Lucy Eden’s The Love Audit is a fun play on the workplace romance trope, also featuring childhood friends who’ve been estranged and a fake relationship. While I’ve only read one of this author’s books in the past, there’s plenty to choose from in her backlist.

Jasmine Morgan is a PR expert whose world becomes a little more complicated when the small company she works for is bought by mega conglomerate MasonCorp. With the merger, the threat of layoffs is close at hand, and Jasmine knows she’ll have to pull off something really big to keep her and her colleague Cassie’s jobs safe. It’s not a question of money – Jasmine is an ivy league graduate with rich parents, but she doesn’t want to live off her parents’ largesse. She’s a successful businesswoman in her own right and plans to stay that way.

While waiting for a meeting with her new boss, Jasmine is stunned to see her former childhood friend Derek Carter also in the waiting room. When they were younger, their parents had been business partners but fifteen years previously (while they were teenagers) there had been a spectacular falling out and dissolution of the business for reasons Jasmine was never told. Rumors of embezzlement had abounded and the childhood friendship between Jasmine and Derek dissolved with no further contact, until now. It turns out that Derek works for MasonCorp and has designs on the same small town, Miller’s Cove, where MasonCorp has some real estate and where Jasmine is hoping to come up with a campaign for investment.

When it emerges that the boss likes both Derek and Jasmine’s ideas, he tasks them to work together to come up with detailed proposals for the town, with the winner getting to keep their job. Determined to win and best the other, Jasmine and Derek head to Miller’s Cove, and when the townspeople assume that they are married, they don’t disabuse them of the notion. And when they get stuck in a one bedroom suite at the bed and breakfast, instead of the two bedroom one they’d reserved, they’ve no choice but to go with the flow.

Getting to know the townspeople gives Jasmine and Derek second thoughts on their work objectives. In close quarters, they also rekindle their friendship and now as adults, realize that they can act on their attraction to each other. Sexy times ensue, but the clock is running out on their time in Miller’s Cove. Will winning at work mean losing at love?

I enjoyed this one. Jasmine and Derek’s history has some sweet points to it, and we also find out exactly what happened to destroy their parents’ business (it’s definitely an interesting revelation!). The small town of Miller’s Cove has some wonderful townsfolk and while it’s a fictional place, it came about as three of the founding fathers, prominent Black businessmen, escaped the very real historical event, the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. As Jasmine and Derek learn about the town’s history and meet the descendants of the original founders, they see how MasonCorp’s plans for the town could cause fundamental and unwanted changes.

On the relationship side, Jasmine and Derek connect emotionally and physically in some spicy scenes (with light kink). Both their families, especially Jasmine’s parents, Derek’s mother and his brother CJ, have key roles in the story as does Derek’s dog Tora whom he brings with him to Miller’s Cove (I really enjoyed the scenes with her).

There’s some second act drama to throw a wrench into Jasmine and Derek’s path to a happy ending, but the resolution is very satisfying. I’d recommend this to readers who enjoy spicy workplace/fake relationship romances.