Running from the nightmare of losing his wife to ovarian cancer, Donald Giovanni moves to a small town on the east coast of Florida and buys an old country store. Soon, he discovers that he's fallen into a pit of vipers when he becomes embroiled in an FBI stock scam investigation involving a New York Mafia family and a dead computer hacker, whose body is found hanging from a tree in front of his father's estate on ritzy Jupiter Island.
Confused, frightened, and alone, Donald's heart melts when he meets Penelope King, a beautiful young Canadian woman. However, Penelope is grief-stricken by the belief that she has inherited Huntington's Chorea, the same dreadful disease that struck down her sister in the prime of her life, and ignores his advances, until one day when fate brings them together.