Sign-In
Cart
Sugar + Smoke & Secrets: A New York City Story of Love, Lies, and Second Chances
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Apr 25 2026
Pages: 162
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.35 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Lena Cruz has built the perfect life.
Her beloved Chelsea bakery, Dulce, is the kind of place New Yorkers fall in love with - warm croissants at dawn, cardamom rolls that sell out by nine, and a marble counter worn smooth by four years of quiet, ordinary mornings. Lena knows every regular by order, every rhythm by heart. She has made her world deliberately beautiful, deliberately small, and deliberately safe.
Because Lena Cruz is hiding.
Six years ago, she witnessed something she was never supposed to see - a crime that sent her running from Miami to New York, from one life into another. She built Dulce from scratch and told herself the past was behind her. She almost believed it.
Then a stranger walks through her door and orders black coffee.
Marcus Hale is an investigative journalist - patient, perceptive, and dangerously good at finding the true version of things. He notices the way Lena moves through her own space. He notices the ceramic mug she saves for him. He notices, slowly and without pressure, that there is more to this woman than the warmth she offers the world.
And then someone else walks through her door.
Rico Velez is a face from the life Lena left behind - and he carries news that changes everything. The man she witnessed. The crime she never reported. The federal trial cannot move forward without her. After six years of silence, Lena must make an impossible choice: step forward into the light and risk everything she has built, or stay hidden and let a killer walk free.
Set against the vivid backdrop of New York City - from the pre-dawn quiet of a Chelsea kitchen to the cobblestone streets of Brooklyn - Sugar, Smoke & Secrets is a story about the courage it takes to stop running. About the recipes we inherit and the lives we build from scratch. About what it means to finally trust someone with the true version of yourself.
And about the kind of sweetness that isn't about sugar at all.
Perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah, Emily Henry, and Colleen Hoover - a slow-burn romance with real stakes, rich atmosphere, and a heroine worth rooting for.Also from
Skye, Willow
Also in
Romance
That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf (Mead Mishaps, Book 2)
Kimberly Lemming
Paperback
Sabine's Notebook: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Continues
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
The Golden Mean: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Concludes
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover