Suzanne's heart felt as dark and despondent as the skies she walked under. Relentlessly down came the rain. It was perfect. It blended with her psyche, and washed over her body to dilute her misery and drain it away. Jack was in love with her best friend Jenny. Their twenty year marriage was over, betrayed by a double whammy. She could never trust him again and never take him back.

It was then, with lightning flashing and thunder rumbling that she remembered Troy's letter, the only one that she had ever kept from so long ago. It had been too precious to burn with all the others. He had written, "If in twenty years from now, you realise 'the essence' that is missing from your life to make you feel complete, then your heart and soul will guide you to me." Precipitated by the recovery of that hidden letter, she takes the first available flight out of the States, heading home to Australia to visit not only her mother for a few days, but to also track down Troy and pursue the fantasy of a lost love.

Five days later she arrives in Sydney, and while waiting on a railway platform to travel the short distance to her mother's home, she has a dizzy spell and falls in front of an oncoming train. At that very moment, as her life flashes before her eyes, a powerful arm lassos her around the waist, jerking her backwards with such force that it expels every molecule of air from her lungs.

The next thing she's aware of is that she's lying flat on her back, sucking and gasping for breath, with her legs in the air and skirt up around her neck. There is a large handsome man straddling her, clasping her legs and pumping her chest with her knees to manually facilitate her breathing. He had just saved her life. She is indebted to him, and all he asks in return for having saved her life, is for the pleasure of her company, by having a dinner date with him for one evening.

Over the course of her journey and a series of incidents, she is about to discover that fate has a way of dealing its own hand.