"I spoke with your Tío Eddy before coming here," Abuela interrupted, crossing her arms. "Since you're so busy—" Her lips twisted, as if she'd bitten into something sour. "—we decided to find you a mate."
"You did what? Again?" Maggie stared at her grandmother.
Unlike some of her relatives, her Uncle Eddy, who was the titular head of the Ornelas clan, had never before tried to interfere in her life.
Abuela gave her a smug smile. "Yes, and guess who we found for you?"
"He's the perfect match too!" Mamá chirped, her striking amber eyes sparkling.
"I—uh—" Shock drove all rational thought out of Maggie's brain, replacing it with a buzz of static and white snow, like a broken TV.
"It's Aarón Lopez," Mama said, smiling broadly. "Can you imagine? He's so rich and handsome!"
"No!" Maggie felt like she'd just been gut-punched. "Not him! Anyone but him!"
Everything she'd seen and read about Aarón in the papers and on social media had portrayed him as exactly the kind of egoistic, entitled douche-bro that she despised.
And their one brief face-to-face meeting back in June, when Aarón had shown up at the grand opening of Cacao Los Angeles, hadn't dispelled her first impression of him.
"Don't be childish. He's smitten with you, and he's the perfect match…if you don't ruin everything with one of your tantrums," Abuela Inez said calmly. "You know that our clan would benefit from an alliance with the Lopez clan. The Vicario-Lopez Development Corporation is looking to invest in vacation destinations like our Bearpaw Springs Resort."
Maggie drew a shaking breath. Tantrum? Childish?
Everything about this discussion was giving her flashbacks to the argument that had ended with her departure from Bearpaw Ridge to establish a new life in San Francisco. "Abuela, you need to tell Aarón Lopez that I'm not in the market for a mate."
"Mija, won't you at least meet him?" Mamá interjected in a pleading tone.
"I've met him." Maggie said shortly. "He's not my type."
Instead of the expected angry response, Abuela Inez only smiled.
"Well, I can't force you to do the right thing," she said with terrifying mildness.
Her words speared Maggie with apprehension. Once her grandmother decided on a course of action, she never gave up easily.
Abuela Inez continued, "But if you're going to continue your selfish lifestyle and think only of yourself, Margarita, then the clan elders will no longer support you. You'll receive no further assistance from us."
What? Maggie thought, bewildered. Her abuela's threat made no sense.
"But I've been supporting myself just fine," Maggie said. "I don't need any assistance."
Her parents traded a look that sent another cold lance of doom through Maggie's guts.
What the hell is going on here?
Abuela Inez's brows, plucked and shaped into precise arcs over her thickly mascaraed eyes, rose.
"Except for that business loan," she reminded Maggie smoothly. "Which the clan financed."
"That my brother financed," Maggie corrected.
"That Manuel coordinated," her grandmother countered, crossing her arms. "The clan elders are the ones who paid for this fancy bakery of yours."
She looked around again, her expression conveying that she felt like she'd made a bad investment. Maggie was reminded that her grandmother served as the clan's treasurer and the resort's Chief Financial Officer.
She wondered if Abuela Inez had voted for the loan in the first place, or if she'd been outvoted by the other clan elders and now resented Maggie for it.
With an effort, Maggie suppressed a growl at the implied threat.
What the clan elders so generously gave, they could yank away. And even if Cacao Denver turned out to be as successful as she hoped, Maggie still wouldn't be in any position to pay off that loan for at least a few months.
Shit. I knew I shouldn't have accepted Manny's offer to invest!
But all of the other financing sources that Maggie had tried had turned her down, and she'd been determined to open the Los Angeles and Denver locations while people still remembered Cacao from that episode of Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice on the Food Network.
After her original San Francisco location was featured on the popular food travel show, her business had boomed.
Her second location in Los Angeles had proved even more popular than the original Cacao San Francisco, and it was close to breaking even after only six months. Maggie had optimistic projections for this new Denver location's profitability, though this past week had shown her that baking at high altitude had its challenges.
When her twin brother Manuel had contacted her with an offer to invest in her business just when she