Chapter 1

Boston, MAMarco

IT WAS LATE SUNDAY evening; I had just finished a double shift—sixteen hours straight—in the trauma center at the hospital; and I was beyond tired as I dragged my weary body through the door. “Dani, where are you?” I said as I closed the door of our Back Bay apartment in Boston and locked it behind me.

“I’m right where I always am, waiting for my prince to come home,” he said from the doorway to the bedroom. I turned in the direction of his voice just in time to see him look me up and down carefully. “Rough one?”

“No more than usual—just another sixteen hours of dealing with the worst that humanity can inflict upon one another. I cannot for the life of me imagine why any doctor would willingly work in a trauma center. I need a drink.”

“Really? Is that all? I can recall a time when you found other things more important at the end of the day.”

He was naked except for a pair of white boxer briefs, which looked even whiter against his Mediterranean skin. They were obviously new, as they still clung to his body in all the right places. The one thing I dislike about boxer briefs is the fact that after a few trips through the laundry they begin to sag in all the wrong places. Then he turned around in the doorway, raised his arms to the doorframe on each side, and flexed his gluteus maximus muscles. We are both fairly short men, five six, if you must know, and we are both very trim, the principal difference between us being his broad shoulders and impossibly narrow hips, the flexing of which always incite me to lust.

“God, you drive me crazy when you do that,” I said.

“That’s why I do it.”

Before he could say anything else, I rushed him from behind, grabbed him by the waist, and kept going. The momentum of my attack carried us into the bedroom, and we landed on the bed. Which of course is what he’d envisioned happening when he’d posed, oh so carefully and seductively in the doorway.

Later, as we reclined side by side in the bed in post-coital languor, propped up on a stack of pillows, wineglasses in hand, I took a long look at him. “Danilo Rosati,” I said, “how in the world did I ever meet, fall in love with, and settle down with someone as gorgeous as you?”

“Pure dumb luck, Marco d’Argenzio, and it’s a two-way street as you very well know. I was but a babe of eighteen when you found me and took advantage of my youth and inexperience.”

“Youth and inexperience, my ass. I was only twenty, and you had twice as many notches on the headboard of your bed as I did.”

“Yeah, I guess I was a bit of a pop tart back then. But that, my love, was then, and this is now. Here we are, ten years later, still fucking like bunny rabbits—every chance we get.”

“I’ll be a full-fledged doctor in just a few short weeks. Then I’ll show you all the attention you deserve.”

“Promises, promises.”

“Speaking of full-fledged, when do you meet with your committee?”

“Tuesday,” he said.

“Do you foresee any problems?”

“I don’t think so, and my adviser tends to agree.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Twenty-eight years old and a second doctorate almost under your belt. I’ll have to buy you a bigger hat.”

“Very funny.”

“Seriously, Dani, have you given any thought as to what comes next?”

“Meaning?”

“Both of us will need to seek permanent and gainful employment by the end of summer.”

“True, but it’s only late spring at the moment.”

“So?”

“Newly minted doctors with your credentials and lab rats with mine don’t grow on trees,” Dani said. “We’ll find someplace to settle down; there’s no doubt in my mind.”

“I suppose so, but meanwhile I’ve had a brainstorm.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Well?”

“Let’s spend a month or two in Italy before we settle down.”

“Can we afford it?” he said.

“Certainly—haven’t you looked at our savings account lately?”

“Babe, although I realize both of our names are on the account, you and I both know all of that money came from you.”

“Yeah, my father has done well by me, paying for my education and living expenses, and I’ve been a faithful steward of his money.”

“You’ve been considerably more than a faithful steward, kiddo—you have the ability to squeeze every nickel until it begs for mercy. You worked all the way through four years of college and three years of med school, even though you didn’t have to, and most of that went into savings. Not to mention the fact that you only use a fraction of your living allowance and save the rest. I, on the other hand, have had to work my ass off to get myself educated, and I’m still up to my neck in student loans.”

“Having a ‘pity me’ moment, are we?” I said.