Andy is an arrogant pop singer about to be divorced by his wife who treats his staff badly. On the same night he starts a job at a theater in Los Angeles his infant son is kidnapped. Despite requests from the lead police officer on the case, Lieutenant Bonner, Paxton plays along with the kidnappers as they string him along even though they are willing to kill.
The "one desire" of ex-gambler Clint Saunders and bar woman Tacey Cromwell is to escape their shady former lives and settle down to respectability. With Clint's younger brother and an orphaned girl in tow, the couple moves to a Colorado mining town where their love is tested by Judith Watrous, daughter of the town banker, who has her sights on Clint.
Struggling to retain custody of his daughter following his divorce, football coach Steve Williams finds himself embroiled in a recruiting scandal at the tiny Catholic college he is trying to bring back to football respectability.
In flashback from a 'Rebecca'-style beginning: Ellen Foster, visiting her aunt on the California coast, meets neighbor Jeff Cohalan and his ultramodern clifftop house. Ellen is strongly attracted to Jeff, who's being plagued by unexplainable accidents, major and minor. Bad luck, persecution...or paranoia? Warned that Jeff could be dangerous, Ellen fears that he's in danger, as the menacing atmosphere darkens.
When jobless genius Beauregard Bottomley interviews with Burnbridge Waters for a position at Waters' soap company, the owner rudely turns Bottomley down. As revenge, Bottomley enters a TV quiz show that Waters' company sponsors, with the goal of winning until he bankrupts the businessman. When Bottomley keeps acing the questions, becoming a media sensation, Waters desperately calls on vixen Flame O'Neal to uncover Bottomley's area of weakness.
