Dev Bentham

You can’t go home again—Nick’s motto for the past twenty years. He was a teenager when he and his mom left his mentally ill and abusive father back in a small town in the northwoods of Wisconsin. Nick’s made a life for himself as an artist in New York with a new show scheduled in nine months. He should be in a painting frenzy but so far he’s hanging empty canvas. Then comes the call—his estranged father has killed himself. Nick flies home to Lacland, a house crumbling from years of neglect and one very fat bulldog. Jonas doesn’t love his job as a research lab veterinarian, although he enjoys volunteering on his boyfriend’s canine behavioral studies. But when he discovers his so called life partner is messing around, Jonas leaps at a job offer in a small town miles away. Despite the grief swirling around Nick and Jonas, their first meeting is electric. But Nick’s only in town for a short time and Jonas is still stinging from the betrayal. They try to keep their distance, but that’s easier said than done. Especially in a small town where misery and hope share the same address.

It takes a special kind of person to work in Antarctica. Max Conway, an ex-Navy Seal, loves working at the bottom of the world. Like any other diver, he's tough and hard drinking. Half the year he's stuck in the States traveling the commercial dive circuit and hitting gay bars every night. The other six months he's lead safety diver at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, reveling in the cold blue Antarctic Sea. The only drawback to life way down under is that Max feels like he has to tuck his libido into storage while he's on station, stashing all those free condoms for use back up north. That is until Andre Dubois, a gorgeous French scientist, shakes up his world. Not only is Andre out and proud, he's sober as the day is long. And the days are long during an Antarctic summer. Max must choose between his comfortable inebriated closet and a life in the sun with Andre.