Worth Fighting For
Molly O’Keefe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About The Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Copyright

Molly O’Keefe has written twelve books for Superromance, Flipside and Duets. When she isn’t writing happily ever after she can usually be found in the park acting as referee between her beleaguered border collie and her two-year-old son. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband, son, dog and the largest heap of dirty laundry in North America.

To Pam Hopkins, I am so lucky to have you in my corner.

CHAPTER ONE

JONAH CLOSKY stared out the window and thought of money. Great heaps of it.

He barely listened to Gary Murphy, his business partner, read over the contract. Most days he barely listened to Gary, but today Jonah was mentally counting the profit they’d make once Gary stopped reading and everyone got to the signing part.

The answer, of course, was a fortune. Plenty, for anyone else. But, for Jonah, for his plans, for Haven House, it wasn’t quite enough.

It was never quite enough.

“Rick Ornus, seller, agrees to pay the cost of soil removal in the northwest corner of the property,” Gary read from the sheath of papers in front of him.

Rick, who sat at the corner of the boardroom table, put up his hand, interrupting Gary. “About that,” Rick said.

Jonah tuned in to the conversation with his whole body. The terms of this contract had already been hashed and rehashed. There should be no “about that’s.”

“Is that really necessary?” Rick asked. “That soil thing?”

“Well.” Gary laid the papers down on the table, keeping his cool when Jonah knew his partner had to be having a heart attack. Gary wasn’t much for “about that’s,” either.

“Considering the amount of arsenic in it, yes,” Gary said. “It is. We will treat the rest of the property and retest, but that northwest corner needs to be dug out and all that soil replaced.”

Rick looked over at Jonah and smiled. “Jonah,” he said, holding out his hands, as though they were coconspirators.

“Come on. Between us. You know that with the right amount of money Barringer will overlook that—”

“I don’t bribe city officials,” Jonah said. “And I don’t build on dirty land.”

“What about your current site?” Rick asked. “I heard you were about to start building and the city just shut you down for poisoned soil.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Gary asked and Jonah nearly hung his head at his partner’s transparency. It was no wonder Gary couldn’t play cards—a ten-year-old child had a better poker face.

“Everyone knows,” Rick said. “Yesterday, I must have gotten seven calls from people telling me about it. It’ll be all over the papers in no time.”

Gary’s worried gaze flicked to Jonah and Jonah held up a hand, trying to get his business partner to relax, to not fly off the handle like some freaked-out howler monkey.

“So,” Rick continued, his eyes gleaming with a certain smug satisfaction. “Why don’t you guys cut the righteous environmental act—”

“Act?” Gary nearly squealed and Jonah rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, and we can get down to business,” Rick said. “You guys have a good racket going pretending to clean up all this bad land, but obviously—”

Well, crap, Jonah thought. Now I’m offended.

And the estimated revenue from this project that he’d just totaled in his head went back to zero.

“There will be no business,” Jonah said, leaning forward.

“What do you mean?” Rick asked. “We’re ready to sign the papers—” Rick looked at Gary, who had seen this kind of scenario enough to know the ending. Gary simply leaned back and tossed the unsigned contract in the garbage.

“What are you doing?” Rick cried.

A long time ago Jonah had made the promise that he’d do whatever he had to do to get the job done, but he wouldn’t explain himself and he wouldn’t beg. And while he might have to do business with rats like Rick, he’d make sure the rats always knew he wasn’t one of them.

“I’m not sure what the problem is here, gentlemen,” Rick said, looking far less smug and a little more sweaty. “You need the land, I can sell it to you. And we can all make a bunch of money if you just forget this soil problem. It’s not like you haven’t done it before.”

“We’re done,” Jonah said, standing so fast the chair spun backward and hit the floor-to-ceiling windows of his boardroom. “Get out.”

“Come on, Jonah. I’m sure we can—”

“We can’t,” Jonah said, striding to the door, opening it and nodding to Katie, who sat at the front desk. “Notify security,” he told her.

“You know—” Rick’s face became bitter and Jonah crossed his arms over his chest and waited for the guy to hammer the nails in his own coffin “—you’re getting a pretty nasty reputation, Jonah. Between the number of real estate agents ready to stab you in the back and that failed soil test on your current site, pretty soon no one is going to be willing to sit down with you.”

A week ago, Rat-faced Rick had been so relieved that Jonah wanted to buy the land with the arsenic problem, that Rick had agreed to Jonah’s terms, including the soil removal.

But then they’d failed that soil test—and apparently the whole world knew about it, and Jonah’s delicate balancing act was in jeopardy.

“Let me tell you what you’ve just done, Rick,” Jonah said. “Not only is our deal over, but I am going to make sure that you will be unable to sell that disgusting property you’re lying to everyone about. And you won’t be able to make a land sale in New Jersey ever again.”

Rick glanced over to Gary, who only shrugged. “You screwed yourself when you assumed we were like you, Rick,” Gary told him point-blank, which was what Gary was good for.

Rick gaped like a fish and Gary sighed, coming to his feet. “Go, Rick,” he said, “before Jonah decides to throw you out himself.”

Rick glanced between them and finally, grabbing his twenty-year-old briefcase and equally ancient trench coat, he left, taking Jonah’s profit margin on the condos with him.

“Someone else is going to get that land,” Gary said, turning to stare out the window, across the river at the Manhattan skyline. He took off his glasses, cleaned them on the corner of his rumpled madras shirt then put them back on. “Someone who isn’t going to deal with that arsenic problem. And they’ll pay off Barringer and the inspectors and build a school there or something all because you couldn’t control your temper with some scumbag.” He sighed and Jonah felt bad, for Gary’s sake. He took these things too hard.

“No,” Jonah assured his partner of ten years. “They won’t.” He leaned out the door. “Katie, please get me David Printer at the Times.” He needed to find out if the soil test results were going public. They needed to do as much financial damage control as possible.

Katie nodded and went to work on the phone. Jonah walked back into the boardroom, letting the door shut behind him.

“That soil test hurt us, Jonah. We’ve never failed one before,” Gary said, running his hands through his haywire brown hair. “Thank God we hadn’t started building yet. That would be a nightmare.”

“We’ll retreat the soil and retest in three weeks. We’ll put out the press release and it will all blow over. We’ll be building by the end of May.” Barring any more disasters in the next two months.

“If this goes public—” Gary looked at him from the corner of his eye.

“It won’t.”

“But if it does? Can you imagine the calls from tenants from other buildings wondering if their children are going to grow up infertile? Or if they are all going to get cancer.” Gary rested his head against the glass.

“We’re going to lose the funding for Haven House, I know we are.”

“No,” Jonah said, perhaps a bit too stridently. A bit too surely. That fragile dream would be protected, at all costs. “We won’t.”

“I should have been a dentist. I don’t know why I let you talk me out of that.”

“Because dentists are boring,” Jonah said, bored of this conversation. The conference-room phone buzzed and Jonah sat as he hit the intercom button.

“David,” he said, “I don’t know what you’ve heard—”

“It’s not David.” His mother’s voice crackled through the speakerphone and Jonah, who in deep, scary places he didn’t acknowledge was worried Gary was right, felt the dark pallor of his conference room lift.

“Mom,” he cried and picked up the handset as Gary grabbed his stuff and left the room to give Jonah some privacy. “I tried calling last night—”

“I was at Sheila’s,” she said and Jonah could hear the weariness in her voice and wished he could throw it out the way he did Rick. Or absorb it right over the phone. Every heavy load and worry that crossed his mother’s path he would gladly add to his own weight.

“How is Aunt Sheila?” His mother’s best friend had earned the honorary title of aunt twenty-five years ago when she’d nursed him through the chicken pox.

“She’s doing great. She had me over for dinner, a fancy thing she had catered in celebration of the doctor’s clean bill of health.”

Jonah sat back in his chair and smiled, feeling better than he had in weeks. “That’s good news,” he said. “Amazing news.”

“Yes.” He heard the smile in his mother’s voice. “It is.”

“We should all celebrate,” he said, thinking of his schedule. “Maybe a trip at the end of the summer. South of France? We can lie on a beach—”

“That sounds wonderful, honey, but I’m calling about something else.”

Jonah spun his chair to face the window and lifted his boot up to rest on the corner of the table. “All right, what’s up?”

Iris sighed.

Jonah knew his mother as well and as totally as any boy could know his mom and he read bad news in that sigh. “What’s going on?” he asked. Jonah didn’t fear much. He was reckless with his career, with his money, with his body, but he lived in fear of something happening to his mother.

“Jonah, last winter, when I told you Sheila and I were on vacation, it wasn’t really the truth. I was in New York…at the Riverview Inn.”

His gut went cold at the name. His brothers’ inn. Where his father lived. The brothers he never knew. And the father he didn’t want to know.

“And I’m going back. Today.”

“What?” he asked, stunned. “Why?”

“Because it’s time,” she said. “It’s time for both of us to deal with this.”

