Shelby Foster built a nine-figure meal-kit empire on one carefully guarded secret: she cannot cook. Smoke alarms in three states will testify.

So when her family guilt-trips her into hosting Christmas dinner — fourteen Fosters, her grandmother's recipes, no caterers allowed — Shelby does what any desperate CEO would do. She practices. And burns a turkey. And reads a strange old recipe card out loud over the smoke.

Enter Asharoth: nine hundred years old, contractually bound to her penthouse until Christmas Eve, infuriatingly good in the kitchen, and absolutely forbidden from cooking the dinner for her. Contract law says her hands have to do the work. His job is to teach her — knife skills, gravy, and the one lesson she never learned: how to be loved without earning it.

The clock says the binding dissolves at midnight on Christmas Eve. Her heart is starting to have opinions about that. And her grandmother's recipe tin has one more secret in the bottom that changes everything.

A laugh-out-loud holiday romcom with a slow-burn heart, a demon in a Christmas apron, one crooked tree, and a happily ever after nobody has to earn. Perfect for readers of A Witch's Guide to Fake Dating a Demon who think Hallmark movies need more horns.

Published
October 22, 2026
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