A Facade to Shatter by Lynn Raye Harris Page B

lucky ones.”
    Lucky ones. He didn’t sound as if he believed those words at all. And yet he was lucky. He was here, alive—and she was suddenly very thankful for that. Her chest squeezed tight as she thought of what he’d said tonight—and how very close she’d come to never knowing him at all.
    “Why don’t you fly anymore, Zach?” She remembered that he’d said he couldn’t but she didn’t know why. She’d asked him that night in Palermo, but then she’d told him not to answer when she’d thought she’d crossed a line into something too personal.
    Now, however, she wanted to know. She felt like she needed to know in order to understand him better. Her heart beat harder as she waited.
    He sighed. And then he tapped his temple. “Head trauma. Unpredictable headaches accompanied by vision loss. Definitely not a good idea when flying a fighter jet at thirty thousand feet.”
    He sounded so nonchalant about it, but she knew how much it must hurt him. “I’m sorry.”
    His eyes gleamed as he looked at her. “Me, too. I loved flying.”
    “I don’t like to fly,” she said. “I find it scary.”
    He grinned, and it warmed her. “That’s because you don’t understand how it works. By that, I mean the noises the plane makes, the process of flight—not to mention the fact you aren’t in control. It’s some unseen person up there, holding your life in his or her hands. But it’s all very basic, I assure you.”
    “I know it’s mostly safe,” she said. “But you’re right. I haven’t flown much, and the sounds and bumps and lack of control scare me.”
    She’d longed for a sedative on the long flight from Sicily, but she hadn’t dared take one because of the baby.
    His laugh made a little tendril of flame lick through her. “A fighter jet is so much more intense. The enginesscream, the thrust is incredible and the only thing keeping you from blacking out is the G suit.”
    Lia blinked. “What is a G suit?”
    “An antigravity suit,” he said. “It has sensors that tell it when to inflate. It fits tight around the abdomen and legs in order to prevent the blood draining from the brain during quick acceleration.”
    Lia shivered. “That sounds frightening.”
    He shrugged. “Blacking out would be frightening. The suit not so much. You get used to it.”
    “You miss flying, don’t you?”
    He nodded. “Every damn day.”
    “Then I’m sorry you can’t do it anymore.”
    “Me, too.” He put his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. She wanted to reach out and touch him, wanted to run her fingers along his jaw and into his hair. But she didn’t.
    She couldn’t breach that barrier, no matter how much she wanted to. She didn’t know what she really meant by such a gesture, what she expected. And she couldn’t bear it if he turned away from her. If he rejected her.
    Lia clasped her hands in her lap and turned to look at the White House as they glided by on Constitution Avenue, heading toward the Lincoln Memorial and the bridge across the Potomac. The monuments were brightly lit, glowing white in the night. Traffic wasn’theavy and they moved swiftly past the sites, across the bridge and toward Zach’s house in Virginia.
    Lia racked her brain for something to say, something basic and innocuous. No matter what he’d said about the photographer, she was certain he’d had trouble with the intrusiveness of the flash.
    But she didn’t feel she could push the subject. He’d already shared something with her when he’d told her why he could no longer fly, and how much he missed it. He had not said those things during his speech. He’d said them to her, privately, and she knew it bothered him a great deal.
    She was still trying to think of something to say when Zach’s phone rang. He opened his eyes and drew it from his pocket, answering only once he’d looked at the display. He spent the next fifteen minutes discussing his schedule with someone, and then the car was sliding between