16. Every Empty Room #2
“Right.”
His brother let the word hang there, gaze lingering a fraction longer than Harris liked. He knew that look. Evan had not necessarily figured anything out, but something had struck him as odd enough to remember.
That might have been worse.
Then Pete asked about a spare set of reins, drawing Evan toward the shelf beside the doorway. Their entire exchange lasted less than a minute, though Harris felt each second drag past before the two men finally continued down the aisle.
He waited until their footsteps had faded before letting his shoulders loosen.
Across from him, Jay slowly lowered the blanket.
“Visual literacy?” Harris asked.
“I was under pressure.”
“You’re supposed to be good at this.”
“I make documentaries. I do not generally provide emergency cover stories while clutching horse paraphernalia.”
Harris put the breast collar back on the workbench.
His pulse was still running too fast. Unfortunately, so was everything else. Being interrupted had done almost nothing to cool the want under his skin, and the memory of Jay’s hand remained available with humiliating precision.
Jay shoved his hair away from his face. “We need to be more careful.”
“Yup.”
Neither of them made any move toward the door.
Jay noticed. Of course he did.
“That means not doing this in a room with an open entrance.”
“Know what it means.”
“Do you?”
Harris looked toward the aisle and then back at him.
Jay’s shirt remained partly untucked, his mouth visibly kissed. Harris could see his pulse beating quickly at the base of his throat, evidence that Jay had not recovered any better than he had.
A minute earlier, Harris had been willing to let him touch a part of his body nobody else ever had while Evan stood perhaps twenty feet away.
The worst part was that Harris had not forgotten where they were.
If he had simply lost track of the risk, he could have understood that. People got distracted. They made mistakes.
Harris had known exactly where they were and what could happen if someone walked through the door. For those few minutes, he had simply wanted Jay badly enough that the consequences stopped mattering.
That realization bothered him far more than the near discovery itself.
Harris had spent most of his life believing caution was built into him.
He checked gates twice, watched wind direction without thinking about it, fixed small problems before they had time to become expensive ones.
He planned around risk because waiting for risk to become emergency was how people got hurt.
A man like that did not stand in an unlocked tack room with another man’s hand inside the back of his jeans while his brother worked twenty feet away.
Except apparently Harris did.
Jay had gone quiet while watching him.
“Regretting it?”
The teasing was gone from his voice.
“No.” Harris rubbed a hand over his jaw, needing Jay to understand that much immediately. “The risk. Not you.”
Something in Jay’s posture eased. “Good distinction.”
“Ain’t funny.”
“I know.”
And he did know. Maybe not every reason Harris had built his life so carefully around never giving anyone cause to wonder, but enough to understand that discovery here would not be a minor embarrassment Harris could laugh about later.
“We can’t do this again.”
Jay’s expression closed before Harris had even finished hearing his own sentence.
“Here,” he corrected. “Like this.”
Understanding returned almost immediately. “Yes,” Jay said. “That was what I meant by more careful.”
“Cabin.”
“The cabin has a door. A revolutionary safety feature.”
“Navarro.”
“Sorry.”
He looked profoundly unrepentant.
Harris stepped closer, which perhaps was not the strongest demonstration that he had learned anything from the previous five minutes.
One side of Jay’s shirt was still hanging loose. Harris caught the fabric and tucked it back into his jeans, telling himself the gesture was practical because sending Jay into the yard visibly disheveled would defeat the entire point of nearly having a heart attack over Evan.
His fingers stayed at Jay’s waist anyway.
Jay glanced down at them, then back at Harris.
Neither of them moved.
That was becoming a problem all by itself.
Harris finally made himself take his hand away. “Go first.”
Jay’s mouth twitched. “Look at you. Learning.”
“Don’t push it.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He retrieved his camera bag and headed for the doorway, but stopped before stepping into the barn.
“I meant what I said last night.”
Harris waited.
“You not knowing yet doesn’t bother me.”
The words reached well beyond whatever had happened against the saddle rack.
Harris nodded once.
Jay left.
Harris gave it enough time that following would not look like following before allowing himself to think about the touch again. He could still feel that brief pass of Jay’s finger and the uncertainty tangled up with the want beneath it.
He did not know whether curiosity would eventually become readiness, and for once he was trying not to force himself into an answer simply because not having one irritated him.
What he did know was simpler.
Jay had stopped the instant Harris went still.
He would stop again.
Harris had not expected that knowledge to matter quite so much.
Outside, Evan called his name from near the wash rack.
Harris picked up the breast collar and walked back into the barn.