“No. try it like this, Mrs. Riffler.” Susan glanced wildly at the clock, then pasted on a calm, reassuring smile for her elderly customer. “The tension of the yarn is important. Just try it once more.”

“I swear it never seems to work for me like it does for you. Maybe if you’d do this little part for me…”

Susan ran a distracted hand through her thick, dark hair, but her smile never faltered. “Of course.”

It was past noon, and Griff was expecting her. He’d gone to fetch Tiger from his ex-wife for the weekend, and the three of them had a thousand things planned. She’d only stopped by the store to do an hour of bookkeeping-and found her assistant, Lanna, trying to keep the shop open even though she was running a temperature of 101 degrees. Susan sent Lanna home. It didn’t matter; the shop always closed at noon on Saturdays…except that Mrs. Riffler had never appreciated the significance of closing time.

Sunlight filtered in on the unicorn display in the front window. Susan had displayed images of the mythical creature in crewel, in wood and in pastels, all on easels designed to catch the customer’s eye. Beneath the three frames were whimsically jacketed books of myths and monster legends and fairy tales.

Susan had always had a strong love of books; she’d collected more books than dolls as a child and had worked in bookstores from the age of sixteen. Her father’s hobby was trading and swapping old editions which he’d passed on to her for her shop. During her last year in college, an uncle on her mother’s side had died and left her an unexpected inheritance. It was enough for a down payment on a corner building that contained a small apartment above a store, very close to the university. Up to that point, her dream of owning a bookstore had always been wishful thinking.

Reality was far different from the dream. Who would have thought one small bookshop could have had such an enormous overhead? Thank God for the bank’s friendly loan officer.