“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 hard-core 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 good-natured 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.”
2
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 sun-warmed 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.
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