Helene Haymes has little time left to live. Her dying wish is to make amends with Justine, the daughter who loathes her. Into Helene's Key West estate comes Quinton Armstrong, the most renowned antiques appraiser in the United States. Helene wants him to sell off her king's ransom worth of antiquities, her legacy to her daughter. — Quinton accepts the job. Then he falls helplessly in love with the sensual, the quixotic, the exquisite Justine, and his loyalties are suspect. When the auction is on the verge of success, when Quinton seems to have tamed the wanton Justine, something so murky with subterfuge, so hideous with duplicity occurs that love and loathing seem mild emotions by comparison.