“Because SEALs always watch entrance and exit points. We never have our back to a door. We don’t sit in front of windows, either.”
Nodding, Bay sat down at his elbow, their backs to the light blue wall. “On-the-job training,” she said in a teasing tone. “You probably feel like you’re babysitting me.” The food on the tray smelled wonderful. Hot food was always a luxury to those who’d lived mostly on MREs.
“I don’t,” he told her. “You’re quick and intelligent. I like working with people like that.” Gabe tried to ignore her closeness. He swore he could smell the strawberry fragrance of her shampoo. There were always soft tendrils on either side of her face even though she wore her shoulder-length hair gathered up in a ponytail. Men continued to stare openly at her. Gabe was sure sitting with him would stir up some gossip across the big base.
“I can hardly wait to get back to Camp Bravo,” Bay told him between bites of her Reuben sandwich piled thickly with sauerkraut. “I’ve got a package coming from home. I hope it arrives today.”
He smiled a little. “Never found anyone who didn’t like mail call.”
Picking at the French fries, Bay said, “My mama makes the best cookies—chocolate chip with walnuts from the trees around our cabin. She adds some secret ingredient she said she’d pass on to me when she died.” Bay chuckled. “Does your wife send you boxes and keep you in cookies, too?”
Wincing inwardly, Gabe said flatly, “I’m divorced.” He saw her expression become sad—for him. Bay was easily touched by another person’s misery, he was discovering. But then again, she was a medic. Who better to be a compassionate soul?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “How about your mom? Does she send you packages?”
“Yes, she does.”
“What’s her name?”
“Grace. She’s an R.N. Works at the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, V.A. Hospital. She’s a psychiatric nurse.” He saw Bay react and she sighed.
“That’s what I want to be when I leave the Navy. It’s always been my dream to become an R.N.”
“That’s a dream you can reach, then,” Gabe said, enjoying the big, thick hamburger and French fries.
“Well,” Bay hedged, “when my pa got black lung, we lost his check from work. He had to quit his job and it was tough to make ends meet after that. I decided to go into the Navy because it would give me a paycheck and I could send most of my money home to them.” She shrugged, her voice hollow. “Pa felt bad about me having to go find an outside job, but it couldn’t be helped. My mama got paid for her services as a doctor with canned goods, vegetables, chickens and such. In the hills, money is scarce, so we trade.”
Nodding, Gabe said, “I saw that with my hill friends I grew up with.” He glanced at her. “And when you graduate from college, are you going back home?”
“I will. There’s a nearby hospital in the lowlands at Dunmore, and I’ll work there, but I intend to be home on weekends. That way, I can support Mama, who takes care of my sister, Eva-Jo. She’s two years younger than me.” Bay picked up her coffee mug and sipped from it.
“What’s your sister do?” Gabe asked, finishing off the hamburger and wiping his hands on a paper napkin.
“Oh,” Bay said softly, pain in her tone, “not much. My sister is mentally challenged. She has the mind and emotions of a ten-year-old.” Shrugging, her voice low, Bay added, “Eva-Jo is special, Gabe. I love her dearly. And Mama is able to take care of her at home. She helps Mama in the garden, hanging the herbs out to dry and things like that. She has trouble reading and writing. It’s sad....”
Hearing the concealed pain in Bay’s husky voice, Gabe started to reach out and hold her hand. He wanted to take away some of her pain. His reaction shocked him enough to keep his hands right where they were. There was something kind, soft and sensitive about Bay that deeply touched him. And even more disconcerting, he had no way to armor himself against her. “I’m sorry to hear that.” And he was. Her eyes widened slightly. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters. I was an only child.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I wasn’t surrounded by my family, my aunts, uncles and cousins, my grandparents,” Bay said, and smiled fondly. “Family means everything to me. When you’re together, you’re strong and you can weather life’s storms more easily. You have support.”
“The SEALs have a similar philosophy. If you consider one twig, it’s easy to break it between your hands. But if you wrap a bunch of twigs together, they can’t be broken. That’s why the teams are so tight—they’re like that bundle of sticks. The guys are close. We trust one another with our back out there and call each other brothers, and we are.”
“At least you have parents,” she pointed out.
Gabe shook his head. “My father’s dead. All I have left is my mother. Both sets of my grandparents lived in California and Oregon, so I rarely got to see them before they passed away.”
“A scattered, broken nuclear family,” Bay whispered, meeting his hooded look. “Maybe the SEALs have given you back the family you lost?”
“Maybe they have,” Gabe agreed. He wanted to share with Bay that he’d longed for a family of his own for a long time. He wanted children, knowing he’d raise them very differently from the way his father, Frank, had raised him. Gabe thought he’d found that dream coming true when he married Lily. As Bay said, he was part of a scattered, broken family in more ways than she would ever realize. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t accurately gauged Lily. He’d been driven to want family. Want that warm, loving support. Without having it as a child, how could he know which woman would be right for him to fulfill that dream with? For his vision of his future? Sometimes Gabe would feel panic in his chest, of having lost out on a very important part of life by not marrying. When he’d decided to try and capture that lost element, he’d met Lily. Marrying her five days later had been the worst decision he’d ever made. Gabe knew, without a doubt, he lacked something within himself to find the right woman who wanted to share his dream of love and having a family. A real family. Not dysfunctional like the one he’d grown up in.
To his consternation, Gabe found himself comparing Lily to Bay. There was a blinding difference. What if he’d met Bay first? God, he was so drawn to her that it scared the hell out of him. She was maternal and nurturing, unlike Lily, who was always in some kind of emotional drama. Bay was quiet and watched a lot and kept counsel to herself unless someone asked her for feedback. Lily was always telling him how she felt and usually it came out as a whining diatribe that about made him nuts.
Moving uncomfortably, Gabe was attracted to Bay’s quiet strength. It exuded from her like sunlight. What man wouldn’t want someone like her around him? And yet, he knew there wasn’t anything he could say or do about it. He wasn’t going to break Bay’s trust in him by coming on to her. Gabe had to keep everything professional. Or else.
CHAPTER SIX
BAY SAT NEXT to Gabe in the small, stuffy room the SEALs used to plan missions. Chief Doug Hampton had a whiteboard set up front and was drawing a valley where they were going to pull an op tomorrow morning. He also used a PowerPoint presentation for the details. The rest of the SEALs were sitting on the other two benches. Not one of them had said anything when she’d arrived with Gabe earlier after getting off a Chinook flight from Bagram. Bay had to admit, she looked like a SEAL with all the gear she had to wear. And maybe, as Gabe had said to her, she was just being too sensitive. Even Hammer didn’t say anything or give her a dark look when she’d entered the room earlier.
Doug pointed to the red oval line on the whiteboard. “This is going to be a recon mission. Alpha Platoon will go and I’ll be joining you. Our assets on the ground in this valley have said that there are three villages. They’re all from the Shinwari Tribe, which the U.S. has a peaceful