all the promises Gretchen had been asked to make, this one gave her the most pause. In the simplest terms, she was not the wild, crazy affair type. Even if she had been, she didn’t know any men like the one Jill had just described.
Or did she? Her thoughts flew to her tenant, the man who rented the other half of the duplex she’d grown up in, and which had been left to her when her parents died. Dr. Marco Garibaldi. She rarely saw him, but whenever she did she experienced all the reactions Jill had just described, and then some.
“Yeah, right,” Gretchen muttered wryly. She had about as much chance of having a wild, crazy affair with Marco Garibaldi as she did with a movie star. Still, the thought filled her with a restless yearning she couldn’t deny.
“Promise me, Gretchen.” Jill’s voice filled the room with a determined strength. “For the first time in your life, I want you to be totally selfish, to for once do things for you and only you, and to hell with what anyone else thinks or says. I want you to live the life we always talked about living but were too scared or busy with our careers to actually get out and live. I want, when you lie on your deathbed, for you to have no regrets.
“Remember that line from Auntie Mame? ‘Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.’ I want you to feast, Gretch. Feast like no one has feasted before. Promise me you’ll do everything I asked.”
Despite her conviction that Jill’s request was beyond crazy, Gretchen felt a growing excitement in the pit of her stomach. Sitting in her office, listening to the voice of a dead woman and making outrageously impractical promises, she felt more alive than she had in months, maybe even years.
“I promise.” The words slipped out before she was consciously aware she intended to utter them.
Could she really do it? Could she do all the things Jill had asked? Could she actually have an affair with Marco Garibaldi, or any other man like him?
One thing was certain: she had to try. After all, she had made a promise, and promises were to keep.
Chapter 1
Something was up with his landlady.
Marco Garibaldi didn’t know precisely what that something was, only that she was behaving totally out of character. Even worse, her out-of-character behavior was making it impossible for him to sleep.
Gritting his teeth against the swell of music echoing off his bedroom walls, Marco rolled onto his back and stared wide-eyed at the shadows flickering across the ceiling. A wave of frustration consumed him. The sheets were a tangled mess around his waist from all his tossing and turning. Air-conditioning, set on high, did little to cool a body that refused to stay in one position long enough to benefit from the chilled air pumping into the room.
The music ended and silence fell. A blessed silence, during which Marco closed his eyes and prayed for sleep to finally claim him. Just when he thought his prayers might be answered, once again the lilting notes of a piano sonatina filtered through the wall separating his half of the duplex from his landlady’s.
Marco groaned. Would it never cease?
It wasn’t that the music wasn’t nice. On the contrary, it was beautiful. Chopin, if he wasn’t mistaken. Or maybe Beethoven. He was too tired to try and figure out which.
Which was the entire point. Having just come off a sixteen-hour shift in the E.R., he was exhausted. Not only that, he was expected back there, bright and early tomorrow morning at six. And tonight, of all nights, his landlady had decided that midnight was the perfect time to play a CD at top volume, an unprecedented action on her part.
But what really had him stewing in aggravation was that she had programmed her CD player to play the same blasted sonatina over and over again. Thirty minutes listening to the same piece, no matter how beautiful, was about twenty-five minutes too long by his reckoning.
For two years he’d lived next door to her. Two years, during which they’d waved hello and goodbye to each other whenever their paths happened to cross, which wasn’t often since she seemed to work as many hours as he did. Two years, during which he’d dutifully placed his rent check in her mailbox on the first of each month. Two years, during which she hadn’t thrown so much as a tea party, let alone a wild, anything-goes free-for-all. Two years, during which she’d kept her stereo and television volume muted, and during which he’d never heard a peep from her after eleven o’clock at night.
Until tonight.
The sonatina swelled to its now-familiar finale, making Marco’s head throb. He winced. Oh, yes, something was definitely up with his landlady. And he didn’t like it one bit.
The music wasn’t the entire problem, he acknowledged with a sigh as he wrapped the pillow around his ears and turned on his side. Yes, he couldn’t sleep, but the music coming from his landlady’s apartment was only part of the reason why.
During his years as an intern, and then later as a resident when he’d worked practically around the clock for days on end, Marco had perfected the art of sleeping on his feet. Normally he could sleep anywhere, at any time and through anything. But tonight his brain wouldn’t shut off, no matter how hard he willed it.
He’d had a hell of a day. A record breaker, just like the heat wave that was smashing records that had stood unchallenged for decades. Heat always tended to bring out the worst in human nature. Add alcohol, drugs and handguns to the mix, and you got a violent combination that would inevitably, at some point, find its way into the E.R.
Today had been no exception. Since it was only July sixth, and the mercury had already soared past one hundred for three days running, Marco hated to think what the rest of the summer held in store.
His shift had started at 6:00 a.m. By noon, he’d already seen three shootings, a husband and wife who had knifed each other in a domestic altercation, a child that had been shaken mercilessly by his mother’s boyfriend and who might have permanent brain damage, and two drug overdoses.
Things had gone rapidly downhill from there. A bus accident had flooded the E.R. with victims at one-thirty. At three, a heat-provoked quarrel over whose turn it was to walk the dog had sent five members of the same family through the E.R.’s pneumatic doors. Then, at four, just as he was preparing to leave, three of his fellow physicians, who had all eaten a late lunch at the same fast-food restaurant, had come down with a virulent case of food poisoning, and Marco had known he’d be working a second shift.
The icing on the cake, though, had been the appearance of his current steady at six o’clock, demanding a commitment she’d assured him she didn’t want at the start of their relationship. When he’d asked if she could wait until he had time to speak in private, she’d refused, insisting he answer her questions there and then. She didn’t care who was listening. She’d left him no choice but to tell her that he had no intention of ever entering into a commitment with her, at which time she’d told him they were history. He hadn’t wanted things to end that way; he had in fact hoped to enjoy her company for a long time yet to come, but she had given him no choice.
Afterward, the patients who had witnessed the scene regarded him as if he’d suddenly sprouted a tail and horns. At least the nurses, who were even more overworked than the doctors, had gotten some entertainment out of the episode. He knew he’d be the object of a fair amount of ribbing for days to come.
Still, the breakup with Pamela, unpleasant and unexpected as it had been, wasn’t what was keeping him awake. The memory
