“Thanks, Jonah. That’s kind of you to say. But she’s been sick, so I don’t—”
“Don’t worry,” he said, feeling the steel bands of his Armani tuxedo close around him. “You really think we need to go?”
“I think if we don’t it will be a pretty big snub. We don’t need any more real estate agents angry with us.”
That was the sad truth, his life depended on those bastards. “Fine.” He sighed. “I’ll go.”
“You can bring a date,” Gary said, trying to be helpful. “In fact, it would probably go a long way toward proving to the agents that you are human.”
They know I’m human, Jonah thought. It’s been splashed all over the front page of the New York Times. He’d never felt so naked with all of his clothes on.
And who would he take? Sue had dumped him three months ago, leaving a letter with the usual complaints about his work and communication skills. He hadn’t had time to date anyone else and who—
The image of Daphne in red satin, her hair down, sidled into his brain. Daphne wearing high heels, a little tipsy on champagne.
It was a seductive image. It was, actually, a pretty damn hot image.
But it wouldn’t happen. He needed to have a conversation with Daphne, let her know that playing around in his life, no matter what her intentions, was not welcome.
She was a menace, that woman.
“A date would keep Tina Schneider off you for the night,” Gary said.
“I can handle Tina Schneider.” Though that was not a proven truth. Tina was stunning, a former lover and the very new wife of the deputy mayor of New York City—though based on her behavior the last time Jonah saw her, her vows didn’t seem to matter to her.
“I’ve heard they’re actually a lot of fun. This one is at the Astoria—”
“It’ll be like swimming with sharks, Gary.” He heard the clatter of a stone struck by a shoe behind him. He whirled to find Max, steel-eyed and coplike. Like Clint Eastwood in the middle of a dusty road.
“Oh, hey, before you go,” Gary kept talking but Jonah barely listened, wondering if Max was going to shoot him or something. “I found out about the land up there. This Sven guy is a little nuts and he’s asking for more than it should be worth, but by our standards the land is a steal. I think I’ll come out and see it before we make an offer.”
“Great,” Jonah mumbled. He felt slightly in danger with Max emanating a barely chained, junkyard dog vibe. Jonah had thought all along that Gabe was the threat, but Gabe was a pussycat compared to this guy. Jonah saw that now. Now that he was about to get shot. “Gotta go,” he said and hung up.
They stood in silence. Spaghetti western music played in Jonah’s head.
“What do you need, Max?” Jonah finally asked.
“I need you to give the old man a break,” Max said, eyes glittering, mouth hard.
“I’m not doing—”
“You’re killing him,” Max said, stepping toward Jonah. He did not step away, the air ignited with possibility. A fight would be good. A fight would be perfect! “You don’t have to change your name. You don’t have to move here. You could leave and never see him again—it would suck—but you could do it.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to acknowledge him. Talk to him. Give him something instead of all this attitude you throw around like you’re God—”
“Attitude!” he cried. This time he stepped forward, until only a few inches separated them. “I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want this. He broke my mother’s heart.”
“She broke his!” Max retorted. “Don’t you get it? This whole thing is rotten. All the way through. For everyone. No one got out safe. Do you think it’s easy for Gabe and me to have Iris back here? She left us. I was six! Do you know what that means?”
Damn. Jonah had never thought of that. It must have been terrible for them. As hard as what he had to deal with. He stepped away.
“Don’t you think we should all cut our losses?” Jonah asked, hoping someone in this family would see sense. Maybe Max could be persuaded to see things his way. “Just let everyone out of this mess?”
Max sighed. “I think it’s too late. It’s taken us a long time, but something good is happening between Gabe and me and Iris.”
“She’s not a bad person,” Jonah said because he knew how much his mother wanted this.
“Neither is Dad,” Max said.
“Then why didn’t he divorce her?”
Max paused a moment before slowly saying, “I think he still loves her. I think he thought if he signed those papers, he’d never see her again. At least if they were married, there was some kind of bond.”
Jonah wasn’t buying it.
“That, and he’s a stubborn son of a bitch.” Max laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Like you.”
Jonah wanted to be angry, but Max had insulted him with such affection, he found himself smiling a little instead. “You, too,” he said.
I am not going to like the man, Jonah thought.
“We’re family, man. Even though you don’t want to admit it, you are a Mitchell, too. Which means we’re going to have to deal with this mess. All of us.”
“Why do you want this so bad? You don’t know me. My mom left you when you were a baby. What’s in this for you?”
“A family,” Max answered as if it were so simple. As if Jonah was the idiot for not getting it. “I spent a lot of time pretending I didn’t need one, but you’re here and Iris is here and I want you guys.”
Jonah looked away, stunned by the honesty.
“Even though you’re acting like a whiny baby—”
“Hey!”
“We are proud of you,” Max said, punching him in the shoulder, the way Jonah always imagined a big brother would do. “Daphne didn’t mean any harm, man. Don’t be angry with her,” he said, and left.
Jonah stood, immobile, wondering what had happened to his life, how everything had been flipped upside down? And all signs pointed back to a nosy blonde.
“Daphne,” he said.
