Doug is a Secret Service Agent who has just completed his stint in charge protecting Tess Carlisle, widow of a former U.S. President, and close personal friend of the President. He finds that she has requested that he not be rotated but instead return to be her permanent detail. Doug is crushed. He wants off her detail. She is very difficult to guard and makes her detail crazy with her whims and demands. Doug returns with no idea of how to continue dealing with her.
Rival Chicago reporters Sabrina Peterson (Roberts) and Peter Brackett (Nolte) reluctantly join forces to uncover a train wreck conspiracy and bite off more than they can chew while pursuing the story and bickering along the way - and falling in love, despite the fact that he's many years older than she.Sabrina is an ambitious, gifted reporter willing to do whatever it takes to learn the truth about the train accident, which leads her into conflict, then reluctant partnership, with fading star newsman Peter who works for a rival paper. He is her polar opposite: he chases women, smokes cigars, and has just published his first novel. During their pursuit of the story, Peter and Sabrina clash over virtually everything - he also subjects Sabrina to indecent exposure in front of a group of boy scouts after he catches her skinny dipping.
In honor of his birthday, San Francisco banker Nicholas Van Orton, a financial genius and a coldhearted loner, receives an unusual present from his younger brother, Conrad -- a gift certificate to play a unique kind of game. In nearly a nanosecond, Nicholas finds himself consumed by a dangerous set of ever-changing rules, unable to distinguish where the charade ends and reality begins.
