But not forgotten. Gil bit back the words as he studied her in the lulling silence. Nothing in the world existed in that moment except Kai with her gray eyes, black pupils large with a rim of color around the outer edge. The way her soft mouth parted, the look of hope in her expression, totaled him. “Okay,” he said thickly. “I want that, too.”
God, if only he could share his love for her. If only Kai knew. He felt as if his heart wanted to tear out of his chest. All he wanted was Kai. All of her and that beautiful, selfless heart. Gil had seen Sam slowly kill Kai’s heart over the years. How many times had he wanted to step in and shake some sense into Sam? Didn’t he see by him being emotionally distant that Kai was like a plant dying from lack of water? But he never had.
Not until they’d come together like oil and water; lust, sex and his love for her all turning into a starving hunger for each other. Gil had always thought Kai had allowed those five days to occur because it was a reaction to three years of being left to emotionally wither on the vine of her marriage, never fed by Sam, never intimate in ways other than sex. In Sam’s world, sex was the only expression of emotions he had available to him to give to Kai. Gil knew there was so much more than just sex. As he studied her in silence, he compressed his lips and gave her a wry look.
“It’s a new chapter for us, Kai. All I want is to be there for you if you need someone.” He patted his broad shoulder. “I’m good at carrying loads for others, so let me carry some of yours when they get too heavy?”
*
KAI LAY AWAKE in her bed that night. Her mind was racing. Her body was achy and needy. She knew what that gnawing sensation meant. Not having had sex for years was turning her into something she’d never felt before. And Gil unexpectedly dragging her into his arms, holding her… God…holding her, had just about unraveled Kai in every possible way. And he smelled so good. So familiar. She closed her eyes, her heart twinging with so many beautiful memories of Gil holding her, incredibly intimate, warm, humorous, making her laugh and allowing her to cry in his arms.
“Oh, hell,” Kai muttered, sitting up in bed. She wore a soft cotton nightgown of heather color. The sheet and quilt settled around her hips as she stared at the door straight ahead of her. Across the hall was Gil’s room.
Shortly after they had separated from one another’s arms, Jordana had come in with her nurse and checked Gil’s thigh. All was good and she was pleased, pronouncing the blood vessel had self-sealed.
She’d waved her finger in Gil’s face, becoming stern, ordering him to rest for the next three days. That meant no horseback riding, no walking around except in the house. The torn blood vessel needed time to heal or, she warned him darkly, it would reopen and tear again. And this time, it meant surgery.
Smiling a little, Kai crossed her legs beneath the covers, elbows on her thighs. Gil looked like a little boy getting scolded by his mother. In this case, by Jordana. Kai had stood back with Cass, both grinning like fools because they knew just how much Gil hated sitting around. Operators, by nature, were a restless breed, and they rarely sat in one place for more than a few minutes at most. Gil was officially housebound for three days and Cass hadn’t let him live that down on the way home. Operators needled the hell out of their kind. To outsiders, it would look like one wolf savaging another, but that was the brotherhood and Gil took Cass’s razzing in good stride, although unhappy with the three-day prison sentence handed down by jailer Jordana.
What had happened in that ER cubicle with Gil? Rubbing her face slowly, Kai tried to sort through the mass of emotions still burning brightly in her heart. When Gil had pulled her into his arms, she’d collapsed against him, needing him so desperately, needing what he’d given her so long ago. Was it because he got her to talking about her dad? Because it had brought up a horrendous amount of anguish and feelings of being abandoned by him. She had been kicked out. No place to go. No more family except for Steve, and she couldn’t even see Steve except off ranch property.
Gil had given her life back to her in Bagram. She’d felt dead inside. Dried out. Numb. The years with Sam had been stressful and the longer they were married, the more she felt bereft, unable to be nurtured or held by him. Sam had never been comfortable with Kai’s emotions. And when she tried to get close to him, have him hold her after they’d made love, he’d get up and leave the bedroom, upset. Kai had cried at first, not understanding why he’d left her side. She never could until Gil had stepped into her life like sunlight after a dark, raging storm. He’d not only fed her emotionally, he’d lavished her with his tender intimacy. Oh, God, she’d craved him holding her in the ER tonight. All the dryness and all the loneliness she carried within her suddenly dissolved in that magical moment. He’d held her close, the sense of protection drizzling through her like a soft rain on the parched desert of her emotional landscape. She was the parched desert. Just talking about her father, the terrible sense of alienation since age eighteen, never seeing him again, never able to talk to him like a real father, had left her hurting in ways she’d never realized before.
