Josie Mayfield is a driven second generation executive at Mayfields, a successful kitchenware company founded by her father Joseph Mayfield thirty-eight years ago - he still the company president - and inspired by the immaculate kitchen of Joseph's wife/Josie's mother, Claire Mayfield. Astuteness in the kitchen is one trait of her mother's that Josie did not inherit. Joseph and Claire struggled financially before the company became a quick success. Everything they now do is solely to put forward a face of success and perfection. Of the men Josie has dated over the course of her adult life, none, including the current, Richard Wright, has been good enough in the eyes of her parents, despite most being carbon copies of Joseph and male versions of the professional side of Josie. Another knock they have against Richard, a corporate headhunter, is that he always seems to be making a pitch. As such, Joseph and Claire would prefer that Josie not bring Richard to their upcoming fortieth wedding anniversary party, which, fulfilling Claire's dream, will be featured in the Chronicle newspaper's Homes section. Knowing that Joseph and Claire do not approve of him as Josie's boyfriend, Richard comes up with a plan to raise his cachet in their eyes: Josie should take someone clearly inferior to him to the party, he posing as her boyfriend. The perfect person in Richard's eyes is Maxwell Gridley, an old friend of Josie's from high school with who she has just reconnected after not seeing since high school. Joseph and Claire have known and disliked Gridley since he was Josie's high school prom date. Gridley, a free spirit, has by choice moved from place to place every six months doing what has moved him, the current six months house-sitting for a mutual friend while he creates and sells driftwood art in the park. Good-hearted Gridley is happy enough to do this favor for his friend Josie. Beyond some mishaps at the Mayfields' house, Gridley does have the intended affect by being his sheer self. But Gridley's presence brings close to the surface other buried issues within the Mayfield family including: Josie's younger sister, Mindy, having difficulties in finding her place within the family and within life; and the reasons behind Claire's father's early onset dementia, which has rendered him speechless now for two years. Gridley's generally good heart may have some effect in bringing to light these and other issues the source of unhappiness, he hoping that heart being something that Josie can see and want as he starts to fall for her.—Huggo