Opaline’s Discovery
by Sonja Gunter
Could these three words articulate distinct spiritual essences to fuse together?
Bookstore owner, Opaline Lunn, facilitates a Speed Dating Event, in hopes of finding her soulmate. She meets attendee Detective Eamon Dayan, who wasn’t looking for love, but sparks fly at their first kiss.
Together they unearth Opaline’s powers which lead to the discovery that she has two sisters, and someone called The Ancient One who wants to kill them.
Unraveling a myriad of mysteries, with Opaline’s newfound ability to do spells, the soulmates must find her sisters by her twenty-fifth birthday to be able to confront the evil force and save all of them.
Preorder Coming Soon
Release Date: January 21, 2025
Genre: Paranormal (Witch) Romance
~ A Pink Satin Romance
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Excerpt
“Welcome to Speed Dating Night at Holiday Inn. I’m the new event director, Opaline Lunn. May I have your name?” The gorgeous woman standing in front of her had a beautiful oval face, framed with wayward auburn hair. Why would someone who looked like her need to be dating? Opaline wondered as she waited for the woman to speak.
“Hi—yeah—I’m Ebba. Ebba Mignon.”
“Is this your first time at a speed dating event?”
“No, I’ve attended several. Still looking for Mr. Right.” Ebba laughed.
Opaline smiled. “You might find him. I have about fifty people scheduled to participate tonight.”
“Really? Oh my.” Ebba fluffed her hair. “I didn’t know we had that many single people in Onamia.”
“I thought the same thing last night when I checked all the confirmations. Here is your packet with your name tag.”
“Thank you.”
Opaline casually watched Ebba walk into the banquet room. Mulling over the comment of how many people would be in attendance, she pressed her lips together. It had been odd. When she had checked Facebook after making a cup of tea, the confirmed attendees list had gone from zero to thirty in five minutes. Thinking she had done something wrong, she had double-checked the event she’d posted on Facebook. She had the right day, Wednesday. Nothing pointed to an error on her part.
What a newbie she had been. Her lack of knowledge of speed dating had worked against her, it seemed. With Onamia being a small city in Minnesota, and with just over eight hundred and fifty permanent residents in a given year, Ebba was correct. Fifty was an unusually large number of singles for her small town. The only thing Opaline could come up with was that her post had encouraged the residents of Mille Lacs Lake, which is only a few miles away, to sign up.
But that theory had blown up on her too. The confirmed-attendees file had shown that people were coming from as far as Little Falls, which was a good half hour drive away.
Per Mr. Horton’s email, the owner of the speed dating franchise, the norm for an event was twenty people. That number had risen to forty-seven in minutes. No, she corrected, forty-eight, including herself.
It was a sold-out event.
She shouldn’t be complaining. It was definitely a plus. All forty-seven attendees had confirmed and paid thirty dollars via PayPal or Apple Pay.
Which was awesome.
As she tallied the numbers, she realized it meant her first paycheck of seventy-five percent commission would be more than she had presumed. It was much needed in her current financial situation.
From a distance, she saw another woman coming and waited for her to approach the table. “Hello, welcome to Speed Dating Night at Holiday Inn. I’m your host for this evening’s event, Opaline Lunn. May I have your name?”
Before she was able to finish with her, more men and women arrived. Someone, or something, was telling her things were changing in her life.
Taking a deep breath, Opaline concentrated on giving each of the attendees her undivided attention. She knew the importance of receiving good reviews.
Soon the line trickled down, and three-fourths of the attendees had checked in. She took a sip of water, glanced up, and noticed a man with black hair near the end of the line. He smiled and laughed at something the woman in front of him said. Even from this distance, she saw how it had made his blue eyes sparkle in the lights.
Holy smokes! He was a looker. Why would he be here? He had to have a girlfriend.
“Will you be speed dating tonight? I’m Scott.”
Opaline blinked to focus on the man in front of her and not the one farther down the line. She looked at the check-in list for the man’s first name. “Sorry, Scott. Can I have your last name too?”
“Sure, Morre. Scott Morre.”
“Thank you. I found you. And again, I’m sorry. What was the question you asked?” She set down the pen and looked at Scott, giving him her full attention.
“I was wondering, Opaline, if you were going to be participating in the event tonight.”
She tried not to recoil at the way he had said her name. The way he had emphasized the last part of it had a creepy sexual vibration to it. Opaline swallowed hard. “I am. I look forward to our date.”
“So will I.” Scott grinned, showing off perfectly aligned white teeth.
She clamped her lips together, not trusting herself to say anything more, and gave him a packet. He took the papers, turned, and winked at the woman behind him in line.
I don’t think so, she thought.
She put a big fat N next to his name. Scott was not someone she wanted to date. The man was clearly a player.
Lifting her head, she forced a smile as the woman Scott had winked at took his place in line to stand in front of Opaline. “Hello, I’m Opaline.”
“Hi. I’m Paula Dayan, and this is my big brother, Eamon.”
“Welcome to Speed Dating Night. We have a full house.” Opaline marked off their names and then held out two packets.
Paula’s brother moved from behind her, and Opaline realized he was the man with black hair that she had noticed earlier.
“This is Eamon’s first time, but I’ve been to a couple of the events before. And oh, I’m so glad you narrowed down the age group. I was getting tired of old men asking me out,” Paula stated as she took one of the packets.
“I’m sorry that happened. I’m the new consultant for this area. The old one recently got married.”
She laughed, and Paula joined in at the corny joke. However, Eamon only smiled a little. The spark she had noticed earlier didn’t reach his eyes this time.
“Eamon, I’m sorry you didn’t find my play on words funny. In your packet, you will find a suggested list of questions to ask your dates. If you should find some of the ladies compatible, you will have the opportunity to stay for our second session.”
