Lover Unleashed

ONE

“I want to blow you.”

Dr. Manny Manello swiveled his head to the right and looked at the woman who’d spoken to him. It was hardly the first time he’d heard that combination of words, and the mouth they’d come out of certainly had enough silicone in it to offer a good cushion. But it was still a surprise.

Candace Hanson smiled at him and adjusted her Jackie O. hat with a manicured hand. Apparently, she’d decided that the combination of ladylike and raunchy was enticing—and maybe it was to some guys.

Hell, at another time in his life, he probably would have taken her up on it, under the why-the-hell-not theory. Now? File that under not-so-much.

Undeterred by his lack of enthusiasm, she leaned forward, flashing him a set of breasts that didn’t so much defy gravity as flip it off, insult its mother, and piss on its shoes. “I know where we could go.”

He bet she did. “Race is about to start.”

She pouted. Or maybe that was just the way her post-injection lips poofed out. God, a decade ago she’d probably been fresh faced; now the years were adding a patina of desperation to her—along with the normal wrinkle-linked aging process that she clearly fought like a boxer.

“Afterward, then.”

Manny turned away without replying, unsure exactly how she got into the owners’ section. Must have been in the rush to come back here from the saddling up at the paddock—and no doubt she was used to getting into places she technically wasn’t allowed: Candace was one of those Manhattan social types who was nothing but a pimp away from being a prostitute, and in a lot of ways, she was like any other wasp—ignore the nuisance and it’ll go land on something else.

Or someone else, as it were.

Putting his arm up to keep her from getting any closer, Manny leaned on the rail of his owner’s box and waited for his girl to be brought out onto the track. She was posted on the outside, and that was fine: she preferred not to be in the pack, and going a little extra distance had never bothered her.

The Aqueduct in Queens, New York, was not quite on the prestige level of Belmont or Pimlico, or that venerable mother of all racetracks, Churchill Downs. It wasn’t dog shit, either, however. The facility had a good mile and an eighth of dirt, and also both a turf and a short course. Total capacity was ninety thousand-ish. Food was meh, but no one really went there to eat, and there were some big races, like today: The Wood Memorial Stakes had a $750,000 purse, and as it was held in April, it was a good benchmark for Triple Crown contenders—

Oh, yeah, there she was. There was his girl.

As Manny’s eyes locked on GloryGloryHallelujah, the noise of the crowd and the bright light of the day and the bobbing line of the other horses disappeared. All he saw was his magnificent black filly, her coat catching the sun and flashing, her superlean legs flexing, her delicate hooves curling up out of the track’s dirt and planting down again. With her at nearly seventeen hands high, the jockey was a tiny pretzeled gnat on her back, and that size differential was representative of the division of power. She’d made it clear from day one of her training: She might have to tolerate the annoying little humans, but they were just along for the ride. She was in charge.

Her domineering temperament had already cost him two trainers. The third they were on now? The guy was looking a little frustrated, but that was just his sense of control getting hoofed to death: Glory’s times were outstanding—they just had nothing to do with him. And Manny was summarily unconcerned with the inflated egos of men who bossed horses around for a living. His girl was a fighter, and she knew what she was doing, and he had no problems letting her go and watching the fun as she buried the competition.

As his eyes stayed with her, he remembered the sucker he’d bought her off of a little more than a year ago. That twenty grand had been a steal, given her bloodlines, but was also a fortune going by her temperament and the fact that it hadn’t been clear that she’d be able to get her gate card to race. She’d been a unruly yearling on the verge of getting benched—or worse, turned into dog food.

But he’d been right. Provided you gave her her head and let her run the show, she was spectacular.

When the lineup approached the gate, some of the horses started to twinkle-toe it, but his girl was rock steady, as if she knew it was pointless to waste her energy on this pregame bullshit. And he really liked their odds in spite of their pole position, because this jockey on her back was a star: He knew precisely how to handle her, and in that regard, he was more responsible for her success than the trainers. His philosophy with her was just to make sure she saw all the best routes out of the pack and then let her choose and go.

Manny rose to his feet and gripped the painted iron rail in front of him, joining the crowd as it crested out of the seats and popped countless binocs. As his heart started to pound, he was glad, because outside of the gym he’d been all but flatlining it lately. Life had carried a terrible numbness with it over the past year or so, and maybe that was part of the reason this filly was so important to him.

Maybe she was all he had, too.

Not that he was going there.

At the gate, it was a case of move it, move it, move it: When you were trying to stuff fifteen high-strung horses with legs like sticks and adrenal glands that were firing like howitzers into itty-bitty metal boxes, you didn’t waste time. Within a minute or so, the field was locked down and the track hands were hightailing it for the rails.

Heartbeat.

Bell.

Bang!

The gates released and the crowd roared and those horses surged forward like they’d been blown out of cannons. The conditions were perfect. Dry. Cool. Track was fast.

Not that his girl cared. She’d run in quicksand if she had to.

