The Promise of Lightning

by Linda Seed

  Colin seemed altogether too pleased with himself for Drew’s taste.

  “But …”

  “What else have you got to do the next few days?” Sandra asked, squinting at him in that way of hers that made you feel like she had X-ray vision of all of your inner workings.

  “Well …” He struggled to come up with something, then seized on the one thing that came to mind: “Place cards.”

  Sandra scoffed, and it almost looked for a moment like she might smile. “Well, that’s fine. You help your mama with the place cards. And when that fifteen minutes is up, well, I figure you can help out on the ranch.”

  By the time the chitchat, the obligatory visits to Liam’s room, and the travel arrangements of who would ride with whom back to the ranch were settled, Drew was pretty much locked in, with no way to escape other than fleeing in the dead of night.

  The thought did occur to him, more than once.

  Chapter Twenty

  Colin hadn’t been much of a rancher, either, until a couple of years before, when he’d moved to Montana to be with Julia and had taken over the family’s operation out there. Colin was a Harvard-educated lawyer, and his strong point was real estate—the buying of it, the selling of it, the managing of it, and the making of astronomical profit from it. But with all of the pre-wedding events except the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner having been canceled, even he put on his boots and his hat and got his hands dirty after Liam’s surgery.

  Drew was paired up with Colin the next day as they rode out into the pasture to check on the stock.

  Drew knew how to ride—he’d been raised in Montana, after all—but it had been awhile, and his ass started to ache before the first half hour passed. That was the first indication that it was going to be a long day.

  The second was when they found another pregnant heifer who seemed off, and Colin said she might be ready to deliver.

  “We’d better bring her into the barn so we can keep an eye on her,” Colin said.

  “Isn’t that how Liam got hurt?” Drew asked.

  “No, Liam got hurt because he couldn’t stay in the saddle. You do that, you won’t have any problems.”

  “Sure,” Drew said, trying to sound agreeable.

  The morning was shrouded in a low fog, and the pasture, the rolling hills in the distance, and the cattle themselves all looked soft and gauzy in the diffuse early light. A cool breeze off the ocean did a little to cut the smell of cow shit and sweaty horse, but Drew still longed for the scent of sawdust in his workshop.

  This time, there was no difficulty roping the heifer and leading her back to the barn. The difficulty came in when the labor didn’t progress the way it was supposed to.

  About an hour after they’d moved her into a calving stall, the amniotic sac had begun to emerge—a sight Drew was fairly sure would haunt his nightmares well into the foreseeable future.

  When an hour passed and nothing else happened, except for the cow—and Drew, for that matter—becoming increasingly uncomfortable, Colin called Ryan to the barn, since Ryan had more experience with this sort of thing.

  When he got there, Ryan took a look at the heifer’s backside, then washed his hands, cleaned the back of the cow with some kind of solution, and put on a long plastic sleeve over his arm.

  “Please tell me you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do,” Drew said, feeling increasingly queasy.

  “I’ve got to check the calf,” Ryan replied, as though he’d done this sort of thing all of his life. Which, of course, he had. “We should have seen two hooves and a nose by now.”

  He slathered the sleeved arm with some sort of lubricant and then, acting as though it were the most normal thing in the world, violated the cow in a way that Drew found objectionable not only morally, but aesthetically.

  “Oh, God,” Drew moaned.

  “Hang in there, champ,” Ryan said conversationally. “I’ve just gotta—uh oh.”

  Drew couldn’t imagine what might be worse than seeing Ryan up to his shoulder in cow genitalia, but he had to ask anyway.

  “ ‘Uh oh,’ what?” His knees felt a little weak, but he valiantly remained upright.

  “The calf’s breech. If I can just …” He rooted around in there while the cow—whose head was secured at one end of the stall, presumably to keep her from bolting or kicking the shit out of Ryan—shifted on her feet and mooed mournfully. “Well, shit.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not gonna work. The calf’s positioned ass first.” Ryan pulled out his arm, which was now coated with some type of goo that didn’t bear thinking about.

