Page 6 of Claiming His Virgin Mate

Mine.

Chapter Three

Earlier that same day…

Maggie was exhausted. There was no other word for it. The day had been a total fucking disaster, and that was putting it mildly.

She replayed the events in her head. Uncertain how to break the news to her younger sister, Joelle. But she couldn’t keep it from her. Honesty was the one promise she’d made after their father had died a year ago, that she intended to keep. Joelle was being put on warning at Maccon City High. One more foot out of line and she was looking at a suspension.

Shit.

“Margaret Flint?”

“That’s me,” Maggie stood up and forced a smile.

She hated being called by her full name, but that was the name on the mortgage the bank held in her name. The hotel she’d inherited from her father came complete with a mountainous loan that an unemployed software developer could never pay back without a miracle.

And she’d been working on one. There simply were not enough hours in a day. How could one woman run a hotel,or try to, raise a teenager,or try to, and work on an app that just might change the way hotels communicated with their target clientele?

The answer was pretty damned obvious. Otherwise, she would not be sitting in the bank trying desperately to stop the sale of her mortgage.

The Sunset Innhad been her father’s dream. One he’d shared with his second wife, Debra, and their daughter Joelle. But ever since Malcolm and Debra Flint had passed away in a terrible accident, it had become Maggie’s dream as well.

She hadn’t known her father’s second wife, or his new daughter, very well. Hell, she barely knew him. But the cards they sent every holiday showed a family that Maggie had secretly yearned for all her life.

Her own mother was not demonstrative. In fact, she resented Maggie, and after an exceedingly difficult eighteen years, Maggie had left home the second she’d graduated high school. Much to Susan O’Doyle’s relief.

Malcolm and Susan’s story was neither original, nor was it happy. She’d gotten pregnant with Maggie the year they’d both graduated from Maccon City High. Being Catholic, the O’Doyle’s insisted their daughter have her baby.

But that was as far as her grandparents went towards helping their daughter raise her baby. Malcolm had tried to stay on friendly terms for most of her early childhood, but that was short-lived. Susan was a difficult woman, and she did not like being reminded she had a daughter at all. Having an even casual relationship with her high school boyfriend hardly constituted moving on.

Then Malcolm remarried, and Maggie was forgotten. Well, that wasn’t exactly fair. His wife, Debra, was nice enough to Maggie, but she always felt like the woman was hiding something from her. When Joelle, her half-sister, was born, her visits grew farther and farther apart.

Her dad had explained it away that the hotel and new baby were just a lot to deal with, but he always promised to make it up to her. Maggie tried to understand.

Her own mother’s distance wasn’t too bad, but she’d never liked being a parent. Maggie had often felt like an accessory in her home. Something to take out when she needed dressing up or down whatever the case called for.

It wasn’t until she went away to college that she began to explore her options. She was bright, ambitious, and she had the whole world ahead of her. She’d studied her programming, made headways into business and other fields she was interested in.

Working her way through her bachelor’s degree then her Master’s was difficult, but she’d always thought it would be its own reward. Then the bottom fell out just as she was achieving her second goal.

Her father and his wife passed away suddenly. Victims of an automobile accident that left young Joelle alone, without anyone to care for her. Except Maggie, of course.

In their will, they’d named her Joelle’s guardian, and they also left her the bulk of the hotel with some funds set aside in a small trust for her sister. She had no idea how to run a hotel, and had foolishly trusted Edward Coleson, her dad’s manager to handle things.

Turned out he was a lying thief. She’d caught him stealing from petty cash, and just before shit really hit the fan, he’d left town. If only she’d decided on a business major, she thought with a sad sigh.

Someday,she promised herself. She was going to see that bastard behind bars.

Either way, she was here now and even though her mother had told her she would regret not finishing her Master’s, Maggie was happy. In spite of every lousy thing that had happened in the year since she’d received that horrible phone call.

For the first time ever, she had a family. It was her decision not to pawn Joelle off on some long-distant relation of her mother’s. She really loved her sister despite being sort of alienated from the teen after her birth.

At the reading of her father’s will, Maggie had learned a little bit more about that estrangement than she could have ever guessed. It seemed her father had a few secrets he’d kept from her.

Thinking about them now, she wished he’d told her when he was alive. It would have explained a lot. But after Kurt Lowell had read the will, Maggie had received a surprise visit from an unexpected guest.

Rafe Maccon, and his wife Charley, had come to see her. At first, she’d thought they were friends of her father or Debra’s, though they seemed too young in her opinion to have known them well.

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