Thomas
Le Beau Series
Book 4
V.A. Dold
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Date of Publication: April 10th 2015
ISBN-10:0-9905235-0-0
ISBN-13:978-0-9905235-0-5
ASIN: B00VZ4HRN8
Number of pages: 211
Word Count: 63838
Book Description:
Julia is happy with her place in the shifter community as the owner of the famous shifter bar, The Backwater. But the life she's created for herself isn't enough to satisfy her crazy-ass mother, Lucinda, who shops her and her sister, Krystal, around to the pure blood shifters like pieces of meat. Only a born shifter mate is good enough for her girls.
Thomas James has his hands full as the shifter king's head of security. He certainly wasn’t looking for a girlfriend during the first annual shifter gathering. He had the king and queen to protect, not skirts to chase.
A childhood of emotional and physical abuse by his birth father has left Thomas emotionally unavailable and uninterested in romantic relationships. His father Tim’s cruelty to his mother and brother molded him into an extremely protective person. No one messes with his loved ones without answering to him.
Even though Julia and Thomas are destined to be mates, the obstacles standing between them and their happily-ever-after seem insurmountable.
Lucinda insists Julia stay away from the filthy human.
Tim is trying to kill every one Thomas loves. The mysterious Benevolent Sovereign, who is trying to overthrow the throne, has sent swampers to attack Thomas and destroy Julia’s livelihood.
With family like theirs, who needs enemies? Will Julia and Thomas’s happiness be snuffed out before it has a chance to begin or will they forge through - obstacles be damned.
Available at Amazon
Excerpt:
“Hello?” Julia Le Beau yawned
into the phone.
Her alarm never had the
chance to go off, because her mother, Lucinda, beat it by a good thirty
minutes. She was convinced the woman could hear her biological clock ticking,
which was ridiculous since she had another six hundred years for children. No
matter what Julia said, it didn’t seem to penetrate her mother’s ears, so, here
she was, having the same conversation again.
“Julia, are you still in bed?
Did you forget I’m bringing another family to your house this morning?”
“I thought I told you not to
bring them. I’m finished with your parades, Mother.”
“For Goddess sake, get
showered immediately. We’ll be at your door in one hour.”
“I’m not going to answer the
door, so don’t bother.”
Her mother ignored her as
usual and exactly one hour later was at her door.
Julia hung her head in
frustration. She lost count years ago how many men her mother brought for the
‘sniff’ test. Each time it was the same: no mate. Like the Little Engine That
Could©, Lucinda refused to give up.
The last time Julia locked
the door and ignored her mother’s knocking, it resulted in a very ugly scene.
Lucinda in the throws of an angry tirade was not a pretty sight. Her face
turned a mottled shade of red, and she broke the door down, dragging the
shocked men in behind her.
Since that day, she'd
grudgingly opened the door. If not for her house’s sake, then for the sake of
the men, she could at least spare them the humiliation of the tantrum sure to
happen.
Two hours later, Julia’s
stomach churned. She loathed the questions that came after each ‘visit’.
Couldn’t her mother forget to ask, just once?
“Well?” her mother asked
impatiently from the doorway.
“Nothing,” Julia mumbled, not
bothering to look up from the romance novel she was reading. “I had no
attraction. No, scent. No, telepathy.” She didn’t even bother to say she was
sorry this time because she wasn’t.
Lucinda snarled in
frustration as she came fully into the room.
“I met all the men you just
paraded through my house and had none of the mating signs. I don’t know what
more you expect from me.” She sighed wearily.
“I expect you to accept one.”
Julia’s chin fell to her
chest as a heavy sigh escaped. “You know as well as I do, it doesn’t work that
way.”
“I’m sure if you made the
extra effort to at least date them, something would shake loose. How hard can
it be? Just look at Cade and that human, Anna, they met in a bar in the French
Quarter of all places. Not to mention, Simon and his mate Rose, yet another
human to dilute the royal gene pool. Rose showed up at Cade’s house after she lost
her job in Denver, and now the family is stuck with her. And I heard a rumor
that Stefan has found his mate, and you guessed it, a human. He bought her at
the auction Simon had a couple months ago. I can’t believe Isaac can still hold
his head up in public with his sons mating lowlife humans. My daughters will
mate pureblood shifters and maintain the integrity of the bloodline.”
