Virginia Manning had it all figured. She finished business school, landed a job with a prestigious accounting firm in Manhattan, and decided to start her family's next generation. Then she went off the path well-traveled. She decided to have her child through artificial insemination.
Needless to say, she needs a supportive family behind her for this calculation. And she does; a mother and a grandmother who at times bring some sense into the equation, but at other times, are part of the problem. Just your normal, maternal four-generation-Irish-American family all living under the same roof, with the only man around a three year old boy.
Just before the story starts, Virginia decides she wants another child. Give her credit, she has finally figured out kids need a father, too. What better daddy than the donor who unknowingly fathered her son in the first place? All she had to do was find out who the father is, track him down, and make him fall in love with her, give her another child, and live happily ever after. Just about then, she begins to notice things aren't quite adding up the way she figured.
She does, however, find her man--James Roderick. They hit it off--badly. She accepts her luck and goes back to work, where her over-zealous best-friend and co-worker, Jack Sullivan, has stumbled onto some thing. Hes not quite sure what it is, but whoever is driving that bus thinks enough of the information to kill Friend Jack to protect it.
Before Virginia can walk herself out of the daze of Jacks death, her familys long-time Gramercy Park home is attacked, and only thanks to Roderick coming back into her life, and taking the three attackers lives, is her little three year old boy saved from being kidnaped.
Add the crimes up, are they random or connected? Roderick doesn't want to take a chance by doing the math wrong. He removes all the Mannings from the target area to their summer cottage in Quogue, Long Island.
At this point, we learn some things about Roderick. After a tour in Viet Nam, he went off to London to study why people go to war, then a teaching post at Columbia University, which included several field trips into the current fray-of-the-month to see if any of his theories stacked up in the trenches. Only because his wife thought he was going to die some tragic death in some godforsaken place, did she demand he make a deposit in a sperm bank.
When, instead, it was his wife who died suddenly, he bailed from his realties. He ended up in New Jersey, scalping tickets for a living. For himself, he climbs mountains and travels. For his clients, he gives them price-is-no-object entertainment. His sole commitment is strictly a cash-only transaction. Like most other things in his past, he has completely written off any memory of the sperm account. Facing the current battle with fronts both at the office and at home, Virginia and Roderick each believe they have things under control. They bury her friend Jack, she gets fired...