Not until tonight. Not until Gil had taken her into his arms and simply held her. He didn’t try to kiss her, but his hand ranged gently up and down her back, smoothing out the tension within her, his moist breath caressing her ear and hair, and it made her want to sob. He fed her heart. He shared intimacy with her. He was all the things Sam had never been. Her heart ached with pain for Sam. For herself. For Gil. It was a triad that had nothing but unhappy endings.
Kai longed to get out of bed, walk across the hall and knock on Gil’s door. Wanting to lie in his arms, his strong body against hers, to absorb the touches and grazes he would give to her, his mouth on hers, the way he held her after they made love, made her ache with raw longing.
Kai recognized she had depression. She’d had it off and on for years, ever since her father had disowned her. Being in Gil’s arms had lifted her out of that terrible cloud of feeling lost, feeling hopeless. Every time Gil was around her, he magically uplifted her. Silent tears slid down her cheeks. Kai closed her eyes, hiding her face in her hands. Her whole life was in chaos. And she was lost in a way she never had been before. In the Army, it was structured, it gave her stability; it had banks like a river that she could flow within. The Apache squadron was her family, and she was admired and respected. She was the go-to person when another mechanic got into trouble and couldn’t figure out what to do. They always came to her.
If only her father would come to her. Kai touched her nightgown where her heart lay beneath the fabric. It had felt like a hole had been punched through it the day he disowned her. He might as well have taken a real gun and pointed it at her heart and fired. Her heart always felt lacking. Even Sam couldn’t fill it.
But Gil did. Around him, Kai felt alive. Felt whole. Felt hopeful. He’d been so damned sincere tonight, asking her to turn over a new chapter in their lives. He was right: what was done in the past was done. But, after walking into her barracks, larger than life, like a sun wrapping around her heart and soul, he’d walked out on her without a word. Could she trust him a second time?
A new kind of fear niggled through Kai. Gil had given her love. Real love. She’d realized that after the dry, desert years of being married to Sam. Gil had nursed and nurtured her back to life, unafraid to show his emotions, share them with her, revel in them. Kai had never laughed so much as she had in those five days with Gil. He wasn’t a mean tease like Sam had been to her. Sam didn’t realize the black ops teasing was downright cruel at times and he couldn’t see the difference when he teased her. She had loved her husband so much, drawn to his strength, his utter confidence and rebellious attitude toward life. Gil had never walked away and left her cold like Sam had. He was loyal to her. And if he could make it happen, he was there for Kai, a strong support, urging her to always aspire, believing in her. Sam was like her father, Kai realized belatedly. Why hadn’t she seen that before? She’d been young, blind and dazzled by Sam, that was why.
She
lay down, nestling her head into the goose-down pillow and pulling the sheet and quilt over her shoulders. Closing her eyes, Kai made a mental comparison of her dad and Sam. Both were unable to emote. Her father froze and tensed every time Kai, even as a young child, had run up to him, her arms open, wanting to hug his knees. He had called for his wife to come and take her away from him. Sam was similar, though not as coldhearted as her dad. He could handle anything when it came to sex. There, he was open, available and giving to her.
It was afterward that Sam couldn’t stand the intimacy she craved and so desperately needed. Sex was one thing. But love, real love in Kai’s heart, was about far more than just the act of sex.
