Noah McManus, young and integer spin doctor of Boston's egotistic-turned mayor Grant, ordered an expensive diamond ring to wed his fiancée and celebrate his dream job, as assistant to an upright US senator, to be delivered at a romantic countryside small town Cape Cod hotel.
But the senator is ruined by a scandal and his fiancée proves a faithless gold-digger, so he decides to pick up the ring for a needed refund now he's unemployed. Due to delivery delay, he's forced to stay a while at the hotel and gets interested in charming, politically clueless the owner Sam Peabody's desperate mayoral election fight against slick real estate developer Randall Henderson, whose mall projects would wreck the old-fashioned charm.
Noah must choose whether to rejoin the mayor's now failing campaign team, as his Boston buddy Elliot Larkin begs, or take on Randall for a quiet life as country mayor, with the local bookshop owner as feisty partner.