Page 42 of The Bookbinder's Guide to Love

He just took her hand in his as he watched his grandfather’s coffin lowered into the ground. The priest spoke, but Wes didn’t hear him. He heard his father’s recollection of what Grandpa had said to him.He learned not to do it again.

Why was it just now that Wes had realized what he’d learned from Grandpa? Had he not been old enough to appreciate it? Or had it taken the loss to remind him he didn’t want to let stubbornness and arrogance cost him, especially where Sera was concerned?

He was tired of trying to figure out his emotions, and he didn’t really know how he felt. He just knew he wanted to hold her hand and give and take comfort from her. He couldn’t forget their night together, and the more time he spent with Sera, the more he wanted to have her again. But this time actually knowing the woman.

Sera hadn’t expected the entire day to be what it was. Wes’s dad, Benjamin, pulled her aside when they got back to Ford’s house to talk.

“Thanks for your words today. I hadn’t really taken the time to know my dad once the boys were grown,” he said.

“He was a good friend to me. So funny,” she said. “I hope you know I didn’t do anything malicious to make him give me those books.”

“Having met you, there’s no doubt about that. That was Wes’s thing anyway.”

“Yeah, I had a feeling,” she said with a laugh.

“I shouldn’t have allowed him to use our letterhead to send that message,” Benjamin said.

He was formal and she had observed him enough throughout the day to accept that it was his way. He was a very reserved man, but his tone was sincere. “Why did you?” she asked.

“He seldom asks me for anything. Neither of them do,” he said, almost to himself.

All of the Sitwell men had emotional constipation. Something must have caused it. For herself, it was the insecurity of the foster-care system. That fear of starting to care about a place and people and then being uprooted and moved.

Whatever the Sitwells had faced, it had to have been very traumatic and hurtful. There was no way to deal with that type of thing in a good way. No matter what happened, there was always some sort of fallout. They were all, from what she saw, decent men. Each of them so very different but also similar, including Ford.

“I guess I can understand that. But it was a bit scary for me to receive,” she said.

“Apologies. We’re tax attorneys anyway, so that type of litigation isn’t our specialty.”

She shook her head. Glad to learn that it hadn’t been Ford’s entire family that had been upset with her. “Why was he so upset?”

“Books were his hobby with Dad. I can only guess, because he’s a Sitwell, that they had a falling-out and he took the gift to you personally. You’d have to ask him. Thanks again for your words,” Benjamin said as he turned to go talk to Hamish and Poppy.

Liberty was talking to Wes’s brother. She wasn’t flirting, so Sera guessed she’d found out he was a tax attorney. Liberty took care of their books and was likely using the opportunity to pick his brain. The surge in revenue from the Amber Rapp event had pushed them into a higher tax bracket and Liberty didn’t want to screw anything up.

She left the formal living room, with its overstuffed bookcases and comfortable but worn furniture, to go and find Wes. He was in the kitchen at the table where she’d had tea with him that first day.

He was leaning over a piece of foolscap and had gold leaf in his hand. He was touching up the gold on the pages. She went to stand next to him and he looked up.

“I saw you and Dad talking. How’d that go?” he asked.

“Okay. Why are you in here alone?”

He put down the knife he’d been using to apply the gold leaf and stood up, stretching as he did so. He’d taken off his suit jacket but still wore a black shirt and tie. He’d dressed from head to toe in black for the funeral, which made his blue eyes brighter and his blond hair seem even thicker.

She stood in the doorway, stopped by a wave of lust. No denying it. There was something very sensual about Wes when he worked on books, and tonight, in his formal wear...she couldn’t tear her eyes from him.

She swallowed hard as she watched him and tried to remind herself they’d just buried Ford.

Life moved on. Sera knew that more than anyone else. She wanted Wes. This Wes.

The quiet bookbinder who was happier working in the kitchen than mingling. The man who used his hands with confidence and surety to fix broken spines and torn pages. The man who hid away from anything he couldn’t fix by turning to his workbench.

“I don’t do grief well,” he said. “Actually, my dad said that. I borrowed it as an excuse to hide out.”

Emotional constipation, she thought again.

“Grief is... I think this is the first time I’ve really had a chance to let go of someone and share my emotions about it,” she said. She’d been too young when her parents died. But each time she’d left a group or foster home she’d missed the people left behind. She’d tried to develop a thick skin where leaving was concerned, but deep down it was another wound that eventually turned into a scar.

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