Under the Mistletoe’s Heat

Falling for her mother’s fiancé was never part of Lila Harper’s Christmas plan.

One snowbound week in a crumbling Vermont lodge, and twenty-three-year-old photographer Lila finds herself trapped with the one man she should never Dr. Elias Vaughn—her mother’s polished, grieving, impossibly magnetic fiancé. What starts as stolen glances across a candlelit game night and midnight cocoa confessions ignites into a forbidden slow-burn that neither can resist.

As pipes burst, secrets unravel, and the lodge teeters on bankruptcy, Lila and Elias are forced into breathless proximity—fixing leaks shirtless in freezing basements, sharing body heat in a cedar sauna, binding wrists with velvet ribbon beneath a glowing tree. Every touch is laced with guilt, every kiss a betrayal… and every climax a promise they’ll never keep.

But when Christmas morning dawns and the truth spills like shattered crystal, Lila must save the family legacy or claim the man who’s already claimed her soul.

This holiday, the only thing hotter than the yule log is the fire they can’t put out.