Sophie’s calm, cool professional facade hid many secrets. For a start Sophie had an incurably romantic nature. So, when she was offered a post as Marc Washington’s PA, she jumped at the chance to return to Venice... a place for lovers, a place for dreams.

Yet Marc Washington hardly seemed the sort of man who would tolerate Sophie’s romantic heart — or her past, should he ever remember the part he’d played in it!

Namely that 15 yrs ago, when she was 11, she lived in Venice with her grandfather, scraping a living by selling tourist charicatures done by her grandfather and shunned by Venice society for being almost homeless and poor. She meets Marc when her grandfather has a heart attack; he happens by and takes over, saving Grandfather's life and getting him to hospital quickly. Though he promises to come back to visit, he never does, so Sophie assumes it's because she and Gramps are beneath him.

Now grown up, she's changed her name and made something of herself and meets Marc again....