Thirty-something Thea is stuck in a rut. She’s given up a promising career as a photojournalist only to become a landlady. Now she’s bored, weary and fed up with acting as a surrogate mother and cleaning woman to untidy and careless college students. Her bossy friend Molly bullies her into a trip to France, and there she meets a young, sexy and very handsome Irish painter -- Rory -- who stirs up feelings inside her that she’d thought were long dead. Uncharacteristically, she makes a spur of the moment decision and accepts Rory’s invitation to visit him at his cottage in Ireland. While Rory’s potent sex appeal tempts Thea very badly, one look at his powerful and wondrous paintings and Thea’s creative spirit reawakens. She vows to open an art gallery back home in the unhip countryside of the Cotswolds just to display his work.

She begins work in earnest, taking loans, finding adequate space for the gallery and more, but Rory is not fully committed to her project. The ever-disapproving and cold Ben Jonson, Molly’s cousin and resident art expert, helps Thea a great deal, though his boorish ways are always creating friction between them. His son Toby, on the other hand, sees in Thea the mother he never had, and charmingly starts matchmaking. All of a sudden Thea’s staid world is turned upside down, and her hitherto dull life has altogether too much excitement, risk, and more men and passion than ever before. But will it all come to fruition, or will it just remain a dream?