In a town the size of Briarhaven, everyone already knows your business. Mara Bell knows that better than most, because she is the one who stayed. She has spent her whole life being the reliable one. She runs Bell Bakery on muscle memory and not enough sleep, and she tends to apologize before anyone has thought to ask her to. Then the ovens die four days before the Summer Table festival that the whole town builds its year around, and just like that the family business and the grant money keeping it afloat are slipping right through her flour-dusted hands.
The only licensed kitchen still standing belongs to Leo Cruz. He is the rival chef, and his family is the one Mara was raised to blame for everything her grandmother lost. He is also quiet and exacting, and he goes unexpectedly gentle with her on the nights she is too worn out to keep pretending she is fine. Leo needs the same festival grant to save Cruz Table, and if anyone catches him helping a Bell, it could split his family in two and make every old accusation look true.
Sharing a kitchen was supposed to be a temporary truce, nothing more than that. It was not supposed to feel like being seen for the first time. Their secret after-hours arrangement turns into something with real heat and real fallout, and then the two of them turn up an old recipe ledger that tells a different story than the one everyone agreed to. Before the fire and the feud, their families were building something together.
To choose each other now, Mara and Leo would have to betray the people they have spent their whole lives protecting. In a place where privacy is a joke and loyalty is the only currency that matters, loving the wrong person could cost Mara the bakery and the last family she has left. Maybe no recipe was ever stolen. Maybe this was never the wrong kind of love. Proving it, though, is going to cost her more than she can afford.
The Wrong Side of Wanting is the first book in The Briarhaven Feuds, a small-town contemporary romance series about rival families and the truths they buried to keep the peace. It is angsty and sensual and more than a little devastating. Every book stands alone with its own guaranteed happily ever after. Perfect for readers who love: Rivals-to-lovers with real, grounded stakes; Small-town family feuds and public reputation pressure; Forbidden, slow-burn tension with high heat; Over-responsible heroines who learn to want out loud; Patient, quietly devoted heroes with restraint; Forced proximity, one kitchen, and a secret they can't keepContent note: adult contemporary romance for readers 18+; explicit open-door scenes.
In a town the size of Briarhaven, everyone already knows your business. Mara Bell knows that better than most, because she is the one who stayed. She has spent her whole life being the reliable one. She runs Bell Bakery on muscle memory and not enough sleep, and she tends to apologize before anyone has thought to ask her to. Then the ovens die four days before the Summer Table festival that the whole town builds its year around, and just like that the family business and the grant money keeping it afloat are slipping right through her flour-dusted hands.
The only licensed kitchen still standing belongs to Leo Cruz. He is the rival chef, and his family is the one Mara was raised to blame for everything her grandmother lost. He is also quiet and exacting, and he goes unexpectedly gentle with her on the nights she is too worn out to keep pretending she is fine. Leo needs the same festival grant to save Cruz Table, and if anyone catches him helping a Bell, it could split his family in two and make every old accusation look true.
Sharing a kitchen was supposed to be a temporary truce, nothing more than that. It was not supposed to feel like being seen for the first time. Their secret after-hours arrangement turns into something with real heat and real fallout, and then the two of them turn up an old recipe ledger that tells a different story than the one everyone agreed to. Before the fire and the feud, their families were building something together.
To choose each other now, Mara and Leo would have to betray the people they have spent their whole lives protecting. In a place where privacy is a joke and loyalty is the only currency that matters, loving the wrong person could cost Mara the bakery and the last family she has left. Maybe no recipe was ever stolen. Maybe this was never the wrong kind of love. Proving it, though, is going to cost her more than she can afford.
The Wrong Side of Wanting is the first book in The Briarhaven Feuds, a small-town contemporary romance series about rival families and the truths they buried to keep the peace. It is angsty and sensual and more than a little devastating. Every book stands alone with its own guaranteed happily ever after. Perfect for readers who love: Rivals-to-lovers with real, grounded stakes; Small-town family feuds and public reputation pressure; Forbidden, slow-burn tension with high heat; Over-responsible heroines who learn to want out loud; Patient, quietly devoted heroes with restraint; Forced proximity, one kitchen, and a secret they can't keepContent note: adult contemporary romance for readers 18+; explicit open-door scenes.
