Night Hawk

He covertly watched as she nibbled disinterestedly at the homemade lasagna Cass had made for them tonight. The scent of garlic and butter on the French bread complemented the meal. Her mouth was one of the most delicious parts of her body and Gil could feel his lower body stirring in memory. She had kissed him so passionately, giving her heart, her trust, to him without question. His brows drew down. Four years later he was seeing the results of how his life had screwed both of them over. Kai was more beautiful, more mature, than before. And she hated him.

From Gil’s perspective it was obvious Cat and Kai were going to become close friends. They smiled and laughed often as they chatted. Sandy was looking a bit better, he supposed, because Cass was like a harpy eagle getting her to eat protein, and the nutrition was working. Sandy’s dark hair was usually thin and hanging around her nape, but tonight it was pretty. He wondered if Cat had fixed her hair. Sandy was a beautiful woman and he secretly envied Cass because Gil knew the man was attracted to her. But Sandy seemed to be unaware. Or maybe she was ignoring Cass? Like Kai ignored him?

After dinner, the table cleared, Talon asked Gil, Kai and Cass to remain. Cat brought over fresh cups of coffee for everyone and then retired to the living room with Sandy to watch the news on television.

Talon brought over the notes Kai had made and laid them out in front of himself. He glanced across the table at her. “This is pretty remarkable, Kai. You’ve cut the repair bill in half on the tractor.”

Kai felt heat in her cheeks. “Thanks, Talon.”

Gil growled, “It might save us money, but I don’t like Kai being around the likes of Harper.”

Talon nodded. “Yeah, this isn’t the best of all worlds,” he agreed. Giving Kai a look of concern, he said, “Did Harper bother you while you were over at his place?”

“No. He introduced me to his repair boss, José, and I never saw him again.”

“I don’t like it,” Gil muttered, giving Talon a hard look.

Kai shook her head. “What is everyone talking over my head about?” She gave Talon a frustrated look.

Cass, who sat next to her, said, “Harper is a woman chaser, Kai. He’s got a seriously bad reputation in town.”

“He didn’t come on to me. He overheard me talking to Joe at the John Deere place.” Kai saw Gil give her a look of disbelief, but he kept his mouth shut, his large, callused hands clasped tightly on the table.

Talon moved his fingers through his short hair. He stared at the bill. “She’s saved us a helluva lot of money. And every penny counts.”

“Not at her expense, it doesn’t,” Gil growled in warning, looking each man in the eyes.

Kai’s skin ruffled beneath his growl. He sounded like a pissed-off grizzly. She refused to look at him, again feeling that intense sense of protection suddenly blanketing her. It almost felt as if he was staking or claiming her! Thinking she was imagining things, she said quietly, “Look, I’m twenty-nine years old. I can take care of myself. We need that machinery shop that Harper’s got. He said I could come back at any time if I wanted to rebuild something. He’d charge me a fair-market price.” She gave Talon a pleading look. “I only got two pieces of machinery fully vetted today. There’s eight more pieces of equipment out there. And I think you can tell from how much repair has to be done to bring that tractor and baler back to life we need what Harper is offering us. I think it was nice of him to do it.”

Talon frowned.

Cass moved uncomfortably around in the chair, his gaze moving to Gil.

Gil’s mouth flattened, his knuckles whitening as he looked at Talon, waiting for an answer.

Studying the list, Talon rubbed his brow as if he had a headache coming on. He studied Kai. “Okay, judging from what you saw and did today, do you think the other pieces of equipment need as much rebuilding?”

“I haven’t really done any kind of inspection to honestly answer that, Talon.” Kai opened her hands. “But just seeing these two, the amount of rust, the amount of metalwork and welding it will take to replace badly rusted areas, yes, I think it’s going to be a pretty good estimate of what’s to come.”

“And you work with metal?”

“Of course,” Kai said. “If we had to replace a fender or some metal skin that took a bullet hole in an Apache, it was up to us to fix it. I’m good at welding, Talon. I’m qualified in specialty metals. I can do all this for you. But I need a good machine shop to do it in. And Harper runs a clean place and he’s got all the latest equipment to make my job easy and fast.”

