Running Fire. Lindsay McKenna

about sixteen. He loved my mother so very much. Looking back on it, I now realize that his love for her was so powerful, so real, that her getting ripped out of his life like that devastated him in ways I can’t even understand to this day.”

      Kell wanted to go over and sit down and hold her. He heard the quiet pain in Leah’s low voice, saw the haunted look back in her expression. “But who took care of you?”

      “No one, I guess. My father was a major in the Army, and he was up for light colonel. His life revolved around the Shadow Squadron.” Not me. Never me.

      Rubbing his jaw, Kell asked, “Did he ever remarry?”

      “No.” Leah looked up, giving him a sad smile. “I got to see what head over heels in love really meant. My father was utterly devoted to my mother. They lived a love I’ve never seen since.” She opened her hands and gave a strained laugh. “I remember as a kid looking at the love my father had for my mother, wishing someday I’d meet someone who felt like that. Someone who thought I was the most beautiful person in the world. Someone who wanted to love me, care for me and support me like my dad supported my mom.”

      And it didn’t happen, Kell thought, knowing what little he did about her marriage. “My ma and pa are like that,” he offered. “Pa thinks the world revolves around Ma. Still does to this day. They’re in their early sixties and they’re completely devoted to each other. And to us. They spread their love around.”

      “You’re lucky,” Leah said, feeling a bit jealous. “My father...well...he had great plans for Evan and none for me.”

      “Ah, the favored-son routine?”

      “You could say.”

      “How did that change your relationship with your father after Evan died?”

      “He basically ignored me until I was sixteen. And then, one day, he told me to get into a helicopter and I did. He started teaching me how to fly. I found I loved it. The freedom...”

      “And then you went to college?”

      “For two years. I wanted a four-year degree in electrical engineering, but I quit after two years. I was always fascinated with how things worked. Not exactly a girlie girl growing up.”

      “Could have fooled me,” Kell said. “You are one heck of a good-looking woman even if you’re forced into wearing that bulky flight suit.”

      His compliment was sincere and Leah absorbed it. “Thanks...kind of hard to be very feminine out here in the badlands.”

      “Don’t kid yourself,” he said, smiling a little. “You give that flight suit a whole new, better, meaning.” He saw her blush and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Her shyness bothered him. Again, Kell was seeing her inability to deal with a sincere male-to-female compliment. He wasn’t flirting with her. He was being honest. She didn’t know the difference.

      “I’m pretty much focused on my career” was all Leah could manage. There was no question Kell was interested in her. Leah felt the same toward him, but didn’t dare let him know it. There was just no room in her life, with her career as a warrant officer, to allow a potential relationship to work. She looked over. “Are you married, Kell? Have a bunch of children?” Because looking at him, he looked like the father type.

      “Was,” Kell admitted. “I met Addison, who was a criminal-defense lawyer, in San Diego. Married at twenty-three and divorced at twenty-seven. She couldn’t take my long deployments, and I didn’t want children while I was in the SEALs. I’d never be home often enough to be a father to them. My training and deployments kept me away from home so much of the time. I did want children, but I wanted to be a father who was home and there for them, like my pa was for us.”

      “You’ll make a wonderful father someday,” Leah said. Mentally she was comparing her father to Kell. There was a Grand Canyon of difference between the two men. Her father was cold, bottled up, frozen in time and bitter. Kell was warm, kind and caring. He was able to show his feelings.

      Leah wondered if things would have been different between her father and herself if her mother hadn’t suddenly died. She had felt abandoned and alone after her mother was gone. She cried for months, every night, sobbing into her pillow, missing Evan and her. Her father was unable to care for her. He couldn’t even care for himself, as crippled as he’d been by the multiple deaths.

      “I have a good role model,” Kell admitted. “My pa. I have two younger brothers, Tyler and Cody, and we used to have so much fun with him. He taught us how to hunt, fish and care for the land. The three of us grew up milking dairy cows.”

      “You’ve got a good work ethic,” Leah said, trying to imagine Kell when he was younger. She’d bet he was the brother who played humorous jokes on others. Not mean ones, but funny ones, because he was so laid-back and easygoing.

      “We all worked hard,” Kell agreed, smiling fondly, remembering those days, “but we also played hard.”

      “What sports?”

      “I went into track and field. Ty and Cody went into football.”

      “You look like a quarterback to me.”

      “Nah, my two younger brothers were good at it. I wasn’t. I’m six-two and they’re both six-four and outweigh me by thirty pounds. I didn’t see any sense in getting the shinola kicked out of me on the football field. Running was something I was very good at. It came naturally.”

      “You’ve got long legs,” Leah agreed. She visualized him running and imagined he would have looked to her like a cheetah with swift, boneless grace.

      “Did you ever go into sports?”

      “No. I found my love, my passion, when I was sixteen. I loved flying. I still do.”

      “What does it give you?” Kell wondered. He looked forward to talking with Leah. She was intelligent, well grounded in reality and funny.

      “I guess...my freedom. When I’m flying, I’m above all the crap that I carry around with me. Up there—” she pointed toward the ceiling of the cave “—I’m in the arms of the sky.”

      “Maybe an invisible, loving mother of sorts?”

      She stared at Kell for a long moment. He was extremely intelligent, able to put seemingly disparate pieces together and make them fit like a completed puzzle. “I never thought of that way, but yes. I always feel protected up there, guarded, maybe.” She’d just walked away from a helo crash that should have killed her. Kell had been her guardian angel this time around.

      “Without a mother to hold you,” Kell said, “you probably didn’t get a lot of that maternal nurturing we all need as kids growing up.”

      “I’ve thought about that, too. Maybe that’s why I love going out into the Afghan villages, bringing clothing and shoes to the kids. I work with a local charity that is run by a husband-and-wife team, Emma and Khalid Shaheen. Both were Apache pilots and then Emma got kidnapped by the Taliban. She was injured and received nerve damage to her left hand. The Army doesn’t let you fly if you don’t have feeling in all ten fingers. But when Emma married Khalid, she got to fly his charity’s helicopter, a CH-47. A year ago, when my squadron was at Bagram, I took my off days and flew with Emma.”

      “You like kids?”

      “Just a little.” Leah smiled, tipping her head back against the wall. “Before we lost Evan, I loved taking care of him. I spoiled him rotten.” She laughed softly, a warm, good feeling flowing through her. “Kids should be spoiled with love.”

      “Evan will always own a piece of your heart.”

      “One of the good parts,” Leah agreed quietly. “The rest of my heart feels like it’s been cut up and buried.”

      “Because of your marriage?” Kell knew he was getting into dangerous territory, but he wanted to understand her ex-husband. He saw her give him a grim look and