Night Hawk. Lindsay McKenna

only five feet seven inches tall. She wasn’t short, but she wasn’t Gil’s height, either.

      What would he do? Try to get her fired? Invent some lame excuse to let her go? Would he do that to her after what they’d shared? She searched his eyes, which were now a darker, stormy blue. Kai could feel how taut and upset he was. It felt as if they were two boxers in a ring sizing each other up, looking for weak spots, a place to get in and punch, taking the other down.

      Her heart said it shouldn’t be like this. That Gil was a man of honor, like his best friend, Sam Morrison. Why had he walked away from her like that? Kai knew Gil well because Sam and he were on the same team. They had been like inseparable brothers. Maybe she didn’t know Gil at all. And he’d already proved to her that he would use her and then run.

      Kai wasn’t about to let him scuttle her or get her fired. She glared up at him. “And what are you going to do about me being here?” Standing tensely, her fingers curved into her palms, her adrenaline flowing through her, she saw his eyes soften for a moment. And then that implacable hardness returned. She hated the game face an operator wore!

      “If Talon hired you, I’m not getting in the way of his choices.”

      Kai didn’t believe him. Her nostrils flared. “You’re a good liar, Gil. I have no reason to trust you.” She saw him take a step back, rage in his face.

      “I’m good for my word, Kai. If Holt hired you, then I’m okay with it.”

      Kai saw what she thought was hurt in his expression for a moment. Gil was struggling to get that game face back into place, but her sharp words were like a slap to his face and he was reeling from it. “You’d better be,” she muttered. Jamming her finger down at the wooden floor between them, she said, “I got this job fairly. And, unlike you, I don’t run.”

      Gil lifted his lips away from his clenched teeth. He stared grimly at her. “Go about your business,” he snapped. “Has anyone given you a tour of the ranch yet?”

      Breathing hard, Kai rasped, “No.”

      “I’ll get Cass to do it,” he snarled over his shoulder as he turned and walked away.

      Kai’s knees felt like jelly. She heard the hard thunk of his boots on the floor of the barn and then caught sight of him as he walked with determination down the slope toward the main ranch house.

      Dammit! Sagging against the locker, she pressed her hands to her face, trying to steady her breathing. Of all the things that life could throw at her, she never thought she’d see Gil again! He’d disappeared like the black ops soldier he was.

      Hands falling from her face, Kai knew she had to get herself together. Her heart stopped racing and her breathing began to settle down. God, she had to sit at the family dinner table with that bastard! How far away could she get from him? Her mind raced with terrible possibilities. Gil was the foreman. He could make her look bad. And if she did, Talon Holt would fire her and she’d have no job.

      Slowly putting the rest of her gear in her locker, Kai closed it, resting her head against the metal door. Should she tell someone? Talon Holt? This was so messy. Would Gil be mature about it? Let bygones be bygones? Not pick at her? Make her life a daily, miserable existence?

      Standing, she pulled the baseball cap from her back pocket and settled it on her head. Right now, Kai wished she had a friend she could confide in. Just to be able to talk this out because it helped her to figure out what to do. Kai didn’t want to feel drawn to Gil. But she was, dammit. Her stupid heart was pining away for him even now! She remembered his kisses, his strong arms around her, cherishing her as if she were the most precious being on the face of the earth.

      Guilt warred within Kai. Sam, her husband, had been an operator who couldn’t remove his game face. He never told her how he felt. He never cried. Sam hated to see her cry and would always plead with her to stop because it tore him up so much. Even though she loved Sam, Kai had never been able to get past those horrifically tough walls surrounding him. Sam never let her in. There was only one-way intimacy in their relationship, and she felt as if she were slowly dying emotionally, never fed by Sam in return.

      Kai looked around. Just the soft snort of the few horses in the box stalls made her feel better. The scent of alfalfa hay was like perfume to her nostrils. She wished she could erase those five days with Gil. Until he showed up at her small barracks room, she had thought he was just like Sam: implacable. Unreachable. But he hadn’t been. She’d seen the devastation in his face, his eyes red rimmed, seen the rawness, the terrible grief over his younger brother’s death hours before. He had met her in the lobby and told her he needed to talk with her. She’d taken him up to her room to speak in privacy.

      Talk had turned into an unexpected arousal when Kai had spontaneously kissed him in her room. That kiss had thrown them into each other’s arms. To this day, Kai couldn’t figure out why she’d agreed to go with Gil to the conjugal building on base reserved for married couples. He was black ops, so he knew how to work the system to utilize the facility. Gil had gotten them a large, beautiful suite with a real bed.

      Kai drew in a ragged breath. She would never forget the tears falling down his stubbled cheeks, the utter vulnerability in his eyes as he stood in her room allowing his grief to surface. And when she’d come into his arms and kissed him, everything changed in a heartbeat. She thought the kiss was to soften his grief over his brother’s death. Oh, she’d always thought he was a ruggedly handsome man. Every woman who laid eyes on Gil stared longingly at him, lust and interest in their eyes.

      He wasn’t pretty-boy handsome at all. Just the opposite—a kind of rough-hewn face, intelligent, hard blue eyes that missed nothing. His nose was hawkish, mouth wide, his lower lip fuller than his upper one. It was his square face and that granite-looking chin that Kai should have read differently.

      Worse, she had no idea that Gil was drawn to her until she’d kissed him. And then she corrected herself: all he’d really wanted was a woman, any woman, to bury his grief in. She was just a convenient receptacle, was all. Nothing more. Gil had proved that by walking out of her life after five days and never contacting her again.

      Why did she want to cry, then? Why did she still feel such gutting loss over his running out on her? Before, when she was married, Gil was the epitome of decorum around her. He never once flirted with her or indicated in any fashion that he was drawn to her.

      Then why had he sought her out after handing off his brother’s body to the morgue on base? Hell, Hanford had all kinds of women groupies on base. Every operator did. Women just fell over themselves, salivating to get one of those badass warriors in bed with them. Kai had never been like that. In fact, she didn’t like operators precisely because of their cocky arrogance, the alpha-male attitude dripping off them like honey. Sam had to court her a full nine months while they were stationed at Bagram before he’d ever gotten her to fall in love with him.

      He was the light brother to Gil’s dark brother. Sam had blond hair, green eyes and a killer smile that made her melt. Gil had black hair, blue eyes and was the quiet one who said little. Sam was always a big, immature kid if he could get away with it while Gil was always the mature, responsible adult. Sam always smiled. Gil rarely smiled. Sam would play jokes. Gil never did.

      It bothered her to this day why Gil had come to her barracks, asking for her. She knew he had other women on base and used them. But it was a two-way street and Kai didn’t draw a judgment on it. Whether there was a war going on or not, men and women had libidos, and that was that.

      She wandered down the breezeway, checking the horses in the box stalls. They were friendly, big quarter horse types, coming to the front and thrusting their soft, velvety noses between the iron bars or the door to try to smell or touch her outstretched fingers. She called to each one, seeing their name carved on the front of their stall. The big gray horse, she thought, was probably half Thoroughbred and half quarter horse. All of them were geldings. There was a horse for each of the wranglers, including Talon Holt.

      Worrying her lower lip, Kai walked out the other end of the breezeway. Down below the gravel slope were five pipe corrals of varying sizes. They were in terrible