by Lauren Dane
Kendra nodded and moved between him and the door. His mother shrugged and gave him a little push toward the stairs. “So, you’ll nap and eat before you go back out. Go on up, the bed is made.”
With a barely restrained sigh, he got up and trudged past his brothers, neither of whom seemed to have a damned bit of control over their wives.
Renee put a hand to his cheek, and he paused to let her fuss a little before he moved up the stairs and toward his old room to take a nap like a cub for God’s sake. He hid a smile as he gave one last look at them before the stairs curved out of sight. If anyone outside the family ever found out what a total marshmallow he was for the women in his life, his cred would be shot to shit.
Chapter Three
Mia looked up from the counter at the sound of the chimes. Imogene de La Vega came in. Mia only knew this was the former alpha female because she’d long admired the woman’s sense of style when they’d attended the very few jamboree events her parents had allowed over the years.
Imogene wasn’t the type of female one forgot.
She shot a quick look to the landing where her father was explaining the difference between two bottles of Malbec to a customer before she headed to intercept Imogene. Hopefully she could handle this before anyone even noticed.
“I’m looking for Mia Porter.” The expression Imogene wore told Mia the woman knew exactly who she was speaking with.
“That’s me.”
Imogene looked her up and down and nodded once. “I’m pleased to meet you.” She held out a hand and Mia took it automatically. She didn’t offer her throat or any other submissive behavior.
“I’m Imogene de La Vega, and I wanted to come and thank you in person for saving my son’s life. I apologize that it took me three days to get here.”
Surprised by the visit, Mia nodded. “I imagine your schedule is fairly busy. You’re welcome. I did what anyone else would have. Is he all right?”
“As you might imagine, or maybe not since you don’t know him very well, but he got some sleep that night he was shot and then got right back to the search for those who shot him. He’s hard to keep down. Even when he was a baby he just never stopped in that gruff, taciturn way he has.” Imogene paused to look Mia over carefully and it made her a tad defensive.
“Did he find them?”
Imogene shook her head. “Not yet. But my children are steadfast. Gibson won’t give up until he’s successful. People like those who harmed him can’t understand that. Would you have some time? Perhaps to get some coffee across the way?” She indicated the tiny Cuban coffee stand on the corner.
“Really, it’s not necessary.” She lowered her voice. “My grandmother will be by later. It would be better if you know”—she paused, trying to find the politest way to put it—“you weren’t here.”
“It’s been over fifty years. What happened was wrong, but it looks to me like she got a much better deal. She built all this with your grandfather. I think it’s silly to hold a grudge this long. Don’t you?”
Mia knew she whipped her head a little, but her grandmother had suffered a lifetime’s worth of sorrow at the hands of the de La Vega family and that wasn’t silly. It was fucked up beyond measure, and it had turned her grandmother into a stone-cold bitch who loved her family fiercely.
“Of course she got the better deal. As for it being silly? She was an eighteen-year-old girl who within just a few months of her life fell in love, got pregnant, got engaged to the man who fathered her baby…and then she lost the baby, her fiancé left her at the altar and ran off with another woman. And then when he got back, he spent his time spreading the most vicious of gossip about her. She lost everything. Her friends felt that they had to choose the side of the jamboree leadership. They wouldn’t speak to her at all. Her family lost everything—their business and their home. Because they couldn’t get supplies their customers stopped working with them. They were nearly destitute when she met my grandfather.”
Fate of course, her grandmother insisted and dared anyone to argue otherwise. Lettie loved Seamus Porter with the same intensity she showed for everything else. She said those two years had hardened her enough to make a success out of her life and build a family. Even today her grandmother lived the hell out of every moment.
Seamus Porter was a ham-fisted Irishman who also happened to be a jaguar shifter. He’d been in Boston visiting some cousins when he’d bumped into Lettie on the street outside a bookstore.
He married her four months later and, from that moment he’d bumped into her, had loved her like she was precious. In their fifty years together they’d had four children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. There was no doubt Lettie got the better deal.
And yet, it was all bound up with what her entire family had suffered. The tragedy had shaped her and it wasn’t always pretty.
“So no, no I don’t think what she endured was silly. What I think is ridiculous is that you’d have the audacity to come in here and call my family silly for being angry over something like that. So, nice to meet you and all but you should go.”
Imogene actually smiled, and Mia knew why she made a powerful leader who even her family admitted ran the jamboree well. Her charisma was large and vibrant. It was impossible not to respond to the blast of her energy. If Mia hadn’t been there in the shop, surrounded by her family, the people she was protecting, it would have been impossible not to look down faster. But she still did after a tense moment.
Imogene released her immediately. “I like a girl who defends her family. It was a stupid turn of phrase. I apologize. What I meant is, I’d like to see if we can deal with this and put it away. It’s been a long time. What happened to your grandmother and her family was wrong. It’d be my pleasure to have you all be an active part of our jamboree once again.”
She pulled a business card from her bag and handed it to Mia. “Please call me for lunch. I’d like to talk with you about your future.” She turned and left, head held high.
It was impossible not to admire that sort of confidence.
