After that, things settled into a routine. There was no doubt in his mind—or anyone else’s—that he was back to stay. They worked as a good team, him and Jimmy and Rob. There was no recurrence of the day they had embraced in the parlour. They watched each other, but neither took it any further forward. It was a grieving time for Matty and he didn’t have it in him to start anything.
He didn’t stop himself looking quickly enough, though, the day he went into the tack room at the end of the barn searching for Rob and found the man stripped to the waist and washing in the rough stone sink. Matty pulled himself together pretty sharply, but he also saw Rob had noticed him noticing, and had looked back. He admired Rob a bit, then, on the quiet. They were harvesting, rushing to get all the fields
