Page 105 of The Fire Line

“She trusted you,” Jay said. “Not just with the ranch.”

The words could have been an intrusion. Jay offered them quietly and left enough room for Harris to reject them.

“She knew me.”

The words caught against something hard in Harris’s throat.

Jay kept his attention on the pasture.

That helped.

“She was the only person who knew all of it for a long time,” Harris continued.

“She keep it from everyone?”

“Never told a soul.”

“You trusted her.”

“Didn’t get much choice. She figured it out.”

Jay’s mouth moved faintly. “Of course she did.”

Harris almost smiled.

The ache beneath his ribs stayed where it was.

“She would’ve liked you,” he said.

Jay went still. “Because she chose me for the film?”

“Not only that.”

Harris could see it too easily.

Nell would have found him irritating for twenty minutes, then liked the talking, the nerve, and the fact that Harris telling him to mind his own business had never once convinced him to do it. She would have appreciated the bad jokes more than Harris did and recognized, probably before Harris had, that Jay knew when to push and when to leave something alone.

She would have seen the rest before either of them managed to name it.

“I think I would’ve liked her,” Jay said.

“You would’ve.”

There was no hesitation in the answer.

Rain came close enough to put her pale muzzle above the wire. Harris rubbed the white star on her forehead, and she leaned into his hand.

Jay watched the mare instead of Harris.

After a while, he pushed away from the fence. “I should let you get some sleep.”

Harris’s first instinct was to stop him.

The cabin waited through the cottonwoods, private and dark. He could ask Jay back there. Part of him wanted to.

Yesterday had proved how quickly being alone together could turn into touching, and touching Jay was considerably easier than standing at a fence talking about Nell.

Maybe that was exactly why Harris didn’t ask.