Molly O'Keefe - Worth Fighting For

“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.”