Julia wanted to scream. A
mating didn’t just ‘shake loose’, and there was nothing wrong with humans.
Heck, most mates were human. There was no reasoning with her mother anymore.
That ability had left the building along with Elvis years ago. She wasn’t sure
if the animal part of her mother was taking over and acting erratic or if the
human side was slipping into insanity.
Her mother leaned forward
forcing Julia to sit back. “For years, you have rejected the males I bring to
you. It’s time you made a—”
“Mother, I know you want your
children mated, but no matter how badly you want it, you can’t force it.”
“Just watch me,” Lucinda spat.
“We are in line to gain the throne. The lineage must be continued and ready at
all times.”
It was true the family needed
to continue, but mates and children came into a shifter’s life when the Goddess
deemed it was the right time. The last thing you wanted to do was push the
Goddess or try to circumvent her plan. Thinking that way was suicide.
Lucinda turned on her heel
toward the door and then paused. “There will be a group of available males here
Friday. This pack is out of Arizona. Pray one of them is acceptable to you.”
Once Lucinda was in her boat
and headed out of her private bay, Julia finally breathed easy again. Krystal
would be home in a few hours and available to talk. They needed a plan; somehow
they needed to find a way to approach Father about Mother’s behavior. The
problem was her father, Charles, was completely blind to her mother’s oddities.
Julia turned the page of her
book and settled deeper into her favorite easy chair; there was nothing she
could do until Krystal got home. Tonight she would suggest again they bring
Logan and Quintin into the conversation. It was about time the boys knew what
was going on behind the family’s back. Thinking it through, she shook her head.
She wouldn’t bother the twins, Rémi, and René, just yet. They were too young to
be drawn into this.
Once Lucinda got a notion in
her head, she had a tendency to twist it until it fit her needs and desires.
After that, she could never be swayed.
And her mother’s drive to
force both Krystal and Julia to find mates had reached critical mass.
“What are we going to do?”
Julia whispered to herself.
Two weeks later
Morning was Julia’s favorite
time of day. The bar wasn’t open yet, and she had it all to herself as she
wiped down tables and checked the bar stock.
The only problem was; it
sometimes gave her too much time to think. Today was one of those times. She
had her mother on her mind.
It wasn’t that her mother
didn’t love her—she did. At least, she was pretty sure she did. But the woman
had some pretty extreme ideas of late. She apparently believed shifters should
only mate other born shifters, and humans were a scourge and diluted the
bloodline.
In her disturbed mind, she
believed if she dragged her daughters around to enough eligible shifter males,
she could somehow force a pureblood mating.
Julia and Krystal were tired
of being paraded before one shifter family after another. Tired of letting
hundreds of males sniff them in the hopes of finding a mate. It was straight up
embarrassing.
As much as she loved the
bayou, she was seriously considering tagging along with Krystal to Lucas’s
ranch in Texas. She heaved a sigh and took a good, long look at the bar. All
right, she would do it. If her mother tried to drag her out ‘visiting’ one more
time, she’d pack up and head for Texas.
*****
It had been a busy shift at
her bar The Backwater, and she was ready to relax in a bubble bath with a good
romance novel.
Julia came through the front
door of her home to a horrifying sight. Her beloved novels lay shredded and
callously thrown in a pile. It must be her entire collection to create a
mountain of pages and covers five feet high in her living room. Next to the
carnage lay a note on a side table. The room smelled of anger, frustration, and
her mother.
She was going to have to store
her books in a safer place from now on. Huffing out an angry breath, she picked
up the note.
You need
to get your head out of the clouds and look for a mate. You won’t find him in
one of these human books. I’ve had it with your lack of interest in settling
down. Pick out a mate, or I will pick one for you.
“Pick one for me? She has
completely lost touch with reality.”
Every shifter knew you
couldn’t just pick any old mate; you had to find the one who held the other
half of your soul. It was time for a private talk with her father. He needed to
know how crazy she was acting.