Talon glanced at Gil. “Is Harper the only game in town?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“And the next closest machine shop would be Idaho Falls, Idaho. That’s a six-hour round-trip and that doesn’t account for the time Kai would have to spend at a machine shop,” Talon said.

“I know for a fact what he charged us today is about one-third less than what a regular machine shop would charge us,” Kai pointed out.

“Cass?” Talon held up the paper toward him. “Have you seen this yet?”

“No,” he said, taking the papers and quickly parsing the numbers. His brows moved up. “Well,” he murmured, looking at Talon, “Kai is right—these numbers are lower than normal.”

“Because Harper wants something in return from you, Kai,” Gil ground out.

All heads turned toward him.

There was no mistaking Gil’s words or his barely closeted anger. Kai shook her head. “I think all of you are going overboard,” she stated flatly. “Harper did not accost me this afternoon. I worked with José. I never saw him again.” She saw Gil grit his teeth. The man was jealous as hell.

Cass sat there scribbling some numbers on the back of one of her notebook pages. “Boss? If we assume each piece of equipment is going to need this kind of do-over, then we’ll easily save one-half of what was going to be spent on those repairs. That’s a considerable sum when you look at the totals here.”

Kai couldn’t stand being near Gil anymore. He felt like a nuclear power engine that was about ready to explode. “Look, Talon, when you guys figure out what you want to do, let me know? I’m tired and I’m going to bed. Good night...”

* * *

GIL WATCHED KAI walk away, the soft sway of her hips reminding him starkly of far too much from their past. He swung his head toward Talon. “You cannot let her do this. You know Harper is into the sex-trafficking trade and drugs. There are two women he was dating and both are gone. Disappeared without a trace. Do you want to guess where they probably ended up? In some Eastern European slave trader’s hideaway to be sold to the highest bidder.”

Talon held up his hand. “Look, I’m aware of the gossip about Harper. No one’s proved anything, Gil. At least—” he sighed “—not yet.”

“What if one of us went with her?” Cass asked, giving the two men an inquiring look.

Talon’s mouth quirked. “Like any of us have time to babysit her for fear Harper will steal and sell her?”

“Look,” Cass said reasonably, opening his hands, “why not go talk to law enforcement? The sheriff’s office is in town. Talon? You could swing by—”

“I’ll do it,” Gil muttered. “No one is handling this except me.” He gave Talon a look of warning.

Shrugging, Talon said, “Fine by me. I’ll tell Kai to not go back there until you’ve talked to the sheriff’s department about Harper.”

Gil rose. “She needs to be protected from that bastard,” he growled, and left.

Cass gave Talon an amused look. “Did I miss something here? Or did your SEAL nose catch it, too?”

“What?” Talon asked.

Cass sat back in the chair, rocking it on its two hind legs, hands resting on his thick thighs. “I might be wrong about this, but I sure think there’s something simmering between Kai and Gil. Did you pick up on it?”

“No,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “I’m so damned busy trying to coordinate everything else, I’m probably missing a lot.”

Cass smiled a little. “She’s a pretty lady. I’m surprised she’s single.”

Talon shook his head. “She was married to a Delta Force operator for three years until he got killed in a firefight.”

Brows drawing down, Cass said, “Yeah, she told me earlier about it. Probably why she’s still single.”

“Well,” Talon said, standing, “I wonder if Gil knew her husband. Maybe there’s a connection there you’re picking up on.”

Cass grinned a little as he rose. “What I felt was definitely interest on Gil’s part toward her. He’s like a nighthawk around her.”

Talon shook his head. “A nighthawk is the wrangler who protects the herd during the night from all kinds of danger. Gil is protective of Kai. You have eyes in the back of your head, Cass. You always did.”

Giving him a wicked look, Cass slid the chair up to the table. “Yes, and I can count how many times we saved your sorry ass out on an op, too, because of it.”

A sour grin edged Talon’s mouth. “Can’t deny it, bro. I’m going to spend some time with my mother and then I’m hitting the sack.”