“Care to tell me why Imogene de La Vega was just here?” Drew, her younger brother, asked as he came into the shop from the back.
“Were you hiding?” She laughed.
“She’s scary. But I wasn’t hiding, I was letting you handle it. So why was she here?”
“I told you I dug some bullets out of someone.” She shrugged.
“What? I thought you were full of shit. You dug bullets out of someone in Joe’s apartment? He’s going to pop a vein.”
“You really thought I was making that up just to mess with you? As for Joe, he’s not going to pop anything. Unless it’s because once you open your mouth about the bullet thing, it’ll only be fair to let him know it was you who put the crack in his windshield when you borrowed his car.” Joe was away for a month, which was good or he’d have smelled the blood she took so much care to clean up after Gibson had left that night.
“You’re diabolical.” He knew she didn’t make threats lightly, and he sighed, flipping her off as he scratched his nose.
She snorted. “You’re an amateur. Thank God you’re so pretty.” Mia grabbed the stack of cards she’d made for the weekly staff recommendations and began to put them throughout the store.
“It was a good idea.” He shrugged. “The cards and the tasting nights. Business is up. And I know they love having you here again. You should stay. What do you have out there in LA anyway?”
That was a good question. “I have to figure this all out. I can’t work here. They can’t afford it.” Drew was the manager at the shop. Her parents ran the place. They didn’t have the kind of profits to bring her on full time.
“You can find a job. You can do everything and better than everyone else, so what’s the real issue? Do you hate us?” He teased but she realized he might not have been entirely convinced that wasn’t the case.
“I love you all. It wasn’t a difficult thing to come back here.” She paused, watching h
is posture loosen a little. “I’m thinking of going back to school to finish my degree.” She’d left UCLA to join the air force after several years of wandering. It had made her feel special, like she was doing something. Gave her the chance to use her love of flying those big, heavy supply runs.
“Why not fly? You have a license. You’re an amazing pilot.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever recover my strength. I can’t pin my hopes on that. Anyway, an engineering degree is totally useful. I can pay for part of it with my GI Bill money.”
“Sure. Except you don’t want an engineering degree or you’d have one already.”
She frowned as she placed the cards. It was silly to not be practical.
“What is it you want to do? You have this time to figure it out, you know? Take this shitty thing life gave you and make it into a plus. If anyone can do it, you can.”
“I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to rock climb.”
“And so you say you can’t be a pilot now, though I don’t believe it. You can’t fly a giant cargo plane anymore. But that doesn’t mean you can’t fly other aircraft. You can fly anything. You’re one of those people who just does it all well. So do it and stop wallowing. I’ve never seen you wallow, it’s ugly on you.”
She sniffed her annoyance but didn’t argue. In truth she did really need to figure out a direction and go with it.
Being insightful, he got it and backed off a little. “So did you get, like, the jaguar medal of bravery for this bullet digging out? Is that why she came to visit? Add it to the chest full of stuff you’ve got already?”
“It was her son I saved. They used silver on him. Shot him just feet away from where I was. She came by to thank me personally. Said she wanted us back. That they wanted to have us be involved in the jamboree again.”
Drew’s brows rose. He was dating a girl from a family who was far more involved in jamboree events, so as a consequence, he went as well and found he enjoyed having that sense of community with the rest of the cats in their area. He’d been trying to talk their father into going, and it was currently a sore spot between them.
“I appreciate the thank-you and all, but I didn’t do it for that. I did it because to do anything else would have been wrong.”
“Of course you did. It’s who you are. Anyway, so which son was it? One of the good, single ones or one of the dick losers?”
She laughed and socked his arm. “Gibson. Didn’t seem like much of a dick, or a loser. Though he was an alpha through and through, so dick is there in his DNA anyway.”
He grinned. “The Bringer. Stacy’s brother Dario is one of Gibson’s guys. Thinks pretty highly of him. What are you going to do? About the visit and what she said?”
“I’ll talk to Mom about it later today.”
“How’s physical therapy going?”
She harnessed her snarl of annoyance. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“And you don’t like being asked every day, but I don’t like that you pretend getting attacked was nothing big. You were victimized, Mia, and I don’t think you should feel any shame for being affected by it. You don’t have to be perfect all the time.”
“Oh look, a customer.” She moved past her brother, ignoring his comments, and headed to the couple who’d just come in. She didn’t want to talk about it. She was sick of thinking about it.
Was it too much to just want to get back to normal?
She took in the couple who’d entered the shop. Cats. Interesting, but not totally unusual. A long time had passed since her grandmother’s days, and many of the jaguars they knew shopped there. But these two she’d never seen before.
Something wasn’t right. It was more than them not being familiar. It was the way they held themselves. She flashed back to the faces of two men who’d been wearing a similar expression as they’d walked into a crowded marketplace and set off a suicide bomb. She’d been behind a low wall. It was what had saved her life. Two of her escort had not been so lucky.
Shit. Shit.
It was as if time slowed. The man shoved his coat back and pulled out a weapon, and her training simply took over.
“Weapon!” she shouted as she sprang into action.
