Lover Unleashed

“Nah. Give it a shot.”

This meant V needed to talk but, in characteristic fashion, was wrapped too tight to squeeze it out: The male had always put the shut it in relating, but at least he was better than he’d been. Before? He wouldn’t have even cracked this door at all.

“She asked you to take care of her if this doesn’t work, didn’t she,” Butch said, voicing what he feared most. “And not in terms of palliative nursing.”

V’s response was an exhale that lasted abooooooout fifteen minutes past infinity.

“What are you going to do,” Butch said, even though he knew the answer.

“I won’t hesitate.” The even though it will kill me went unspoken.

Fucking life. Sometimes the situations it put people in were just too cruel.

Butch closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall. Family was everything to vampires. Your mate, the brothers you fought with, your blood . . . that was your whole world.

And along that theory, as V suffered so did he. And Jane. And the rest of the Brotherhood.

“Hopefully, it won’t come to that.” Butch glanced at the closed door. “Doc Jane is going to find the guy. She’s a bulldog—”

“You know what dawned on me about ten minutes ago?”

“What.”

“Even if it hadn’t been daylight, she would have wanted to go alone to find the guy.”

As the male’s bonding scent wafted over, Butch thought, Well, duh. Jane and the surgeon had been tight for years, so if there was persuading to do, she’d have better luck on her own—assuming she could get past the whole back-from-the-dead thing. Plus V was a vampire. Hello. Like anyone needed another layer added to this mess?

And on that note, all things considered, it would be great if the surgeon were five feet tall, walleyed, and had bear hair on his back. Fugly was their only friend if V’s bonded male side was being triggered.

“No offense,” Butch murmured, “but can you blame her?”

“It’s my twin.” The guy raked a hand through his black hair. “Goddamn it, Butch . . . my sister.”

Butch knew more than a little something about how losing one felt, so yeah, he could feel the male on that front. And man, he was so not leaving the brother’s side: He and Jane were the only ones who had a prayer of derailing Vishous when he got like this. And Jane was going to have her hands full with that surgeon and her patient—

The sound of V’s cell phone going off made them both jump, but the Brother recovered fast and there wasn’t a second ring before he got it up to his ear.

“Yeah? You did? Thank . . . fuck . . . yeah. Yeah. I’ll meet you in the parking garage here. Okay.” There was a slight pause and V glanced over like he wished he were alone.

Desperate to make like thin air, Butch looked down at his Dior Homme loafers. The brother was never really into the PDA or talking personal stuff to Jane if there was an audience. But given that Butch was a half-breed, he couldn’t dematerialize and where the hell could he run to?

After V muttered a quick “bye,” he inhaled deep on his cig and muttered on the exhale, “You can stop pretending not to be next to me.”

“What a relief. I suck at it.”

“Not your fault you take up space.”

“So she got him?” As Vishous nodded, Butch got dead serious. “Promise me something.”

“What.”

“You won’t kill that surgeon.” Butch knew exactly what it was like to trip on the outside world and fall into this vampire rabbit hole. In his case, it had worked out, but when it came to Manello? “This is not the guy’s fault and not his problem.”

V flicked his butt into the bin and glanced over, his diamond eyes cold as an arctic night. “We’ll see how it goes, cop.”

With that, he pivoted and punched through into where his sister was.

Well, at least the SOB was honest, Butch thought with a curse.

Manny really didn’t like other people driving his Porsche 911 Turbo. In fact, short of his mechanic, no one else ever did.

Tonight, however, he’d allowed Jane to get behind the wheel because, one, she was competent and could shift without grinding his transmission into a stump; two, she’d maintained that the only way she could take him where they were going was if she were doing the ten-and-two routine; and three, he was still reeling from seeing someone he’d buried pop out of the bushes to hi-how’re-ya him.

So maybe operating heavy machinery going seventy miles an hour was not a good idea.

He could not believe he was sitting next to her, heading north, in his car.

But of course he’d said yes to her request. He was a sap for women in distress . . . and he was also a surgeon who was an OR junkie.

Duh.

There were a lot of questions, though. And a lot of pissed off. Yeah, sure, he was hoping to get to a place of peace and light and sunshine and all that namby-pamby bullshit, but he wasn’t holding his breath for the kumbaya- all-cools. Which was ironic. How many times had he stared up at his ceiling at night, all nestled in his beddy-bye with his new Lagavulin habit, praying that by some miracle his former chief of trauma would come back to him?

Manny glanced over at her profile. Illuminated in the glow of the dash, she was still smart. Still strong.

Still his kind of woman.

But that was never happening now. Aside from the whole liar-liar-pants-on-fire about her death, there was a gunmetal gray ring on her left hand.

“You got married,” he said.

She didn’t look at him, just kept driving. “Yes. I did.”

That headache that had sprouted the instant she’d made her appearance instantly went from grouchy to gruesome. And meanwhile, shadowy memories Loch Nessed below the surface of his conscious mind, tantalizing him, and making him want to work for the full reveal.

He had to cut that cognitive search-and-rescue off, though, before he popped an aneurysm from the strain. Besides, he wasn’t getting anywhere with it—no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach what he sensed was there, and he had a feeling he could do permanent damage if he kept struggling.

As he looked out the car window, fluffy pine trees and budding oaks stood tall in the moonlight, the forest that ran around Caldwell’s edges growing thicker as they traveled away from the city proper and its choking knot of population and buildings.

“You died out here,” he said grimly. “Or at least pretended you did.”

A biker had found her Audi in and among the trees on a stretch of road not far from here, the car having careened off the shoulder. No body, though—and not because of the fire, as it had turned out.

Jane cleared her throat. “I feel like all I’ve got is ‘I’m sorry.’ And that just sucks.”

“Not a party on my end, either.”

Silence. Lots of silence. But he wasn’t one to keep asking when all he got in return was I’m sorry.

“I wish I could have told you,” she said abruptly. “You were the hardest to leave.”

“You didn’t dump your job, though, did you. Because you’re still working as a surgeon.”

“Yes, I am.”

“What’s your husband like?”

Now she winced. “You’re going to meet him.”

Great. Joy.

Slowing down, she took a right-hand turn off onto . . . a dirt road? What the hell?

“FYI,” he muttered, “this car was built for racetracks, not roughing it.”

“This is the only way in.”

To where? he wondered. “You’re so going to owe me for this.”