Page 8 of Bear and Book

So no. We wouldn’t work out. Even if there was a moment when I felt something the second he stepped inside. A strange tug in my gut. A quiet click in the air like something falling into place.

Didn’t matter. I wasn’t doing that again. Fate could keep its secrets and its soulmates and its stupid inconvenient timing.

Besides, he’d probably flirt like that with anyone. That grin? That casual, soft-spoken charm?

Probably just standard-issue Leo. I wasn’t special. Just the latest project for a bear who couldn’t sit still when someone needed help.

Chapter 3

Leo/ Elias

LEO

The second I stepped into the shop, I knew I was in trouble. Not because of the water damage, though yeah, there was a lot of it.

The place smelled like a basement flooded with tea and old parchment, and the carpet squelched under my boots in a way that definitely wasn’t normal.

No, the trouble was Elias.

He reminded me of a librarian god, glaring at a broken bookshelf with a mop in one hand and frustration radiating off him like heat from a boiler.

His hair was damp, dark curls sticking to his temples, and his shirt clung to his shoulders in a way that probably wasn’t on purpose but definitely worked in his favor.

Then Elias looked at me. Sharp eyes. Raised brow. Dry as a bone, even soaked to the skin. I immediately had the impression he didn’t approve of me one bit.

And while I was helping him out in the back, I inhaled a lungful of his scent. Woodsmoke and old books and something faintly citrusy, like bergamot. Everything inside me just stopped.

My bear surged up under my skin, not aggressive, just there, alert and humming with realization.

Mine. The word landed heavy in my chest.

I dropped the box I was holding.

“Oops,” I muttered.

“You better not have damaged anything,” Elias called from the front.

“All good!” I called back, bending to pick up the paperbacks. “Just excited about Agatha Christie.”

“Try not to get too excited,” he muttered as he joined me, arms crossed.

I glanced up at him, heart still pounding. I didn’t say anything about the scent. About the pull.

About the sudden need to wrap him in a blanket and make him tea and guard this bookstore from storms and mold and heartbreak.

I just smiled.

“The Murder of Roger Ackroyd blew my mind when I first read it,” I said, gently spreading out the wet books on a towel I found. “I hate seeing books get hurt.”

Something shifted in his expression. Just a little. Like the ice cracked at the edges.

“You actually read mysteries?” Elias asked.

“Love them,” I said honestly. “And fantasy. And cookbooks with stories in them.”

He looked at me like he didn’t know where to file that answer. Which was fair. I’m not exactly easy to categorize. But he didn’t send me away. He let me keep working.

He didn’t say anything when I rigged up a tarp and used duct tape to patch the worst leak by the window.