Librarian Bear

by Chant, Zoe

  "We have our curmudgeons," Sarah said as they took their seats in one of the smallest booths. "But overall, yeah. It's a pretty great place." She bit back saying too bad you won't be staying, instead managing to say, "And it's got a lot of history to sort out, so I'm glad you're here." There. That didn't sound stalkery at all. Sarah gave herself a mental pat on the head.

  "Tell me about that," Matthew said hopefully. "Is there an archival system in place already, or do I have to figure something out?"

  Astonishment and real optimism bloomed in Sarah's chest. She pushed her menu aside and folded her hands on the table, leaning toward Matthew, who leaned toward her in turn. He smelled amazing. Probably cologne, but Sarah didn't know what kind. It didn't matter. It was as delicious as Matthew himself. And he looked more edible than anything on the diner's very tasty menu.

  Man, somebody needed to throw a bucket of cold water over her. It took Sarah a moment to remember what she was supposed to tell him about. "Oh! Right. I can't believe you want to know if I have a system. All the archivists I've ever known want to do things their way."

  "I can do that," Matthew promised, "but I won't, if you have a system."

  "I have a system! It's not complicated, and I'll show it to you tomorrow, but I'd be so incredibly grateful if you'd use it. I've been—" She hesitated, suddenly aware that the truth wasn't very flattering.

  Matthew Rojas's slow smile, though, told her he understood. "You've been dreading this, haven't you."

  Sarah wailed, "I really have been," and put her head on the table. Matthew's laughter rolled over her, warm and comforting. She peeked up, both mortified and shyly pleased. "I hate needing help," she told him honestly. "I'm a one-woman do-it-yourself machine. My mom always said 'if you want something done, ask a busy person', and I'm always the busy person. I hate waiting for other people to get something done, I hate finding out they've done it—not necessarily wrong, but—"

  "But not the way you'd do it." Matthew had the absolute most sparkling eyes of any man Sarah had ever met. They sparkled and crinkled and smiled, even through the lenses of his glasses. They were just so kind. So beautifully dark brown. If he turned on a puppy-dog-eyes look, no one on earth would be able to resist him, least of all Sarah herself.

  She burst out with, "Exactly!" in frustrated relief. "It's not that other people don't do things well—it really isn't!" she protested at his chortle. "It isn't. But I'm fast and good at things, and if I have to go back and understand how somebody else did something..."

  "It slows you down. Well, my job is to make things easier for you, not harder. I'll use your system. Oh no, here comes the waitress, I don't know what to order. What should I get?"

  "Carnivore or vegetarian?"

  Matthew, straight-faced, said, "I prefer to eat vegetarians."

  "Well, thank goodness I am one, then." Sarah felt herself turn red from the collar of her shirt all the way to her hairline, and probably past both of those things. Matthew threw back his head and absolutely roared with laughter, loudly enough to make everyone in the diner turn to look, and frankly, Sarah couldn't blame either him or them. She sank down, hiding her face in her arms on the table, and just blushed from the absolute bottom of her soul. She could practically hear people grinning at them, even after the regular level of noise in the diner resumed.

  Matthew put his hand on one of her elbows, like he was offering her some degree of reassurance she definitely didn't deserve. She lifted her head a few inches, barely looking above the top of her arm to meet his eyes, which were wet with laughter. She'd blushed so hard her eyes were wet, too, more with rue than actual shame. Matthew, still smiling, leaned in and asked, "Are you okay?" quite softly, as if he was genuinely concerned.

  "Fine. I just. I don't know why I said that. It's not even true!"

  He burst out laughing again, though he kept it just quiet enough to not draw absolutely everybody's attention again. Sarah put her head back down, shoulders shaking with her own abashed laughter. "I am so sorry," she said, muffled, to the table. "I don't know what's gotten in to me. I mean, I do."

  She lifted her head, still blushing, and met Matthew's eyes again. "You're very handsome, which I'm sure you must know, and I'm sure you have women say idiotic things to you all the time, but I personally usually have better control over my inside voice turning into my outside voice. I'm sure I'll be okay in a couple of days when I've gotten used to you, and in the meantime I'll try not to say anything else horrifyingly inappropriate. Or maybe at all."

