The Promise of Lightning by Linda Seed

Author:Linda Seed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: family saga, beach, rich, cowboy, love triangle, millionaire
Publisher: Linda Seed

The way Ryan told it went something like this:

When they’d all come back from the kayaking thing, he and Liam had gone out into the pasture to check on the stock. The mare Liam usually rode had thrown a shoe, and she was out of commission until they could get the farrier out there to fix it. So, he was riding a big, black Arabian that they hadn’t had very long.

It was late afternoon, with the sun sinking down below the tree line, when Ryan and Liam were bringing in a pregnant heifer that Ryan thought would deliver that night. The heifer was agitated—part of the reason Ryan was convinced that it was almost time for her to calve—and didn’t want to go.

Ryan didn’t see exactly what happened, and later, Liam would say that he didn’t remember much of it himself. Maybe the heifer spooked Liam’s horse somehow. Maybe the horse just wasn’t used to Liam. Maybe something else happened—a snake, or a problem having to do with the tack.

Whatever it was, Liam’s horse reared up just as he was leaning over to secure the heifer. He wasn’t ready for it, and he toppled off the back of the horse and hit the ground hard. That, in itself, probably wouldn’t have done much damage. But then the horse brought one of his front hooves down onto Liam’s lower leg.

Ryan heard the bone snap from twenty feet away.

Liam hadn’t lost consciousness, but the leg was badly broken. There was no bone poking out anywhere—thank God for that—but legs weren’t supposed to bend the way Liam’s had.

Ryan had called Orin, who’d brought a four-by-four truck out into the pasture.

Ryan and Orin had hoisted Liam up onto his good leg and loaded him into the truck, with Liam spewing a string of obscenities that was extreme even for him.

There had been some discussion about whether to call an ambulance, but Orin decided that by the time it got out there, they could have Liam halfway to the hospital in Templeton.

The drive out of the pasture had been long and arduous because Orin was doing his best not to let the truck jostle too much, in an effort not to torture Liam. But that wasn’t easy, as they didn’t have the benefit of a road. Orin tried to balance the need to get Liam help quickly with his desire not to make his son wish the horse had killed him.

The results were mixed.

By the time they moved out of the pasture and onto a relatively level road, they’d had to stop once to let Liam open the passenger door and vomit into the grass.

By the time Megan got to the hospital, most of the Delaneys were gathered in the emergency room waiting area, Liam was drugged up on painkillers, and a series of X-rays had shown that Liam had a comminuted fracture of the tibia and fibula—which meant that both of the bones in his lower leg had been crushed.

“He’s gonna need surgery,” Orin

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