After twenty-one-year-old Emily Miller flees her ex-husband, Lee, with the exterminator she hired to kill hornets in her backyard, she finally feels safe. Jake Clayton offers Emily and her daughter a beautiful place to live where neither Lee nor her mother, who wants custody of Jenna, can find them. Unlike Lee, Jake has a steady job, doesn''t drink (she''s never met a man who doesn''t), and doesn''t hit. And he doesn''t think Emily is too much - too mouthy (Lee), too large (her mother), too extra. Isolated in a cabin in the Santa Cruz mountains with only a three-year-old for company, Emily distracts herself from the liquor cabinet and from worrying that Lee will track her down by planning a surprise for Jake: a reunion with the sisters he hasn''t seen since foster care. But the deeper she digs into Jake''s past, the less he seems like the man she trusts - and when she learns Lee has disappeared, she suspects Jake could have done . . . something. But that''s ridiculous, right? Sure, Jake is bossy about where she goes and who she sees. Sure, he has a temper. But murder? That''s just her being dramatic - like Lee and her mother always say she is. Right?
