Molly O'Keefe - Worth Fighting For

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.”

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.