Night Hawk

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

“Don’t ‘ma’am’ her,” Cass warned gravely. “Things around here are loosey-goosey. No one stands on much protocol.”

“Good to know,” Kai murmured, giving Cass a grateful look. Already, she liked this ranch. Sandy worried her, though, and now she knew Talon Holt was her son. Was he like his mother? She didn’t know but hoped some of her DNA had made its way into him. Cass was a man in the kitchen. So maybe Talon wouldn’t think it odd she was a woman mechanic. Here at this ranch, they seemed not to care what the gender was as long as they were good at what they were doing. Mentally, Kai crossed her fingers.

Kai didn’t have long to wait for Talon Holt. She heard a man come in the screen door, the clacking of paws indicating a dog with him. Sitting on the couch, she saw a beautiful Belgian Malinois dog enter the room. His alert cinnamon eyes instantly settled on her. The intelligence in the dog’s gaze was apparent and Kai lifted her chin, seeing the owner come in right after him.

“Zeke, sit,” he ordered the dog.

Instantly, the dog sat.

“I’m Talon Holt,” he said, glancing at his mother and then at her. He took off his black Stetson. “You must be Kai Tiernan?”

Kai instantly stood. “Yes, sir, I am. Nice to meet you, sir.” She saw the tall man with black hair and gray eyes, grimace.

“Stand down,” he said with a slight smile. He crossed the room and shook her hand. “No need to say ‘sir’ to me.”

Zeke whined.

Talon looked back and pointed at his mother. “Zeke, guard.”

Sandy made an unhappy noise. “Now, Talon. I do not want that dog herding me around like I’m a sheep to be taken care of. Really!”

“No,” Cass boomed, coming into the room, handing Talon a cup of hot coffee, “she has me. Let the dog go out and smell the flowers that you’re trying to grow.”

Grinning, Talon nodded. “Kai, one second? I’ll be right back.”

Kai nodded, fascinated with the family dynamic. Unlike her own, no question. Sandy was the matriarch. Cass was protective of her, for sure. And as Talon turned and gave the dog a hand command, Zeke leaped up, tongue hanging out of his mouth, and ran down the long cedar hallway toward the screen door ahead of him.

Cass handed Kai a cup of coffee. “Might as well be relaxed. Come on, I’ll show you to Talon’s office. That’s where he’ll interview you.”

Grateful for Cass’s warmth and thoughtfulness, she followed him out of the massive living room and kitchen. It was an open-concept area. Down another hall, Cass led her into a small office. There, he gestured to a chair in front of a massive oak desk that looked to her to be at least a hundred years old. She sat, holding her coffee between her hands.

Cass hesitated at the door and said, “Now, just be yourself. And don’t call him ‘sir.’ He was in the military, but he’s out now. Okay?”

“Yes, si— I mean, yes, I’ll remember.”

Cass nodded and said, “You’ve got mechanic’s hands.”

Dumbfounded, Kai stared up at him.

“I was in Special Forces, a sergeant,” he said. “I was the mechanic in our A team. You can always tell someone who works around equipment.”

“Really?” she asked, still in shock that he could tell by just looking at her hands.

“Sure,” he said, “short, blunt nails, calluses on the insides of your fingers, and the skin around your nails is darker, indicating oil or other fluids you’ve been handling.” He grinned. “Hey, be proud of it. I tried to talk Talon into letting me go finagle those sick pieces of equipment in the barns, but he needed me because I’m good at numbers.” He laughed.

A little shaken, Kai wondered what kind of ranch this was. Talon had been in the military. Cass had been an Army Special Forces operator. She was a vet. Did he hire vets? Her hopes rose sharply. Kai heard the thunking of Talon’s boots along the hall. Her heart rate went up. Setting the cup on the desk, she pulled out her résumé from her pocket and unfolded it, placing it on the desk where he would sit. What would he think?

“Cass make you at home?” Talon asked, entering the office and quietly shutting the door.

“Yes, s— I mean, yes, he did. Thank you.”

Talon hooked his Stetson on a peg behind the leather chair and sat down, scooping up her three page résumé. “I’ve been anxious to see you,” he admitted, glancing up, the paper in his hands. “Good mechanics are rare as hen’s teeth. And when you answered the ad and sent me an email, telling me you had been a mechanic in the Army, I was very interested. Let me read this for a moment?”

