Lindsay McKenna - Night Hawk

He slowed his walk, not wanting to reach the ranch house just yet, his mind and heart back in Bagram where Kai was stationed. She didn’t know how much he looked forward to seeing her when he and his Delta team came off a mission. He would always walk over to the Apache hangars, look her up and casually ask if she’d go to chow with him. He would see her eyes widen a little, a sudden smile blossom on her lips when she’d spot him. And she always was eager to go eat with him.

Did Kai know how much he looked forward to those special times? To hear her talk, hear her dreams, hear her getting over Sam’s death.

That’s what they shared between them: Sam Morrison. He was a larger-than-life Delta Force operator. The perfect poster child for the shadow warrior group, the best the Army had. Gil recalled the first time Sam had accidentally run into Kai. It was in an Afghan village. At Bagram, Kai worked with a group of Army people who had started a charity for the children of the Afghan villages. She was with a group of volunteer medics, the only female in the group. The medics, all men, couldn’t talk to the mothers or little girls, but Kai could because she was a female.

Gil remembered going into the village because they were looking for a Taliban suspect who had run and hidden in it the night before. They’d tracked him by infrared scope on their rifles. Often Taliban would hide in villages to throw them off the trail. Gil couldn’t get Kai out of his mind, his heart or his body after seeing her there. Sam Morrison was leading the team and spotted her. And he reacted the same way toward her, telling Gil he was claiming her.

Well, Sam had claimed Kai. The guy knew how to turn on the charm Gil never possessed. He watched his best friend sweet-talk innocent Kai. And she was naive at that time. Hell, she still was. Innocent in the sense that she was an idealist. She didn’t see the bad in life. She always saw the good.

Gil was privately jealous of Sam for getting to her first. He’d been so powerfully attracted to Kai that he couldn’t explain it at all. He’d lain awake in his tent at Bagram, unable to erase her from his thoughts or, worse, his heart.

Every time they came back to Bagram, Sam would go directly to Kai. And Gil ached to be the one who went to her, instead. But Sam was his brother-in-arms. They had each other’s backs. He would never betray Sam to get to Kai. No way. There was honor in him although as Gil slowly walked by the rusted corrals, he admitted sourly that his morals and values had gone to hell when he’d lost his brother Rob. By that time, Kai had been a widow for a year. Gil had stepped in to be an emotional support for her after Sam was killed. It was his duty, his moral obligation, to be there for Kai. To let her weep unashamedly on his shoulder, clinging to him, the raw sounds of grief tearing out of her. And he’d held her, patted her back, whispered gruff words, trying to make her feel better.

And sometimes, after a good cry and they were sitting out in back of one of the hangars, Kai would talk to him. She never, ever suspected he ached for her, wanted her for his own, dreamed of her in his arms, in his bed. And Gil never gave her pause to think that he was anything other than Sam’s brother who was there to help her through the transition of losing her husband, his best friend.

Gil could never tell Kai how much he looked forward to coming off an op, landing at Bagram in an MH-47 Chinook flown by Night Stalker pilots and looking her up. Just to be with her. To see her face, those haunting, large gray eyes of hers, to watch how her mouth flexed when she talked, to hear what was bothering her or what had made her laugh. She had been an oasis in the desert of his heart. Gil could never explain why he was so powerfully drawn to Kai. And he never did. It was just there. In his face. In his dreams. In his heart and memory. In his soul.

Mouth quirking, Gil headed past the rusted corrals and knew he had to meet everyone else. By that time, Sandy was up and puttering around. It didn’t take much to know that Sandy was drawn to Cass. The Special Forces operator had a way with people, no question. And in the three months that Gil had been at the ranch and knew the situation with Sandy’s health, he’d seen Cass put at least ten pounds on her skinny frame. Sandy would eat for him. Gil knew Cass was more than a little drawn to Sandy. He wasn’t sure she was aware of it, however. She was in a struggle for her life and when that happened, a lot of nuances slipped unseen beneath the bridge of normal awareness. Still, the warmth that existed between the two of them was real and Gil liked to sit at the table and watch the dynamic. Sandy deserved some breaks in her life. She’d had two husbands die unexpectedly. And from what her son, Talon, had told him, she had loved each of them with her whole heart.

In a way, as Gil opened the picket-fence gate to the ranch house, he saw a little of Kai in Sandy. She had loved Sam with everything she had. And she had been true and loyal to him. Gil’s conscience needled him as his boots rang hollowly against the cedar steps leading up to the massive ranch house porch. He wanted to turn around, walk back to that barn and hold Kai. Just stop the pain she was feeling because of a situation he had no control over. He had been shocked at the depth of her anger, the depth of hurt he’d caused her.

Taking off his hat, he opened the door and stepped into the foyer. There was conversation and laughter coming from the large kitchen down the hall and to his right. His heart twinged. Settling his Stetson on a peg, he halted for a moment, trying to get his strewn emotions collected. No one knew what had happened between him and Kai in the barn. He had to appear as if nothing was wrong. But the truth was that his whole life was in chaos for a thousand reasons. And it wasn’t Kai’s fault. It was entirely his.

* * *

KAI AVOIDED LUNCH with everyone. She had a protein bar she kept in her toolbox, and she kept working out in the barn instead. The day had warmed up, the air fresh with a scent of pine drifting fragrantly through the barn.

As she went to each piece of equipment, she cleaned it up. It was a lot of work, but it made her feel better under the circumstances. Gil was like that dust that had collected on the metal surfaces of the machines. She had never forgotten about him, his kisses, his crying in her arms, as if his entire world had been torn up and would never be the same again. It had turned her grieving heart inside out. She’d never heard a man cry before and it had stripped her emotionally in ways she could never describe, except that it was an agony that tore her up, made her want to hold him, give him safe harbor from his brother dying unexpectedly in combat.

She heard someone walk into the barn around one in the afternoon, and instantly Kai went on alert. Was it Gil? Looking up from where she stood, she saw it was Cat Holt. She wore a black baseball cap, a pale yellow tee with short sleeves and Levi’s.

“Hey,” Cat called, lifting her hand, “we missed you at lunch. Everything okay?”

“Fine,” Kai answered. She washed her hands off in the bucket of clean water and wiped them down on the sides of her jeans. “I know we were supposed to go riding today, but I’m really focused on getting this list of repairs done for Talon. You okay with that?” Kai liked the tall, well-built woman. She was in good shape and Kai knew from Cass that at one time she’d been a firefighter in the Jackson Hole Fire Department until she injured her knee.

“Sure, no problem.” Cat came over and smiled. “Wow, you’re really making all this stuff sparkle and shine. You didn’t have to do that, Kai. You know that, don’t you?”

Shrugging, Kai smiled a little and ran her hand over the hay baler. “Can’t stand to see equipment dirty like this.”