Page 61 of The Fire Line

“I’m starting to think I should just keep my mouth shut.”

“Wouldn’t last five minutes.”

Harris’s eyes met his for a second, the faintest trace of amusement there, then he went back to unloading.

That was going to require some strategic ignore-at-all-costs.

Inside, the cabin contained two narrow bunks, a small table, a woodstove, shelves of battered cookware, and exactly enough floor space to make avoiding another adult man a conscious logistical decision.

Two bunks.

Fine. Jay had slept in smaller rooms with crews and once a Peruvian epidemiologist who spoke in his sleep exclusively about municipal budgets. This was not intimate.

His body, which had already become unhelpfully alert to Harris’s proximity, appeared to disagree.

Harris dropped the saddlebags onto the table and gestured toward one of the bunks. “You take that one.”

The bunks looked completely identical. “Why?”

“Better mattress.”

“You tested them?”

“Nope.”

“So this is instinct. Wonderful.”

Jay set his bag beside the bunk nearest the window and stretched out experimentally. The mattress was thin enough that Harris’s assessment of the alternative became mildly alarming, but after a day in the saddle even horizontal plywood would have had its charms.

He folded one arm behind his head. A wooden shelf had been built into the wall above the bunk, and from this angle four faded words were visible on its underside in black marker.

NELL WAS RIGHT — 2004

Jay smiled. “Harris.”

“What?”

“Come here.”

Harris gave him a suspicious look from the table.

“I promise this is not an elaborate attempt to lure you toward my bed.”

“That wasn’t my concern.”

“Well, now I’m offended.”

Harris rolled his eyes, but came over anyway. Jay pointed upward. “Look under the shelf.”

Harris bent, couldn’t find the angle, then crouched beside the bunk and leaned farther in, bracing one hand on the mattress beside Jay’s shoulder.

Oh.

This was considerably more Harris than Jay had anticipated joining him on the mattress.

His forearm was inches from Jay’s chest, one knee nearly against the side of the bunk, and Jay could smell sun-warmed cotton and leather. His heart gave one hard, deeply unhelpful beat.

Straight man. Very straight man. Currently half on your bed.