Page 47
Kyle looked over from across the yard. “I resemble that remark.”
“Yes, yes, you do,” she shouted back.
Mac grinned and held out the tape measure. “Coming?”
Jodie looked at Arden. “Only if my jailer will allow me.” She mock-bowed.
Arden sighed dramatically. “Fine. But if you start limping, I’m sending Waylon and Elias over there to strap your stubborn ass to a stretcher.”
“Snitch.”
“Proudly.”
Jodie stuck her tongue out at her bestie, grabbed the clipboard that was practically an extension of her body, and followed Mac toward the pasture. He shortened his stride without making a production of it. She noticed anyway. Strangely, it did not annoy her.
They reached the relocated quarantine line, where several stakes marked it after Jodie had ordered them moved back. Mac crouched beside one, sighted along the ground toward the pasture, then looked the other way, down the long shallow fall of the land toward the trees.
“Ground runs that way.”
“It does.”
“Which is why you wanted it down here and not up there.”
Jodie put a hand to her chest. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that louder? I want witnesses.”
Mac chuckled and stood. “Foot traffic comes through there.” He pointed to another section. “Horses come through here. Where Kyle had it, everybody’s crossing paths and the quarantine isn’t a quarantine.”
“Exactly. And frightened horses plus twenty people who all think they know what they’re doing crossing paths is how somebody gets flattened.”
“Twenty?”
She flung her arm out toward the yard. “Have you met us?”
“Fair.” He looked back at the stakes. “How long do they stay separated?”
“Thirty days. Separate water, separate buckets, and nobody goes from that pen into Arden’s barn without changing their boots.” Jodie tapped the clipboard against her leg. “She’s got other people’s horses in that field. If something came off the range with us, it isn’t just ours to worry about.”
Mac nodded slowly, and something in his expression shifted, the way it had at the table over pizza.
He hooked the end of the measuring tape around a stake and handed her the reel. “Walk that toward the shelter line.”
Jodie did, careful over the uneven ground but no longer favoring the ankle nearly as much as she had earlier in the week.
When Mac called, “There,” she stopped and looked back. He stood and studied the line between them. For a second, Jodie forgot what she was doing as she studied his jeans, boots, the muscles bulging from his sleeves, and that hat.
Oh, come on.
Bodyguard Mac had been bad enough. Apparently, Ranch Mac was going to be an even bigger distraction.
Nope. I can’t let him be. I have to focus—
“Jodie?”
“What?”
Mac’s mouth twitched. “Sorry. You’re about three feet past where I said stop.”
She looked down.
