Читать книгу Night Hawk онлайн | страница 43

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.