When an English oil consultant named Kate Palmer walks into Jack Renoir's San Francisco office, he doesn't realise she is going to turn his carefully-constructed life completely upside down. The survivor of a traumatic, violent childhood, Renoir is a master of self-control - who makes his living discovering other people's secrets while making sure he keeps his own. High-powered Kate soon changes that, and when he falls in love with her, Renoir moves to England. There, Kate's pukka family and affluent friends prove less than welcoming as he and Kate work to create a rural idyll. And, when this adult Eden turns out to be more fragile than expected, Renoir is forced to confront the horrors of his past in order to secure a future with the woman he now loves.