And he went to find her.
“Tim, please. I’m begging you.” Daphne stood in the middle of Tim and Cameron’s tomato plants and she wasn’t going to budge until she got an answer.
“And I,” he said, pushing his glasses up his sweaty nose, “have told you no.”
Well, an answer she liked better than that one.
“I cannot show up there alone,” she explained for the hundredth time.
Tim reached out, cupping her shoulders, his face sympathetic, but then he gave her a good shake. “Then don’t go!” he said. “It’s that simple. You don’t owe that man—”
“I promised,” she said.
“And we always keep our promises,” Helen piped up from the herbs where Cameron had taken her to give Tim and Daphne some privacy.
Some privacy.
“Why did you promise?” Tim asked.
To show him I’m okay. That I don’t leave. I don’t give up when it’s hard. That I stick things out.
Those reasons made her seem like a woman who enjoyed taking a hammer to the head repeatedly.
What is wrong with me?
“It’s not important,” she hedged. “What’s important is that I said we’d be there. Today. In—” she checked her watch “—an hour and I cannot show up alone.” It would be too humiliating. The reality that she hadn’t had a boyfriend or a lover or a single real date since her husband left her was mortifying enough. If she showed up alone, she was sure Jake would know. Everyone would know. Hell, everyone probably did know.
But worse, she worried that if she went alone—if Jake saw her alone—he’d ask for another chance, again. And because she was alone and lonely and because Helen was getting older and life was getting harder, she’d say yes.
She worried she’d be weak. If he kissed her, hugged her, she’d let him back into her life, even for a night. And that weakness would spread, from one minute to the next.
To hours and weeks. Perhaps a year.
And he would leave her all over again.
“I don’t want to be hurt,” she whispered.
But Tim wasn’t looking at her. He stared, openmouthed, over her shoulder. Daphne knew only one person who could elicit that kind of response.
“Can I have a word with you, Daphne?” Jonah asked and she closed her eyes on a curse.
7
Daphne led Jonah away, not wanting to be scolded in front of her child and not wanting to get into a fight in front of Tim and Cameron.
But she couldn’t look at him. Not yet. Not until she’d gotten herself under control. She was worked up. About him. About Jake. About everything.
My life used to be quiet, she remembered, stopping on the far side of the lodge, near the forsythia. And totally under control. My control. The country of Daphne and Helen had been invaded by an environmental bastion disguised as the handsomest man she’d ever seen.
The man was a menace.
Bracing herself, she met his eyes and saw…nothing. No heat. No icy chill. No lingering effects of the powerful scene in the dining room. Nothing. The man wasn’t giving away anything.
“I’m sorry,” she said, cutting to the chase. “I shouldn’t have pried.”
“You spend a lot of time apologizing to me,” he said and crossed his arms over his chest. The blue T-shirt pulled against his biceps, his dark hair caught the sun and glittered. For a second he was too pretty to look at.
“What can I say?” she snapped, angry that she still had these loose cannon feelings for him. She needed them squashed. “You bring out the best in me.”
He smiled, not his fully human one, but a small one. A sort of human one. And it only made him cuter. Damn him.
“I have to go,” she said, walking away from him. Walking free from his magnetic pull and her hormonal curiosity.
“I heard,” he said. “Begging for dates doesn’t become you.”
She couldn’t speak, choking as she was on her ire. On her humiliation. She was a divorced mother who hadn’t been touched in years. A small-farm owner with dirt under her nails that she’d never get out. Not without surgery. She was thirty-seven, a size ten and the only dates she could get were ones she begged for. And even those were with gay guys who got hit on more than her.
How kind of Jonah to rub her nose in it.
“You’re such a jerk,” she finally said, wishing she could think of something better. Something that would pull him apart and hit him where it hurt the way he had done to her.
It was her eyes. A terrible excuse, he knew. But her eyes made him do it.
The sparkle was gone and all he saw in those green depths was a mild despair. And while she was a menace, he couldn’t stand to see her beaten. So he’d made a bad joke about begging for dates. It had been a joke, but she wasn’t laughing.
“You’re such a jerk,” she said again.
And as she utterly eviscerated him with her gaze, he realized he might have overdone it and his joke had become an insult.
“I need to beg for a date, too,” he said, quickly, but not fast enough. She didn’t even pause as she walked away from him. Her denim skirt, pleasantly short, flipping up behind her as she went.
“Daphne,” he said. “Stop. Please. I’m—” He stopped himself in time. “I have a proposition for you,” he said, instead of apologizing. “A good one. Mutually beneficial.” Still she kept walking, calling Helen to join her. Ignoring him.
He felt his blood pressure rise, his chest get tight. Offending her had been a stupid idea. Who insults a person to make them feel better? Gary was right, he had the social graces of a water buffalo.
“I’ll go to the picnic with you,” he said and she only glanced over her shoulder at him. The expression in her eyes like daggers.