“Yeah,” Cass grumped good-naturedly. “All I have to look forward to is swimming in red and black numbers in my office for a couple of hours now.”

Talon looked over his shoulder. “Better be more black than red,” he warned him.

“Doin’ my best, boss,” Cass teased. “We’re slowly eking toward the healthy side of the business ledger. Rebuilding an empire takes time.”

CHAPTER SIX

TALON HOLT SAT with Gil in his office at the main ranch house. Both were grim. Talon said, “Look, we know that Chuck Harper is being watched by the FBI and ATF for drug running. So far, no one has caught him at it.” Pushing his fingers through his dark hair, he added, “Deputy Sheriff Cade Garner is someone I trust, Gil. You haven’t been here long enough to know that, but if he suggests that someone escort Kai over to the Ace Trucking machine shop, we need to do it.”

“You won’t get any argument out of me,” Gil said, feeling relief start to trickle through him. He would talk to Garner soon. Until then, Gil had made a decision that someone would always be with Kai over at Harper’s machine shop. He had her back. “It’s going to be a balancing act. Needs at the ranch versus needs of machinery being available so we can use it. Right now, I need a horse trailer. And we don’t have one that’s safe enough to use.” He saw his boss sit back in his chair, nodding. “You need to tell me what repair should be first.”

“On another issue, we need to buy a horse for Kai,” Talon said. “Slade McPherson, Griff’s twin brother, owns an endurance-racing horse ranch on the other side of Jackson Hole. Cass has allotted us fifteen hundred dollars for the animal. Can you take Kai over after setting an appointment up with Slade? Let her see what’s available and then you need to get him to agree to our money limit.”

Gil had never met Slade McPherson, but he knew his twin, Griff, who he respected and admired. The man had an MBA, along with horse sense and hard work combined. He was bringing the Bar H back to life. “I’ll see what I can do.” He knew the worth of the horses he had bred and trained.

“Then,” Talon said, talking more to himself as he looked up at the copper ceiling that had been imprinted with hundred-year-old patterns from the past, “get Kai to look over all the equipment. Have her make up a complete repair list. Tell her the double-wide horse trailer has to supersede the tractor for now. If push comes to shove, we can always ask Slade to deliver the horse here and he will. But we need that trailer as bad as we need the tractor.”

“And who do you want to go with her to Ace Trucking?” Gil wanted it to be him. He saw his boss’s expression pinch.

“Whoever is available at the time. Hell, it will be Cass, you or me. Any way you cut it, she’s got a black ops guy at her side. I don’t think Harper will try anything.”

“You want us to pack a weapon?”

Talon nodded. “We all have a license to carry a concealed weapon. I don’t trust Harper. At all. But I sure as hell like the prices he’s giving Kai. If we don’t use his services, that means we’re wasting a day driving to and from, plus, if Kai can’t finish everything off at another machine shop in Idaho Falls, we have to pay for her food and hotel bill. And we’re paying one-third more in costs. It mounts up in a hurry.”

Gil understood Talon’s position. He knew from his own father always battling the accounting ledger that keeping a ranch in the black was the toughest thing to do in the world. And right now, the Triple H was in the red. Cass had a good, solid plan for the ranch, but it was slow going. Rome wasn’t built in a day, he reminded himself. So Talon was going to be damned conservative, and Gil didn’t blame his boss for wanting to use a nearby facility and save money while he was at it. He just didn’t want to put Kai at risk. But neither did Talon. Gil could see he was morally wrestling with the situation. In one way he knew he was putting Kai in a potentially dangerous situation. On the other hand, all three of them were well-trained operators and would be packing a weapon in case shit happened.

“Do you think Harper would try anything while she was in his facility?” Gil wondered.

“No, I don’t. And that’s the only reason I’m willing to even consider this idea. Harper is known to be very low-key. He doesn’t want trouble. There’s been enough of it of late and Cade thinks that he knows the FBI is following him. He employs only Latino workers. Cade thinks most of them are illegals. But the other agencies that usually swoop down and find them are pulling back. The FBI is trying to insert someone into the trucking company, but they know Harper is watching closely.”