Still holding his packet, she set it down and tapped it with her finger, feeling strangely lightheaded. He moved to stand in front of her, forcing her to look at him. In doing so, she couldn’t miss how toned and buff his body was from the waist up. His T-shirt only emphasized what it hid.
“Let me get this straight. If I think I might like to have a real date with someone, I should ask them to stay?”
“Yes and no. In here.” Opaline paused to catch her breath. She blinked and then pushed the file toward him. “This a list of everyone who has signed up for tonight. While dating during the first session, simply put a mark by their name. If those parties are interested in another session, you will be able to speed date again.”
“Oh, Eamon, it’s no wonder you don’t have a girlfriend. I’m sorry, Opaline. I’ll make sure he gets the hang of this. I’m very confident my big bro will find someone tonight.” Paula took his packet too.
“Enjoy your dates.”
“Thank you, Opaline. Will you be speed dating tonight also?”
“I will.”
“Come on, Eamon. There is a line behind us. Let’s go get a drink.” Paula tugged on her brother’s arm.
Opaline watched Eamon’s mouth curve upward. The smile, this time, did make his eyes sparkle. As he walked away, she felt a weird sense of loneliness. His presence had given her a familiar feeling. She wanted to follow and be close to him.
Frowning at her odd thought, she shook her head to clear her mind and then greeted the next participant. Thankfully, she noted the line had thinned down, and there were only a few more people to check in before the start time at seven.
Opaline sat for a moment at the table, waiting for the last two people to arrive. Even if they didn’t, forty-five attendees wasn’t bad for her first event.
Speed dating was the hot and new alternative to the dating scene. Most of all, it wasn’t just for young people. It had a huge age range, from young to old.
Tonight, though, she had arranged a special age grouping, per Mr. Horton’s suggestion. Apparently, he had no clue that the age group of twenty-four to thirty-four were the ones too busy to go about dating the conventional way. He had indicated it would be a good way to get her feet wet.
Yeah right. What planet was he from?
Her commission of $1,050 would be a lifesaver in her bank account. She’d had to take a part-time job to make ends meet, and when she’d seen an ad for a speed-dating consultant, after talking to Mr. Horton, they had reached an agreement for her to earn seventy-five percent commission from the profits from each event she held. She had victoriously accepted.
The One Book Store, which she had inherited from her mother, was failing because of a lackluster business. Not many people had been buying paperback books or visiting bookstores over the last couple of years. With e-books and the accessibility to most everything online, bookstores were hard-pressed to make ends meet. Not to mention the big publishers’ troubles of not taking returns and not paying the authors their commissions.
Her mother, Nevaeh, had opened the store the year she had given birth to her. Through the years, the three-story brick building had been their workplace and home. The corner lot didn’t allow much parking, but the street did.
Smiling, she remembered how her mother had made the place home over the years. It took months, but her mother had built a play area in the small backyard. It had become a project to add on to it from year to year. The area had stayed the same for a couple of years with simply a swing set. Then a picnic table was added with a small garden. Together, they would plant seeds in the spring and harvest vegetables when it was time. The final phase had been the placement of a small bench and a walkway leading up to it from the rear entrance to the building.
A burst of melancholy took over. She checked her phone as a diversion from her emotions. Her grief knotted inside her.
Opaline frowned.
The walkway and bench had been the last change to the backyard. She had done it to honor her mother after she had passed away a month before Opaline’s twenty-first birthday.
The building and business, which held all the memories of the two of them, were all she had left of her mother. Now, four years later, she was on the verge of losing it all.
The business.
Her home.
And everything that meant anything to her.
Damn it.
She was going to fight tooth and nail to keep the business afloat. This part-time job would help her financially, but she had to admit that the real reason for taking on the job was to fill her lonely nights. She needed friends. The ones she did have were few and far between and were mostly customers of the bookstore. Plus, she had an alternative motive, which was to hopefully find a man.
The men who visited her store simply weren’t her type. Unfortunately, when she thought about what her type of man was, she couldn’t pinpoint any specifics.
Tall or short. Easygoing or talkative. Intellectual or funny. Handsome or plain.
There were so many possibilities that she couldn’t decide. That could be part of her problem. She didn’t know what she wanted in a man. The man she would marry wasn’t going to simply be a husband. Her husband would be her life mate or soulmate.
He was out there. She just had to find him and needed some magic to bring him to her.
Opaline snickered. Magic? Where had that come from? There was no magic in the world, only a person’s reality.
“Bless it be.”
She clasped her hand over her mouth, realizing she’d said the words aloud. Anxiously, she looked around to see if anyone had heard. She was alone.
Why had she said those words? Her mother had said them whenever something good had happened but had scolded her when she had used them.
A buzzing sound emitted from her phone, and she tapped off the alarm. She straightened her papers and shoved them into her book bag. Before standing to leave the check-in table, Opaline scanned the area for the last two participants. Not seeing them, she made her way to the bathroom to freshen up before her own speed dates.
It was empty when she entered. She sighed. Her nerves were on edge. As she looked at her reflection, the first thing she saw was her mother’s favorite necklace. It was an odd-shaped moonstone with silver accents locking it in place. Her mom had worn it every day after she had gotten sick, saying it gave her strength. Since her mother had passed away, she had begun to wear the moonstone, hoping it would give her strength too.
She thought about touching up the light purple eye shadow but saw it still looked great, and so did her lipstick. Her short white-blonde hair had, for once, stayed curled and framed her face. Turning a little to the right, she wondered if any of the men attending tonight would notice her teal-green-colored blouse, or how the soft yellow tank underneath accented it. Taking a step back, she liked how her low-rider jeans showed off her assets too.
Pleased with how she looked, Opaline left the bathroom. It was time to impress Mr. Right, whoever he was.