A steamy Christmas age-gap office romance featuring a grumpy rival boss who never looked twice at anyone, an ambitious heroine who handed him her résumé to prove a point, and a family rivalry that was never supposed to become personal.
She walked into the enemy’s office to prove she didn’t need her father’s name. She didn’t plan on the man behind the desk.
Everyone called me a nepo baby. No matter how hard I worked, I was always my father’s daughter first—never my own person. So I did the one thing no one saw coming. I walked straight into the rival’s office and handed the biggest enemy in the industry my résumé. This was about my career. My future. My name standing on its own. I had a plan and it was a good one and it had absolutely nothing to do with the man who read my résumé without looking up and then looked up anyway.
He was grumpy. Guarded. The kind of man who filled a room without trying and made it clear he didn’t need anyone in it.
He was also my father’s biggest enemy. And the only person who’d ever looked at me like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
I told myself it was complicated. That if my father found out it would cost me everything I came here to prove. I told myself that every morning on the way into the office and every evening on the way out, and it stopped working faster than I wanted to admit. Because the man I was supposed to be using as a career stepping stone kept looking at me like he already knew something I was still catching up to—like the rivalry was a fact he’d already decided didn’t matter, and the only question was how long it would take me to agree.
It was reckless. Forbidden. Too fast and too complicated to survive. I wasn’t wrong about any of that.
He didn’t care about the rivalry. He told me later that the second I handed him that résumé, he knew—that the rules stopped mattering before I’d finished the sentence, that he’d looked at me like no one had ever really seen me before because no one had. Not the way he did. Not the way he intended to keep doing long after the Christmas lights came down. I came to that office to prove something to my father. I stayed because of him. And the best thing I ever did wasn’t taking the job offer.
It was staying long enough to let him find me.
Her Naughty Scrooge is part of the Scrooges of Pleasure Valley series. It can be read as a standalone but is best enjoyed in order. This is a steamy open-door romance with forbidden workplace heat, fast-burn instalove, and a guaranteed happily ever after.
Featuring these tropes:
Grumpy possessive boss hero who knows immediatelyAmbitious heroine proving herself on enemy territoryForbidden instalove—she’s the rival’s daughterAge-gap tension with real emotional stakesVirgin heroine, rivals-to-lovers, holiday heat
GENRE: Contemporary Romance / Christmas Romance / Age-Gap Romance / Office Romance
TROPES: grumpy hero, determined heroine, instalove, forbidden love, age gap, possessive alpha, virgin heroine
TONE: steamy, emotionally charged, fast-burn instalove, festive
HEAT LEVEL: steamy open-door, first-time chemistry, possessive alpha heat
COMPS: Christmas office romance, forbidden age-gap instalove, rival families romance, grumpy boss HEA