“Mom, you tried to deal with it thirty years ago, remember?” he asked, cruelly reminding her of the situation with her husband in the hopes that it might change her mind. “You wrote to him twice. And twice Patrick told you he didn’t want us.”

“He didn’t want me, Jonah. It had nothing to do with you. And he wants terribly to meet you now.”

“Well, now is thirty years too late. I think I’ve made my feelings clear about this, Mom.”

“I know, but—”

He groaned and tipped his head against the high back of his chair. He’d made a promise with his first million dollars—a promise he’d actually made at the age of sixteen while he watched his mother clean houses and pretend to be happy—that he’d never say no to her.

Whatever she asked for he would do.

And so, being his mother, she’d made a point of never asking for anything. But he had a sense that was all going to change.

“I am asking you to come, Jonah. I am asking you to meet your father. To give your brothers a chance.”

He could financially destroy the competition. He could intimidate shady inspectors and city officials. He’d strongarmed the Mafia off his building sites.

But he couldn’t say no to his mother.

“When?” He sighed.

“As soon as you can make it,” she said, and he could hear her smile, her joy—so fleeting—flooding over the phone and he smiled wearily.

“I need a few days,” he told her, thinking of his schedule. A few days and then he’d come face-to-face with the family that, sight unseen, he loathed.

DAPHNE LARSON, the early spring sunshine in her eyes, pulled the boxes of herbs out of the bed of her truck and staggered to the kitchen door of the Riverview Inn.

She expected, any moment now, for the kitchen door to open and the men of the Riverview to flood out to help her.

The door stayed closed and the boxes just got heavier.

So, unable to open the door herself without dropping her load, she used her head to knock lightly on the window.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Alice Mitchell, executive chef of the inn, said, opening the door. She was married to Gabe Mitchell, the owner, and had, in the past year, become Daphne’s closest friend. “Knocking with your head? What’s wrong with you?”

“My delivery guy quit,” Daphne explained, sliding the boxes onto the counter already crowded with bowls of fruits and vegetables ready to be used for the day’s menus.

“Again?”

“Again,” Daphne said, bending backward slightly to relieve the pinch in her lower back.

“Why don’t you go in and see Delia,” Alice said, referring to the massage therapist with the magic fingers who also happened to be dating Max Mitchell, Gabe’s brother. “She doesn’t have any bookings for the rest of the morning.”

“I wish I could,” Daphne said, brushing her long blond braid over her shoulder. “But you’re my last delivery and we’ve got the first crop of asparagus coming up, so I should get back.”

“Well, have some tea at least,” Alice offered.

It smelled so good in the Riverview kitchen. Like delicious things baking and calories. Daphne swore she gained a pound just sitting next to one of Alice’s pies.

“I’d love some tea,” Daphne agreed, willing to risk some osmosis weight gain for the chance to sit. And perhaps to talk to Tim, Alice’s assistant, if she could get him alone. “You don’t know anyone looking for a job, do you? A kid from one of Max’s after-school programs or something?”

Alice shook her head and stepped back to her spot at the counter rolling pastry dough.

“We’re having the same problem.” Tim brought her a glass of mint iced tea. She tried to catch his eyes, but he set down the glass on the counter next to her and was gone, back across the room to the peppers he was chopping. She had a highly uncomfortable question to ask him, and she needed an answer today. “Not enough staff,” he said, studying the peppers as though he knew she was here to talk to him.

“Are you sure you should even be working?” Daphne asked Alice, settling in for some good kitchen chitchat. No one did kitchen chitchat like Alice. And maybe if Daphne stayed long enough, Tim would relax his guard and she’d catch him alone. “It’s only been a month—”

Alice rolled her eyes. “You are worse than Gabe. It’s been a month and a half. I had a baby, not a leg amputation. And I’m just rolling pastry.”

“Okay.” Daphne took a sip of tea. “If you want to be out here working when you could be in your bed sleeping, that’s your business.”

“Trust me,” Alice groused. “There’s not much sleeping.”

Daphne laughed. She remembered those early months of Helen’s life with such heart-squeezing nostalgia. The nursing and napping, the late-night feedings, the exhaustion and sore breasts. It was a very special kind of torture. And she’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

“Where is everyone?” Daphne asked, hoisting herself onto a stool in the corner. Usually the place was packed with family members and employees, but today it was practically a ghost town.

“Jonah’s supposed to be arriving today,” Alice said and Daphne’s mouth fell open.

“Really? Today?”

“Apparently he called this morning,” Alice said and took a bowl of raspberry preserves and began to spread a thick layer over the pastry. “Everyone has found some reason to be out front when he arrives. I swear Gabe has trimmed the bushes to within an inch of their life.”

“So why aren’t you out there?” Daphne asked. She wanted to go out there and wait for the man’s appearance.

Gabe and Max’s mother had vanished thirty years ago only to reappear a few months ago with the heartbreaking news that Gabe and Max had another brother they’d never known about.

That Patrick had another son.

Jonah.

Iris had gone home to help nurse a friend through her last round of chemo and had returned over a week ago with the news that Jonah was planning to come to the inn.

The whole family had been jumping like dogs in a thunderstorm ever since. And the later he was, the more everyone jumped.

Soap operas couldn’t compete with what was happening at the Riverview Inn.

“I don’t think he’s coming,” Alice said, shaking a black curl out of her eyes. “I think the guy gets off on leading this family on. He’s postponed three times over the past two weeks and I swear Patrick is going to have a heart attack. And Iris…” She shook her head.

Daphne nodded in total understanding. Iris was bordering on tragic. Iris, with her dramatic black and silver hair and dark eyes, seemed so sad to Daphne. As if she lived every day with her mistakes, taking them out for polishing to be worn around her neck. Never forgetting and never letting anyone else forget, either.

“Iris is terrified everyone is going to hate everyone else,” Alice said. “And, she’s probably right.”

“How is Gabe taking this?” Daphne asked. Max was fairly sanguine about Jonah coming. Patrick was nearly rabid with eagerness, but Gabe…not so much.

“Gabe is ready to pounce if Jonah so much as looks at Patrick cross-eyed.” Alice shook her head and rolled the pastry into ruglach. “It’s like he’s a four-year-old and someone is trying to steal his favorite toy.”

“It’s a tricky situation,” Daphne said. She couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to come face-to-face with a son you never knew you had. A son who might not like you. Or vice versa.

“Hey,” Alice said, turning to Daphne and changing the subject. “I see Sven’s put that land up for sale.”

Daphne rolled her eyes. Her neighbor, Sven Lungren, and his land were a reoccurring bad dream in her life. About once a year he put the land up for sale and she offered what she could for it and he kept saying no. But he never sold it to anyone else and she wasn’t sure if the reason was that no one met his mysterious price, or that he was going through the exercise to taunt her.

All she knew was that if she got his acreage, she could expand. The existing Athens Organics land was being used to maximum output. She was rotating crops as much as she could, but the demand for her organic fruits and vegetables was beginning to overwhelm what she could supply with her little patch of property.

Plus she had dreams of expanding her small apple grove into a full-on pick-your-own apple orchard. That required land. And money. And a few years to come to fruition, but Daphne was thinking big these days.

“I gave him my offer yesterday,” Daphne said. “I haven’t heard.”

“Well, good luck,” Alice said with a grim smile.

The sound of baby Stella fussing buzzed from the baby monitor tucked into one of the pots that hung from the ceiling, and Daphne’s entire body practically spasmed with longing. Hormones flooded her bloodstream and her heart chugged—baby, baby, baby, baby.

At thirty-seven Daphne’s biological clock was in hyperdrive and she wished she could tell her body that a baby wasn’t going to happen, that it could stop with the hormonal fanfare. But she couldn’t and so her womb set up a howl when she held Stella or heard her sleepy cry over the monitor.

Alice paused, listened then went to the sink to wash her hands. “That’s a real cry,” she said. “I better go feed her. I’ll talk to you later.”

Daphne waved goodbye. Finally it was just her and Tim in the kitchen. She prepared herself for some hardcore begging.

“Forget it, Daphne,” he said, before she could even open her mouth. “I’m not going.”

“Tim.” She sighed. “You haven’t even heard—”

“I don’t have to.” He turned to face her, pushing up his black glasses with his wrist. “I’ve been to two tedious functions with you in the past month.”

“Oh, come on. They weren’t that tedious,” she argued, knowing this was a losing battle. Political fund-raising events were boring. In fact, she’d learned they were the definition of boring. But she’d promised her ex, Jake, she’d go. Still there was no way she’d be going alone.

“This one is for the local school board,” she said. “A family-style picnic. You love picnics.”

“I hate picnics,” Tim practically cried. “Look, if it’s so important for your ex-husband’s political aspirations that you be there, why don’t you go as his date?”

Daphne shot him a look, making it clear that she’d really rather eat glass than go as Jake’s date.

“Then don’t go,” Tim said, scooping up his pile of peppers and dumping them into a bowl.

