Page 32 of The Bookbinder's Guide to Love

“I can tomorrow,” she said, sticking to her policy.

The woman nodded. “Can’t wait.”

Her husband came up and slid his hand into hers as he set some books on the counter and the playing-card-sized box of Charm, Curse, Confluence on top of it.

“Did you find anything?” he asked his wife.

She shook her head but picked up the box. “What is this?”

“Looks like fun for our next dinner party. They have famous figures from history as well as pop culture figures from today.”

Sera rang them up, glad for the excuse to ignore Wes while she did so. After the couple moved on to the tea shop, she texted her friends in the group and told them they’d made their first game sale.

Wes tried to keep his attention on his work, and once his hands were busy, he found his balance, despite the fact that he wasn’t fixing an old tome. He had always felt like his value was in finding something and repairing it, breathing new life into something with history.

That feeling of being in flux was back. Part of it was Sera. He’d somehow managed to convince himself he could be in the same room as her and not want her. He was going to be mature and the kind of man Grandpa wanted him to be. Not turn into some lust-driven horndog the moment he saw her.

His body either hadn’t gotten the memo or didn’t care. And honestly, Wes wasn’t sure he minded. He liked looking at her. And the sound of her voice when she spoke to her customers drew his ear.

She had a dusky tone, stirring him further. His fingers were mindlessly doing the French binding and then the kettle stitches of Sera’s journals. He thought he could probably complete one every fifteen minutes or so.

But only if he wasn’t thinking about putting Sera on the workbench in front of him and then pushing his hands up under that frothy skirt of hers and...

“Wes?”

“Yes,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at her.

“What is it you do? You said you run an online auction house, but do you stock books too?” she asked, coming over to him.

He steeled himself against the scent of lavender, which was fast becoming one of his turn-ons.

“I have some. Mostly I look to see what I think I could use in my online bookstore and then auction stuff that’s a higher value,” he said. “Why?”

“My customer is looking for a specific Beatrix Potter book—The Tailor of Gloucester—and I thought you might be the man to help with that,” she said. “I could even refer her to you if that’s how you work.”

“Nah, I can sell to you and you can sell to her. I do that a lot,” he said. “I’ll text Hazel and have her start a search.”

He finished the binding stitch he was doing and then reached into his back pocket for his phone, his elbow accidentally brushing her breast.

He glanced up at her. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I was standing a bit close,” she admitted and then moved a few inches farther away from him, leaning back against the workbench.

He sent the text to Hazel and she thumbs-upped it. “She’s on it.”

“Seems like we’re a bit slow now. My part of the bargain is to help you get to know Ford like I knew him. But I’m still not sure where to start,” she said. She turned and began working on folding signatures.

Now that she asked, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to know either. Starting at the beginning seemed the best place. “How’d you meet him?”

“I was in the coffee shop near his house. It was really busy, there were no free tables, and I hadn’t gotten a to-go mug so was about to just ditch my coffee when our eyes met and he gestured to the empty seat at his table. I sat down and he continued reading his book and I fumbled in my bag for my e-reader and he said—”

“‘Those contraptions will never replace real books,’” Wes finished, mimicking Ford’s voice.

She laughed. “God, you sound just like him.”

“He hated technology. I guess that’s why I was surprised to get the email from him,” Wes said.

She heard the regret in his voice. But she didn’t want to bring Wes down. “He did hate it. But I got him to agree that changing the font on a book for ease of reading was a good thing.”

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