  He managed to look simultaneously amused and injured. "A couple of days? Is that all it will take?"

  "Well, I don't know," Sarah admitted, sitting up. "An actress who starred on one of my favorite TV shows said it was always a shock to come back for the next season after a summer break, because during filming she'd get used to how insanely handsome her lead costar was, and then she'd see him again and be like 'oh my GOD', so I suppose it's possible. Oh, man, I need a drink of water. I'm so sorry, Mr. Roj—"

  "Matthew," he said firmly, although he was still smiling. "Matthew, or Matt. And it's all right. Women don't usually say things like that to me, for what it's worth, and can we get two glasses of water, please?" he asked the waitress, who was waiting a few steps away, looking like she couldn't decide if she should interrupt the blush-fest going on at their table. "We haven't decided on anything else yet."

  The waitress, relieved, ran off to get water, and Sarah hid her face behind her hands for a moment before sighing and peeking through her fingers. "Do men?"

  Matthew looked befuddled. "Do men wh—oh, say things like that to me?" He laughed. "A couple of times, maybe, and I admire them for taking their shot, but they were shooting in the wrong direction." He squinted. "I think that metaphor went badly."

  "I got the gist," Sarah said hoarsely. At least she hadn't been shooting in the wrong direction. "I really am sorry. And I'm, uh, I'm still not clear on whether you're a vegetarian...?"

  "Mostly yes," he said with a smile. "If there's nothing good on the menu, though, I do eat meat occasionally, and fish more often than that."

  "No, they've got a good vegetarian menu. There's an amazing stir fry and insanely good mac and cheese, a bunch of soups and my favorite vegan chili ever, plus stuff like shrimp and mushroom alfredo. They'll take the shrimp out and put extra mushrooms and broccoli into that, if you want."

  "This is a very upscale diner," Matthew said, amused.

  "There is a fancy restaurant in town, but it's only open three nights a week."

  The waitress appeared with water, asked if they were ready to order, and waited patiently for Sarah to drain most of her glass before saying, "I'll bring a pitcher."

  "That would be great. I think I'll have the shrimp alfredo, actually, if that's okay."

  "I hear the chili is fantastic," Matthew added. "I'll have that. And a root beer, please."

  "Ooh, chili and root beer, excellent choice. Just water for me," Sarah said, and the waitress, writing their order down, went off again. "Matt, again, I'm so sorry—"

  He held up a hand, stopping her. "Please, Sarah. It's fine. It was very funny, and you seem more appalled at yourself than really embarrassed, so I think...no harm done?"

  Sarah ducked her head, then smiled at him. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. I am appalled, I mean, I'm kind of your new boss, but...okay. Okay. Moving on!" She kind of didn't want to move on, though. The fact that this clever, gorgeous man could tell the difference between her actually being embarrassed and being horrified at herself struck her as both wonderful and amazing. She wasn't sure she could have even explained it aloud herself, but he'd understood easily. This was the kind of guy she could stand keeping around for a while.

  Except he had an expiration date. When June left, so did Matthew Rojas. Or close enough, anyway. His contract was technically through the end of the last work week in June, so he would be there a couple of days into July, but...that was it. So there was no point in getting attached, or even daydreaming about it. Sarah
let go a little sigh, and smiled. "So did drawing on old maps lead you into archiving, or...?"

  "I think I inherited it from my mother." Matthew spun his water glass in its ring of condensation and smiled at Sarah. "She's an anthropologist who helps remote communities collect their story histories, ideally in their native languages. She speaks more languages and dialects I can count," he added, sounding proud. "Mom's American, but she moved to Argentina when she was just a grad student, and lived in the village my father came from. After that Mom and I traveled around from there a lot, collecting stories and preserving histories, so I just kind of came by it naturally."

  "That, and she, sounds amazing," Sarah said. "Wow. Man, I've never really even been farther west than D.C. I grew up mostly here in Virtue and went to Brown for college, so I'm just kind of a Northeasterner."