“I promised,” she said, as if it were that simple. In some ways it was. She had made the promise in the middle of the night eight months ago, while her ex-husband sat at her kitchen table and pretended not to stare at her legs under her T-shirt. That’s probably why she’d said yes, she’d been drunk off his sideways glances.

It had been eons since anyone had glanced at her, sideways or not.

But there were other, not as simple reasons she was helping Jake.

“Besides,” Tim said, crumbling a big block of feta over the peppers, “I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but pretending to be your love interest isn’t fooling anyone. Three guys asked me out at that Democrats For a Living Planet event last week.”

“Really?” she asked, slightly stunned. She’d thought their act was fairly convincing.

“Really.” He nodded.

Daphne sighed, she knew a losing battle when she was in one.

“Anyone good?” she asked, pleased for her friend, even if he was dumping her.

“Yep.” His eyes twinkled. “As much as I’d love an excuse to go to some family picnic, Daph, I’m just too busy and frankly, I’m just too gay.”

She laughed and slung her arm over his shoulder in order to kiss his cheek. “It’s too bad all the other men around here are married,” she said. “Or as good as,” she added, thinking of Max and Delia. There was a lot of goodnatured betting going on regarding when Max would get around to asking the fiery redhead to marry him. If he did it before the end of summer this year, Daphne was going to be the big winner.

“Married or gay,” Tim joked and waggled his dark eyebrows at her.

“Excuse me,” a deep voice interrupted their laughter. Daphne and Tim twirled to the back door where a tall, dark and very handsome man stood, silhouetted in the bright morning sunlight.

Good gravy, she thought as her biological clock started its usual ruckus around handsome men of a certain age. Her womb was suddenly the overeager kid in class waving its hand screaming, “Me! Pick me!”

He was too good-looking to be real.

The stranger’s black T-shirt and blue jeans were the kind of casual clothes that looked more expensive than the finest suit. Or maybe it was the world-class body beneath them that made them look so good.

Daphne was suddenly very aware of her dirty gray chinos and work boots.

“Can I help you?” Tim asked casually, as if Brad Pitt’s younger, taller, darker brother walked into his kitchen every day.

She could barely breathe, much less talk.

The mystery man slid his trendy aviator sunglasses up on his forehead and Daphne was struck by the sense that she knew this guy. She’d seen him somewhere. And she knew something about him. Something bad.

Where had she seen him?

He stepped out of the doorway and the glare of the sun, and suddenly she remembered. His face had been all over the front page of the Times a week ago. He built condos on polluted land.

“I’m—”

“The Dirty Developer,” she said, snapping her fingers as it all came together. “That’s where I’ve seen you.”

As soon as the words fell from her imprudent lips she wished she could suck them back. She actually had to fight to keep her hand from slapping over her mouth. Tim pinched her and the Dirty Developer’s jaw tightened as waves of hostility rolled off him and pounded her right in the chest.

“I’m Jonah Closky,” he said and slid his glasses back over his eyes. “And I’m leaving.”

CHAPTER TWO

AND YET ANOTHER excellent example of my big mouth, Daphne thought, as the door swung shut behind Jonah.

“That’s the missing Mitchell?” Tim asked into the stone silence of the kitchen then whistled low. “You scared him off good. You better apologize.”

“To the Dirty Developer?” she cried; her skin practically crawled at the thought.

“To Patrick’s son,” Tim said and she groaned. He was right.

Daphne took off after the Dirty Developer/the missing Mitchell boy/the handsomest man she’d seen in real life.

You’d think by this point she’d have learned to think before she opened her mouth. But as Jake had always told her, it was as though she came with a broken edit mechanism. And a temper that didn’t really understand the phrase “appropriate time and place.”

Though she could usually control that.

“Hey!” she yelled at Jonah’s very wide retreating back as she chased him to his Jeep. The gravel of the parking lot crunched under her boots.

The guy’s angry stride made it impossible to catch up to him, and before she knew it he was pulling open the driver-side door of his dusty vehicle.

She bumped her fast walk into a jog. If she actually chased away Patrick’s missing son, she’d never forgive herself. To say nothing of probably losing her biggest client and best friends.

“Hey wait!”

Finally he whirled, squinting against the sun behind her. At least she hoped he was squinting against the sun and not glaring at her as though she were some bug buzzing around his head. “I’m so sorry,” she said, coming to stop a few feet from him. “That was very inappropriate. I never expected you to come in the back door. Everyone is waiting for you up at the front, which really is a terrible reason for saying something so rude. So, I apologize. Again. More, actually. I apologize more. If that’s possible.”

She just didn’t know when to shut up.

He watched her for a second, all that handsome male focused right on her and, despite the sunglasses that covered his eyes and his barely contained animosity, she felt her stomach dip as if she were going down a hill too fast.

Whew. He was some kind of man.

And then he shrugged.

She apologized and he shrugged.

For the life of her she didn’t know how to respond to that shrug.

He was destroying the planet and he was rude, to boot. This guy didn’t deserve the Mitchells. But that wasn’t her call.

Best foot forward, take two.

“I’m Daphne Larson, Athens Organics. Your family will be out here shortly I’m sure. Everyone’s thrilled you’re here.”

Jonah looked at her hand as if she were offering him a palm full of manure. A smile—or was it a sneer—tugged at the corner of his mouth. She couldn’t really be sure without seeing his eyes. He pulled his keys from his pocket and scanned the lawn behind her, utterly ignoring her hand.

“Tell my mom to call me on my cell,” he said and turned to his Jeep.

Wow, she thought, stunned by the audacity of his rudeness. In her world no one treated anyone the way this man had the balls to treat her.

She gritted her teeth.

“Jonah.” She reached out and put a hand on his arm, just below the sleeve of his T-shirt and the spark between his sunwarmed flesh and her rough hand shocked both of them. She jerked her hand back and shook it, uncomfortable by the contact and the spark that zinged through her whole body.

Women like her didn’t know anything about men like him.

“Your family—” She tried again, distracted by the tingle in her arm.

He ripped off his sunglasses and waves of anger poured from him as if it had been contained by those expensive shades. For the second time in the mere moments she’d been in his presence she fought for a big breath. This man wasn’t rude, he was mad. And he was barely in control.

His whole body radiated fury.

“Don’t call them that,” he said, his voice a burning purr. His face might as well have been made of stone. “They’re not family.”

“Then why are you here?” she blurted, stunned. “If you feel that way—”

He made a dismissive gesture, his lips thin and white. Conversation, his vibe screamed, over.

Now she was getting a little mad.

“Look, I just wanted to apologize about the Dirty Developer thing—”

“Are you trying to piss me off?”

“No,” she clarified. “I’m trying to apologize.”

“Well, how about you start by not calling me that?”

If he hadn’t used that tone with her, maybe she could have kept her mouth shut. “I didn’t,” she said, arching her eyebrows. “The New York Times did. If you don’t like the title, maybe you should rethink your business practices.”

Not a very good apology. She could see that. Now. Now that he was angry all over again and she was a little peeved herself.

“Athens Organics?” he asked, tilting his head, his blue eyes sharp, as if he could see right through her, past her pink chambray shirt and the T-shirt bra with the fraying strap, down to her bones, her DNA. And he judged all of it, all of her, as somehow beneath him.

“Let me guess, you grow a few tomatoes?” he asked.

“Sell them on the roadside?”

“Athens Organics is a thirty-acre, environmentally sound organic farm.”

“You grow a lot of tomatoes,” he said, but it wasn’t a compliment. This man, in his fancy clothes and his bad attitude, understood one thing. Money.

And she only worked for one reason: to be able to look herself in the mirror and smile every day. To be able to pass on the best possible earth to her daughter.

She took a deep breath. “I employ thirty people and give them a fair wage. I support my daughter and myself and I am proud of what I do. I haven’t sold myself, or this planet, to do it.” She studied him. “How about you?” she asked. “Are you proud of what you do?”

He didn’t answer, not that she expected him to. He simply stood there, staring at her until, because she was who she was, her righteous temper flickered and died and she suddenly felt the need to apologize again. As if she’d done something wrong.

She opened her mouth, mustering up the energy for one more sorry to this loathsome man.

“Yes,” he told her. “I am.”

Her mouth hung open, stunned. Building homes on dirty, poisoned land. He was proud of that?

“Your father is going to be so disappointed in you,” she whispered. He stepped toward her so fast she almost fell back. She almost put up her hand, not to ward him off, but to push back. The man was too much. Too angry. Too resentful.

“I have no father,” he said, each word like a bullet from a gun.

“Son?” Patrick Mitchell, as if summoned, appeared on the other side of the Jeep. He wiped his hand across his large chest, like a nervous boy. His heart was all too visible in his watery blue eyes.

Eyes that were, she realized, just like Jonah’s.

No, she wanted to cry. No, Patrick, don’t put your hopes on this man. Don’t let him hurt you, because he will.

