Wild Trail (Clean Slate Ranch #1)(28)
Back at the campsite, all the bedrolls had been neatly stacked next to the wagon, giving Reyes access to other things like cooking equipment. Canteens of water went around, too, and Wes gulped at his, not realizing how parched he was. Too busy focusing on Mack, probably, to notice.
“Anybody here built a fire before?” Mack asked once the wood had been sorted by size.
In an unexpected plot twist, Miles was the only person who raised his hand. Wes gaped at him. Miles shrugged. “What? My parents forced me into Boy Scouts for two years. I learned stuff.”
“Forced you?” Wes asked.
“Dad said it was character building.”
“Come on up here, then, Miles,” Mack said. “Show us what you’ve got.”
Cheeks blazing now that he was the center of attention, Miles squatted near the fire pit and started arranging the wood. The tiniest bits of dried grass and some newspaper was called the tinder, apparently. Over that, he used the small, skinny twigs to create a teepee shape over the tinder. Kindling. Huh. Funny how all the layers had names. Over the kindling went a few more of the larger twigs.
“What do you have to light it?” Miles asked. “I don’t want to bury the tinder if all you’ve got are matches.”
Reyes produced a long-necked grill lighter from the wagon and handed it to Miles. “Don’t worry about burning your fingertips.”
Miles took the lighter and put the flaming tip to the tinder. It caught fast. Miles fed it a few strips of newspaper that burned quickly, until the kindling started to catch. Once the fire had a solid burn going, Miles and Mack both added larger branches to really fuel the flames.
Conrad and Derrick clapped their approval.
“Won’t big fires draw mountain lions toward us?” Miller asked. “They like light, don’t they?”
Miles’s eyes went wide and scared, and Wes wanted to thump Miller over the head with a piece of their firewood.
“We’re out in wide-open spaces,” Reyes replied. “Mountain lions prefer to stay in dense foliage so they can hide from their prey more easily. They won’t come close to a big group of human beings.”
The answer seemed to placate Miles for now, but that had still been an asshole thing to do. The campers were encouraged to explore while Reyes got dinner going, but warned not to wander out of eyesight of the camp. The sun had set far enough that it was hidden by the mountain, so Wes freed his hair of the cowboy hat. Without a mirror, he had no idea how it looked. He finger-combed it a bit, then gave up. No one but him cared what his hair looked like.
There wasn’t a whole lot to explore in the immediate area. Wes leaned against a boulder—he wasn’t sitting again until absolutely necessary—and watched Mack ignore him as best he could. Mack moved between assisting Reyes, watching the camp perimeter like a sentry, and trying not to stare back at Wes. The dance was endearing as hell. And while Mack had yet to say anything to explicitly state he was gay, the way he was flirting with Wes suggested he was at least bi.
A unique brand of flirting, to be sure, with all the growling and glares, and something about it really turned Wes’s crank. His preferred club type was tall, athletic hotties with waxed abs and styled hair. Mack was...well, not that. Wes’s height, but thick all over. And those hints of dark hair peeking out from the neck of his ranch polo? Yes, daddy.
Maybe I’ve been limiting myself all this time by ignoring the bear community. Mack is sexy as hell, and then some.
Dinner was, naturally, a hearty bean and beef chili with lots of crusty bread that Reyes toasted over the fire. It gave the bread a slightly smoky taste that really worked with the chili, which was spicy without scorching his mouth. They all ate out of these weird tin cups with long handles. The dude-bros made a bunch of fart jokes that proved their collective maturity maxed out at age six.
Wes wasn’t sure how they were supposed to entertain themselves until everyone was collectively exhausted enough to go to sleep—until Reyes produced a few decks of cards and a box of wooden matches to use as poker chips. Wes kind of sucked at poker, so he watched while Derrick, Conrad, Sophie and the dude-bros played hand after hand. Sophie’s pile of matchsticks grew bigger and bigger, while the boys’ piles shrank.
She caught his questioning look and mouthed college at him. Who knew higher education had turned his little sister into a cardsharp?
Conrad went out first, followed quickly by Miller. Sophie lost a few hands to Liam. After she knocked Derrick out on a bluff and Liam went all in on his next hand, Sophie called.
She beat his three sevens with a full fucking house, queens over nines.
Mack and Reyes applauded.
Conrad hugged her tight. “That’s my future wife, y’all!”
Liam made a face that Wes really wanted to smack off of him.
The sun had set completely by then, and Wes glanced up, shocked as hell by the sea of twinkling lights above him. Sure, he’d seen stars through the bunkhouse window, but nothing like this. Thousands, if not millions, of stars winked above their heads, more than anyone could count in a lifetime.
“Look at the stars,” he whispered.
Next to him, Miles did. “Damn. I wish I had a lens that could properly take pictures of that. It’s gorgeous.”
He sensed Mack behind him before the man’s hand appeared between them. “You see that arrangement of stars right there? Looks like a Y on top?” Mack connected various stars with his finger. “That’s Ursa Major.”