After divorcing her cheating ex-husband years ago, 42 yr old Lauren McCarthy is pleased with herself for finding ways to be happy that don’t involve dating and men. Who needs that kind of headache or heartache anyway? Her best friends call her a saint for choosing a celibate life over a man in her bed, but Lauren considers it just self-preservation. It took a lot of therapy to deal with being married to a man habitually sleeping with other women. That’s why it’s so painful now to find herself seriously attracted to a married man. Or at least, James Gallagher says he's married, but Lauren has never actually seen him with a wife. His answers to her questions about it are vague and frustrating. Lauren doesn’t want to risk getting to know Jim only to find out he’s as bad as her ex. In fact, there are many reasons not to get involved with the mysterious man, but desire for him keeps overriding her common sense. Every single time Jim puts his desperate and needy hands on her, the only thought Lauren has is that Jim belongs to her. If he would only trust her with his secrets, she might be willing to risk her saintly reputation if it meant ending up in Jim’s arms. It’s true 42 yr old James Gallagher is keeping some secrets, but whether or not he is married is not one of them. He freely admits to being legally married, but figures the details of the situation are his business alone. Besides, what difference does it make anyway? There isn’t a line of women waiting to have affairs with him, and he’s not interested anyway. He learned a hard lesson a few years ago, learned he couldn’t live a normal life, not even a notorious one. Labeled by his conservative town as a womanizing cheater, the judgment seems a bit harsh to Jim for a single moment of weakness he never repeated. Still Jim has mostly learned to live with what he assumes he can never change. It is only when his attraction to Lauren McCarthy turns into a gut wrenching reality that Jim starts regretting his situation. One thing for sure, Jim knows Lauren’s history pretty much guarantees she could never settle for what little he can offer her, not that he would actually ask her to sleep with him. The last thing in the world Jim wants is an affair with the woman he fantasizes about being his wife.