After New York City party planner Rayne Walker learns that the only father she has ever known is seriously ill, she immediately heads to American Beach, Florida, where her father is recuperating in his vacation home. Having been warned by her mother that her biological father — Benjamin Jefferson — also lives on American Beach, Rayne carefully avoids him, until, as fate would have it, she meets the scion of the Jefferson real-estate fortune and finds herself falling for him.

For Wade Jefferson it was love at first sight when he laid eyes on Rayne Walker. A powerful land developer, Wade and his father have been buying property in the popular resort community for years to preserve the island's African- American heritage. But when Rayne rebuffs his overtures, Wade suspects that it's more than just her father's land that's getting in the way of their mutual attraction....