A small-town beach romance set in Carolina Cove —an enemies-to-lovers / rivals-to-lovers tale with next-door neighbors , slow burn , closed-door chemistry, and career competition . Expect a disgraced finance heroine starting over , a contractor/childhood nemesis turned unexpected ally, redemption , found family , and a guaranteed HEA . Perfect for readers of sweet contemporary romance , small town beach reads , neighbors to lovers , and workplace rivalry love stories. Sophia Shipley will do pretty much anything to keep her secrets secret until she’s ready to reveal them to her family. Coming back to Carolina Cove in disgrace is hard enough, but that doesn’t compare to knowing all of her hard work and career advances were for nothing. Her job in finance, her life in the financial sector, is gone due to the whispers of fraud now attached to her name. She has to start over from scratch and she has no idea where to begin… Dawson Blackwell can’t believe his luck. He’d finally managed to buy out the awful neighbor next door and renovate the rundown cottage for a rental only to discover his childhood nemesis to be its first guest. From rivals in the classroom to enemies on the debate team and competitors for class president, he and Sophia had butted heads at every turn. But as neighbors and unlikely friends, he finds himself battling a different kind of intensity towards the grown-up version of the spoiled rich girl he’d known. They say opposites attract but when Dawson finds himself going after the same job as Sophia, will their competitive personalities lead to a show down—or will their forbidden love lead to something else entirely