style="font-size:15px;"> ‘And sometimes you need to back off.’
‘Like you have from everyone?’
‘Butt out,’ he said, trying to sound good humoured. If she was to pry into his personal life, the next four weeks would be endless.
‘You made phone calls on my behalf,’ she said mildly. ‘Do you call that butting out?’
‘That’s …’
‘Different,’ she said cordially. ‘You can butt into my life, but I can’t do the same in yours.’ She glanced back along the track. ‘That chainsaw …’
‘He doesn’t want us! He’s vowed not to want anyone.’
‘Like you?’
‘I wouldn’t know. Tom and I don’t talk of it. What business is it of mine?’
‘All your business if you love him.’
‘Then you end up where you are with your mother.’
‘Are you saying your uncle Tom is like my mother?’
‘No, but …’ He raked his hair. ‘You can care too much. It leaves you open for hurt, like you’ve been hurt. It sounds to me like you should have backed off years ago.’
‘Like you,’ she said cordially. ‘And Tom. Living in your emotion-free bubbles.’
‘I like emotion-free bubbles.’
‘Good for you,’ she said, and smiled, and it was an entrancing smile. Enchanting. Beguiling. It made him want to.
Step right out of his emotion-free bubble.
It wasn’t going to happen. It was not.
The chainsaw was roaring in the background. They walked on in silence, using the noise as a silent excuse not to talk.
He was so aware of her, a slip of a girl with an enchanting smile, with judgment written all over her. And challenge.
He thought of Tom. Was she right? Was the old man finally admitting he needed people?
The chainsaw was biting through wood. It really wasn’t safe, he conceded.
He had talked to Tom about it. Tom had told him where he could put his worries.
Suddenly the chainsaw’s motor whined sharply, differently, rising in pitch as if it had been jerked free of wood. The wood was rotten. If Tom was pressing against solid wood and met rot …
Even as Luke thought it, the chainsaw motor cut out as it was meant to do the moment pressure was released from the hand hold.
And as the motor died … a scream.
Luke was running almost before his brain had processed the sounds.
They’d been replacing fence posts. The old ones had been hauled out and stacked.
Tom had balanced the first post against the pile, then started slicing it for firewood. Now he was sprawled on the damp grass, the chainsaw tossed beside him. The dogs were whimpering in fear.
A pool of bright scarlet was blooming out from Tom’s leg.
Lily wasn’t as fast as Luke. By the time she reached the clearing Luke had rolled Tom from curled and clutching his leg onto his back so he could see the damage.
In that one instant, she knew what had happened. He’d swiped the chainsaw downward. Maybe the wood was more rotten than he’d expected—maybe he hadn’t needed as much pressure as he had exerted. For whatever reason the saw had sliced far further than he’d intended, smashing into his upper thigh.
He must have hit the femoral artery. It had to be cut, she thought with horror. There was no other explanation for this amount of blood.
Luke was searching for pressure points, one hand pressing, the other ripping at his shirt to try and get a wad, a tie, anything.
Her shirt was off in an instant, folded, handed to him. Then she grabbed Luke’s sleeve and ripped with a strength she hadn’t known she had. She ripped the sleeve right off, then ripped again from shoulder to cuff.
It gave them padding and a tie.
‘Let me … let me…’ Tom was gasping, trying to see.
‘Lie still,’ Luke snapped. There was no time for reassurance, not while the blood was pumping as it was. ‘Tom, lie still. You’ve cut an artery and we have to stop it.’
‘Bloody fool,’ Tom muttered, and subsided.
His face was ashen.
So much blood.
The pad was doing nothing, no matter how hard Luke pressed. Lily was twisting the tie above the wound but making no difference at all to the blood flow. Already Tom was looking clammy, a sheen of cold sweat on his face.
He’d bleed out in minutes.
If they were back at the hospital they’d have tools to cut down, to find the artery and clamp it off. Here they had nothing.
‘I can’t locate it,’ Luke snapped, and the agony in those words was desperate. ‘Your hand’s smaller. You try.’
It was a desperate request. He had nothing else to try.
He took the tie, while she shoved her fist into the wound, hard, as tight as it’d go. Was her hand small enough? She was searching for the source of the blood, pushing with a desperation born of terror.
Harder …
The blood welled around her fingers … and slowed.
Slowed more.
But in time?
She had to be in time.
‘Hey, she’s stopped the bleeding,’ Luke told his uncle. Until now it had been impossible to disguise the panic. ‘Lily’s hit the spot. Don’t you move, not a whisker.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Tom whispered. ‘Oh, girl, I’m making you all mucky.’
‘I love horses and I love nursing,’ Lily told him, trying to match Luke’s reassurance, trying to keep the strain from her voice, as if holding back blood like this was routine. Knowing how close to disaster they still were. ‘I like a bit of muck.’
Tom tried to laugh but it didn’t come off. He looked …
Like he could go into shock at any minute.
It was a real possibility.
Lily couldn’t move. Her fist was a ball curled tight against damaged tissue, pressed hard against the pulsing artery. Somehow she’d hit the spot, somehow she’d blocked the blood supply. If she
