After her mother dies, fourteen-year-old Marion falls in love with her stepfather, Remy.

Remy is morose: he's nearing 30 with his career as a musician going nowhere and his eight-year marriage to Martine souring. Then Martine dies in a car crash, and Marion, her 14-year-old daughter, wants to stay with Remy rather than go to her father's house. Remy likes the idea: he loves her, he's raised her, and she offers him emotional responsibility. Marion's father objects, but she's determined, so he relents. Soon she tells Remy she finds him attractive, that she's now "a woman," and she wonders why they can't be lovers. Remy is appalled, but he weakens, missing her when she spends Christmas with her dad. What if they do become lovers? What next? And what if a woman closer to his age enters the picture?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>