As Daniel moves into his new house in Anchorage, he notices a beautiful young girl observing him from the upstairs window of the house next door; soon thereafter, suggestive letters begin appearing on his doorstep. Images of the girl haunt his thoughts and dreams, and finally she appears in person, wearing a pair of cutoff jeans and a skimpy red tank top.

Jane Aylwood is a perfectly-proportioned little pixie of a girl with long, wavy chestnut hair and big brown eyes who appears to be fourteen or fifteen, but her behavior and knowledge are far more mature than her appearance would suggest. She is obsessed with Daniel, constantly begging him for sex; when he asks Jane her age, she will say only that she is old enough to be his lover and his wife. Jane’s sexual advances become more frequent—almost frantic in their intensity—and he finally gives in to her wishes.

Believing Jane to be underage, Daniel is wracked with guilt, but he allows their relationship to continue because it has become more than sexual and they have completely and inexplicably fallen deeply in love with each other. He learns that Jane’s parents are dead and that she lives with her sister Ellen. When he talks with Ellen, he is surprised to receive her blessing, and Jane moves her belongings into Daniel’s house.

Their activities are interrupted one evening when Daniel’s ex-lover and research colleague, U.S. Air Force Captain Shiri Newmann, appears at their door and Jane answers it naked. Shiri is more than upset and vows to cut off funding for the research project, and she also vows to cut off something else. She threatens Jane, but is in turn threatened by the arrival of "Janey’s Club"—a group of five misfit teenage girls who explain to Shiri what would happen were Shiri to be staked out naked on top of a glacier. Shiri gets the picture and leaves in a huff, but nobody messes with Shiri and gets away with it.

When Jane asks Daniel about his research, he is hesitant to tell her but eventually explains that it involves time travel. During their discussion, Daniel realizes that Jane seems to know much more about the subject than the average person—perhaps including himself—but his love for her overrides his puzzlement.

Daniel’s research team has created a time portal, but it is uncontrollable because the mathematics Daniel has developed to describe it have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Jane asks what such a portal would be used for; Daniel suggests historical research, but Jane suggests otherwise: since the portal could be set to look anywhere and anywhen, it would be the ultimate surveillance device and the end of personal privacy.

Once Daniel realizes this, he destroys the project to keep it out of the hands of the government, but he keeps his notes and enough spare parts to build another portal. With Jane and his research team, he flees to the secluded private estate of Emily Devonshire, a member of Janey’s Club, thirty miles down the coast at Girdwood, Alaska. There, they reconstruct the portal. The mathematics problem remains, however, until Daniel discovers that someone has made changes to his equations—changes which solve the problem and allow a fully-functioning time portal.

Shiri is suspicious of Daniel’s disappearance; when she discovers that the research notes and spare portal parts have vanished, she realizes that the project is continuing in secret. She tells no one and begins a search to determine Daniel and Jane’s location. Bent on revenge, she teams up with the Elmendorf base commander Richard Fitzworth Smythington III, who is an incompetent, fat, cigar-chomping slob more interested in Shiri’s delectable body—and crème-filled donuts—than finding Daniel and Jane. In return for his help, Shiri provides Richard with sexual favors, and she soon discovers that Richard has given her more than just help.

At Devonshire Manor in Girdwood, one of the research team, Carl Wheeler, makes improper advances to Jane and is rebuked by Daniel; in anger Carl calls Shiri and offers to reveal Daniel’s location in return for—you guessed it: sexual favors. Shiri agrees; they meet and Shiri gives Carl what he wants, along with something he doesn’t want. In the middle of this tryst, a black helicopter lands next to their car; Carl is abducted by men in black…suits, and Shiri is stripped naked and left on the side of the highway. She makes her way to a roadside gift shop; the proprietor offers to drive her back to Anchorage, in exchange for…well, I needn’t elaborate. Shiri’s dilemma worsens when she develops an excruciating itch "down there" and the uncontrollable urge to scratch.

Meanwhile, the relationship between Daniel and Jane flourishes and they decide to get married. Ellen, as Jane’s guardian, signs the necessary permission papers and the Devonshire’s butler Barrymore—who has CIA and Mafia connections (and a black helicopter)—is able to bypass the red tape; he digs up a pastor and the wedding is held in the ballroom of Devonshire Manor.

Carl has told Shiri the location of Daniel and Jane; she reconnoiters Devonshire Manor but her image is captured on surveillance tape. Fearful that Shiri will give away their location, Jane, with the help of Janey’s Club, tracks Shiri to a Girdwood hotel, shoots her in the butt with a tranquilizer dart, and drags her back to the manor. Shiri becomes the world’s first time traveler as Daniel shoves her through the portal into 1890’s Victorian England, having first determined, by means of the portal, that a Shiri Newmann was a famous romance novelist who lived around the turn of the century. [According to history, she was eventually considered nuts when she started talking some nonsense about having come from the future.]

That night, Jane reveals her true nature to Daniel. She is from fifty years in the future; in her world, the time portal is controlled by the government and is used to spy on its citizens and foreign dignitaries. Jane herself had been a physicist; her mission was to return to Daniel’s time and convince him to destroy the project yet continue its development in secret.

That mission having been accomplished, she tells Daniel that it is time for her to go—to return to her own time. Daniel is heartbroken, yet angry that she had deceived him, allowed him to fall in love and marry her, and was now leaving him forever. There is a crying scene; Daniel storms out. Jane goes to the portal room, sets the controls and walks through, tears pouring down her cheeks as she realizes all she is leaving behind.

Three months go by; Janey’s Club continues to meet at Daniel’s house. Daniel becomes superficially involved with one of the club’s members Lanie, but only because she reminds him of Jane. Jane had left a little poem for him in the portal room, the last two lines of which were, "Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad." But life doesn’t work that way—Daniel’s depression deepens; he has lost his wife, his best friend, his soulmate and his life partner. He is totally lost without Jane. He gets drunk, climbs to the top of Mount Alyeska and calls her name, but there is no answer; even the heavens mock him—the northern lights seem to spell out her name.

Daniel puts his house up for sale, planning on moving anywhere as long as it’s away from Alaska, Janey’s Club, and all the rest of his memories. He is working on his car in the driveway when he hears a quiet cough behind him. He spins around and she’s back, wearing the same grubby cutoffs and red tank top as the first day he had met her, only this time she is wearing her new wedding ring.

There is a joyous—and intimate—reunion. Jane explains that when she had returned to 2054 AD, everything had changed. Yes, her mission had been successful and the government was no longer a cruel dictatorship, but in the new timeline she was just a filing clerk working for the future Dr. Daniel Ross—a Dr. Ross who was happily married to someone named Sophie and had four children.

Realizing she would never be happy in the future she had helped to create, she had finally talked the future Dr. Ross into sending her back where she belonged—in the arms of Daniel, her beloved husband.

And as for Jane’s real age? Cosmetic surgery in 2054 AD has advanced by leaps and bounds. Jane is actually two years older than Daniel. But you’d never know it—to this day, she still looks like a fourteen-year-old little pixie with long, wavy chestnut hair and big brown eyes.