The Bear's Bartender (Steamy Shifters #8)

She blew up her old life on a Thursday. By Friday she was his.

Lia Reyes found out her boyfriend was cheating on a Thursday morning.By Thursday afternoon she’d quit her job, sublet her apartment, and texted him a photo of his things in a garbage bag on the sidewalk.

By Friday she’s in Harlow—because her college friend lives here, because her car stopped here, because sometimes you just pick a direction and go.

The bar on Main Street has a help wanted sign in the window. The man behind the bar is Wes Maddox—six-foot-four, shoulders like a barn door, brown bear shifter—and the second Lia walks in and asks about the job, something in him goes completely still.

He hires her in thirty seconds. He spends the rest of the day trying to remember how to form a sentence.

Wes has owned The Maddox for twelve years.He is not a man who gets flustered. He is extremely flustered.Lia is funny and sharp and still running a little hot from the wreckage of her old life, and she is his mate, and every time she laughs at something behind the bar he has to grip the counter to stay on his side of it.

When she says offhand that she’s done wasting time—that she wants kids, wants someone who actually shows up, wants a life that feels like something—he goes so still that she asks if he’s okay.

He is not okay. He is perfect. He just needs a minute.