lazily Tag’s way, mouth, nose and forehead sliding across the stallion’s sleek coat. A sleepy, sensual move as if dragging her face across a warm pillow. To face a bedmate. The hair lifted along his arms. She was something! Cheek resting against the horse, she smiled at him. Her eyes glistened.
Had she been crying? “Susannah?” He reached for her, but Pookie thrust his nose out between them. Tag switched his attention to the stud, who had teeth the size of dominoes, offering the back of his hand for inspection, fingers curled away, ready to dodge. But the horse was satisfied with a lusty whiff of him, not a chunk. “Good Pook, nice Pookie.” Tag got a hand on his halter, rubbed his neck, turned to study her. “You all right there?”
“Um.” She nodded and pushed off from the horse. The hand that had been hidden from view held a small silver hip flask. “Just fine.” She cleared her throat and her voice gained conviction. “Finer than fine.” She thrust the flask at him. “Like a sip?”
“Not while I’m working.” He took the container and sniffed-bourbon—closed it with the cap that dangled from a silver chain. This was beautiful workmanship, with the name “Brady” engraved elaborately across its face. Who’s Brady? He tucked the flask into her jacket pocket. She was shivering, all the feverish vivaciousness of their first meeting faded to a braced stillness. And her eyes were much too bright. “You know,” he said, “we don’t have to do this right now. We could board him here for a day or so, if no stable will take him.” Of course, that meant Higgins would insist on doing the job once Carol Anne reached him.
Her lips slowly parted—and Tag’s brain went blank for half a dozen heartbeats. Then thought returned as his blood flowed north again and she shook her head.
“Nope. I’ve made up my mind. Let’s do it.”
Then he’d better get on with it. He had a full slate of patients this afternoon, beyond the two appointments he’d made Carol Anne reschedule.
He decided to give the stallion his first shot right there in the corridor. A tranquilizer, intramuscular injection. Susannah gripped the stud’s sculpted nose with one hand, held the halter tight with her other. If he reared, she’d go flying. Tag slapped Pookie’s neck smartly, the impact supposedly disguising the following prick, then inserted the needle. Pookie let out a grunt of surprise. But no fireworks. Tag had treated poodles that struggled more. “Good boy.”
Then a quick exam while he waited for the preanesthetic to kick in. Pulse, taken at the submaxillary artery along his lower jaw, was thirty-six. “Good...” Tag placed his stethoscope on the left side of the stallion’s chest just behind the elbow to check the heartbeat, then over the lungs for the respiratory rate. Ten breaths a minute, average for a horse at ease. He glanced at Susannah. “Any idea if he’s had a tetanus booster lately?”
“It’s up-to-date.”
She looked dead certain of that, so he left her stroking the stud and crooning endearments while he went in to check the stall. He spread more hay from the new bale in the corner, though the bedding was clean and deep enough already. Nerves. “Okay, you can bring him in now.”
Filled with a seventeen-hand stallion, the stall seemed the size of a shoebox. “Can you put him up against the wall there, head toward the door?”
She could, handling him as deftly as a trucker backed an eighteen-wheeler alongside fuel pumps, one small sure hand flattened to the monster’s ribs as she shoved him over. Pookie allowed himself to be parked, his left side nearly touching the wall, then turned his head to look at her with a snort of surprise while Tag swung the gate around. This was a hinged device Higgins had built years ago, a wide padded rail that hemmed the horse in against the wall. “Duck under, Susannah.” She ducked and he swung the rail all the way parallel to the horse, then dropped the front fitting into its reinforced slot. Let out a breath of relief. Not that the stud couldn’t still kick his way free if he took the notion.
She grabbed a lapel of the leather jacket Tag had thrown on over his lab coat. “You’re gonna put him to sleep, aren’t you? I don’t want—”
“It’s okay, Susannah.” He caught her wrist. Unlike her stallion pal, her pulse skittered wildly and her skin was clammy-cold. “He’ll be sleeping like a baby in a minute. Won’t feel a thing.” You could do a stud with a local, but he’d just as soon this brute was safely in dreamland when he stole the family jewels.
“The gate lets him drop straight down, nice and easy. We don’t want him falling sideways.” He rubbed a thumb across her silky skin, then had to consciously pull away to stop. “Why don’t you sit on that bale while I get organized?
“You wouldn’t know what he weighs, would you?” he added over his shoulder as he spread out a sterile sheet, then laid out his surgical pack, the various antiseptic scrubs, several pairs of gloves.
“‘Bout twelve hundred an’ fifty-five,” she drawled.
Tag blinked at the precision. How many owners knew to the pound? He glanced back and saw she’d pushed up her sleeve to consult a man’s wristwatch, one of those ugly black, multifunction sportsman’s timepieces that dwarfed her slender wrist. Her long legs were crossed and one lizardskin boot jiggled nonstop. “Won’t be long now,” he assured her, deciding to leave the special gelding tool out of sight till he’d banished her from the stall. “He’s a thoroughbred?” He didn’t know much about horses, but big and rangily graceful as this one was...
“Yeah.”
“How old?” He drew the bottle of short-acting barbiturate from his bag and shook it. “Twelve?” Pookie’s teeth weren’t those of a young horse.
“Fourteen.”
Based on the weight she’d given, Tag calculated the dose and filled the syringe. He detached the 18-gauge needle and held it between gloved fingers. “Has he ever been raced?” A lot of clapped-out racers ended up as hunters or riding hacks, the lucky ones that didn’t go to the dogs.
“Um...few times.” She sprang to her feet and went to the horse’s head. “We gonna do this or not?”
“Right now.” Joining her at the stud’s forequarters, he swabbed the jugular furrow with alcohol, then pressed down on that vein, nearer the heart. The vessel swelled with impeded blood. He smacked it with the back of his hand, then inserted the needle. No objections from Pookie, who was looking mellower by the minute. “He’s going to go down almost at once when this hits his bloodstream. Keep your hands and feet out of his way.” He attached the syringe, checked that the needle was still in place, then slowly depressed the plunger. “We’ll lay him down, then I want you to wait outside. Won’t take long at all.”
“Nope, I stay here.”
“But—”
“I want to watch.”
Great. He’d be happier fumbling his way through this without an audience, but one look at the angle of her chin, and he knew better than to argue. “Okay. Here we go.” He withdrew the needle. Pookie’s ears pricked, then wobbled. He let out a whuffling breath and swayed on his feet. The gate creaked ominously. “Hands out of the way, Susannah.”
While the stud folded slowly, majestically, front legs first, she crooned wordless sympathy and cupped his muzzle, supporting his massive head as it drooped. Tag bent to watch his back legs, folding nicely, all in order, good...good... That high, whimpering sound scared him for a second, then he realized it was the woman, not the horse. Pookie
