Sarah Draper has run a charity kitchen in the dregs of London's Southwark for five years. What began as penance for her disastrous fall from grace has become her vocation and passion, and a lonely one at that. She has built a protective cocoon around her heart and has become a master of self-sufficiency even as she secretly craves more from her life.Samuel James is a brash American printer, gregarious, handsome, and bossy. His attraction to the fairer sex extends only so far as amusing companionship....until he meets a coolly aloof woman who seems immune to his most charming smile and attempts at flirtation. Sarah Draper is everything he never realized he was looking for.The combination of a fiercely independent woman and a well-intentioned but high-handed man is disastrous until their need for one another proves overwhelming.