She knew it in her bones.

This man hurt everyone.

“JONAH?” Patrick asked again, waiting for the big man to turn away from Daphne. The air crackled between her and the stranger with Iris’s jawline and hair color, who could only be his youngest son. Patrick could tell she was upset but he was too at loose ends to try to determine what had happened.

Christ, he couldn’t even figure out what to do with his hands. His heart was thundering in his chest and all he wanted to do was pull that man, that boy he never got to know into his arms and hold him as tight as he could.

My son, his whole body cried. That’s my son.

Daphne stepped away from Jonah, keeping her eyes on him as though he were a snake that might strike. Crossing in front of the Jeep, she stepped up to Patrick and wrapped her sturdy arms around him. He watched Jonah’s stiff back sag momentarily.

What is happening here? Patrick wondered.

“You’re a good man,” Daphne whispered in his ear. Stunned, he tried to tilt his head, to push away slightly so he could see her face, but she held on tight. “The very best. I would have killed for a father like you.” She kissed his cheek, patted his chest and walked away.

Sparing one sharp glance over her shoulder at Jonah.

Odd, Patrick thought, curious about what had gotten into their practical fruit and vegetable supplier.

He looked at Jonah to find the young man watching him. Staring at him across five feet and thirty-plus years. Jonah wore his sunglasses and Patrick longed to tell him to take them off. To let him see his eyes. They were blue, Iris had said, like Patrick’s own.

“Hi,” Patrick finally said into the tense silence between them. Jonah nodded, a regal tilt to his head and Patrick felt more unsure than he had the morning after his wife had walked away, leaving him with two young boys to care for.

The speeches he’d prepared and discarded over the past few months couldn’t be resurrected. He didn’t remember anything he’d thought would be so prudent to say. All those things that would explain the past thirty years without casting blame or judging. All the words he’d hoped would bridge the gap between them vanished. His brain was empty.

What should I say? he wondered, jamming his hands in his pockets. What am I supposed to do with my hands? Why doesn’t Jonah say something? Why doesn’t he take off those damn glasses?

Jonah just stood there.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Patrick said. It was a ridiculous understatement. A mere patch on what he truly felt, as if his life, missing something for so long, was finally going to come together. And this boy, his boy, this strong, handsome and angry man was the key to it all.

But Jonah stared at him as though Patrick were speaking French and he didn’t understand the language.

“Son—”

“Where’s my mother?” Jonah asked, his voice flat.

“She went back to her cabin to freshen up,” Patrick said, stammering slightly. He understood it wasn’t going to be roses with this boy. They had a lot of demons between them that needed to be put to rest. But he had hoped for a better start. Something closer to friendly than this frigid behavior. Iris had warned him that Jonah was not happy about this. That he was reluctant to come. But Patrick truly had not expected there to be no connection. They were flesh and blood after all and it wasn’t as though Patrick had known about him and rejected him. If he’d known Iris was pregnant when she left, he would have moved heaven and earth to get them back.

“I’m sure she’ll be out here soon. My boys are coming, too. Gabe just had a baby and he’ll want to show her—”

“Listen…Patrick,” Jonah said, his voice cutting him like a knife. “I’m not here for a family reunion. I’m here because my mother asked me to be here. And—” his voice grew slightly meaner, mocking “—you probably don’t remember this about my mom but she doesn’t ask for much. So, I’m here for her. I don’t care about your sons—”

“They are your brothers,” Patrick insisted.

“They are no one,” Jonah said. “You are all strangers and you’re going to stay that way.”

Patrick watched this boy and tried to see into him, tried to find him amongst all that attitude. But couldn’t. And it broke his heart a little.

“We’ll see about that,” Patrick said, not ready to give up the fight just yet.

Jonah shook his head. “This isn’t a made-for-TV movie,

Patrick. There is no happy ending for us. Mom had no business trying to get us all together.”

“Don’t you want her to be happy?” Patrick asked.

Jonah lifted his sunglasses before bracing himself against his Jeep. Patrick felt pinned by the hate in his son’s blue eyes. Eyes that were, as Iris had said, identical to his own.

“You don’t know my mom,” Jonah said. “You don’t know what makes her happy. And you sure as hell don’t know me.”

“I want to,” Patrick said, bracing himself against the Jeep, too. There was only so much of this man’s disdain and disrespect he could take. “You are my son and I want to be a part of your life.”

“Well.” Jonah laughed and the sound made Patrick wince. “You should have thought of that thirty years ago when you told your wife you wanted nothing to do with her. Twice.” Jonah put his glasses back on and checked his watch, dismissing Patrick like a waiter at a restaurant. “Tell my mom I’ll pick her up for lunch—”

“Tell her yourself.” Iris appeared on the walkway leading from the cabin she’d been staying in. She wore red—a scarf in her hair and a banner of crimson across her lips. Happiness, a certain motherly excitement radiated from her like raw electricity. It was as if the woman Patrick had gotten to reknow in the past five months was plugged in suddenly, amped up.

She looked like the woman he’d married. The woman he fell in love with so long ago. And seeing that woman again knocked all the wind right out of him.

He barely stopped himself from sagging to the ground.

“Hey, Mom!” Jonah said, his face changing, growing younger, lighter, happier. His body, so rigid, softened as he picked up the smiling Iris and wrapped her in a giant bear hug.

“It’s been too long,” Jonah said.

“Yes,” Iris agreed. She stroked her son’s hair away from his face and pulled off his sunglasses. “That’s better,” she said, smiling into his eyes.

Patrick felt as if he’d been punched in the gut.

They were a unit, these two. A family. Who was he, at this point in their lives, to insist on being involved?

There was so little chance of this working, he realized. He understood Jonah’s anger and Iris’s reticence to get him and Jonah under the same roof.

“Well, well.” Gabe, his oldest boy, stepped up next to Patrick while Max, his middle son, flanked him. Patrick could not have been more relieved.

This was his unit. His family.

“I should have guessed that Jonah would use Mom’s maiden name, but I never put two and two together,” Gabe murmured quietly so Jonah and Iris didn’t hear. “The Dirty Developer is our missing brother.”

Patrick’s jaw dropped. “No,” he breathed. “No way.” They’d talked about the news article this morning over coffee and he hadn’t put two and two together, either.

But Jonah did bear a remarkable resemblance to the grainy picture of the man in the newspaper.

My son? Patrick thought. Someone with my blood was capable of such things?

It was obscene. Gross.

“Jonah,” Iris said, keeping her arm around him but pointing him toward Patrick and the boys. “Meet your brothers.”

Max stepped forward, all business, a policeman to the core. “Max,” he said, holding out his hand. “Good to meet you.”

Jonah just stared at the hand and Patrick held his breath, waiting for Max’s short fuse to be lit by Jonah’s apparent ingrained disrespect. The last thing this situation needed was Max’s fighting instincts to be stirred.

“Jonah,” Iris admonished the full grown man next to her as though he were a five-year-old. Jonah reached out to shake Max’s hand.

“And I’m Gabe,” Gabe said, stepping up beside his brothers. With all of them standing together Patrick could see how similar they all were. Tall men, like him. Gabe had Patrick’s blond hair and olive skin. Max and Jonah had Iris’s dramatic coloring—dark hair and light skin—though Max’s eyes were dark. And Jonah’s eyes, like Gabe’s, were blue.

Patrick glanced at Iris and caught the worry in her expression, her clenched hands and tight lips.

The parking lot was filled with dangerous fumes, combustible tempers and incredibly hurt feelings. The wrong word uttered and Patrick knew the whole place would go up in smoke. But he didn’t know what to say. What to do. This whole situation was too big to be dealt with. How did one pull it apart and try to fix what was so terribly wrong?

“Well, now,” Iris said, charging into the clutch of boys, wrapping her arm around Jonah’s waist and grabbing Max’s hand, giving them both a little jostle. She glanced around, her smile fierce, her eyes daring any one of them to say something wrong at this moment. “Isn’t this nice.”

Patrick tipped his head back and laughed.

That’s how, he thought, pride and respect for Iris washing over him. That’s how you do it.

IRIS COULD BE a powerful riptide, dragging Jonah places he didn’t want to go. School. Church. Parties. Into the Riverview Inn for lunch.

“Go,” he told her when she turned to wait for him. Patrick, Max and Gabe had already headed for the front doors. Max and Gabe had practically grabbed the laughing Patrick and ran away with him, as if rescuing him from Jonah. “I’ll be right in.”

This was not my idea, Jonah wanted to yell. But he didn’t have enough air. He didn’t have enough air to walk to the lodge, much less give those men, his brothers, the fight everyone was itching to get to.

My chest, he thought, a frenzied panic starting to claw up his back.

“Mom,” he said when she continued to stare at him with her obsidian eyes, knowing him far too well to believe him. She thought he was going to turn and run.

“I have to call Gary,” he lied. “A quick call and I’ll be right in.”

