Librarian Antonia Gray has fled England for Tuscany, desperate to put distance between herself, the dangerous man she nearly found herself married to, and the whispers that followed her since his exposure.

She's perfectly happy losing herself in the archive of a seventeenth-century Italian explorer until she meets his descendant, Lorenzo Quattromani. Lorenzo is rich, arrogant, and inconveniently handsome. Worse, he seems determined to make Antonia fall in love with him. The last thing Antonia wants is another man in her life - at least not one living in this century.

But with Lorenzo living under the same roof, he takes every opportunity to prove to Antonia that he isn't the feckless dilettante she first took him for. Antonia struggles resolutely to keep hold of her scornful first impression, but Lorenzo at his most charming proves impossible to resist.