Some debts never make it onto the books.

Tessa Bell trusts numbers because people once used family feeling to make her small. She keeps the ledgers for half of Briarhaven's Main Street, and she likes it that way: clean columns, no surprises, no one close enough to hurt her. Then a stack of old loan records refuses to balance - and the discrepancy points straight into the heart of the feud that has defined her whole family.


Mateo Cruz carries the quiet panic of Cruz Table alone - payroll, suppliers, the debts no one will say out loud - because he believes love means absorbing pressure so no one else has to feel it. He is the last man a Bell should trust with anything. He is also the only person who can help Tessa understand what the numbers are hiding.

Night after night in the records room, the columns pull them closer - to the truth, and to each other. Because the deeper they dig, the clearer it becomes: the paperwork behind the old fire was doctored, and someone profited from keeping two families at war. What Tessa can prove could ruin everyone she loves, and the one person she wants is the one she is most likely to destroy.


To be together, Tessa has to let herself be seen without the armor of always being right, and Mateo has to let someone carry the weight with him. In a town that runs on debts no one will name, choosing each other might be the most dangerous math of all.

The Sum of What We Owe is the second book in The Briarhaven Feuds, a small-town contemporary romance series about rival families, buried truths, and love that refuses to stay quiet. Angsty, sensual, and emotionally charged, each book is a standalone with its own guaranteed happily ever

after.

Perfect for readers who love: Forbidden workplace tension and after-hours proximity; Opposites attract: a guarded numbers woman and a steady, overloaded hero; Competence, slow burn, and "being seen without armor"; Family-feud stakes with a buried-secret mystery; Heroes who quietly carry too much and finally let someone in; High heat with real emotional consequences


Content note: adult contemporary romance for readers 18+; explicit open-door scenes.