Dani Carrigan, the academic of the Carrigan family, has always relied on logic when making important life decisions. But when she discovers she’s pregnant—and that there’s a chance her baby may be born “not perfect”—deciding what to do isn’t so easy.

It would help if the father, Adrian Carlson, department head at the University of Washington in Seattle where they both work, would pop the question. But the widower seems more interested in protecting his six-year-old daughter than committing to his new relationship with Dani.

The last time Dani felt so alone and scared was when she was sixteen and her mother died in an accident at their family ranch, leaving Dani to raise her younger sisters with precious little help from her distant and disapproving father. She felt so inadequate then. But is she any more prepared to be a mother now?

Support comes from an unlikely source. Dani always saw her next-door neighbour and friend, divorce attorney Eliot Gilmore, as a charming, handsome, playboy-type. But with each challenge Dani faces, from pregnancy, to delivery and beyond—Eliot reveals himself to be more of a man than she ever guessed. Is it possible that in all the years she’s known him, Eliot hasn’t been playing the field—but waiting for her?