She quirked an eyebrow and he smiled, dug into his pocket and chucked her his car keys, which she caught deftly in one hand the way she used to when he was a teenager.

Go, he wanted to beg, please just go.

“Happy?” he asked and immediately knew it was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes got wet and she bit her lower lip.

“I am, Jonah,” she said, standing against the rustic and wooded background of the inn like a brave and noble pioneer woman. Which so suited how he always saw her. Strong and stalwart. Unflinching but also, most of the time, unsmiling.

Life had been hard on Mom.

“I am very happy right now,” she said and Jonah forced himself to smile so she would leave him for a few minutes. Just a few was all he needed. Or he’d pass out on the gravel.

His body awash in cold sweat, he waited until she worked her way down the path to the lodge before he opened his passenger car door and slumped into the seat. Gasping, he pawed open the glove compartment and grabbed his emergency inhaler.

It had been weeks since he’d needed this. Weeks since the asthma had fought past his carefully acquired relaxation tools.

He took a deep puff from the inhaler. Another. Waited, inhaler poised, until finally, he felt the steroids at work, opening his lungs. His throat.

Air, like cold, clean water, filled his body, and his head stopped spinning.

He stared at the brilliant blue sky, the muscular shoulders of the Catskill Mountains and waited for his body, his constant betrayer, to fall into line.

“See you later, Tim!” The tall blonde, Daphne, shut the kitchen door behind her and stepped onto the gravel heading toward her white pickup truck with the Athens Organics logo in green on the side.

But she stopped, like a deer sensing danger and glanced over at the Jeep, the open door and him slouching in his passenger seat.

God, she was pretty.

Her hair, so gold it seemed white, was lit like a halo around her head, as if further proof of the differences between them. He could practically feel the devil’s horns pushing out from his skull. Her green eyes raked him. Her lush mouth opened slightly in surprise and, he was sure, a mild disgust.

Not wanting her to see him like this, he tossed the inhaler back in the glove box and sat up. Met her gaze as if he had nothing to hide.

She lifted a hand—a farewell or a greeting he didn’t know—then walked to her truck, got in and drove away, right past him, without another glance.

CHAPTER THREE

JONAH HAD SAT THROUGH more than his share of tough negotiations. He could sit unfazed through the heaviest, stoniest of silences, smiling slightly until the opposition cracked.

It was a skill he’d picked up from the many hours Aunt Sheila spent with him playing Stare Down during that chicken pox incident.

But even he had to admit that lunch was rough. Rough in the way the Nuremberg Trial was rough. Rough like the South surrendering to the North. Civilized on the surface but only one wrong word away from an all-out brawl.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Mom asked, resting her head against his shoulder, while linking her arm through his. He was walking her from the lodge to her cottage across the clearing that was filled with the electric-green of a new spring. He slid on his sunglasses against the blaze of the sun.

He had to admit, much like the meal he hadn’t eaten and the room he didn’t eat it in, the place was nice.

That was all he was going to admit.

“It was pretty bad.” He laughed, putting his hand over hers and holding it tightly.

“Well, you didn’t help,” she chastised him. “Sitting there like some kind of—”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Tough guy.”

“I am a tough guy,” he protested.

“Please,” she said. “You barely said two words.”

“They talked plenty,” he reminded her. Had they ever. Alice and Delia, the redheaded Texan, could talk paint off a wall. They were like two birds—bright and pretty but chattering constantly. He’d tuned them out until one of them mentioned Daphne, then like some kind of radar, he tuned right in.

Idiot, he thought.

“Max and Gabe barely said two words,” she said, seeming preoccupied.

“Gabe said enough,” he assured her. Gabe, when everyone was occupied with passing dishes and spooning out salad and cooing at the black-haired, squashed-face baby, had turned to him, eyebrow arched in a way Jonah completely understood and said, “Dirty Developer?”

He’d pushed away from the table for one wild moment, ready to put his fist in Gabe’s smug face but Max put a hand between them and said, “It would break Iris’s and Dad’s hearts if you fought.”

It had been the appropriate bucket of cold water. But still, Jonah felt that anger in his stomach. The anger remarkably similar to the one that had fueled him for years on the playground when kids called him shrimp or tiny tunes or baby.

But he did hope that before he left he might get a chance to have a quick conversation with Gabe Mitchell. The kind of conversation that might end in a bloody nose.

“So, are you satisfied?” he asked, glancing down at her. “Family reunited so we can all get on with our lives.”

She stopped and stared at him, her dark eyes like spotlights on his grimy little soul. “I know this is hard for you, Jonah—”

He laughed and tugged her into motion. “No, it’s not hard at all,” he clarified. “It’s not hard because I have no expectations, Mom.” He knew this was going to hurt, but she’d clearly gone slightly delusional since coming here over the winter. Maybe it was grief and stress over Aunt Sheila’s battles, but his mom wasn’t thinking clearly. “I have no attachment to these men.” When he saw her shaking her head, he spun her to face him. He took off his glasses so she could see how serious he was. “These men don’t mean anything to me. And they are never going to. I don’t want anything from them, or need anything from them.”

She searched his eyes and he let her. This was his truth. “You are what matters to me,” he told her and she smiled. But it was one of her sad smiles.

“Oh, honey.” She sighed, cupping his cheek. “You’re what matters to me, too. That’s why I want you here. Why I want you to stay.”

“Mom—”

“Look,” she interrupted. “Everyone in there was having a real hard time not asking you about that article in the Times last week.”

“You saw it?”

“Of course I did. It was the New York Times. Everyone saw it.”

Of course. Everyone. Even out here. The lovely Daphne had already proven that. Thinking of her watching him through the windshield of his Jeep, her eyes so damning, made his skin tight.

He bristled in reaction to the unbidden thought of her. It had been a long time since his thoughts had been so caught up in a woman. Especially to one who so clearly hated him and who he was never going to see again.

“Why don’t you just tell them,” Mom suggested. “Explain—”

“There’s nothing to explain,” he said, walking again, trying to shake the remembered sensation of Daphne’s eyes judging him.

“Jonah—”

“There is nothing to explain,” he repeated, enunciating clearly so she’d get the idea that the conversation was over.

“Well, if you won’t stay for me,” she said, “if you won’t stay in order to get to know your own father—”

He rolled his eyes at her and she smacked his arm. “I am your mother, Jonah. You will not roll your eyes at me.”

“Sorry, Mom,” he said, truly abashed.

“Like I was saying, if you won’t stay for me, or to get to know these truly wonderful men—these kind and generous and complicated men who are your family—at least stay until that Dirty Developer thing blows over.”

Ah, his mom. So smart.

He sighed. “If you are asking me, I will stay.”

“I know, but I get tired of asking.”

“You never ask,” he cried, laughing. “I have more money than I know what to do with and you refuse a penny. I try to take you on trips. I tried to buy you that new car—”

“My car is fine.”

“Your car is a mess!”

“I don’t need your money, or your trips or cars.”

“Clearly.”

“I need you. Here. For two weeks.”

He felt himself strain and push against that promise he’d made. He’d never guessed, being so young and so suddenly on top of the world, that his mother would ever ask for something he didn’t want to give. The one thing, actually, that he didn’t want to give her.

“Were you unhappy?” he asked, blurting out the question that had been churning in his brain since he saw her smile at Max and Gabe. “All those years with me…did you wish we were with them?”

Tears filled her eyes, turning them to black pools. He was sorry that he made her cry. He was always sorry for that. But it hurt to think that he was second best all these years.

“I wanted to be with you,” she said fiercely. “Wherever you were that’s where I wanted to be.”

He smiled at her. He knew a hedge when he heard one. A half-truth. She’d asked him once if he wanted to know his father and he’d said no. Absolutely no.

At the time his six-year-old brain thought it might mean sharing his mother. And he hated that.

His thirty-year-old brain wasn’t all that different. But he did recognize what he did to her when he’d told her no. The wall he’d built. He made it impossible to try to have both—her husband and sons all together.

Of course those letters Patrick had written telling Iris he didn’t want her, those letters put up quite a wall, too. Jonah didn’t like the idea of her here chasing after the man who’d rejected her. Hurt her so much. There was far too much potential for more pain for his mother here.

“Mom, why do you want this so bad?” he asked. “The guy told you no.”

“And then he said yes.” Iris shrugged. “We both made mistakes.”

It was a terrible answer, in Jonah’s book. Patrick changing his mind about having Iris come back didn’t erase the thirty years that his mom missed the man.

She’d pretended she didn’t, but Jonah wasn’t blind.

And it made him very nervous. Mom was walking toward a freight train of pain and he needed to pull her out of the way.

“If I don’t stay, if I say no, will you go back home?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Will you come to New York for a visit?” he asked.

And his mom, who knew him so well, shook her head again. “I want to get to know these men,” she said. “I’ll stay for a while.”

There was a buzzing in the back of his head, a sense of impending doom.

“Mom,” he whispered, wishing so badly she didn’t feel anything for Patrick.