The Thoroughbreds thundered by, the sound of their collective hooves and the driving beat of the announcer’s voice whipping the energy in the stands to an ecstatic pitch. Manny stayed calm, however, keeping his hands locked on the rail in front of him and his eyes on the field as the pack rounded the first corner in a tight knot of backs and tails.

The wide-screen showed him everything he needed to see. His filly was the second to the last, all but loping while the rest of them went at a dead run—hell, her neck wasn’t even fully extended. Her jockey, however, was doing his job, easing her out from the rail, giving her the choice of running around the far side of the pack or cutting through it when she was ready.

Manny knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to plow right through the other horses like a wrecking ball.

That was her way.

And sure enough, as they came off the distant straightaway, she started to get her fire on. Her head lowered, her neck elongated, and her stride began to stretch.

“Fuckin’ A,” Manny whispered. “You do it, girl.”

As Glory penetrated the choked field, she became a streak of lightning cutting past the other runners, her burst of speed so powerful you had to know she did it on purpose: It wasn’t enough to just beat them all, but she had to do it in the last half mile, blowing the saddles off the bastards at the last possible moment.

Manny laughed deep in his throat. She was so his kind of lady.

“Christ, Manello, look at her go.”

Manny nodded without glancing at the guy who’d spoken in his ear because a game changer at the head of the pack was unfolding: The colt that was in the lead lost his momentum, falling back as his legs ran out of gas. In response, his jockey cropped him on, whipping his hindquarters—which had all the success of someone cursing at a car whose tank was on E. The colt in second place, a big chestnut with a bad attitude and a stride as long as a football field, took immediate advantage of the slowdown, his jockey letting that horse have all its head.

The pair went neck and neck for only a second before the chestnut took control of the race. But it wasn’t going to be for long. Manny’s girl had picked her moment to weave in between a knot of three horses and come up on his ass tighter than a bumper sticker.

Yup, Glory was in her element, ears flat against her head, teeth bared.

She was going to eat his fucking lunch. And it was impossible not to extrapolate to the first Saturday in May and the Kentucky Derby—

It all happened so fast.

Everything came to an end . . . in the blink of an eye.

On a deliberate sideswipe, the colt slammed into Glory, the brutal impact sending her into the rail. His girl was big and strong, but she was no match for a body check like that, not when she was going forty miles an hour.

For a heartbeat, Manny was convinced she’d rally. In spite of the way she careened and scrambled, he expected her to find her footing and teach that unruly bastard a lesson in manners.

Except she went down. Right in front of the three horses she’d passed.

The carnage was immediate, horses veering widely to avoid the obstacle in their way, jockeys breaking their tight racing curls in hopes of staying on their mounts.

Everyone made it. Except Glory.

As the crowd gasped, Manny shot forward, popping over the box’s confines and then vaulting over people and chairs and barricades until he came down to the track itself.

Over the rail. Onto the dirt.

He ran to her, his years of athletics carrying him at breakneck speed to the heartbreaking sight.

She was trying to get up. Bless her big, fierce heart, she was fighting to get up from the earth, her eyes trained on the pack as if she didn’t give a shit that she was injured; she just wanted to catch up with the ones who had left her in the dust.

Tragically, her foreleg had other plans for her: As she struggled, that front right flopped around below the knee, and Manny didn’t need his years as an orthopedic surgeon to know that she was in trouble.

Big trouble.

As he came up to her, her jockey was in tears. “Dr. Manello, I tried—oh, God . . .”

Manny skidded in the dirt and lunged for the reins as the vets drove up and a screen was erected around the drama.

As the three men in uniforms approached her, her eyes began to go wild from pain and confusion. Manny did what he could to calm her down, allowing her to toss her head as much as she wanted while he stroked her neck. And she did ease up when they shot her with a tranquilizer.

At least the desperate limping stopped.

The head vet took one look at the leg and shook his head. Which in the racing world was the universal language for: She needs to be put down.

Manny rode up in the guy’s face. “Don’t even think about it. Stabilize the break and get her over to Tricounty right now. Clear?”

“She’s never going to race again—this looks like a multi—”

“Get my fucking horse off this track and over to Tricounty—”

“She isn’t worth it—”

Manny snap-grabbed the front of the vet’s jacket, and hauled Mr. Easy Out over until they were nose-to-nose. “Do it. Now.”

There was a moment of total incomprehension, like being manhandled was a new one to the little snot.

And just so the two of them were really clear, Manny growled, “I’m not going to lose her—but I’m more than willing to drop you. Right here. Right now.”

The vet cringed away, as if he knew he was in danger of getting corked a good one. “Okay . . . okay.”

Manny was not about to lose his horse. Over the last twelve months, he’d mourned the only woman he’d ever cared about, questioned his sanity, and taken up drinking Scotch even though he’d always hated the shit.

If Glory bit it now . . . he didn’t really have much left in his life, did he.