  “So, what does that mean?” Drew asked, feeling a little wobbly on his feet.

  “It means that calf’s not coming out on its own. Call the vet, would you?”

  As Colin got out his cell phone to call Megan, Drew tried to steady himself. “Why the hell did you want me out here, anyway?” he asked.

  “I figured it was time you saw what we do here.”

  “You stick your arm up a cow’s ass?”

  Ryan chuckled at him from where he stood at the cow’s hind end. “If you think a calf comes out of the cow’s ass, then we’ve got more work to do than I thought.”

  Drew almost forgot his mixed feelings about seeing Megan again, amid his terror about what she might have to do to the cow once she got there. It turned out that his concern was justified. The cow needed a C-section, which was something Drew didn’t even know people did on cows.

  She didn’t waste time once she arrived with her vet tech in tow—the poorly positioned calf was, apparently, an emergency—and before he knew what was happening, Megan made the first incision and Drew’s world went all soft and black.

  He’d never thought of himself as a fainter, but then again, the question had never been tested by this particular scenario.

  As blurry color started to return to his vision, he was aware of Ryan and Colin supporting his weight and leading him to another part of the barn, making gentle fun of him as they did it.

  They set Drew down well away from the carnage with his back propped against a wall, and Colin handed him a bottle of water.

  “I just … haven’t eaten. That’s all,” Drew said weakly, sipping from the water bottle.

  Colin laughed at him—the bastard actually laughed.

  “That’s what they all say,” he remarked, slapping Drew on the shoulder. Then he went back to see how Megan was coming along, leaving Drew to continue his recovery.

  He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, but eventually everybody came out of the stall, with Megan, the tech, and the two Delaney brothers all looking to be in good spirits. Drew figured that meant things must have gone well—or as well as could be expected, anyway.

  He got himself to his feet just as Megan got to him.

  “So … how’d it go?” he asked. He was pleased that his voice sounded reasonably steady.

  “Good, I think. The calf looks good.” She’d stripped off her gown and hat and booties and was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, looking reasonably put-together, given the circumstances. “You guys will have to watch the mother for a few days, give her antibiotics.”

  “Okay.” He nodded. He was sure Ryan and Colin already knew all of this, but he wanted to act like he had some useful role to play.

  She came to stand beside him and peered at him with an amused look on her face. “Don’t feel bad,” she said. “I’ve seen experienced ranch hands go down like they’ve been shot.”

  “So … what happens now?”

  “The guys and Ellie—that’s my tech—are moving the mother and the calf to a clean stall. Then I imagine one of the ranch hands is going to have some cleaning up to do.”

  The thought of some poor guy having to hose out blood and amniotic fluid and who knew what else made him feel woozy again, so he sat down on a stool he’d found nearby and took a few deep breaths.

  “Are you okay?” she asked him.

  “Yeah. Still a little shaky, th
ough.” He hated to admit that he lacked the fortitude to handle the sight and, indeed, the very thought of blood and bovine internal organs, but there it was.

  Colin came over while they were talking.

  “Is he okay?” he asked Megan, as though Drew weren’t there.

  “Still a little unsteady,” she said. Drew had the uncomfortable sensation of being one of her patients.

  “Yeah, looks like it,” Colin remarked. “I’d better get him back to the house.”

  “I can do that,” Megan said. Her voice was casual and offhand, but Drew’s heart was beginning to speed up. The idea of being alone with her, even for the few minutes it would take to walk to the house, was bringing him around.

  “But you’re busy.” It would just be good manners to protest a little.

  “We’ve got to stay around awhile anyway to keep an eye on the animals,” Megan said. “Ellie can do that until I get back.”

  So Drew grabbed his water bottle and took another sip, and the two of them walked out of the barn and into the late afternoon sunlight. A cool breeze blew in off of the ocean, and it felt good on Drew’s skin, making him more steady and alert.