“I know,” she said, holding up her hand. “But I wouldn’t change it if I could.”

He would, he thought. He’d change everything about the damn situation if he could.

Well, crap. He was going to have to stay. Maybe he could derail the freight train.

Daphne’s green eyes were there in his head and he slid his sunglasses back on. Perhaps he would be seeing her again.

“I’m at the Athens Motel tonight,” he said. “I’ll check into the Riverview tomorrow morning.” He saw her relax. Melt a little, as though whatever pins had been keeping her shoulders up around her ears, whatever stress was making her lips tense, her fingers clench slowly faded away.

He kissed her lightly on the forehead.

Love, he thought, was just a disaster waiting to happen.

DAPHNE TOED OFF her mucky galoshes and stepped into her kitchen in her bare feet. The rainy spring had done wonders for her asparagus and between that and her trouble finding reliable delivery guys, her mornings were insane. She woke up at dawn and ran a marathon by 8:00 a.m. Luckily her mother, Gloria, had been coming over in the mornings to help Helen get ready for school.

“Hi, Helen,” Daphne said, tugging her daughter’s long ponytail and taking in her ensemble. Helen’s fashion sense this morning involved the top of a genie costume that she’d worn in a school musical two years ago. It was pink, sparkly and showed about an inch of her little girl’s belly.

Damn teen pop stars and MTV and hormones in meat and milk or whatever was making little girls grow up way too fast these days.

“You’re not wearing that to school,” she said, point-blank.

“Mom.” Helen groaned.

“Sorry, kiddo. Go on up and change.”

Helen cast one more pleading gaze at her grandmother, who only laughed. “I told you, you wouldn’t get away with it,” Gloria said. Helen flounced up the stairs, the spangles on her shirt twitching and twirling.

“I swear she’s seven going on seventeen.” Daphne sighed, taking the mug of coffee her mother slid across the counter at her.

“It’s not much different than when you were a kid,” Gloria said, arching one dark eyebrow. Daphne did not take after her petite, dark-haired Italian mother, despite how much she wished she had. Instead, she was the spitting image of her lying, cheating, Swedish father. Blond hair, broad shoulders and a fierce temper. She was a genetic delight. “The clothes are just smaller.”

Daphne smiled and tried to drink as much caffeine as she was capable in the few minutes she had before driving Helen to school. Mornings were still chilly these days and she warmed her palms around the Del Monte seed mug.

“She asked for two sandwiches in her lunch again today,” Gloria said and Daphne frowned.

“Didn’t she have breakfast?” she asked. Helen’s appetite usually hovered around birdlike, except for the occasional growth spurts in which case her appetite approached don’t-get- in-my-way territory.

Gloria nodded. “She ate all her yogurt. But that’s every day this week she’s asked for an extra something.” Strange. Daphne checked her watch. She’d have to ask

Helen about it on the road.

“Helen is also turning into a gossip columnist,” Gloria said, wiping off the last of the breakfast dishes and setting them back in the oak cabinet.

Daphne nearly choked on her coffee. “I wonder where she gets it?” She cast a look at her mother who, as the resident gossip queen, had given up amateur status and gone pro a few years ago. Gloria took “news” very seriously.

“Very funny. But she’s all wound up over what’s happening down at the Riverview. Thanks to her friend Josie, she’s an expert on Patrick’s youngest.”

“Jonah,” Daphne said, trying to hide behind her coffee cup, so her mother wouldn’t pick up the blushes she couldn’t control. Mom was like a drug-sniffing dog when it came to those sorts of things. She could take a wayward glance or a blush and turn it into a torrid love affair in less time than it took Helen to change her clothes.

“Sounds like quite a guy.” Gloria pretended to be nonchalant but “why don’t you marry him and give me more grandbabies” was written all over her. She did this whenever a young man got within dating distance.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Daphne hedged. Utterly inappropriate or a low-down scumbag were a couple of others. She checked her watch. “Helen! Let’s go, slowpoke!” she shouted, wanting to flee the kitchen before her mother started into her biannual monologue about men, ticking clocks and loneliness.

A real laugh riot, that monologue.

“Sweetheart?” Gloria said. Daphne groaned and just laid her head on the counter, like a woman at the guillotine. “Would it kill you to date?”

“Yes,” she said into the yellow Formica. “It would kill me.”

“I’m being serious,” Gloria insisted, pulling Daphne up by the back of her shirt. “This Jonah fellow is a young man, single, apparently attractive—”

“And leaving, Mom. He’s not sticking around. He’s probably already gone. Which wouldn’t matter because he’s the last person in the world I would date.”

“Apparently every man within a thirty-mile radius shares that status.”

“Mom—”

“You didn’t even fight for Gabe Mitchell!”

Daphne rolled her eyes. Her mother could not let go of the brief relationship she had with Gabe. “There was nothing to fight for, Mom. The man was in love with his ex-wife. What was I supposed to do?”

Gloria’s face became a mix of pity and pleading and Daphne hated it. “You’re too young to spend your life covered in mud. You used to be so carefree and spontaneous. You used to be fun.”

“I’m still fun, ask Helen.”

“Grown-up fun. Sex fun.”

Daphne groaned and held up her hand. “I am too busy to date. I am too busy for—” she dropped her voice, uncomfortable even saying the word “—sex fun. I am raising Helen and trying to expand my business—”

“Excuses,” Gloria interrupted, her eyes flashing, her short brown hair practically bristling. Gloria had finally found love again with a high school English teacher who lived twenty miles away. They dated, went to movies, traveled. They weren’t married, didn’t live together and the relationship was, for Gloria, perfect.

And that perfection gave her a license to harangue Daphne on the subject of second chances on a regular basis. “You’re too scared to even try.”

A charged stillness filled Daphne, like the air before a lightning strike. Her mother was right. She was scared. Scared of being hurt. Of being rejected. Of being left behind all over again.

“You are so beautiful and strong. Any man would be lucky to have you.” Her mother’s soft voice was tempting, but reality was reality and that’s where Daphne parked her butt these days.

“You’re my mother, you are supposed to say that.” Daphne brushed crumbs from the counter into her hands, looking anywhere but at her mother. “But my track record speaks for itself.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means—” she swallowed, the words wedged behind her pride and reluctant to come out “—men don’t want me. Not permanently.” She dumped the crumbs in the garbage by the sink, wishing she could do the same with this conversation.

“Oh my God!” Gloria cried, spinning Daphne around. “How can you say that?”

“Well, for one, Dad—”

“Your father wasn’t cut out to be a father. His leaving had nothing to do with you.”

“I was seven, Mom. I went to bed and had a father but when I woke up he was gone. Trust me, that feels pretty personal. And Jake pretty much confirms it.”

Gloria sighed. “Well, you barely gave Jake a chance to be a father. Or a husband.”

“Jake wanted to leave,” Daphne insisted. “You think I pushed him out the door, but trust me, he doesn’t see it that way. I gave Jake his freedom.”

They heard Helen’s footsteps upstairs, a signal to stop before she heard them.

“Not every man leaves,” Gloria said.

“You’re right,” Daphne agreed. “Just the ones I love.”

Helen tromped in wearing a far more appropriate red T-shirt with a big yellow flower on the front, looking like the quirky funny seven-year-old she was, rather than a young hooker in training. “Mom, everybody in school wears shirts like that,” she said, grabbing her bulging book bag and brown bag lunch.

“Everyone but you, Helen,” Daphne said sweetly, ushering her out the door toward the truck. “Everyone but you.”

They drove down the driveway toward the road into town and Daphne unrolled her window, the morning finally warming up. The breeze, warm and smelling like pine and manure from Sven’s farm, curled through the cab.

The For Sale sign was still posted and she hadn’t heard a word about her offer. She stuck her tongue out at the ramshackle old house as they drove by just to make herself feel better.

“Hey, Mom, guess what I heard?” Helen asked, turning bright eyes to Daphne. Her still chubby cheeks were pink and the wind teased hair loose from her braid to whip it around her face. Daphne smiled, loving her daughter so much sometimes it was like a physical pain. Budding gossip columnist or no.

“What did you hear?” she asked like a woman on the edge of her seat. She shouldn’t encourage this or Helen would turn out worse than Mom, but she was too darn cute not to.

“Josie said Jonah moved into the inn and Josie was trying to spy on him but her mom caught her and made her do dishes with Chef Tim.”

“Jonah moved into the inn?” Now Daphne really was on the edge of her seat.

“That’s what Josie said yesterday on the playground.”

“When did he move in?”

“Yesterday morning. Josie said she watched him unpack his bags and talk on the phone. She said he talks on the phone a lot.”

“How long is he staying?” Daphne asked and wished she didn’t care. She wished her cheeks weren’t hot at the mention of his name. Wished she could stop interrogating her seven-year-old as if she were the sole witness to a crime.

“I don’t know,” Helen said. “I’ll ask Josie.”

