Page 30 of The Bookbinder's Guide to Love

“Oh. Yeah, I guess last night wasn’t my best idea.”

“Hell, woman, it was a great idea.”

She smiled. “It was pretty good, but it’s making today a bit awkward. Should we start over?”

“Nope. I’m not pretending we didn’t hook up. I can be chill...or at least pretend to be. I just wasn’t prepared for how gorgeous you were going to look today.”

“Were you expecting me to be more troll-like?” she asked.

Fuck. “I didn’t mean it that way. You always stop me in my tracks. I thought I was ready for it but my memories don’t do you justice. There’s something so wild about your hair that I forget, or the way your lips are that shade of brownish pink I can’t tear my eyes from. In my mind’s eye I’ve memorized every feature, and I’m cool with it. But then I’m standing here and see a small scar under your eye I didn’t notice, and...” He shrugged.

FFS, now he’d gone too far. So far being his normal self around Sera hadn’t worked. This new dude without a filter was in control and Wes wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.

She flushed a little bit and licked her lips.

“I fell off the bed and hit my face on the nightstand when I was three. My parents were still alive then and they freaked out, but we didn’t have insurance, so they didn’t take me to the doctor until the next morning. I couldn’t have stitches and it healed just fine, but I have that tiny scar.”

He reached up to touch it. She’d been so matter-of-fact telling him how she’d gotten it, but her eyes held a hint of sadness and the timbre of her voice had dipped. He wanted to know more about her past.

Until college, he’d always assumed everyone’s family was perfect and his was the only one that was messed up. But as he’d gotten older, he’d come to understand that every family had something shitty they had experienced. It didn’t mean there wasn’t love, just that everyone dealt with something.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, but there was a tremble in her voice. She took a deep breath and then said, “So...um...about the journal. If you work for me, I’d have you making signatures in the morning and then binding in the afternoon.”

She explained how she made the signatures—three holes, as he’d suspected—and then left him to bind six of them together. He was aware of her watching him as she worked, but she went to ring up two customers before he finished. She then inspected the binding and nodded. “I just learned the kettle stitch from Ford before Christmas.”

“Yeah? It was the first one he showed me. What do you think of my work?” he asked, more than a little nervous. He wanted her to be impressed, but it had been a long time since he’d made anything new.

“You’ll do. I know we said it was temporary, and I was thinking a few weeks, but would you be able to do six?” she asked.

“I would need a week off during that period. I have a big auction I need to get prepared for,” he said. “Would that work?”

She agreed it would and told him she could accommodate his other work if he needed more time off. She had a contract she’d printed off the internet, which they amended and then initialed and signed. For the next six weeks, Sera was officially his boss.

Eight

After they signed the contract, Sera felt a little like she owed him a story about Ford but had no idea what he wanted to know. She had promised him stories and she had a lot of them, but she wasn’t really sure, now that she’d agreed to do it, that she wanted to.

There it was. The nugget of truth she had hidden even from herself.

Those stories of Ford were personal. Something that belonged to her and her alone. After a lifetime of sharing everything, she wanted to keep them just for herself.

But she’d made a deal with Wes. There was also that niggling feeling Ford wanted her to do this.

“I have two hours left in the shop. Normally I work over here making signatures or binding journals, but I have to stop if a customer needs me,” she started.

“That makes sense. Which one do you want me to do?” he asked.

She chewed her lower lip for a second while she was thinking and then realized what she was doing and stopped. “Were you naturally fast, or did you do that just to impress me?”

“Um...both. I am that fast since I practiced all night,” he said.

She could picture him working all night on making signatures, his hair mussed as he labored to impress her. There was no other way to take that, right? It turned her on to think of him working on something just for her. If she’d been there, she knew it would have turned more physical. She just couldn’t be next to Wes without remembering his fingers on her skin.

The scent of his cologne mingled with the aroma of paper and books. Honestly, she wasn’t sure she could keep things just business between them.

“Hearing about Ford must be really important to you,” she said. “And I get it. So why don’t you do the binding. I can do signatures at the register even.”

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