His bones gave way when she grabbed his wrist and twisted to make him drop the gun. Mia landed on his chest, knees at his throat, a snarl on her lips. The woman had run out the door.
“Who the hell are you?” she shouted over the ringing in her ears. Her thigh oozed blood, but the flow was already slowing. No silver then. At least there was that.
The male hardened his mouth into a grim line, his face pale.
“Do you think I’d hesitate to hurt you again to get an answer? I’m not a human, I’ll cut you just to watch you bleed.” To underline her point, she popped him one and let the crunch of a broken nose assuage her rage a little.
But he remained close-mouthed until Drew got to them and hit him so hard it knocked him out. “Stop wasting time.” He frowned at her.
She socked him in the gut. “I was questioning him!”
“You’re bleeding. Again. Let’s deal with that first and then we can question him.”
Her father arrived, first aid kit in his hands.
“What the hell is going on? Your mother wants to call 911.”
“No! Let’s see what the damage is first.”
Her father’s face was pale as he dealt with the wound in her thigh, and she tried very hard not to wince. “Clean through. At least we’ve got that much.” He packed it, enough to hold until the wound began to close on its own.
“No silver, which seems dumb. Why Gibson and not me?”
Drew narrowed his gaze. “You think this is connected?”
“What are you two talking about?” Her father’s tone was taut. He was on the verge of losing his temper in a big way.
“How could it not be? Doesn’t it seem like far too great a coincidence? Two shootings in the span of a week?” She quickly explained the situation to her father. Being as brief and non-scary as she could.
“Why does it not surprise me that de La Vegas are involved? It would be very nice indeed not to have to deal with people trying to hurt you. Also, your knowledge of silver versus non-silver ammunition does not fill me with confidence over your well-being.”
“No kidding, Dad.” Did he think she wanted this? Her life before this was not filled with danger and silver bullets. “These were new pants. Jerk.”
She managed to stand and her father moved her straight to a nearby chair and his look dared her to argue.
“Stay still for God’s sake! Let your body take care of it.”
“Should we call the cops?” Drew stood after binding the still-unconscious man’s hands.
“We can’t.” She knew what she needed to do, which didn’t really make it any easier. “Take care of your customer, Dad. I’ll deal with this. Drew, put him in the broom closet after you hogtie him.”
Thank heavens the customer was a long-time one and a cat as well. Made her call a little easier when she didn’t have to worry about hiding what had happened or why she wasn’t bringing in the police.
She got voicemail that was as gruff as the man himself.
“This is Mia Porter. Two cats entered my family’s shop and one of them shot me. We have him here, bound and locked in a closet. The other, a female, got away.” She hung up and turned back to the shop where her father returned from letting their customer out the side way.
She busied herself by cleaning up the mess until her father bodily put her in a seat.
“For heaven’s sake, Mia! Sit down and rest. Since we’re alone, you can tell me what’s going on. The full story because I know what you told me was just a sliver of the whole thing. Is this related to what happened to you in Los Angeles as well?”
“I don’t think so.” She sighed and told him about helping Gibson three nights before.
His brows were high and he shook his head. “My darling girl, you never do anything halfway, do you?” He ga
ve her an affectionate, slightly befuddled hug.
“Go big or go home, I guess. Anyway, I called Gibson, so hopefully he’ll get back to me soon. I don’t want to keep a hostage all day long. Even if it would be fun to break and re-break his nose over and over.”
“You used to wear dresses and play with dolls. I preferred that.” Her father frowned.
“Can’t be seven forever.” Her phone buzzed in her back pocket, freeing her from having the same old conversation.
“Are you all right?”
It was Gibson. He had a very growly voice. She liked it. Her cat responded immediately, and she tamped it down as well as she could under the circumstances and hoped fervently that her father didn’t notice.
“Interestingly enough, not the first time I’ve been shot. Anyway, I’ll be healed by tomorrow.”
“Hmm. I’m across town but we’ll be there as soon as we can. You didn’t call the authorities?”
“Only the furry one who just told me he was on his way.”
He paused, clearing his throat. “So you recognize my authority?”
She knew she blushed but she couldn’t help it. “Enough to call you when a jaguar comes into my family’s store and shoots me.”
He laughed then. “Sit tight. You have him confined in some way?”
“Yes. He’s in a closet. My brother hogtied him. Drew was an Eagle Scout so he’s awesome with the knots. Plus he knows how to keep a shifter bound. Extra points I suppose.”
“Hold tight. Shoot him if he moves. Don’t let him get away.”
“I broke his nose already. I’m thinking he gets that I’ll mess him up if he tries anything else fishy.”
“Yes, okay. On the way.” He hung up.
She brushed a hand down her leg and winced when she came upon the bandage. A good reminder. This wasn’t the senior dance for God’s sake.
She turned back to her father and brother. “The Bringer is on the way.”
Chapter Four
He didn’t bustle in. Didn’t barge or storm. No, Gibson de La Vega seemed to melt into the space. How he did that and still managed to be a total badass she had no idea. But it made her a little dizzy. He moved like a male on a mission, his gaze taking in every corner, every place anyone could be standing or hiding.