Sighing, at almost two
hundred, she was well past the age by which she hoped to be mated. Every year
her mother had marched available men into her quaint little house like she was
presenting the latest fashions, or worse, dragged her to them. Not a single one
had been her other half. How exactly was she to blame for that?
Then she read the last
sentence of the note.
You will
attend the dance at your Uncle Isaac’s on Saturday. Perhaps this time you will
find your mate.
Your
Mother
She audibly groaned. She
hated being sniffed by every single male who came within five feet of her. It
made her feel dirty. The First thing she did after these setups was take a
long, hot shower.
Julia thought back to the
beginning of her ‘shame’, as her mother described it. She had gone to yet
another event where she was set out like a prize to be won. When none of the
men were a match, her parents informed her they were buying the Gator’s Tooth
Bar and Grill, and she would be the full-time bartender. Their hopes were she
would stumble upon her mate amongst the patrons and visitors. The first thing
Julia had done was rename the bar The Backwater to spite her mother.
Has it
really been twenty years?
“Oh well, I have six days
before Isaac’s party; time enough to stock up on new books. And I’m not going
to waste another second thinking about the party. Take that, Mother.”
At least her uncle’s party
actually sounded fun. Her cousins would be there, and she could hang out with
them while avoiding her mother.
The Day of the Gathering
Stretching, Julia considered
what to do with her free day. The gathering didn’t begin until seven that
evening, and since everyone was invited, The Backwater was closed for the day.
Grabbing her robe, she
slipped on her bunny slippers and made a beeline to the coffee maker. Goddess,
she loved her new programmable machine. No more waiting for the coffee to brew
for this girl.
Steaming cup in hand, she
grabbed one of her new romance novels. A friend had recommended it, saying the
storyline and names sounded like her cousin, Cade, and his mate, Anna. She’d
never read V.A. Dold before, but she hoped it would be as good as her friend
said it was.
Not two chapters into the
book and the last person she wanted to see walked through her door. Her mother.
Lucinda took one look at the book and turned an interesting color of purplish
red.
“Do you always barge into a
person’s home without knocking?” Julia asked coolly.
“Where did you get that?”
“The coffee? From the pot in
the kitchen.”
“You know very well I’m not
talking about the coffee.”
“Well, if you’re referring to
my NEW book, touch it and die. And if you think I’m kidding, try it.”
Lucinda was dumbstruck; Julia
had never spoken to her like that before.
“Since I have a day of
relaxation planned, why don’t you tell me why you’re here so I can get back to
it?”
“I bought you a dress for the
gathering. I was shopping for one for myself and saw this. It’s your favorite
color, and I’m sure it will be stunning on you.” Lucinda held it out to Julia a
little hesitantly.
Interesting. She’d never seen
her mother unsure of herself.
I’m going to have to tell her off more often.
“I wasn’t planning on wearing
a dress, but I’ll try it on later and see what I think of it.”
“Wonderful. We’ll pick you up
at six thirty.”
“No. You won’t. I’m going by
myself.”
“But you have to ride with
the family.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way you
travel to these gatherings. You arrive as a family pack.”
“Then I guess I’m starting a
new tradition because I’m going by myself.”
Lucinda narrowed her eyes.
She was so mad, Julia checked to see if steam was rising out of her ears. “You
wait until I tell your father.”
“Go ahead. I’m still going by
myself.”
Lucinda growled, spun on her
heel, and slammed the door on her way out.
“Well,” Julia chuckled to herself, “that was pleasant.”
About the Author:
V.A. Dold Amazon best selling author of the Award winning Le Beau Brothers series.
Prior to becoming a full time writer, she was publicist to the authors, owning ARC Author & Reader Conventions. Still is.
Her idea of absolute heaven is a day in the French Quarter with her computer, her coffee mug and the Brothers, of course.
A Midwest native with her heart lost to Louisiana, she has a penchant for titillating tales featuring sexy men and strong women. When she's not writing, she's probably taking in a movie, reading, or traveling.
Connect with V.A.Dold
Visit V.A.'s website www.vadold.com
Like on Faceboook at https://www.facebook.com/vickieann1
Follow on twitter at @VADOLD https://twitter.com/VADOLD
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