I wince. I pull the phone away from my ear for a second. “Joey, calm down.”
“Calm down? I’m three hours away, and I’m getting calls from old high school buddies asking if I’m dead. Tell me what’s happening. Are you guys okay? Is it the cattle?”
“It’s contained,” I say. I try to keep my voice level. “We’re under quarantine. Some kind of parasite. The CDC is here.”
“The CDC?” he roars. “On our land? Who let them in?”
“Seth handled it. It’s protocol, Joey. We have to cooperate.”
There’s a pause on the line. I can hear Joey breathing, sharp and fast.
“Where’s Billy?” he asks. “I tried calling him. His phone goes straight to voicemail.”
I look at Seth. Seth looks back at me. His eyes are wide.
Billy’s with Sedona. In the bunkhouse. Probably holding her while she sweats through a fever. He’s finally letting himself be her Alpha again.
“He’s… resting,” I say.
“Resting?” Joey sounds incredulous. “Billy doesn’t rest during a crisis. He’s the foreman. Put him on the phone.”
“He can’t talk right now,” I say quickly. “He’s asleep. He was up all night with the cattle.”
I hate lying to Joey. But I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him that Sedona is here. I can’t tell him that she’s sick.
And I definitely can’t tell him that Billy is with her.
If Joey knew, he would lose his mind. He would demand to talk to Billy. He would demand to know why the hell the girl who broke his brother’s heart is back on the property. He would make a scene.
It’s better this way. Better for him to hear it from Billy. When things have calmed down. When Billy has his head on straight.
“Tell him to call me back,” Joey says. His voice is tight. “The minute he wakes up.”
“I will,” I promise.
“Are the cattle okay?” Joey asks. His voice drops, losing some of the anger, replaced by worry. “Have any of them succumbed?”
I think about the separated calves, the stressed mothers. I think about the virus we can’t see.
“No,” I say. “No deaths. Just a lot of stress. We’re managing.”
“Okay,” Joey breathes. “Okay. Look, I can be back by tonight. I can skip?—”
“No,” I cut in. “Stay where you are. The quarantine is strict. No one in, no one out. You can’t get to us anyway.”
“I hate this,” Joey growls. “I hate being stuck out here while you guys are dealing with this.”
“We’ve got it handled,” I say. “Seth is on top of the paperwork.”
Joey grunts. “Fine. Call me if anything changes.”
“We will.”
“And Tex?”
“Yeah?”
“Watch your back. And watch Seth. Don’t let him take all the weight. You know how overwhelmed he gets. I wanted to call him, but I don’t want to stress him out more than he probably is.”