“Sounds like a standoff of sort,” Gil agreed.

“If you can ask Kai to focus on that horse trailer and tell her why, I’d appreciate it.”

Gil rose. “I will.”

* * *

THE LATE-MORNING sun felt good coming into the back of the green barn where Kai was working. She was dusty from taking a broom and putting a bandanna around the lower half her face to start sweeping off the thick dust on every piece of machinery. There were clouds of dust hanging in the air, sparkling as it hit the shafts of sunlight piercing through the barn.

She lifted her head and saw Gil coming up the gravel slope. For a moment her heart pounded. The fear of having to confront him and then fight back her desire for him always left her exhausted afterward. His face was set and shadowed, the sun at his back. He was so damned good-looking to her. He always had been.

Going to meet him at the front of the barn where there was less dust in the air, she pulled the handkerchief off her face, broom in one hand. Kai longed for some kind of truce between them. But how could there be? Gil had not told her why he’d left her. Not said one peep. He had apologized, she reminded herself, when they’d had it out in the barn the day after her hiring. And he’d looked so damned sad, as if he were going to cry or something, but he always tried to hide it from her. She’d been brimming over with anger, and having gotten it off her chest now Kai wanted a truce, maybe.

“How’s it going?” Gil asked as he drew up to her, keeping a good six feet between them.

Wrinkling her nose, Kai said, “I couldn’t stand how dirty everything was.” She internally tensed, unsure why Gil was here. There was no reason that she could think of. And she didn’t want another argument with him. Searching his blue eyes, she saw worry in them, not anger or defensiveness.

“If we had more hands, I could get someone in here to do it for you. Like it should be.”

Her stomach began to unknot. For the first time, this was the Gil Hanford she knew from her past. He’d put his hands on his hips, shifting his weight to one leg more than the other. His face was relaxed looking, too. Some more of her sagged in quiet relief. “It’s okay. I’m good at cleaning up situations.” She managed a sliver of a smile.

“You are very good at everything you do.”

Praise riffled across her. She almost asked Gil if he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep, remembering the tense discussion at the dinner table last night. “Thanks, it’s nice to hear it.”

“Talon’s happy with you, and that’s all that counts.”

Gil wasn’t happy she was here, but she bit back the words. To say that would be to stir the tension that flowed between them. “What do you need?”

“Talon wants to get you a horse. Slade McPherson has some for sale on the other side of town at his ranch. I was wondering if you were at a place where you could stop for a couple of hours?”

A horse! Her heart sang. Kai felt giddy. “Sure. That would be a lot of fun to go look at horses.” She saw a slight curve of one corner of Gil’s mouth, his blue eyes lighter. Was he happy? It felt like it. Far better than being at odds with him.

“Let me go get cleaned up? I look like a dust bunny.”

Gil gave her a slow inspection from head to toe. “Yeah, a little. Go ahead. I’ll meet you out front in the company truck in twenty minutes?.”

Heat soared through Kai and she felt her breasts tighten beneath his heated gaze. That look wasn’t impersonal. Her mouth went dry. God, was it possible he wanted her? Man to woman? The realization was like a bolt striking her and Kai inwardly floundered. Her heart was doing a happy dance. Her memory sourly reminded her of the hurt he’d caused her. “Sure,” she murmured, setting the broom inside the barn. “Twenty minutes.”

* * *

KAI WAS UNEASY riding with Gil so close to her in the cab of the truck. They had a good twenty miles together. She sat with her hands in her lap, tense. Gil seemed relaxed in comparison. The scenery was rich and green, the valley blooming to life after eight months of hard, cold winter. She enjoyed the patchwork quilt of small farms on the left. To her right rose a rocky hill and cliff.

“Does Slade have quarter horses?” she wondered, wanting to break the silence.

“No. He’s got endurance horses. Talon was telling me Slade has a sunbonnet paint mustang stallion called Thor. His stud has won every endurance event in North America. Jordana McPherson rode Thor to victory two years ago. Slade got gored in the thigh by one of his ornery bulls and couldn’t ride him in the event, so she did and won.”

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