When Tara Blankenship's writing assignment takes her to an "eco village" on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, she anticipates a quiet couple of weeks in a quaint setting. (She's far too mature to use the word boring, thank you very much.) What she stumbles into is anything but quiet and quaint. Someone has been slaughtering livestock to scare the villagers, mysterious intruders are searching the property at night, and Tara finds a grisly welcome-warning on the porch of her guest cottage. To top it off, the surly neighbor nearly runs her off the road on her first day. Why are the handsome ones always such jerks? Malcolm Ashcroft is the last person a sane woman would want to deal with, but he may be the only one with the key to solving the mystery—and giving Tara the story of her career. Of course... he might also be the man behind all the trouble.