  "Like the wind," Matthew said, smiling. "Blowing in a whole lot of change."

  "Hah! Yeah, maybe. I guess so. Good change, if so, I hope."

  "I know I've only known you a couple of hours, but I'm already finding it hard to imagine you as a catalyst for evil."

  Sarah's eyebrows rose until she laughed. "A catalyst for evil. Wow, no, I hope not. That's the developers trying to undermine Virtue. I hope I'm more like the bulwark against that. A bulwark of good. Except bulwarks are the opposite of change, aren't they, so I guess I have to choose between being a bulwark and a nor'easter."

  "Both," Matthew suggested. "Both is good."

  "Well, I certainly wouldn't want a bulwark blown at me, anyway. Oh, that was fast. Thank you," Sarah said as the waitress brought plates of food. "It looks great."

  "Always is," the young woman said with a smile. "Enjoy!" She hurried away again and Sarah began twisting threads of pasta out of the alfredo sauce so they would cool down, but Matthew went straight for a bite of chili, hissing air between his teeth when it burned his tongue.

  "Worth it," he said, his eyes watering. "Worth it. You're right. This is terrific." He slurped some root beer and took his second bite of chili more cautiously, then sank contentedly into the booth seat with a smile that made Sarah's toes tingle. "Oh, that's good. All right, it's official. I hereby trust you with my life, Ms. Ekstrom."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Trusting Sarah Ekstrom with his life was probably a little over the top, but the chili really was very good, and it made her laugh, which was Matt's only goal in life just then.

  "Trust me with your palate, maybe," she suggested. "Your life is a lot to trust somebody with on the basis of two hours' acquaintance and a bowl of chili." Color stung her cheeks momentarily and Matthew imagined she was thinking of her ill-advised vegetarian comment. Really, though, if he was going to trust anybody with his life, a woman who would say something like that went straight to the top of his list. Even if she had been horrified for saying it, Matthew had...not been. At all. Horror had been the very last thing on his mind in that moment.

  In fact, if she hadn't been so mortified at making the comment, he might well have grabbed her hand and taken her out to the relative privacy of her old truck and done some very thorough investigations on the topic of whether vegetarians liked to be eaten or not.

  The fact that she wasn't actually a vegetarian seemed wonderfully unimportant, in the grand scheme of things. Honestly, any detail that didn't involve making this woman happy seemed pretty unimportant just then.

  Although probably some very intense making out in a parking lot that half the town seemed to be in right now wouldn't necessarily make her all that happy. Matthew liked to think he could thoroughly distract Sarah from the crowds, but he was quite sure he couldn't distract the crowds from them, if they did that.

  And that was one of the reasons he thought of himself as a big-city person. Not because he wanted to make out in public without people judging him, but because in a city, you could, and the people who saw you might very well never see you again. Small towns knew your business whether you wanted them to or not.

  And in the end, Sarah had to live in this small, busy-body town, so Matthew dragged his mind back to eating chili, drinking root beer, and watching the vivacious, vibrant woman across the table from him.

  She told him about her archival system over dinner—it sounded straight-forward enough to work with easily—and somehow they got onto the topic of favorite books, which they agreed was like asking a parent to choose a favorite child. "All right, then," Sarah said, "desert island books. Which ten would you take with you if you were going to be stuck on a desert island for the rest of your life?"

  "That's a terrible decision, too! Can I bring the complete works of Shakespeare?"

  "Hah!" Sarah slammed a hand on the table. "That's what I always say! I don't see why not. They don't say one story per book, they just say 'what books.'"

  "That's one, then. What else is on your list?" They talked until the diner got quieter, and then until it got quiet, before Sarah looked up guiltily at the waitstaff lingering in the hopes they'd leave.

  "We'd better go," she whispered, as if they hadn't been chatting noisily for hours. "They're giving us the stink-eye. No, I've got this," she said as Matthew reached for his wallet. "My treat, for dragging you out to the hinterlands before you even started work."

  "All right, but next time it's on me," Matt warned.

  "It's a da—deal," Sarah said, obviously changing the word halfway through.

