Page 40 of The Fire Line

Navarro’s overshirt lay across the table beside his equipment bag. The T-shirt cleared his head, and Harris got one unobstructed look at him.

More muscle than he’d expected. Olive skin stretched over a hard chest and stomach. His gaze caught on the dark line of hair disappearing beneath the waistband of Navarro’s jeans.

Then Navarro’s arms started coming down.

Harris got his eyes onto the radio shelf.

“Looking for something?” Navarro asked.

“Fence radio.”

His voice sounded normal. Good.

“Right.”

Harris crossed toward the shelf and kept his attention where it belonged while Navarro pulled on the clean shirt.

Radios.

There were six of them. Five in their charging docks. One missing.

“Is three still okay?”

Harris reached for a radio. “Said it was.”

“For the training session.”

He clipped the radio to his belt. “I know.”

“You’ve been a little difficult to read lately.”

That brought Harris’s eyes back to him.

Navarro had finished dressing. His hair was mussed from pulling the shirt over his head, longer pieces falling around his face. He looked amused, but there was a question under it.

For nearly a week Harris had been so determined not to change anything that he had somehow changed everything. He had shortened conversations that did not need shortening, found work elsewhere when Navarro drifted too close, and kept every exchange squarely on ranch business because anything else suddenly felt like something he might mishandle.

So much for behaving exactly the same.

Navarro smiled. “I’ll see you there. I think I’ve memorized the terms.”

Harris walked past him without answering.

He made it halfway back to the barn before realizing he was carrying the wrong radio.

Fence channel three. He had needed channel one.

“Fuck.”

Harris did not go back.

He had nearly been caught. That was the part he kept coming back to. Harris had walked into the equipment room while Navarro’s shirt was halfway over his head and looked before he had time to decide not to.

More muscle than he’d expected. Olive skin stretched over a hard chest and stomach. His gaze had caught on the dark line of hair disappearing beneath the waistband of Navarro’s jeans.

Moth to the fucking flame.

Then Navarro’s arms had started coming down. Harris had gotten his eyes onto the radio shelf maybe half a second before Navarro could see where they had been.