Slate Claiborne is a former Marine and sniper who has seen and done things that no man should have to experience. He returns to his hometown on bucolic Peaberry Island, desperate for the familiar routine he once wanted to escape. Wounded and dead in spirit, Slate is unable to be surrounded by people, while his body is a deadly weapon, and nightmares do not allow him to sleep. Slate fails to keep the oath given to the commander who died in his arms - the elderly man asked to look after his daughter. However, contrary to expectations, the enthusiastic Holly Harper turns out to be not a little girl with pigtails. She comes to Peaberry Island and buys a run-down mansion to turn into a hotel for vacation tourists. Moreover, Holly is determined to return Slate to the world of the living. First, she swoops in on him in the middle of a winter island festival, dropping pies at his feet, then, against her better judgment, she drags him to a fortune teller. Apart from a withering attraction, they are incompatible in every way. But when a harsh northeast December wind locks them out of the house together, will Holly and Slate overcome their past and discover that they are two halves of the same whole?