  But it had been a date, Matthew thought. Tonight had been, at least from his perspective. Furthermore, it had been the most successful date he'd been on in years. He couldn't really consider his bear's opinion that Sarah Ekstrom was his fated mate, because—well, because his life was meant to be elsewhere. He had a deposit down on an apartment in the city. He had new coworkers he was looking forward to getting to know. He had a deep-dive project waiting for him, one on early American history that might, someday, lead him to his dream find: a lost copy of the Declaration of Independence.

  But Sarah was a wonderful, smart, gorgeous woman and he'd enjoyed the evening enormously.

  He said as much, too, when Sarah dropped him back at the library so he could collect his car. "I had a great time today. Thanks for bringing me out on my first night in town."

  Sarah, framed in the red window of her truck, grinned. "Yeah, well, don't imagine it's all going to be fun and games like this. Tomorrow I put you to work!"

  "I look forward to it." Matthew banged his fist against the back of the truck's cab in what he thought of as a universal sign for 'all right, go on, leave now,' and waved as Sarah drove off into the darkness.

  For a moment he was alone in the library's little parking lot, with only a single dim streetlight to break the quiet depth of the night. More stars than he could see in the city glittered above him, including his favorites, the great and little bears.

  Of course they're our favorites, his bear said contentedly. It's us, written in the stars.

  "Yeah, Oso?" Matthew asked aloud, if softly. "So where's Sarah, if it's written in the stars?" His gaze sought out the Virgo constellation, which was the closest one he could think of that was associated with women, but shook his head, murmuring, "She's still a very long way away, Oso. A very long way away indeed."

  His bear said, You worry too much, and Matthew, amused and chastened, drove home.

  * * *

  Waking up for the first day of a new job always brought a certain thrill of excitement to Matthew Rojas's heart, but knowing he'd be spending the day with Sarah invigorated him even more than usual. He showered and dressed, realizing he was putting more effort into his hair than usual, and tried to make fun of himself while he ate breakfast. He already knew Sarah thought he was handsome, after all, so it wasn't like he had to try to be more attractive than usual.

  On the other hand, it certainly couldn't hurt. Matthew had learned from yesterday's drive that he lived nearer to the library than he'd imagined, so he walked out through the lovely morning, whistling on his way. It surprised him how much he was looking forward to the quiet atmosp
here and a morning of close contact with the town's knockout librarian.

  The whistle died on his lips as he stepped through the library doors just before nine into a scene of absolute chaos.

  Children were everywhere, swarming like ants, if ants swarmed with plastic Viking helmets and foam swords and toy armor ranging from cardboard to tinfoil to what looked like hand-made padded armor that might do some good in an actual fight. They ran through the stacks, crawled under tables, and jumped over chairs, screaming all the way.

  A terrible roaring came from somewhere deep in the library. Lions made that sound, or maybe bears—

  Not bears, his oso said firmly.

  —or bull moose during mating season, or—

  —or a dragon, because one came bursting from the aisles at the far end of the library, its purple papier-mâché head baring enormous yellowed teeth and a soft flopping tongue that split at the end. The dragon's forearms were clawed in gold lame, and its tail lashed behind it, knocking things over indiscriminately. It stopped and roared, waving its head and arms and—now Matthew could see—its cell phone, from where the roaring came, in one paw.

  Half a dozen of the children simultaneously screamed, "KILL THE DRAGON!" and swarmed the beast, which went down in a howl of laughter as swords and toy axes and vicious little fists beat on it.

  "Mercy! Mercy! I surrender! I will threaten your books no longer! This library shall become my hoard, and I will protect it with my life!"

  "No burning books! No burning books!" the children shrieked. "That's—" The next word descended into pure gibberish, but from their united efforts, Matthew thought they must be saying 'censorship'. "You have to give us anything we want to read!"

  "The dragon of the library promises to give you anything you want to read, and to help you with the hard words, and to reach the books that are too high! But!" The dragon leaped to its feet, pointing dramatically at the squealing, giggling mass of children. "What do you have to do in exchange?"