Page 1 of Charming the Orc's Mate

CHAPTER ONE

CARISSA

The doors were supposed to be open.

A damp wind whipped down River Street, setting the hanging flower baskets swaying. The perpetual mist from the falls beaded on my windshield, blurring the view of the colorful Victorian and brick buildings that lined downtown. Tourist trap architecture at its finest.

I parked alongside Spines & Spirits and eyed the dash clock—eight forty-five A.M. sharp. The darkened windows of the bookstore stared back at me like a rebuke.

Quick clicks on my phone pulled up the employee schedule I’d updated remotely last week, though I already knew what it would say. Molly Verhoeven, opening shift, 8:30 AM. The number of available names had dwindled to just two after the fourth resignation email hit my inbox.

Speaking of resignations...

I shoved the snide little thought away. Between jobs. That’s what I was calling it. Sounded better than “rage-quit after that prick Johnson took credit for my risk mitigation strategy.” My color-coded five-year plan had crumbled in a fifteen-minuteZoom call, and didn’t even have the good grace to do so before I missed the funeral.

I snatched up my purse and braved the misty morning air before the fresh wave of grief could crash over me. An aneurysm, the doctors said. Nothing anyone could predict or prevent. Just a person-shaped hole where there were jokes and laughs and lavender tea.

The key stuck in the ancient lock, and I rattled it with increasing frustration as my heel slipped on the wet sidewalk.

The door finally gave with a protesting creak, and the musty smell of old books hit me like a punch as I stepped inside. For a moment, I was eleven again, hiding in the stacks and trying to forget Mom and Dad’s muffled arguments.

A different sort of chaos spread out before me. The building’s open two-story layout should have created an airy, welcoming space. Instead, books teetered in precarious towers on every surface—blocking the path to the wine bar that dominated one wall, cramming the reading nooks, even threatening to topple over the railing of the upper level.

Great-aunt Mags’s organizational system apparently involved throwing paper at random surfaces and hoping for the best. The register drawer hung partially open, jammed with receipts like some rodent had made a nest inside. Papers covered every inch of the checkout counter, spilling onto the nearby community events board where a calendar showed more crossouts than actual appointments before someone stopped updating it altogether.

“For fuck’s sake.” I slammed my purse down harder than necessary. The tower of books swayed ominously.

By 9:25, I’d managed to wrangle most of the receipts into some semblance of order. The drawer still wouldn’t fully close and neither of my remaining employees deigned to answer their phones, but those were problems for later. Right now, Ineeded caffeine. And maybe a flamethrower for this hellscape of disorganization.

The bell above the door chimed. I looked up, half-expecting to see Aunt Mags’s ghost come to haunt me for daring to reorganize her system of controlled chaos.

Instead, I found myself face-to-face with a blast from the past in sensible shoes and a cardigan that had seen better days.

“Little Carrie Morton!” Beverly Morris exclaimed, her eyes crinkling with delight.

“It’s Carissa,” I corrected automatically.

No one called me Carrie anymore—except Dad, in those awkward birthday phone calls that got shorter every year. I’d put my foot down about the nickname that last summer in Silvermist Falls, right after Mom won primary custody. New life, new name. The eleven-year-old who hid in these stacks while her parents fought wasn’t me anymore.

Beverly barreled on as if I hadn’t spoken. “My, how you’ve grown. I hardly recognized you without a book under your nose! Still as skinny as a rail, though. Mags always said we needed to fatten you up.”

I forced a tight smile. “What can I help you with, Mrs. Morris?”

“Oh, just Beverly, dear. We’re practically family after all those summers.” She waved a hand airily. “And since I’m here anyway, I was hoping to check on my book club order. The girls are so looking forward to our summer reading list.”

I blinked. “Book club?”

“Why yes, dear. Surely Mags mentioned it? We’ve been meeting here every other Friday for, oh, must be going on fifteen years now.” She settled into one of the armchairs like a queen holding court, radiating calm expectation. “In fact, we have quite a busy schedule planned for the next few months. I do hope you’ll be keeping the store open?”

The implication was clear. Close the store, and I’d be disappointing not just Beverly, but an entire cadre of Silvermist’s most formidable book lovers.

My temples throbbed. I should be in Seattle right now, interviewing for new positions, not dealing with my dead aunt’s book club drama. And where was Dad? Too busy with his new family to deal with his sister’s mess. Which left me, the responsible one. Always the responsible one.

My calendar stretched emptily ahead, mocking me with a future full of job searching and inevitably baking three dozen perfectly uniform snickerdoodles at two in the morning. At least in Seattle I had my own kitchen. Here I was stuck in Aunt Mags’s cottage with its temperamental 1950s oven and drawers full of mismatched measuring spoons.

“I suppose we can keep the existing schedule for now.” The words tasted like defeat. “Let me just... check on that order for you.”

“No rush, dear. Do you remember how you used to help Mags shelve books? Such a precise little thing, even then. Everything had to be perfectly aligned.”

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