My Orc in Uniform (Eastshore Isle #6)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Marissa

Staff meetings are the literal worst.

I don’t care if there are donuts involved, none of us want to be there. This could have been an email! But nooooo , we all have to gather in the school library and listen to the eighth-grade science teacher ask too many questions about shit she should have talked to HR about.

Or better yet, emailed.

I refrained from rolling my eyes and bit into my donut. Stale. Should’ve guessed. Just like this meeting.

I shot a side-eye to my work bestie, Joleen. She was the school nurse and also taught all the health classes, but her office was right next to my desk in the main office, so we’d become pretty good at snarking back and forth. Sometimes even without words .

Sure enough, she sent me A Look, which was almost as good as an eye roll. I knew she was feeling the same thing I was, which made it better somehow.

And then…

And then, as the principal droned on about testing protocols, the library door opened.

I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t already been facing that way, because he was certainly quiet. But once I did notice, I couldn’t seem to look away.

And I wasn’t the only one looking.

One of the problems with working in a small-town school system is that a) we all know one another, and b) like ninety percent of us are female. So when a guy joins the team, everyone sort of…notices. Sexist, I know, because, as someone who’s worked in education for almost two decades, and someone with a teenage son, having more male teachers and role models would be ideal.

Point is, even if the newcomer were a scrawny, balding, elderly civics teacher, we’d notices him.

But he wasn’t.

Simbel was…the opposite of that.

He’d joined the staff only recently, at the beginning of the spring semester, as the school’s resource officer. Rumor had it that our mayor, who was an old friend of his, had talked him and his brother into quitting the NYPD and moving down here. Simbel had joined the Eastshore police force and been assigned here to Eastshore Upper School for his first year .

I say rumor had it because, despite the fact he was this month’s hottest new gossip topic, I didn’t know anyone who had actually gotten close enough to him to ask.

Joleen had noticed him, and now turned a wide-eyed, knowing smirk my way. I screwed up my lips, the closest I could come to sticking out my tongue without the eagle-eyed principal, Dr. Johnson, noticing.

Of course, she noticed Simbel’s late arrival.

“Good afternoon, Officer,” she said in that tone that managed to be both snide and professional.

“Hi everyone.” He gave a little wave with a claw-tipped, green hand. “Sorry I’m late.”

Because did I fail to mention he was an orc?

A seven-and-a-half-foot-tall, green skinned, completely jacked —as my son would say—orc, complete with tusks and claws and a killer smile.

Before the principal could answer, the response came from a totally different, and not completely unexpected, direction. “Oh, that’s perfectly okay, Simbel,” simpered Kelly Iverson, our PE teacher and champion cheer coach. “Come stand next to me, I’ll fill you in on what you’ve missed.”

I have to admit, I liked his sheepish little grin as he crossed behind the bookshelves to move beside Kelly. I did not like the way she latched onto his arm and stretched up on her toes to murmur into his ear.

I mean, the charitable part of me admitted she was likely bringing him up to speed on the fascinating world of testing protocols, but the petty part of me acknowledged she was 110% flirting.

If you were ever the quiet girl in high school, the one with glasses and braces and too-frizzy hair who liked to read, then I’m sure you understand the visceral reaction I still have to cheerleaders.

Look, Kelly is a perfectly nice person, devoted to her students, maybe a little enthusiastic when it comes to cheer, but everyone has their thing, right?

Well, except me. I don’t have a thing . I have work and motherhood and books. Are books a thing ? Damn, I dunno how other moms my age—late thirties, I’m not getting more specific than that—manage actual hobbies.

Anyhow, point is, Kelly is an acceptable human, and the only reason I was currently sneering at her—internally, so no one besides Joleen would ever guess—was just me being petty.

Because if Simbel was going to start paying attention to any of the ladies here at the school, it would absolutely be Kelly. She’s perky, enthusiastic, confident as hell, athletic, has great hair… et cetera . Not that I didn’t think Simbel should start paying attention to her. I just wish the universe didn’t always hand her exactly what she wanted, ya know?

Dr. Johnson cleared her throat, and I swallowed down my sigh to focus on testing protocols again. Huzzah.

The damn meeting took another forty-five minutes, and even donuts couldn’t make that fun, so I was in a foul mood when I made it back to the front office .

How much of that’s because of Kelly ? Very little, I lied to myself.

I threw myself down in my rolling chair behind the main desk. This was my domain, and honestly, I usually loved it. I loved how different the tasks were each day, and how I had to switch between parent emails, student records, bus schedules, student issues, and a million other tasks minute-to-minute. My job was never boring, I’ll give you that.

Maybe my job was my thing ?

Gah, how depressing. Next, I’d take up jigsaw puzzles and NPR radio.

I logged into my computer to find two emails from the district and three from parents. I was bent over my keyboard when Joleen returned from the library.

“Probably a good thing you didn’t stick around,” she teased, leaning over my desk to smirk. “You-know-who got all up in his business.”

I groaned theatrically and leaned back in my chair. “Even worse than what I saw? You’re kidding.” I mean, don’t judge, but gossip is what gets me through some days.

“Oh, honey, I’m far from kidding. She was all over him, touching him every chance she got.” Joleen straightened and mimed putting her arm around a large body, then slid her hand over the pretend man’s pecs, squeezing his biceps. She put on a squeaky voice. “ Oh, you’re so strong, where do you work out? Tee-hee. I wish Eastshore had a real gym, don’t you? Tee-hee. Wanna come work out with me? Tee-hee. ”

I was shaking my head at her impression. “What are the odds on if it works? I’ll bet he falls for it.”

“No bet,” Joleen snorted. “He’s a dude, isn’t he?”