Sam found it uncomfortable to hug and kiss her goodbye. Kai knew he was trying. And Sam was aware she needed more because she made it known to him. Digging back into his past, Kai eventually, after a year of marriage to him, found out that Sam’s father had been a meth addict. He’d beaten Sam with a belt where it never showed. When Sam was old enough, he’d stood up to his druggie father and fought back. But it was too late by that time, Kai thought, feeling badly for her dead husband. He’d been severely abused, his mother weak and unable to protect Sam when he needed her the most. She was needy and dependent, and Kai often thought Sam confused her needs for intimacy—a simple hug, an embrace or kiss—as being like his mother. She wasn’t, but she was fairly sure Sam couldn’t tell the difference.
Kai knew something of Gil’s growing-up years. They must have been similar in that one way, but in other ways, Gil was the opposite of Sam. And maybe that’s why those two hit it off so well, like long-lost brothers. When Gil came over to their home and the men had beers, Sam was always laughing. It was the only time Kai heard her husband laugh. The rest of the time he was emotionally locked up, unavailable or unable to reach out and give her what she needed most: his vulnerable heart. That, Sam kept behind a stone fortress. And even she, as much as she tried, could never penetrate those walls around his heart.
Kai had loved him so deeply, so completely. There was goodness in Sam. He loved children, worked with several charities in Afghanistan, giving back. Helping the poor and the suffering was important to him. She wondered if he saw himself in some of these young Afghan boys. The fathers in Afghanistan, at least the ones she’d seen, brutally beat their sons. The rod was not spared in the least. Had Sam seen himself in them? By the time Sam was fourteen, he had five broken bones thanks to his violent, addicted father.
Yes, there were similarities between Sam and her dad. She remembered one time her mother telling Steve never to hit his children. That to lay a hand on a child was a mortal sin. She was Catholic and Kai had stood there, leaning against her mother, her fleshy arm around her tiny shoulders, holding her as she talked to Steve.
Steve had asked why. Her mother, Olivia, had made a sad face. She told Steve that their father, Hal, had been severely beaten as a child. He’d been the oldest in a ranching family that had created the ranch they now lived at. Hal had been the oldest. It was his job to take care of the other children. Kai remembered her mother pushing away tears, her voice trembling. Hal’s younger sister, Janie, had wandered into a pen of bulls. And she’d been killed by them at six years old. Hal had been beaten badly by his grief-stricken rancher father. And from that day forward, his father had called him a murderer and no-good.
Kai lay there, eyes closed, trying to put herself in her dad’s place. Both he and Sam had suffered from abusive fathers. Tragic things had happened to them, scarring them for life. She often wondered if her mother was the only warmth, the only intimacy and love that her dad had ever known. Pain filtered through her heart as she thought of Sam and herself. Had she played the same role with him that her mother had with her dad? God, the pattern was the same. The same.
Tears leaked from beneath her tightly shut lids for both men. Kai wanted so desperately to reach out to her dad before it was too late. Because she loved him in spite of what had happened. He was her father. And there was a different, deeper ache in her heart to connect with him. To tell him to his face that she loved him, that she forgave him because he was her father. He needed to hear that from her. But Kai didn’t know how it was going to happen or if it would. Steve was grim about the prospects. Her brother knew how important it was to tell her dad these things. But Hal, as he was dying, had become an angry person that no one could stand being around. Not even Steve. And even the hospice workers refused to be around Hal for the same reasons. He was an angry, raging man striking out at everyone who got close to him.
Gil…
I need you so much…so much…and I’m so afraid you’ll leave me again. Just disappear like before. Can I trust you? How can I begin to trust you again? You broke my heart. I can’t stand to have it broken again. I just don’t have the strength to get up off the floor a second time. First, my dad. Then Sam. And then you. I just can’t risk my heart with you again as much as I want to…
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
KAI WAS IN the kitchen helping Cass with the turkey dinner that would be served today at four o’clock. Miss Gus, and Griff and Val McPherson, with their daughter, Sophie, were coming over for Sunday dinner once more. They tried to make it over at least once or twice a month, and they were always more than welcome. The kitchen was filled with wonderful smells. Gus had said she had a surprise for all of them.
Glancing into the living room, Gil was unhappily sitting in a recliner, his injured leg up and resting. Sandy was knitting a rainbow-colored afghan, half of it spread across her lap in her rocker opposite him. Cat was down on the floor petting Zeke as he lay on his large bed in the corner. Talon was in his office, doing paperwork. It was three thirty, and she was setting the trestle table when a knock came on the screen door.
