled the pillow from her and tossed it aside. "You think you're the only teenager to pull a tough road?

Your mother had to deal with bringing up four younger brothers and sisters while her mom supported them."

His jaw tensed, and Julia could almost see him working to draw the words from inside himself.

"By the time I was fifteen, I'd moved twice as much as you have now. We followed my father from rig to rig because that's how he put food on the table. Then my mother died." He scrubbed a hand over his face, but couldn't swipe away the exhaustion from his eyes. "After that, life was...not good. We weren't exactly living the American Dream, kiddo."

Julia's joy seeped from her.

His spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child father.

Zach always understated his own disappointments and pain. For him to share this much, his teenage years must have been beyond bad. She didn't need tender yearnings to be the one to soothe his hurts.

Not now when there was still so much unresolved between them. They were even farther than ever from establishing a true partnership.

"Just like you, Shel," Zach continued, pacing a relentless path in the threadbare carpet. "I planned to take control of my own world. For me, your mother and the military were my ticket out for making a real life.

I won't ever regret marrying her because I have you and Ivy. But what we see for our lives at sixteen or even eighteen may only be about fifty percent on target, if you're lucky. Keep that in mind when you're making decisions."

Silently, Shelby jabbed her toe through a quarter-sized hole in the carpet.

"This is who I am, Shel." Zach thumped his chest right over his military nametag. He dropped onto the edge of the bed beside her. "I wish I could promise you things will be different at home. All I can say is I'll try."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Somebody's gotta pay the bills."

Zach tucked a knuckle under her chin, tipping her face up. "If it was just about paying the bills, I'd be flying for the airlines. But it isn't. I've had a fair glimpse of what it's like to lose control of your life. And there are people out there in the world who are feeling that a helluva lot worse than you or I ever will. I can't just say it's not my problem and turn away."

The words may have been meant for Shelby, but Julia heard the deeper implications for her relationship with Zach. She knew first-hand how he took on the troubles of others, and she couldn't help but admire and love him for turning his life around even as she wished for more from him.

He slung an arm around his daughter's shoulders. "Shel, if you want me to respect where you're coming from, you're going to have to do the same for me."

While Shelby didn't return the embrace, she didn't pull away either. Her head fell to rest on his chest, nothing overt like some Ivy hug, but Julia saw the tears Shelby wouldn't show her father.

They'd made a start in reconnecting as father and daughter, transcending into a new stage of the parent-child relationship as Shelby left behind Ivy-days of unquestioning acceptance. Julia blinked back her own tears, touched.

Then it hit her. They didn't need her anymore. She sat on the outskirts, much as John slumped against the wall, both of them unnecessary now.

Pam had returned and from all appearances planned to stay. Both girls had bonded with their father.

Patrick was thriving, and Julia had a solid support system in place now to maintain that progress.

And she was a stronger woman than she'd been a year ago, or even five months ago when Zach had sauntered into her hospital room. She'd learned from him how to strengthen her dreams with a solid focus.

They'd accomplished their goals in marrying in half the time they'd thought they needed, which should be cause for rejoicing. Except now, there wasn't anything holding them together. No more crises to solve or major single-parenting hardships to wade through.

Now, there wasn't anything to stop her from leaving.

* * *

Her light tread sounded along the hardwood floors, then muffled on the rug as she eased closer. Stopping beside him, she didn't answer, just stared down at the sleeping baby with him.

While he wanted to hope she would disagree, he knew better. He might have salvaged something with Shelby, thanks to Julia's intervention, but he'd blown it with Julia by losing his temper in the hotel room.

By the whole damned way he'd handled the flight. If only he could have kept control, thought through his words to fix the fact that he should have been straight with her about Lance's crash. But damn it, Julia stirred emotions that weren't calm or even rational.

Her scent swirled around him, strawberry shampoo and fresh air. "We've accomplished what we set out to do with the children. They're back on track."

He noticed she didn't flat-out state she planned to leave. He pushed that advantage to the wall. "Why tear that apart now?"

He'd reclaimed his daughter, but would he lose a wife again? And this time, he would lose a child too if his marriage ended. Patrick might not be his biological son, but the boy couldn't be any more his if he'd fathered him.

"If I stay any longer, it will only be worse when I leave. Shelby expects me to go now. Ivy's excited about having her mother home so this won't hit her as hard."

"You're deluding yourself on that one, Jules."

She didn't answer, just patted her son's back. Zach tucked the blanket around Patrick's feet, using the familiar ritual to steady himself while he thought through ways to convince her, something he could do to make her stay. "What about Patrick?"

"I'll miss being with him all day, but I'm stronger now, more confident in myself and the support system I have in place."

"That's not what I meant." Stirrings of residual anger edged past his exhaustion. "Don't you think Patrick will miss me? Or that I'll miss him?"

Her grip on the edge of the crib whitened. "It will be harder for him the longer he has to grow attached to you."

Zach grasped her shoulders and turned her toward him, finding her face as pale as that tight-knuckled grip. "If you're so much stronger now, then give us a chance."

Patrick stirred, snuffled, then stilled with a sigh.

Julia's eyes slid back to Zach. "Do you think this is easy for me?" she whispered, her words laced with frustration. "I want to do what's best for the children."

"Bull."

"What? I can't believe you said that to me."

She tried to inch back but he held firm.

"Hell, Jules, I'll say it again if it will make you listen." He could see she was three seconds away from packing her high tops and swiping all those bottles of polish right off his dresser, into her bag and out of his world. "You won't stay because you're too scared to try. Fantasies are easy. Real life is hard. At least be honest."