Toni Crenshaw is an up-and-coming corporate attorney for the multi-billion-dollar cosmetics company, Rayenata. Her ambition is to become their lead counsel, the youngest in the nation. Her plans are threatened when a research scientist asks for a sabbatical. This Baynard J. Starling is one of those brainiacs who graduate from M.I.T. at fifteen with a PhD and then go on to earn several more. He is the innovative power behind the company's market leadership, only the executives have kept that fact under wraps to avoid having to pay him more, much, much more of the billions he is generating. Now the naive geek wants a year's leave of absence, which would mean a huge profit loss for Rayenata.

The panicked board task Toni with saving the situation, only to discover why Starling wants the sabbatical. He means to create a 'love potion, ' a concoction of pheromones which work far better than any cologne to draw women to men with the word 'yes' on their lips. Starling, the man-child genius, could do it, create a cologne which seduces women. The Rayenata leadership wants that potion, and if they get it, Toni is promised the position of lead counsel. But Toni doesn't want them to touch it at all, frightened of the consequences. As Toni tries to navigate this serious conflict of interest, Starling begins changing in interesting ways, far too interesting, only increasing her professional turmoil. And of course, the genius Starling has plans of his own.