Worth Fighting For

“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.