Allison Kensington has made some questionable decisions in her life, but inviting a software engineer she met at a bus stop to move into her house may be her most spectacular achievement yet. Tim Johnson, meanwhile, is delighted to discover that the beautiful, intimidating woman who recruited him as a fake girlfriend owns a charming Colonial with a white picket fence, a swing set, and a doghouse. For someone who claims to have given up on romance, Allison has assembled a remarkably convincing picture of domestic bliss. Tim considers it his responsibility to point this out, preferably before she finds something else to throw at him.

Of course, sharing a house involves more than finding room for an impressive quantity of designer clothing. Allison and Tim have an entire lifetime of ordinary things to discover about each other, and neither seems particularly inclined to behave like a temporary arrangement. Between unexpected tenderness, increasingly enthusiastic flirting, and the possibility that Allison's friends may be even more dangerous than she is, their carefully constructed plan for Paris is already developing complications. Tim came home with Allison expecting an adventure, but he's beginning to suspect that the most interesting discoveries won't have anything to do with impressing her ex-girlfriend.

Tim Johnson is having a thoroughly unremarkable bad day involving a dead car, an expensive mechanic, and a bus that seems personally committed to disappointing him. Things take an unexpected turn when an impossibly glamorous woman approaches him outside Maison Belle, a boutique where Tim suspects even the empty space between the dresses costs more than his car repairs.

Allison Kensington is accustomed to getting what she wants, and at the moment she seems unusually interested in a software engineer wearing jeans, sneakers, and a jacket that has clearly seen better days. Her questions are becoming suspiciously personal, her attention to his appearance borders on professional assessment, and Tim is beginning to wonder whether he's accidentally wandered into the world's most expensive recruitment interview.

Whatever Allison has in mind, she appears to have the confidence, connections, and financial resources to make it happen. Tim, who makes a living finding flaws in complicated systems, is discovering that asking the right questions only seems to encourage her.

By the time the conversation turns toward Paris, Tim's delayed bus is rapidly becoming the least interesting problem of his afternoon.