She came to buy the block. She never planned on losing her heart.

Arden Vale has spent fourteen years perfecting the art of the corporate takeover. As Executive Vice President of Strategic Acquisitions, she doesn't enter rooms without mapping the exits, and her promotion to Chief Operating Officer is thirty-two days away. All she needs to deliver is the final commercial parcel on Bellwether’s historic Marigold Row.

The only obstacle standing in her way is Lavender & Ink: a fiercely independent, queer-owned bookstore whose owner refuses to name a price.

June Rivera didn’t spend seven years pouring her soul into Lavender & Ink just to hand the keys to a slick Manhattan developer in a bespoke suit. When Arden arrives with a hollow "community investment" proposal, June issues an impossible challenge: if Arden wants to decide the future of Marigold Row, she has to work behind the counter for thirty days and learn the true value of what she’s trying to erase.

Stuck in tight stockrooms and navigating unconventional shelving systems, corporate hostility quickly ignites into undeniable heat. Between late-night power outages, whispered confessions, and scorching tension across the checkout counter, Arden's armored world begins to crack. But when a corporate betrayal threatens to destroy everything June has built, Arden must choose between the career she sacrificed twenty years to build and the woman who taught her how to feel again.

Hostile Takeover is a full-length, high-heat contemporary sapphic romance featuring an armored ice queen, a passionate bookstore owner, scorching enemies-to-lovers tension, and a fiercely loyal found family. Complete with a guaranteed happily-ever-after.