“Daphne—” He caught up to her and touched the soft white underside of her elbow. His fingers tingled, his hand went numb and he swore under his breath. This was a bad idea. He shouldn’t be setting up dates with a woman he wanted this much. His desire for her, for the soft white skin of her entire body, defied logic. And he preferred his desire logical. Daphne was a tall, leggy blonde, exactly his type. Yet she was so far removed from the women he usually took to functions, she could have been a different species.
“What?” she cried. The look in her eyes was past despair into something wounded and sad and he’d done that. He’d put that pain in her eyes, that doubt in her heart.
“I’m sorry.” The words, unprecedented, tumbled out, helter-skelter like animals released from captivity. “I am a jerk. This has been such a weird day and Max punched me and I was trying to make a joke—”
Well, now he was going a bit overboard. He shut up before he started telling her he wanted to talk about his feelings over tea. Maybe watch Oprah with her.
“A joke?” she said. Clearly his first apology in nearly fifteen years wasn’t enough for her.
“A bad one. But my proposition is good. I will be your date for your event if you go with me to an event next weekend.”
Her jaw dropped open. “What kind—”
“Formal. In the city. You’ll be away for the night.”
“I…ah…I can’t just—”
“She’d love to,” Tim yelled from behind him, where he apparently was eavesdropping.
“I’ll babysit,” Cameron yelled.
She put her head in her hands and he literally had to grip his hands together to keep himself from hugging her.
She was so lovely and real. Vulnerable. No woman he’d ever dated, ever seen naked, ever done incredibly intimate things to had ever given so much of herself away.
He liked it. It made him nervous as all hell, did stupid things to his blood flow and heart rhythms, but he liked her this way. Guileless and real.
“Sounds like it’s a done deal,” Jonah said.
“It’s hardly fair,” she said, glaring at him. “You’re going to a picnic for a few hours, but I am required to go to a formal event in the city—”
“The company is paying,” he quickly cut in. “Everything. Clothes, hotel, transportation—”
“Babysitter?” Cameron asked. “I don’t come cheap.”
“Yes,” Jonah yelled over his shoulder. And then he said it again, right to Daphne. “Yes, everything. It was a dumb joke. But you need me right now and I really need you next weekend.”
She pulled that lower lip that had been keeping him up nights between her teeth. “Clothes?”
“You can talk to my assistant. She’ll get you set up with Armani.”
Daphne was positively agog, and he loved it. “Maybe Chanel,” he added just to watch her jaw drop.
“What’s the catch?” she asked.
Right. The catch. His forte.
“My relationship with the Mitchells is off-limits. You don’t ask. You don’t read newspaper articles to them. You don’t even bother caring what is happening between me and the Mitchells.”
“I shouldn’t care?” she asked. Clearly the idea was foreign to her, this woman who cared too much about too much.
“Not about me.”
He couldn’t make it any plainer. Any more clear. Whatever happened between these dates, while he was here at the inn, it would be better—for everyone—if she didn’t care about him.
“How do you do that?” She tilted her head, observing him as if he were a strange bug she’d found on her asparagus.
“Do what?”
“Ask me out, offer to buy me expensive clothes yet rope yourself off-limits at the same time?”
I’ve had a lot of practice.
“Because it’s business, not personal. I need an escort to this function. And you need one to this picnic.” He shrugged as if it all made sense. And it usually did. He wasn’t sure why it sounded so perverse this time around.
“I don’t know whether to be offended or sad for you,” she murmured.
“Neither,” he assured her. “Is it a deal?”
She ran he
r eyes down his body, slow, as though she were taking off his blue jeans and T-shirt. He had to smile at her audacity, her sheer bravado. But then she looked right at him—through him almost. Past his stupid conditions and catches, his predate speeches right to the ten-year-old boy dying for a father to stand up for him.
“Absolutely,” she said and nearly knocked him out with her hundred-watt smile.
Patrick heard footsteps on the steps of the gazebo behind him. He knew it was her, caught the spicy, sweet scent of his wife, felt her calming influence before she said anything.
My wife, he thought, nearly brought low again by the words.
He’d come to the gazebo to clear his head, but he’d come hoping she’d follow.
He scrubbed at his eyes and tried to get himself under control before facing her.
“You don’t have to hide your tears from me, Pat,” she said. Her cool palm touched his arm, squeezed his hand and he shut his eyes against the pain of everything. A son who didn’t want him, a wife who wasn’t really his, a situation so out of control he hardly felt like himself.
“Are you okay?”
“You bet,” he said, trying to make a joke. “I always cry after breakfast.”
“I know this is hard, Patrick. You have to keep at him.” She tugged on him so he had to turn. His eyes, he knew, were red.
“I think Gabe might be right,” he said, shaking his head, denying her advice, trying not to look at her because she was so pretty. So worried for him and he wanted to touch her so bad his whole body ached. “I think maybe I should let go of this. For everyone’s sake.”
“No,” she whispered and for the first time he noticed her eyes were red, too. Her long black lashes thick and damp with tears.
“You’ve been crying.” His grief broke into a sudden anger. “This has got to stop. We can’t keep—”
“You’re doing the right thing.” She grabbed his arms in a fierce grip.
She’s touching me, he thought. His whole body still. After so long. My wife is touching me.
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