Bay Area Professionals
Dr. Ethan Marshall is the young medical student on call the night Tessa Duran murders her husband for abusing her twelve-year-old-son, Rino. Ethan stays in the cubicle while the rape kit is performed and is surprised when the boy resorts to prayers instead of tears.
Despite compelling evidence, Tessa is sent to jail for life. To avoid placing Rino in foster care, their parish priest agrees to raise him. Ethan is touched by Rino’s plight and visits whenever possible, but the connection is broken when the priest and young boy leave the area months later.
Raised by the Dominicans in California, Rino considers joining the order until a romance blossoms with a fellow student. After much soul-searching, he turns his back on everything familiar, and chooses his orientation over his perceived vocation. Upon graduating dental hygiene school, Rino takes a job at the office of Scott Gregory and Robin Kennedy.
Seventeen years have passed since that horrible night in the emergency room. Forty-three-year-old Ethan is now a Dominant in search of a full-time submissive. Twenty-nine-year-old Rino is adrift, longing for someone or something to help him find the serenity he’s lost along the way. As they rekindle their friendship, they realize they might be perfect for each other.
Cover Artist: Catt Ford
Chapter 1
June 17, 1991
Naval Base, Subic Bay, Olongapo, Zambales, Philippines
RINO SQUATTED on the ash-covered dock, watching the line of people waiting their turn to board ship. Evacuations had begun the day before when Navy higher-ups finally admitted that leaving the area was the only sensible thing to do. Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption two days ago, compounded by the devastating torrential rain unleashed by Typhoon Yunya over northern Luzon, had buried most of the area in a foot of sandy rain-soaked ash. Lack of drinking water and electricity had decided the fate of thousands of Navy and Air Force dependents, and the decision to leave was a welcome relief.
A total of seventeen ships, including the aircraft carriers USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Midway, were lined up to carry all twenty thousand dependents over the next few days. They would be taken to Mactan Air Base and then airlifted to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. Rino wondered what would happen to him and his mother, Tessa, now that their home lay in ruins and most of the “visitors” who’d supplied them with goods from the naval exchange were about to disappear from their lives.
When the earth had begun rumbling two nights ago, no one knew what was happening, least of all a six-year-old boy. The inconspicuous volcano causing the commotion was twenty miles away from Subic Bay and had been dormant for years. Rino hadn’t known it existed, and no one had ever told him what devastation could be wrought by an ultra-Plinian eruption. Lashing rain, thunder, and lightning had added to the confusion that night, and he had scurried under his mother’s mosquito net and into her waiting arms as they lay huddled in terror, waiting for morning to come. It had taken thirty-six hours for the sun to finally peek through the thick fog of sulfuric acid haze, revealing death and destruction for miles. Homes had collapsed under the weight of the volcano’s detritus, and many of their friends had died as a result. Rino and Tessa had been among the lucky survivors, but it appeared their luck was about to nosedive as their chief source of income was moving out of the area.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Rino asked Tessa that morning when all she could produce for breakfast was stale pandesal, the Filipino version of a morning roll, and one sliver of dried fish. They had half a jug of water between them, and after the meal was over that, too, was empty.
“I don’t know,” she answered, “but I’ll think of something.”
The United States Navy had been Tessa’s patron since she had given up her virginity at the young age of fifteen. Getting pregnant at twenty was a karmic blip she hadn’t counted on, but the idea of an abortion never crossed her mind. She was deeply religious, despite her profession, and knew it was a sin to take a life. She had the baby and took pride in the highly prized Caucasian features and light coloring of her newborn, proof positive that he’d been a by-product of the US military.
Even though everyone who lived and worked in the area knew her story, no one could produce the paperwork entitling her and Rino to board one of the ships to escape the devastated region. Tessa could argue that Rino was the son of an admiral, but she couldn’t prove it. The boy was just another illegitimate child, one of thousands who was a genetic leftover of military personnel throughout the area.