Gorgeous twenty-one year old Cass Everett has just moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco to take on a job as a secretary in an x-ray lab. Having not been there long she already has a serious crush on one of the radiology doctors, Bill Atkinson, and fortunately for Cass, the feeling is mutual.
The two begin going out on dates, especially to the race track as Bill is a big fan of racing and soon they are confessing their deep love and mentions of marriage. On the way home from one of their dates it begins to rain and the car skids and flips over. The two are fine with the exception of a deep cut in Cass' cheek. With a scar most likely to result Cass' Aunt Willa hires Dr. Tod Jeffers to do a skin graft on it. Tod is one of the top plastic surgeons on the west coast and to Cass's surprise he is close to her age.
With the plastic surgery scheduled for a few weeks away Cass goes back to work. A new hire named Linda soon joins the lab's team and it's clear to all the women that she has only taken on the job to try and land a rich, doctor husband. She acts cold towards the women and turns the charm on when any men are around.
Against her will Cass begins to worry about Bill and if he will fall prey to Linda. Despite never having been self conscious in the past Cass realizes her facial injury and the chance of a disfiguring scar are making her loose her confidence. However Cass feels a bit better when Dr. Jeffers visits the lab and Linda appears to lock onto him as her target. This belief is reinforced when Linda asks to visit Cass in the hospital after she's had the surgery.
The surgery itself is successful but the following days of recovery are a struggle for Cass. All she wants is to see Bill but when he arrives he has Linda with him and Cass doesn't get to see him alone. That night she comes down with a terrible cold which will keep her in the hospital longer. Her next two visits from Bill are also intruded on by Linda and when a co-worker visits Cass she says Bill and Linda have been inseparable at work.
That evening Dr. Jeffers comes into Cass's room while she is bawling her eyes out. He washes her face and lets her tell him of her troubles. Cass is surprised by how easy she finds it to confide in him.
The next day when Bill and Linda visit Tod comes into the room and begins to flirt with Linda before inviting her out for a drink, a ploy to give Cass and Bill some time alone. After she leaves with the surgeon Bill becomes upset and agitated about it. Cass confronts him bluntly; "Bill, you're in love with Linda, aren't you?". Bill mistakes her tone and sees the accusation as a sympathetic remark. Suddenly he is telling Cass how happy he is that she understands, that clearly Cass and him are just two friends who mistook their friendship for something more. Cass, holding onto her pride, plays along and tells Bill she also had been wanting to end their relationship for awhile.
Cass is surprised to find she doesn't feel emotionally shattered over the break up but she does feel depressed. Once home from the hospital Cass is annoyed to receive a call from Bill asking if she has heard from either Tod Jeffers or Linda. Linda has apparently thrown Bill to the side in favor of the doctor. Cass is greatly annoyed by Bill's immaturity in calling and after recalling numerous things he had said and done in the past Cass realizes Bill is very much a "man-child".
"The person she thought Bill to be, a man she could love, had never really existed except in her own starry-eyed concept of him. So her mistake had been an error of judgment about the man, not about her feelings for him, and when she saw the man was nonexistent, her feelings became nonexistent, too."
Back at work, and in the presence of Bill, Cass finds she truly does have no feelings for him but for some reason she still gets an upsetting feeling when Linda is around. She finds herself thinking about how much Linda is seeing Tod and wonders if he really has fallen for Linda's calculated charm. This she finds is more painful than the thought of Bill and Linda together was.
At her follow-up appointment with Tod she finds herself in an argumentative mood over these feelings which brings out one in him as well. He's been going out with Linda to try and keep her away from Bill so Cass could have Bill and be happy...despite Tod being in love with Cass himself. This truth comes out in a yelling argument and soon Cass also confesses her love for Tod.
- Much like one of the other books I've read by Marcia Miller this book has a woman named Cass with a scarred cheek from a car accident. It is also set in San Francisco with a home on telegraph hill, and it's filled with the detailed descriptions of the main characters clothing and home decorating. I can't find any information on Marcia Miller but I wish I could. Clearly she loved fashion and interior decorating and the repeated use of the cheek scar makes me wonder if it's something she pulled from personal experience.
- Cass lives in a two-story apartment building yet it says she takes an elevator down from her apartment. I think Marcia Miller forgot what she had written.
- Although it mentions Cass' cheek healing there is no mention of the area behind her ear, where the skin was taken from for the skin graft, healing.
- The end was kind of abrupt.
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