“I’ll get it,” Cat said, jumping up, smiling. She hurried down the hall to the foyer.
Kai heard lots of greetings, laughter and chatting from the kitchen, where she finished setting the table. Rubbing her hands on the pink apron around the waist of her Levi’s, she saw Cass glance up from his duties of slicing the golden-brown turkey sitting on the counter. “They’re here,” she said, anxious to meet Miss Gus once again. She was a legend in the valley, along with Iris Mason, who was the other matriarch of the largest ranch, the Elk Horn. These women had helped define this valley, its growth and direction. Both were in their early eighties and role models as far as Kai was concerned. She loved seeing them in action and maybe learn something she could become herself.
Kai saw Talon wander casually down the hall, a smile on his face. Sandy and Gil remained in the living room along with a very alert Zeke. “What next, Cass?” she asked coming over to the counter.
“Get all the casseroles here on the counter over to the table,” he directed. “Keep the lids on them, though. If Miss Gus says she has a surprise, it might waylay dinner for a bit and I want to keep everything hot.”
“Gotcha,” Kai said. She pulled on two oven mitts and placed metal trivets on the table. Cass brought out the sweet potato with marshmallow casserole, the green bean casserole and a huge bowl of thick turkey gravy that smelled heavenly as she set it down and covered it. There was a huge bowl of steaming sage and chestnut stuffing that made her mouth water. Cass had spent all of Sunday morning cooking and she’d helped him. Cat had come into the kitchen and volunteered her time and hands, as well. They had been a great team.
Kai stood back and surveyed the table filled with such bounty. The fragrances were heavenly, and it made her even hungrier than she already was.
“Hey,” Cat called, walking into the kitchen. “Kai? Take a time-out and go meet Miss Gus.”
Kai turned and smiled at the short, thin woman with silver hair that looked like a halo around her head. Gus slowly limped into the kitchen. “Hi, Miss Gus. How are you?” She walked over and held out her hand to the elder. The woman’s blue eyes sparkled with energy and warmth.
“Aren’t you a pretty little thing this afternoon,” Gus said, giving her a quick, warm
hug of hello. “I need a whiz on mechanics.” She cackled a little. “I just might swipe you from here and ask you to come over and look at some of our equipment. Good mechanics are hard to find.”
Kai smiled and released her. Gus was dressed in a starched white blouse that had a red knit cape over her small shoulders. She was lean and Kai knew elderly people got cold easier than others. A dark blue set of slacks and brown leather shoes completed her wardrobe. “Well, I’ll be more than happy to do that for you, Miss Gus, as long as Talon lets me.” She smiled up at Talon, who stood behind the elder.
“Any weekend, Miss Gus. Kai’s the best. She’s gotten all our equipment, which sat in that barn for nine years without any care, up and working.”
Gus patted Kai’s arm. “Good. Because I’ve got a cantankerous old tractor that I dearly love.” She looked up at Griff, who was coming into the kitchen with Val, who had Sophie in her arms. “Griff tells me to put it into the dump, but it’s kinda like me—old and touchy.” Her eyes sparkled with mirth as she held Griff’s gaze. “As long as I can putter around, if I can get that tractor worked on, we’ll both stay active and working on the Bar H.”
Everyone laughed.
Cass came over, drying his hands on a small towel. “Hey, Miss Gus, nice to see you again.” He was a big man and towered over her. Cass leaned over and gave her a gentle hug and then released her. “Your favorite for dinner this afternoon—roast turkey with all the goodies.”
Rubbing her hands, Gus said, “I could smell it comin’ up to the porch.” She peered between people into the living room. Raising her hand, she said, “Hi, Sandy. Hi, Gil.”
Sandy smiled and started to get up by putting her afghan on the stool in front of her rocker.
“No, no, stay there,” Gus called. “Don’t move for a minute. Stay there because I have something for you.”
Sandy relaxed. “Okay, Gus.”
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