When restaurateur Hugh Neumann rebukes Oliver Nicholas’s very public proposal to his boyfriend during a Valentine’s Day dinner, the diverted Cupid’s arrow strikes Hugh not in the heart, but in the ass.<br><br>After a media storm of commentary, ironically pro and con, gains national steam, what Hugh begins to refer to as his personal “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” begins to affect home life with his partner, Dominick Brodie.<br><br>Was Hugh’s overreaction pandering to his largely heterosexual clientele? Or did the incident trigger his own panic about same-sex marriage? Will the public scrutiny threaten his decade-long commitment to Dom?

Bended Knee

“Crab cakes are burning,” Dom mumbled and took off for the kitchen.


The local FOX TV affiliate—it had to be FOX?—latched on like Rachel Zoe to the latest starved ingénue needing red carpet pointers. In receipt of a text to their designated news tip number, their news van was at Platte before the second seating had their espresso.3


Too late to make that night’s local broadcast, the labor pains of “the incident” began the next morning. It wasn’t the lead, but damn close.


“In a curious twist already reverberating in the gay/lesbian community, a local restaurant owner ejected a male couple after a public marriage proposal.”


Reverberating? Did this warrant a Richter scale? Because, minus media coverage, there wouldn’t have been a ripple.


“But this incident has people scratching their heads: the owner of Platte is a gay man, too, one notable in the GLBT community.”


Chapter 5