When top-selling romance novelist Valerie St. John announces that she is giving up her career and disappears into obscurity in the Midwest, editor Shelby Stuart is appalled. Unless she can persuade Valerie to write another book for her, Shelby will be fired. But the man who is supposed to be helping her look for Valerie — Mark Buchanan — seems to be more interested in Shelby herself than in the search, and Shelby feels as if she’s hunting a shadow.