  “That was … I’ve never seen anything like that,” he told her as they walked up the path toward the house. “Are they going to be okay?”

  “Should be,” Megan said. “I’ve had C-sections go wrong—where things seem okay at the time, but then the animal doesn’t make it. But usually, they recover just fine. That one went smoothly, so … We’ll see.”

  “Those guys are never going to let me live this down,” Drew said.

  She smiled. “Oh … I think they get that this isn’t your usual milieu.”

  The fact that she’d just saved two lives, combined with the fact that she’d used the word milieu, made him want to kiss her. He wanted it so much, in fact, that he would gladly endure what he’d seen in the barn again if he could be with her at the end of it.

  But he couldn’t get past the image of her holding Liam’s hand and looking at him with love.

  “How are things between you and Liam?” he asked, because getting her onto that topic might push the thought of kissing her out of his head.

  She looked down at the ground in front of them and shook her head. Their feet crunched on the dirt path.

  “I’m not in love with him,” she said. “But I can’t stop caring about him. Not now. Not while he’s hurt. I just—”

  And that was what did it. Hearing that she wasn’t in love with Liam—hearing it confirmed—broke his resolve. He closed the distance between the two of them, pulled her to him, and kissed her.

  Megan knew she shouldn’t be doing this. But all rational thought was extinguished by the sudden sensation that she had pure, crackling electricity running through her veins.

  She had loved Liam—or at least, she’d thought she had. But she’d never felt this all-consuming passion for him, this desire like some kind of wild beast inside her. She wrapped herself around Drew, let her body melt against him, her hands gripping fistfuls of his hair. His embrace lifted her off her feet as he claimed her with his mouth.

  After a time that felt both endless and not nearly long enough, he was the one to pull away.

  He took hold of her shoulders and held her at arm’s length.

  “This was a mistake.” His voice sounded rough.

  “But …”

  “You’d better head back to the barn.” He let go of her, turned, and walked toward the house, leaving her shaken and trembling.

  They’d started their walk toward the house with Drew feeling unsteady on his feet. Now Megan was the one who thought her knees just might give out.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  After the C-section, Megan went home to feed her pets, clean Mr. Wiggles’s litter box, and take Bobby and Sunshine for their walk. Then she drove out to the hospital to see Liam, feeling restless and irritable. Everything in her life was in upheaval. She’d closed her clinic for the week to accommodate the wedding schedule, so she didn’t even have the comfort of her usual routine to soothe her.

  Being with Liam was hard, with her guilt and her changed feelings toward him, and her growing and uncontrollable feelings for Drew. And yet, she had to be with Liam right now, until the crisis of his injury passed. If she didn’t, she’d never be able to live with herself.

  Not that it was easy to do that now, with the memory of her afternoon of passion with Drew still fresh—very fresh—in her mind.

  And then he had to go and kiss her.

  How had things gotten so out of control? How had her life taken this turn?

  No.

  Her life hadn’t just magically taken a turn. She’d made choices, taken actions, and those actions had brought her here.

  She wasn’t some victim of circumstance. If anyone was a victim here, it was Liam.

  God, Liam.

  Liam with his sweet core buried under so many layers of defensiveness and bravado. It had been hard for him to love her in the first place, hard for him to leave himself vulnerable enough to let her in.

  And now, what had she done with that trust? She’d fallen in love with another man.

  To think that Liam had even been prepared to marry her.

  With a jolt, she remembered that Liam had been planning to propose at the wedding. She smacked the steering wheel with her palm as she drove east on Route 46.

  She’d been planning to end things earlier rather than later so it wouldn’t come to that. But then he’d been hurt, and she’d nearly forgotten that she had a deadline for coming clean.

  Well, not completely clean. She needed to tell him how she felt, but that didn’t mean he needed to know about Drew. Not yet. Not until the shock of the breakup wore off.