Kai sat there trying to relax. Talon Holt was as tall as Cass and he walked like he’d been in the military, no question. His gray eyes were darker colored than hers. She remembered her father hated her eye color, accusing her mother of it being her fault that she had been born with the god-awful color. He didn’t like the light gray color because he constantly told her he felt as if she had X-ray vision and was looking straight through him. That it made him feel damned uncomfortable.

Kai watched Talon’s expression closely. The man homed in on the résumé like a laser-fired rocket. Kai could literally feel the shift of energy around him, that sudden focus. She gulped once, realizing that her dead husband, Sam Morrison, who had been a Delta Force operator, had that same kind of intensity, that same telltale energy about him. It was a mark of an operator. And Kai had known enough of them at Bagram in her many tours at that Afghanistan Army base to recognize one when she saw one.

Was Talon Holt an operator, too? Shaken by the synchronicity, if that were true, Kai felt her hopes rise a little more. If he was, he’d speed-read it, memorize it and have it locked permanently into his brain. That’s the way operators were. She waited, barely breathing. Hoping against hope. Finally he looked at her after rapidly skimming the three pages.

“I like that you were an Apache helo mech. Only the cream of the Army crop of mechanics get that important position. Were you the only woman?” He smiled a little.

“No, s— No, I wasn’t. In my squadron, we had four women. The rest were men.”

“I see you had six deployments to Bagram. You were kept busy.”

She nodded. “Well, if I wasn’t on Apaches, I and a few others were sent over to work on Black Hawks and MH-47s for the Night Stalker squadrons located there with us.”

“Yes,” he murmured, “I’m a little familiar with Bagram.”

Kai was dying to ask him what branch of the military he served in but didn’t dare. That would have been inappropriate.

“So,” Talon said, holding her stare, “if you were being asked to work on other birds then, you were a multi-engine qualified mechanic. They don’t let mechs work on anything but what they’re trained in on.”

“That’s correct. I was multi-certified.” Kai saw a pleased look come to his face. He didn’t hide how he felt. If he was an operator, usually they had a game face on and no one knew what they were thinking or feeling. Maybe Talon Holt wasn’t an operator, after all.

“I see here you were born in Cody, Wyoming? That your father owns the Circle T?” Talon cocked his head, studying her. “Why aren’t you home working for your parents instead of applying here for a job?”

Her throat tightened for a moment. Yeah, Talon was an operator. They had an unerring ability to home in on the exact issue that needed to be revealed and investigated. She told him the least she could, keeping out the fact she had a permanent rift with her father. His expression became sympathetic when she told him her mother had died when she was eight years old.

“That had to be tough on you,” he murmured. “And you have an older brother?”

“Yes. Steve works at the Circle T.” Her hands grew damp. “My father didn’t need a mechanic. I needed to expand my horizons and stay in my MOS after I separated from the Army. That’s why I’m applying for a job here.”

Rubbing his shaven jaw, Talon regarded her for a moment, the silence thickening in the office. “And you grew up helping to repair tractors, trucks and hay balers?”

“All of those,” she said, “and more.”

“Did your father think it odd for a girl to be a mechanic?”

Shrugging, she said, “He did, but I persevered.” Because she would work with her brother, Steve, who taught her everything that her father refused to teach her about fixing equipment.

“What are you looking for, Kai?”

The question caught her off guard. It was a thoughtfully posed question, without rancor. She saw kindness in Talon’s gray eyes, his face fully readable. There was a gentleness around this man despite how tall he was. Holt wasn’t pretty-boy handsome—he was deeply tanned and tough looking. For a moment, a man from her past, Gil Hanford, came to mind. He’d been a Delta Force operator and Sam’s best friend. Kai quickly slammed that door shut in her memory—too much grief and loss came with it. Moistening her lips, she answered honestly.

“I wanted a family. The military was my family for ten years, but they were downsizing and a lot of us were being let go when our enlistment expired.” She opened her hands. “I love people, children and animals. I like being part of something greater than myself. I was hoping to find a ranch owned by a longtime family and become a part of it.”