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The events begin in the small town of Green Valley, Tennessee, on Halloween, on a Friday night. Jessica James is a twenty-two-year-old maths teacher, the sheriff's daughter, the sister of a police officer. For Halloween she has put on a bearded Gandalf costume, but in a «sexy» version: a short, low-cut one-piece mini dress and high-heeled sandals. The aim is to provoke her father and brother and to amuse herself.

She comes to the jazz night at the town community centre. From her talk with her close friend Claire we learn that Jessica plans to stay here until she has paid off her student loan and then set off round the world; she counts the travel blogger «Fearless Inger» and Leibniz as «heroes». Most of all she has been attached since childhood to Beau Winston: at eight she knew him as the boy who rescued her cat from a tree, and the feeling has not passed in fifteen years.

The Winston brothers are a well-known family in town: six boys and a girl, all with red or brown hair. Beau and Duane are identical twins; Beau always smiles and is sociable, while Duane is sullen and silent. Jessica has been in love with Beau since childhood and feels a strong antipathy to Duane, because he threw a stone at the tree during the cat incident. Now the family's mother Bethany died suddenly four weeks ago, and the town is still in mourning.

Jessica sees Beau in the hall with a small girl (in a Tinker Bell costume) and loses her tongue: every time she talks to Beau she loses her mind, forgets English and mixes Swedish and Swiss. Claire tells her there is nothing extraordinary about Beau that should frighten her so, she should just go and talk. Jessica says «no». Beau comes to her himself, jokes with Claire and tells Jessica «touch my beard». His eyes, voice and changed look disconcert her: this is not the «hero» of her childhood dream but an adult desire.

Beau takes Jessica by the hand and pulls her backstage, into a dark corner of the community centre. There he takes off Gandalf's hat and false beard and puts them on the floor, presses Jessica against the wall and kisses her. Jessica lives this moment as the most powerful of her life, because her sexual experience is slight and she feels such a strong sensation for the first time. This part of the book is an explicit erotic scene, but it is written in a romantic-comedy tone and the consent of both sides is plain.

• The language is conversational, and the characters' inner monologue and dialogue are full of jokes
• Each Winston brother has his own character line: Cletus's logical oddities, Beau's affability, Jethro's past
• In the second half the biker thread sharpens but the comic tone is kept and the danger is softened
• The extras at the end (profiles, deleted scene, letter) are offered as a bonus for series readers
• The sex scenes take up real space but are mostly given as a continuation of the characters' emotional closeness