After eight years together Isabella's boyfriend tells her he is going to marry someone else and is going to sell the apartment they have lived in. With hardly any money and nowhere to live she moves down to Dartmoor, to a dilapidated cottage her great aunt left her three years before. There she meets Roman Cowle, a neighbour and, so she thinks, an odd job man. He rescues her from the cold driving rain which is falling when she finds herself stuck in thick mud, the rusty old van she managed to buy refusing to go any further. A deep friendship develops which quickly turns into love, but she must prove to herself that she is capable of making it on her own before allowing him to take care of her.
