Dominique St. James is attending Harvard as a sophomore and she is one of the best in her entire year, competing for this spot with her arch-nemesis, Daniel Murtaugh, the most arrogant and infuriating but also the most handsome guy she's ever met…
Now, in order to relieve some stress from a year of hard work, she's going to spend her vacation with her family, the Bakers. The father, Tom, is her mother's brother, and he and her aunt Kate have invited her to come to Wisconsin with them, just like the good old days, when Dominique or Nik as she's called by friends and family, and her mother (her British father died when she was very young) lived in the same town as the Bakers and she practically grew up in their household, while her mother was working every day just to make enough money to live. Her father had come from a wealthy family, but they had cut him off when he married her mother, and when they had nothing left, her mother had no other choice but to rely on her brother and his wife to take care of her daughter. But they didn't mind and cared for her as one of their own, eventually becoming like the 13th of the 12 Bakers…
She didn't mind either, seeing as she didn't have any brothers or sisters, so she considers the Bakers like her siblings instead of her cousins. After years of attending the local schools in Midland with her best friend Charlie and the rest of the family, her mother suddenly died and after that, her own family decided to take notice of her and offered to pay for her education, as long as she came to England to do it. Her mother had always wanted the best for her, so she decided she had to honour that wish and get the best education possible, even if that meant going all the way to England … only to return when she finished high school, not only because she had insisted on attending Harvard, but also because she missed America and her family there. Not that she got to see much of them, with all the time she spent studying, so she's going to make up for that now… by spending a few weeks at Lake Winnetka in total peace and quiet… or as much peace and quiet you can get in a house with 15 other people and one dog… and if only she could stop thinking about that annoying moron that won't stop competing with her….