  The phone rang, coming through her truck’s Bluetooth.

  “Hey,” Breanna said, her voice filtered through the speaker system. “You’re coming to the rehearsal dinner, right? Mom wanted me to ask you, since Liam isn’t coming, obviously, and you were going to be his date. … Actually, she didn’t tell me to ask you. She said to tell you you’re coming, and not to take no for an answer.”

  The rehearsal dinner was scheduled for the following evening, and Megan hadn’t given any thought to whether she would go without Liam. Drew would be there, which raised a whole host of issues that she’d rather not deal with, especially in front of the entire Delaney family. But when Sandra said she wouldn’t take no for an answer …

  “Geez, Bree, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what? There’s going to be food, and you have to eat.”

  “Yes, but …”

  “But what?”

  “It’s just … complicated.”

  “Dinner isn’t complicated. Food isn’t complicated. Well, I guess some of that fancy French stuff is, but …”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Breanna let out a slow sigh, like a tire with a minute leak. “You mean Drew.”

  “Well, yes! What am I supposed to do, Bree? Am I supposed to sit there eating pot roast next to him, at a big table with the whole family around us, and try to act like nothing’s going on? Like everything’s fine?”

  “Eggplant parmesan.”

  The non sequitur had Megan momentarily disoriented. “I … what?”

  “We’re not having pot roast. It’s eggplant parmesan. Apparently, that’s Julia’s favorite, so …”

  “Bree? Can we focus, please?”

  “No, I don’t think I will. I think I’ll recite facts about the menu until I bore you into submission and you agree to come. The side dishes will be caprese salad, a really nice garlic bread, oh, and these roasted tomato tarts that Isabelle wanted, even though I think they’re a little frou-frou …”

  “Breanna!”

  “Look, Megan, just come to the dinner, okay? I want you there. We all want you there.”

  Instead of responding with her plans for the dinner, Megan blurted out the main thing that had been troubling her since the moment sh
e’d left Drew at his hotel the day of the accident.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Bree.”

  Breanna knew Megan wasn’t talking about the dinner invitation.

  “About Drew, or about Liam?” she said.

  “Either. Both. I’m on my way to the hospital now. How can I tell him? Especially now that he’s hurt. But … how can I not tell him?”

  “You’ve gotten yourself into a mess, all right,” Breanna agreed.

  That wasn’t an answer—not that Megan expected Breanna to have any solutions for her.

  “He said he was going to propose at the wedding,” Megan said. “You don’t think he’s still going to do that, do you?” The idea was the worst-case scenario. No, the worst-case scenario would be Liam finding out about her and Drew at the wedding, and pummeling Drew into unconsciousness. She guessed that with Liam in a wheelchair or on crutches, at least that was one thing she could cross off her list of worries.

  “Okay. Okay. I’d better hang up. I’m getting close to the hospital now, and I have to get myself psyched up before I see him.”

  “Psyched up,” Breanna repeated.

  “Yes. You know, I have to get myself into the right frame of mind to pretend that everything’s okay. When it’s really, really not okay.”

  “All right,” Breanna said. “But what should I tell Mom about the dinner?”

  “Tell her”—she blew out a breath—“tell her I’ll be there.” Regardless of the state of things between her and Liam, the Delaneys were like family to her. You showed up for family. She hoped to God she wouldn’t lose that part of her family when the truth came to light.

  Liam was sitting up in his hospital bed, his bandaged and immobilized leg stretched out in front of him, his ever-present scowl—so much like his mother’s—firmly affixed to his face.

  “Hey,” Megan said tentatively, waving the fingers of her right hand at him as she came through the door.

  “Oh. Hey. I still can’t get this damned remote to work.” He pressed some buttons with more force than strictly required, while waving the thing at the television. “Goddamn it. If I have to be stuck here, you’d think I could at least watch some decent TV.”