Beneath the Skin: de La Vega Cats, Book 3 Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.