Raised in a magnificent Charleston house, Jessie Roland wants for nothing. But as she grows into young adulthood, all she feels is loss and a desperate need to break free from the stifling possessiveness of her "parents." Somewhere, in the deepest part of herself, Jessie believes that the world she has always lived in is not the one she came from . . . or belongs in.

Now, at nineteen, she has escaped to Washington, D.C., where no one knows her, and where she is swept into a whirlwind marriage to a Texas senator's son. But the past will not release Jessie, who is still haunted by a sense of lost happiness, of simple, tender gestures buried in her memory. Only in Luke Holt, a reclusive rancher, will she discover the strength to penetrate the darkness, and find her way back to a place she can call home . . .