needed the money most, she'd just assumed that he was going to be using his personal funds. After all, was one of the most successful real estate brokers in Idaho.
Now her assumptions were coming back to bite her on the ass.
Abuela hadn't explicitly asked Maggie to immediately repay the loan. Yet.
"You're really going to hold me hostage like this?" she demanded.
"How can you say that? We're just trying to do what's best for you and for our family," Mamá protested.
"And it's your duty to help us, just like we've helped you," Abuela added coolly. "You need to find a mate, while you still can. And if you can forge an alliance with the Lopez clan, so much the better."
"We're all worried that you're getting too old to start a family," Papá added, sounding almost apologetic. He clearly wasn't going to oppose his mother's wishes.
Maggie inhaled in outrage. They've been discussing my reproductive choices behind my back?
With an effort, she bit back her next, angry protest. It wouldn’t do any good anyway.
When she'd been growing up in Bearpaw Ridge, she'd heard endless accounts of the grim persecutions that had killed so many jaguar shifters during the Mexican civil war in the early 1920s and then in Guatemala in the early 1970s. Those bloody conflicts had driven the surviving members of most jaguar shifter clans from their ancestral lands and forced them to take refuge north of the US border.
In the decades since then, the jaguar clans, now scattered across the United States, had struggled to prosper in their adopted country and to regain their former numbers. Time and again, the Ornelas clan's children had been informed of their solemn duty to mate once they reached adulthood and have as many babies as possible.
That expectation had been one of the big factors in Maggie's decision to stay in the San Francisco Bay Area after completing her studies at the Culinary Institute of America.
For as long as she could remember, her big dream had been to own a bakery. Everything else had come second to that. Settling down and starting a family had always felt like a huge distraction from running her increasingly successful business.
Afterwards, Maggie couldn't figure out what possessed her inner cat to rise up and seize control of Maggie's voice. Her jaguar announced, "I have met the man I want as my mate."
What the hell? Maggie froze and waited for her grandmother and parents to call her on her cat's bald-faced bluff. It was almost impossible to lie to another shifter.
They all surprised her.
"Oh, thank goodness," Mamá said, clapping a hand over her heart.
Maggie fought the urge to roll her eyes.
"Well, I'm glad you finally decided to do your duty for our clan," Papá said, the corners of his warm brown eyes crinkling in a smile. "Who's the lucky guy?"
"I only hope it's not too late," Mamá said, sounding as melodramatic as a character in one of those telenovelas that she adored.
"Too late for what?" Maggie asked.
Mamá's gaze narrowed. "Why, babies, of course. Grandchildren."
Oh, hell no. Despite her shock at her inner jaguar's intervention, Maggie wasn't stupid enough to say that part out loud. Instead, she forced herself to smile at her mother.
Abuela wasn't buying it. Her gaze narrowed. "So who is he, this mystery mate-to-be of yours? When can we meet him?"
"Is he…one of us?" Mamá asked, sounding wary.
Maggie's last few boyfriends had all been Ordinaries. Things had never gotten serious enough between them for her to want to brave the ordeal of introducing any of them to her family members, but at the time, she had been barraged by questions about her dating life, funneled through her younger female cousins.
"Um," Maggie began. She had absolutely no idea how to answer that question, and her inner cat had gone silent again.
"Well, I'm just happy that our girl has finally managed to settle things on her own," Papá interjected, beaming. "Why didn't you tell us sooner?"
At that moment, the door buzzer sounded again.
Maggie turned to see Thor Swanson, a baby carrier strapped to his broad chest, leading his team of smokejumpers into the bakery. They were all wearing cargo pants and dark blue t-shirts with their winged mountain logo.
They also looked considerably cleaner and better-groomed than they had last weekend.
Her gaze lingered on the infant, then went straight to Mr. Hotness, who hobbled through the doorway behind the others.
He was wearing loose sweatpants and had something that looked like a pirate's peg-leg strapped to his right thigh. When he pivoted