Daphne told herself that she was just curious about a man so utterly different from her. Still, she had to bite back a long list of questions she had about the man.

When is he leaving?

Why is he such a jerk?

Why does he look so good in blue jeans?

Is he married?

“You want me to ask if he’s married?” Helen asked and Daphne nearly drove off the side of the road.

“What?” Good God? Am I talking out loud? “Why?”

“So, you can date. Josie said he’s really cute.” Helen waggled her eyebrows, something Daphne did as a joke and it was about a million times funnier on her seven-year-old daughter.

“Have you been talking to Grandma?” Daphne demanded.

“No,” Helen said. “I told you I was talking to Josie and she can totally find out if he’s married.”

“Even if he was single, I’m not going to be dating him,” Daphne told her daughter in all seriousness, hoping to end this conversation.

Helen harrumphed and looked out the window, pulling blond hair out of her eyes. Daphne had known that the little cocoon of Athens Organics, the country she’d created of Daphne and Helen, wouldn’t last forever. Helen was bound to get interested in things outside of the farm and her mother, but Daphne had never really suspected it would be her love life.

“Is it because Daddy’s back?” Helen asked. “Is that why you don’t date anyone?”

Oh God, Daphne had feared this would happen when Jake came back around. She’d suspected Helen would get her hopes up and start thinking that they’d be a family again. The divorce wasn’t so hard the first time around— Helen had been so young. But this time, when Jake left—and he would, he was a leaver—his absence would ruin a seven-year-old’s high hopes and fantasies.

“Honey, Dad and I aren’t getting back together,” Daphne said clearly. She decided to slow down, deliveries be damned, and pull over to the side of the road so she and Helen could really talk. “We’re just friends and we’re going to all these parties to help him with his new job.” She put the truck in Park and let it idle.

“I know,” Helen said, and Daphne wondered if she was just saying what Daphne wanted to hear. “But it would be nice if we were all friends. And I think Daddy loves you.”

“No, honey, he doesn’t.” She stroked her daughter’s cornsilk hair. He never really had. Not the real her. And certainly not enough to make it work. “But he loves you like crazy,” she said, smiling and tugging on Helen’s ponytail. Soon Helen would want to cut off that long hair, wear something cooler than a long braid like her mommy. Daphne dreaded the day.

Helen smiled, some of the seriousness leeching from her face, only to be replaced by the quicksilver joy of a seven-year-old. “He’s taking me to the drive-in tonight. A double feature.”

Daphne steered the truck back onto the road. It was Friday and Jake’s night with Helen. She’d convinced herself at some point in the past eight months that this one night a week Jake had with his daughter was a blessing for all of them. He got to know his daughter. Helen got to know her father in a very small way. A small, very regulated way that would hopefully keep her protected when he reverted to his leaving ways. And during those few hours Daphne got some work done.

On Friday nights.

When the rest of the world was dating or watching movies as families or fighting or making love or putting their children to bed. She was walking asparagus fields.

It didn’t feel like a blessing.

It felt lonely.

She dropped Helen off at school, glad her little girl wasn’t too old or too concerned about being cool to forgo the kiss goodbye.

And only when she was halfway to her first delivery did she realize she never asked why Helen needed extra food in her lunch.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE RIVERVIEW INN had wireless Internet, Jonah could get a cell phone signal, his mother had been bringing him coffee and food. So despite having been forced to stay, he was doing a very good job of not leaving his cabin.

Jonah had been at the inn for exactly twenty-nine hours and he’d managed to avoid seeing anyone but his mother. It helped that he was busy. At least it gave him an excuse for his mother when she tried to persuade him to join her for a walk.

“We passed the second soil testing with flying colors,” Gary told him. “We’ve got the green light to keep building.”

“Excellent news,” Jonah said, though he had not expected anything less. “We’re ahead of schedule. I’ll contact Herb and we’ll get crews in there next week.”

“Okay, but do you want to do anything with the newspapers?”

“Send the press release like you always do,” he said, jotting “call Herb” on the pad at his elbow.

“But those press releases don’t go anywhere. We never follow up and maybe with this bad press we’ve been getting—”

“No explanations, Gary.”

“I’m not saying we explain. I’m saying we clear the air. We tell the world what we’re doing and maybe get some wheels greased for Haven House.”

“The world isn’t going to help us with Haven House.”

“Donations would help and a little good press would make me sleep easier.”

“We don’t need good press, so why pander?”

“You are the most stubborn man I’ve ever met, Jonah. I’m your partner. And I’m telling you—I’m actually saying it loud and clear so you understand—you’re making a mistake. We need to talk to the papers. I know at least four journalists who would love to interview us.”

Ouch. He and Gary didn’t often disagree but when they did, it had been proven time and time again that Gary was right.

Jonah liked to pretend that wasn’t the case, but facts didn’t lie.

“Fine. They can interview you.”

“I’m not the Dirty Developer,” Gary said. “I’m the Dirty Developer’s associate.”

Jonah knew it was practically a done deal before he even agreed. Gary was tricky that way. Tricky and smart. “Fine. Get in touch with them and e-mail me the details.”

Jonah glanced at the window and saw the little girl duck again, just out of sight. The bushes rustled and he heard her whispering to someone or into a tape recorder. The redhead—Jonah would guess she was about ten—had been out there for most of the day, spying on him. The spy had astounding stamina and determination. He’d only been working and even he was beginning to find that dull.

He smiled, remembering doing a similar thing to Sheila after finding out she was a full-blooded Hopi Indian. He’d followed her hoping to see some scalping. But she only grocery shopped and walked her dog. The disappointment had been sharp so he decided to give young Mata Hari a thrill.

“Gary,” he said, watching the window from the corner of his eye. “Listen carefully. We’re going to put the bodies—”

“Bodies?”

“Right. The dead bodies. The dead bodies we killed.” He winced at his redundancy but the bushes were unnaturally silent. “We’re going to put them in the river.”

Something fell outside his window. A bush rustled and the little girl yelped.

“No mistakes,” Jonah said, smiling, straining to try to see the girl. “Or I’ll kill you, too.”

“Jonah, you should come back to the city,” Gary said. “All that clear air is making you crazy.”

Jonah heard the little girl talking to someone then heard the deep rumble of Patrick’s voice and his smile vanished. “Send me that e-mail,” Jonah said, distracted by the sound of Patrick and the girl walking up the sidewalk outside his cottage.

Great. Visitors.

“Got it,” Gary answered and hung up as a knock sounded at the door.

Jonah opened the door and found the old man, his hand on the girl’s shoulder.

The little girl, wearing head to toe purple, looked tortured, but she still managed to give him the evil eye. He swallowed a crack of laughter.

“This is Josie,” Patrick said, his gaze flicking between them. “And she has something to say.”

Jonah wanted to roll his eyes, call out the old man for this useless display of what…manners? Honor? Jonah didn’t believe a moment of it. Patrick wouldn’t know honor if it had bitten him on the ass.

“I’ve been spying on you,” Josie said, gesturing limply to the window.

“And…?” Patrick prompted.

“And—” she rolled her eyes “—I’m sorry.”

Jonah nodded at her and her tortured expression changed slightly. She craned her neck to get a better look inside his cabin.

The girl was stubborn, and Jonah understood stubborn.

My kind of kid, he thought.

“You go see what Chef Tim has for you to do in the kitchen,” Patrick told the girl and she scowled.

“Again?”

“You got caught,” Patrick said, shaking his head, “again.”

“But—” She looked at Jonah then Patrick, and Jonah realized that she didn’t want to leave the old man alone with him, maybe suspecting Jonah would add Patrick to the pile of bodies in the river.

“I knew you were out there,” he told the little girl. “I made that up about the bodies.”

“Really?” she asked, eyeing him shrewdly and again he almost laughed.

“Really.”

He felt Patrick’s gaze on him, hopeful and surprised. Yes, Jonah wanted to snap at him, the Dirty Developer has a sense of humor.

But he didn’t want Patrick to know anything about him.

She hesitated as if to say she didn’t believe him but then she nodded. “Okay. But if Patrick goes missing, I’m an eyewitness. I’ll testify.”

Jonah blinked, stunned slightly by the legal vernacular.

“Get going,” Patrick said, bodily turning the girl around and giving her a push toward the lodge.

Josie sighed heavily and stomped off, leaving Patrick and Jonah alone. Jonah realized this was the moment Patrick had been waiting for since he’d arrived.

Josie hadn’t been the only one haunting the outside of his cabin.

“Josie and her mother were in a scrape with the law last winter,” Patrick explained. “She saw and heard some things she shouldn’t have and spent some time in court this spring testifying. She caught on to the lingo.”

Jonah watched the girl go until the door of the lodge shut behind her.

“Why don’t you come on out?” Patrick said. “I’ll give you a tour. Take you down to the river.” His tone seemed casual, but he couldn’t control the hope that rolled off him, nearly suffocating Jonah.

“I’m working.”

