Talented Marianne and gregarious Gabby have been friends since college. It feels natural to go into business together, selling Marianne's unique jewelry designs, and their family ties become closer when Marianne falls in love with charismatic stone-dealer, Jay, Gaby's half-brother. But as their company takes off, Gabby's contribution becomes more questionable, and while she remains single, troubled and fragile, Marianne is blossoming at work and in her private life and she is expecting Jay's baby.

Then her ex-boyfriend Paul walks back into her life in search of an engagement ring for his homely new fiancee and sets off a train of events none of them could have imagined. Marianne discovers to her cost that, like the beautiful stones she works with, relationships too can hold fatal hidden flaws and there are unexpected fault-lines in her world. In the tropical heat of southern Sri Lanka, she begins to see that the finest quality often lies buried in unlikely places, and to realize that someone she once easily dismissed might be the only person who can save her...