Lover Unleashed by J. R. Ward Read Free Book Online Page B

cooking. Last thing she needed was her old boss getting put into traction because her husband got territorial and decided to do a little spine cracking himself: Just before her death, Manny had been interested in more than a professional association with her. So unless he’d up and married one of those Barbies he’d insisted on dating, he was probably still single . . . and under the absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder rule, his feelings might have persisted.
    Then again, he was just as likely to tell her to go fuck herself for lying to him about the whole “dead and gone” thing.
    Good job he wasn’t going to remember any of this.
    On her end, though, she feared she was never going to forget the next twenty-four hours.
     
     
    The Tricounty Equine Hospital was state-of-the-art all the way. Located about fifteen minutes away from the Aqueduct, it had everything from operating rooms and full-service recovery suites to hydrotherapy pools and advanced imaging. And it was staffed with people who saw horses as more than profit-and-loss statements on four hooves.
    In the OR, Manny read the X-rays of his girl’s front leg, and wanted to be the one to go in and take care of business: He could clearly see the fissures in the radius, but that was not what worried him. There was a handful of chips that had broken off, the sharp flakes orbiting the bulbous end of her long bone like moons around a planet.
    Just because she was another species didn’t mean he couldn’t handle the operation. As long as the anesthesiologist kept her under safely, he could handle the rest. Bone was bone.
    But he wasn’t going to be an asshole. “What do you think,” he said.
    “In my professional opinion,” the head vet replied, “it’s pretty grim. That’s a multiple displaced fracture. The recovery time is going to be extensive, and there’s no guarantee of even breeding soundness.”
    Which was the shitkicker: Horses were meant to stand upright with their weight evenly distributed on four points. When a leg was broken, it wasn’t so much the injury that was a bitch; it was the fact that they had to redistribute their poundage and disproportionally rely on the good side to stay on their feet. And that was how trouble came.
    Based on what he was staring at, most owners would choose euthanasia. His girl was born to run, and this catastrophic injury was going to make that impossible, even on a recreational basis—if she survived. And as a doctor, he was quite familiar with the cruelty of medical “savior” jobs that ultimately left a patient in a condition worse than death—or did nothing but painfully prolong the inevitable.
    “Dr. Manello? Did you hear what I said?”
    “Yeah. I did.” But at least, this guy, unlike the pussy out at the track, looked as heartbroken as Manny felt.
    Turning away, he went over to where they had laid her out and put his hand on the round drum of her cheek. Her black coat was shining under the bright lights, and in the midst of all the pale tile and stainless steel, she was like a shadow thrown out and left forgotten in the center of the room.
    For a long moment, he watched her barreled rib cage expand and contract with her breath. Just seeing her on the slab with those beautiful legs lying like sticks and her tail hanging down onto the tile made him realize anew that animals like her were meant to be on their feet: This was utterly unnatural. And unfair.
    Keeping her alive simply so he didn’t have to face her death was not the right answer here.
    Bracing himself, Manny opened his mouth—
    The vibration inside the breast pocket of his suit cut him off. With a nasty curse, he took his BlackBerry out and checked in case it was the hospital. Hannah Whit? With an unknown number?
    No one he knew, and he wasn’t on call.
    Probably a misdial by the operator.
    “I want you to operate,” he heard himself say as he put the thing back.
    The short silence that followed gave him plenty of time to realize that