A five-million dollar Trust awaits Luc Deveraux on his thirtieth birthday.  All he has to be is a settled family man by then.  So he told a little lie and made up a wife and child and thought he'd found an easy way out.  Now, however, his grandfather is ill and asking for his grandson to come home—with his family.  A chance meeting with penniless widow Julie Richmond ends in a quick marriage, which will finish in an even quicker divorce when Luc gets his money.  The only problem is Luc's falling in love with his pseudo-wife and her little daughter and wants to keep them in his life.

When Luc returns to his grandfather's Louisiana plantation, he doesn't expect Julie to be the catalyst, which will bring hidden hatred and desires into the open, and subject them all to danger.  Waiting for them at San Souci is the younger brother with whom Luc's been feuding for eighteen years, and the one woman he's never been able to get out of his life—Clarice, a jilted ex-girlfriend who's determined to win him back, though she's now his brother's wife...she isn't going to let a little thing like a wife and child stop her from getting what she wants.