I shrugged. “Maybe orcs aren’t as clueless as human men? Just run by their dicks?”

“Oh, that reminds me!” Joleen was already on her way to her office but poked her head back out to offer the invitation. “Maggie wanted me to invite you to dinner Friday night.”

I brightened because Joleen’s wife was one of the best cooks I knew. But then, my shoulders fell. “I would love that, you know it.”

“We’re going to turn you to the dark side yet. I told you there are more lesbians on Eastshore than you know.”

Chuckling, I shook my head. It was something we’d joked about over the last years; my experience with Patrick’s father, and all the guys I’d dated since then, had taught me that dudes were in it for their own pleasure, and expected me to be too. I had enough guy drama in my life with one teenage son, thank you very much. I didn’t need to be catering to someone else who couldn’t be bothered to cater to me in return.

Too bad I just wasn’t attracted to women.

I mean, you could date a lady for companionship, yeah? You don’t have to actually… do anything.

But…

“The idea has merit,” I told her, “but I’m not interested in dating anyone right now. Maybe in a few years, when I get Patrick off to college, I could think about it. ”

“Lady, you’re going to be forty in a few years! Forty isn’t old!” Joleen waggled a finger at me. “You’re nowhere near dead, and you’re certainly too young to be acting like the dried-up husk of a woman you’re pretending to be. Are you eating dinner at four p.m. and sticking Werther’s candies in your purse? Get out and live a little, for goodness’ sakes! Maggie’s making pot pie.”

This time, I groaned out loud. Maggie’s pie crust was to die for. “I want to, Jo, but the basketball game is Friday.”

“So? You’re not on duty, are you?”

Since I wasn’t a teacher, I didn’t have extracurricular duties like chaperoning basketball games…but my son didn’t know that. “I have to be there to keep an eye on Patrick.”

“Ah.”

That was all she said: Ah .

Joleen had been my friend for long enough that she saw my sweet little boy turn into a hormonal preteen and now a surly teenager who was, despite everything I could do, falling in with the wrong crowd.

Friday’s basketball game would be the perfect time for him and his friend Ethan to meet up with Jaxon and the others and get into some trouble. Luckily, it wasn’t big trouble yet, but I could see the writing on the wall.

Just like the letters someone had spray-painted on the bricks down by the wharf. Patrick swore up and down it was Jaxon and his friends, not him and Ethan, and I had to believe him, because he was my kiddo…but I was terrified he was involved with all these cases of petty vandalism, and what it could lead to .

Joleen could obviously read my thoughts because she winced. “Maggie and I could bring Angel and Lilly to the game and hang out with you.” Her daughters were fourteen and twelve. “So it could be a fun time instead of boring?”

Oh man, she was the best. “Thanks, Jo,” I offered with a grateful smile. “But you shouldn’t have to give up Maggie’s pot pie for me.”

“I get enough of Maggie’s pie,” she shot back, waggling her eyebrows enough for me to catch the raunchy joke.

I was giggling when the office doors opened, and Kelly swanned in.

“Don’t you just love staff meetings at the end of the day?” she asked—rhetorically, I assumed, because who the fuck answered yes to that?—as she breezed over to her box. “I’m heading to the gym for practice.”

Joleen had popped back into her office, leaving me alone with Kelly. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I did. “Oh? Is Simbel going to be joining you?”

The PE teacher froze, then pulled her mail from her box and turned to me with an icy smile. “He will . He said that he was into fitness, but I haven’t told him when he can come work out with me yet.”

She was that confident? So sure that she could just tell him when he was allowed to spend time with her, and boom—he would?

I forced a smile, pretending great interest in my computer screen. “That’s great. I’ll bet the two of you are perfect for each other. ”

I almost meant the words.

“We are .” Kelly bounced her way to the front desk again so she was once more in my line of vision as I bent over my computer. “He’s so hot, isn’t he? I mean, who would’ve thought an orc could be that hot? They’re basically monsters, yeah? But he’s built like the man of any girl’s dreams, and he’s into me.” She flipped her blonde ponytail. “A girl can tell these things, you know.”

A girl .

I’d been the one to process Kelly’s new-hire paperwork. I knew exactly how old she was, and she wasn’t too much younger than me. A few years. So why did I feel like an old maid next to her?

Probably because of all the bouncing and bobbing and makeup.

I couldn’t be bothered to manage anything more than a messy bun and some mascara most days. Is that why I felt like—what did Jo call it? A dried-up husk of a woman? Hell, even if I was considering giving up on men entirely, should I be putting more effort into my appearance?

Oh shit, Kelly was still grinning down at me…the same way a shark might grin when it saw dinner. So I plastered on another fake smile and nodded. “Yep, sounds like you’re right.”

“He’s going to ask me out,” she stated matter-of-factly. “I was thinking about saying no, just to make him work a little harder, but…”

“If you’re interested in him, say yes,” I said a little too sharply. She blinked, but I didn’t back down. “Don’t play with him. ”

She pshawed —legit pshawed —and rolled her eyes. “It’s just a game, Rissa. Everyone does it,” she announced as she flounced out.

I stared after her. Did everyone play games like that? It seemed silly to me, but maybe that’s why I was a dried-up husk of a woman.

Sighing, I reached for my mouse once more—three more emails to go before I could log out for the day—when the door opened again.

And Simbel walked in.

Kelly was right: He was the hottest man I’d seen in a long, long time. You know how uniforms can make a normal guy seem hotter? Well, just imagine what happens when the guy is already a four-alarm-fire kind of hot, and then add a cop’s uniform on top of that.

Yes please .

I reached for my insulated water bottle to hide the fact I was staring, and of course I fumbled.