Patrick sucked in a quick breath but kept his smile intact. The man wasn’t going to budge.

“Your mother—”

“Don’t try to use my mother to get me to do what you want me to do,” he said. “It won’t work. In fact, it will make me like you less. Not that it’s possible.”

Jonah tried to shut the door but Patrick got his hand in there before he could. Jonah was stunned briefly by the sudden sharpness in the old man’s eyes, the sudden anger.

“I didn’t know about you,” Patrick said. “Your mother never told me. If I had known, I would have done anything to get you back.”

Jonah knew that, of course. His mother had made very sure that he understood that Patrick had not rejected Jonah. He’d only rejected his wife. Banished her from her own family.

“Is that supposed to make me forgive you?” Jonah asked.

“I don’t understand what you are angry with me for.” Patrick truly looked lost. Clueless and that told him even further what Iris meant to this man.

“I’m angry,” he said clearly, making sure nothing would get misunderstood or forgotten, “because you never signed those divorce papers. You kept her chained to you for thirty years like she didn’t matter. You broke my mother’s heart. I’m angry because I grew up with a mother who every day tried to hide the fact that she was unhappy.” Patrick’s face crumpled, his fire extinguished. “And, no, there is nothing you can do to make me forgive that.”

With that, before the old man could say anything more, Jonah shut the door in his face.

PATRICK STARED at the closed door.

Heartsick, he battled nausea and chest pains. Confusion and grief made his head fuzzy and light.

What am I supposed to do?

He watched Max walk out of the lodge into the woods and thought about calling out to him. Trying to talk to him about this mess with Jonah. But his boys weren’t invested. They wanted him to protect himself, not get involved. Gabe in particular wanted him to let it go.

Even Max, last night, had said if Jonah wasn’t interested in bridging the gaps then maybe it wasn’t meant to be.

Patrick couldn’t believe that this family wasn’t meant to be.

Against all odds, Jonah was here. In cabin five.

Patrick simply needed to figure out how to get Jonah out of cabin five.

He knew that if he asked Iris to help him, to force the boy’s hand since he’d do anything for his mother, some of this heartache would be avoided.

But Patrick didn’t want her help. He wanted to feed the small fire of his grudge against her.

What she’d done was unforgivable. Despite the fact that he understood the whys and the reasons, he couldn’t forgive her.

She’d left them, him and the boys. Walked away in the middle of the night thirty years ago and had stayed away for three months before writing Patrick a letter asking to come home. He’d told her no. He’d been angry. Spiteful and hurt and he had no way of knowing that she was pregnant and her terrifying erratic behavior before she left had been caused by depression brought on by the pregnancy.

She wrote again, nine months later when Jonah must have been a few months old. By that time Patrick had his life in a rhythm. Something that worked. It wasn’t perfect and often it wasn’t pretty, but he was raising his boys and he’d decided that life was easier without her.

He’d been wrong, of course.

When he’d sent those letters to her, telling her not to come, that they were doing fine without her, he’d been thinking of himself and the boys.

He’d been thinking about Iris’s depression and the way it could make his life terrifying.

Happiness—hers, his, the boys—he hadn’t thought of. Now he wished he had. Staring at the door of cabin five and knowing his son was in there, blaming Patrick for things that weren’t all his fault, he wished he could have seen the future. In order to prevent this itchy heartache in his chest, he wouldn’t have kept his wife away.

He could have had his son.

Like a magnet, he found himself pulled in the direction of Iris. He wanted to remind her of the mistakes she’d made, the mess she’d made of their lives—the years they’d wasted.

It was, after all, her fault.

He’d been trying to keep his distance from her since her return a few weeks ago. He liked to pretend that he didn’t know this woman who looked like an older, sadder version of the woman he’d fallen in love with on a vacation to the Jersey Shore. He wanted to pretend that the years and the betrayal had changed their core.

Now, however, he walked to the gazebo where he knew she’d be.

And there she was. Bouncing, loving and generally hogging baby Stella as she had since her arrival.

Their first grandchild. The thought caught him in the throat and he couldn’t breathe. He just watched Iris with Stella and ached.

It was a milestone they should have celebrated together—arm in arm, in love, proud and happy.

She robbed him of that.

She didn’t hear him approach, thank God, all of her energy focused on the pink bundle in her arms.

A tiny hand came up out of the blanket and patted Iris’s mouth, reaching for the dangling earrings she wore.

“Pretty soon, Stella,” she cooed, touching her nose to the baby’s. “Pretty soon you’ll have your hands on everything.”

The hot mix of emotions built in him, filling his chest and his head. He couldn’t make sense of them. Couldn’t put a name to everything that made him want to grab her and shake her. Touch her.

Oh God, how could he want to touch her so bad when she’d lied to him? Kept his son from him? Why did he want to hold her and ease the pain he saw in the weary set of her shoulders, the bowed curve of her neck as if the whole world was pressing on her?

It didn’t make sense. But anger made sense. Anger worked. So he concentrated on that.

He started to put words together, hurtful words telling her exactly what she’d done to him.

“Patrick,” she said, interrupting his mental tirade, not even turning to look at him. “I was wondering when you’d come looking for me. Things aren’t going well with Jonah?”

He shook his head, the mix of emotions making words impossible. I’m mad, he wanted to howl.

“You want to take that out on me?” she asked. “Yell at me? Make me feel worse than I already do?”

Yes!

Finally she looked at him, her black eyes a well of hurt. Of regret. But she would let him do it. She would let him yell and rage and blame her for all the misery at the inn. But it wouldn’t add to the pain in her eyes. The burden she carried on those strong, elegant shoulders.

I can’t make her feel worse than she does, he realized.

“No,” he whispered. He shook his head, weary suddenly as the emotions that had fueled him dissipated like fog in the sun.

Stella fussed, a little cry that turned Iris’s attention to the little girl. “Hello, there. Hello, little love,” she whispered and he felt that bit of nonsense, that soft breath of air from his wife’s mouth enter his tortured self and calm him down.

He and Stella both stopped fussing.

“She’s a lot like Max was as a baby,” Iris said, with the familiar ribbon of the Hudson River behind her. A careful truce was offered in her eyes, the merest hint of a question. Will you let it go? her eyes asked. Please, for both of us, let it go. “He didn’t like sleeping, either. Wanted to be in the middle of the action all the time.”

Patrick felt the memories creep through him. Images of the boys’ early years when they were a family—memories he’d sequestered and quarantined.

I can’t do this. I can’t pretend everything is okay. I can’t.

But he wanted to.

“Remember?” she asked.

Don’t make me let go of my resentment.

“He was a busy guy,” he said, giving in, knowing it was a useless battle. He let the memories out. The happiness of those days. The peace and kindness whirled through him. “I thought he’d never sleep through the night.”

“Unlike Gabe,” she said. “He slept through his first six months.”

“Six months? More like six years.” Patrick smiled at the memories.

“Slept and ate, that’s about it. Remember when we went camping that summer?”

Patrick laughed, knowing exactly what she was thinking of, the incident conjured up by her voice as if it had happened yesterday. “He slept through that big storm.”

“Not just the storm,” she said, swaying slightly when Stella began to fuss. “He slept through the tent collapsing and all of us running around trying to fix it.”

Iris brushed her fingers over the little girl’s face and Patrick could feel that touch as if it were his flesh Iris stroked. These feelings entered with the memories, unwanted hangers-on.

“I pulled in as much of the tent as I could and ended up balling up the rest and sleeping on it.” Patrick cleared his throat and stared at his hands. “One of the worst nights of sleep I ever had. I was sore for months.”

“Remember in the morning, Gabe woke us up to tell us the tent fell down. Like we didn’t know.” Iris laughed. “Oh my Lord, that boy could sleep through anything. Jonah was the same way.”

At the mention of their youngest son’s name, the air between them changed. Became heavier, darker.

“He’s not talking to me,” Patrick murmured. “He won’t even come out of the cabin.”

“Jonah doesn’t want to be here,” Iris told him what he already knew. “And he can be very stubborn.”

“What do I do?” Patrick asked, sitting in one of the wrought-iron chairs. His bones felt sore, taxed to their limit just by holding him up.

“You be patient with him,” Iris said. “He’s stubborn but his heart is so good.”

“The Dirty Developer?” Patrick asked, the name tasting gross on his tongue.

“If I explained his business to you, he would never forgive me,” she said. He glanced at her and he could see her strength. Hard-won in Arizona, raising a boy without him. She was like bedrock and she wasn’t going to budge on this.

Admiration—one more thing he didn’t want to feel for her—seeped into the mysterious whirl of feelings he was trying to ignore.

A breeze came up from the Hudson and sent her earrings into motion and Stella reached again for the silver. “But you have to trust me—”

He laughed. He laughed before he could help it. He was sore and raw and he did trust Iris. He could see what the years had done to her, the regret she lived with.

But he laughed because he hurt so much and he wanted her to hurt a little, too. It was cruel. And sick.

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