Page 1 of How To Woo A Warrior Orc

CHAPTER ONE

PIPER

The roses are about to be in bloom.

I stare at them, a muscle in my eye twitching, knowing I should be pleased. The roses that climb over the sign proclaiming The Pixie’s Perch, and are currently positively littered with buds, are beautiful.

They smell amazing.

My eye twitches again, and I rub my palm across my face, only succeeding in smearing flour all over my nose.

“What’s wrong?” a deep, familiar voice murmurs from behind me, and I nearly jump out of my skin.

I should be used to Ga’Rek, the orc I hired to assist with my increasingly absurd baking load.

I should be pleased about the last flush of roses.

I should be both of those things, and I am very much not.

“They look like summer,” I finally admit, burying my face in my hands. “The fall festival is in one week, and it’s going to look like summer.”

Velvet nuzzles her soft nose against my hip, my deer familiar clearly unhappy that I’m unhappy—which just makes me feel worse.

“It’s going to look like magic. Like everything else you do,” Ga’Rek tells me. His big hand grazes against the small of my back, and a delicious shiver goes through me at the thought that he’s just touching me to comfort me.

Until I realize he’s tugging at my apron strings, which drag on the cobblestones behind me, barely visible in the early morning gloam. It’s darker than it has been at this time for months, and usually that would thrill me.

Autumn is by far my favorite of all the seasons. My mother used to say that the fairies painted the leaves in crimson and burnt umber while we slept. The flush of fall color on foliage reminds me of her, and those happy mornings we spent baking while she told me stories of the fair folk and taught me long-held secrets of kitchen witchery.

His fingers brush against my back again as he ties my apron on for me, surprisingly adept considering how large they are.

“Thank you,” I murmur, slightly off balance from his proximity.

I half-turn, the rag I’ve planned to use to clean the windows swinging uselessly in my hands.

“Couldn’t have the finest pastry chef in all the region tripping and falling on her apron ribbons,” he tells me in a low rumble.

Ga’Rek’s smile transforms his typical orc-ish resting glower to an expression of pure joy, and, as it always does, elicits a smile of my own in response.

His hand brushes across my hip as he finishes tying the strings.

I shiver in response, goosebumps rising across my bare arms.

No, not in response—more likely from the chill pre-dawn breeze that signals the true demise of summer and beginningof fall. Soon, green will be replaced on the leaves all around us as they melt into fiery oranges and reds before the boughs lose them with a great shake and go to sleep for winter.

Not that the budding roses dripping dramatically over the front of my pastry shop received the autumnal notice.

Tears of frustration sting my eyes, and I sniff once, outraged by my own irrational outrage. Two outrages for the price of one.

“Do not cry, kal’aki ne,” Ga’Rek murmurs, so low I nearly miss the words. “We will make it right.”

I rub the back of my hand across one eye. I don’t know what the name he keeps calling me means, and I’m half afraid to ask.

Probably something like, ‘weak worm’ or ‘possible appetizer’ or ‘tiny snack’ or ‘woman who cries over roses for no damned good reason.’

Could be any of those things.

I open my mouth to ask.

---