Worth Fighting For. Molly O'Keefe

than this frigid behavior. Iris had warned him that Jonah was not happy about this. That he was reluctant to come. But Patrick truly had not expected there to be no connection. They were flesh and blood after all and it wasn’t as though Patrick had known about him and rejected him. If he’d known Iris was pregnant when she left, he would have moved heaven and earth to get them back.

      “I’m sure she’ll be out here soon. My boys are coming, too. Gabe just had a baby and he’ll want to show her—”

      “Listen…Patrick,” Jonah said, his voice cutting him like a knife. “I’m not here for a family reunion. I’m here because my mother asked me to be here. And—” his voice grew slightly meaner, mocking “—you probably don’t remember this about my mom but she doesn’t ask for much. So, I’m here for her. I don’t care about your sons—”

      “They are your brothers,” Patrick insisted.

      “They are no one,” Jonah said. “You are all strangers and you’re going to stay that way.”

      Patrick watched this boy and tried to see into him, tried to find him amongst all that attitude. But couldn’t. And it broke his heart a little.

      “We’ll see about that,” Patrick said, not ready to give up the fight just yet.

      Jonah shook his head. “This isn’t a made-for-TV movie,

      Patrick. There is no happy ending for us. Mom had no business trying to get us all together.”

      “Don’t you want her to be happy?” Patrick asked.

      Jonah lifted his sunglasses before bracing himself against his Jeep. Patrick felt pinned by the hate in his son’s blue eyes. Eyes that were, as Iris had said, identical to his own.

      “You don’t know my mom,” Jonah said. “You don’t know what makes her happy. And you sure as hell don’t know me.”

      “I want to,” Patrick said, bracing himself against the Jeep, too. There was only so much of this man’s disdain and disrespect he could take. “You are my son and I want to be a part of your life.”

      “Well.” Jonah laughed and the sound made Patrick wince. “You should have thought of that thirty years ago when you told your wife you wanted nothing to do with her. Twice.” Jonah put his glasses back on and checked his watch, dismissing Patrick like a waiter at a restaurant. “Tell my mom I’ll pick her up for lunch—”

      “Tell her yourself.” Iris appeared on the walkway leading from the cabin she’d been staying in. She wore red—a scarf in her hair and a banner of crimson across her lips. Happiness, a certain motherly excitement radiated from her like raw electricity. It was as if the woman Patrick had gotten to reknow in the past five months was plugged in suddenly, amped up.

      She looked like the woman he’d married. The woman he fell in love with so long ago. And seeing that woman again knocked all the wind right out of him.

      He barely stopped himself from sagging to the ground.

      “Hey, Mom!” Jonah said, his face changing, growing younger, lighter, happier. His body, so rigid, softened as he picked up the smiling Iris and wrapped her in a giant bear hug.

      “It’s been too long,” Jonah said.

      “Yes,” Iris agreed. She stroked her son’s hair away from his face and pulled off his sunglasses. “That’s better,” she said, smiling into his eyes.

      Patrick felt as if he’d been punched in the gut.

      They were a unit, these two. A family. Who was he, at this point in their lives, to insist on being involved?

      There was so little chance of this working, he realized. He understood Jonah’s anger and Iris’s reticence to get him and Jonah under the same roof.

      “Well, well.” Gabe, his oldest boy, stepped up next to Patrick while Max, his middle son, flanked him. Patrick could not have been more relieved.

      This was his unit. His family.

      “I should have guessed that Jonah would use Mom’s maiden name, but I never put two and two together,” Gabe murmured quietly so Jonah and Iris didn’t hear. “The Dirty Developer is our missing brother.”

      Patrick’s jaw dropped. “No,” he breathed. “No way.” They’d talked about the news article this morning over coffee and he hadn’t put two and two together, either.

       But Jonah did bear a remarkable resemblance to the grainy picture of the man in the newspaper.

      My son? Patrick thought. Someone with my blood was capable of such things?

      It was obscene. Gross.

      “Jonah,” Iris said, keeping her arm around him but pointing him toward Patrick and the boys. “Meet your brothers.”

      Max stepped forward, all business, a policeman to the core. “Max,” he said, holding out his hand. “Good to meet you.”

      Jonah just stared at the hand and Patrick held his breath, waiting for Max’s short fuse to be lit by Jonah’s apparent ingrained disrespect. The last thing this situation needed was Max’s fighting instincts to be stirred.

      “Jonah,” Iris admonished the full grown man next to her as though he were a five-year-old. Jonah reached out to shake Max’s hand.

      “And I’m Gabe,” Gabe said, stepping up beside his brothers. With all of them standing together Patrick could see how similar they all were. Tall men, like him. Gabe had Patrick’s blond hair and olive skin. Max and Jonah had Iris’s dramatic coloring—dark hair and light skin—though Max’s eyes were dark. And Jonah’s eyes, like Gabe’s, were blue.

      Patrick glanced at Iris and caught the worry in her expression, her clenched hands and tight lips.

      The parking lot was filled with dangerous fumes, combustible tempers and incredibly hurt feelings. The wrong word uttered and Patrick knew the whole place would go up in smoke. But he didn’t know what to say. What to do. This whole situation was too big to be dealt with. How did one pull it apart and try to fix what was so terribly wrong?

       “Well, now,” Iris said, charging into the clutch of boys, wrapping her arm around Jonah’s waist and grabbing Max’s hand, giving them both a little jostle. She glanced around, her smile fierce, her eyes daring any one of them to say something wrong at this moment. “Isn’t this nice.”

      Patrick tipped his head back and laughed.

      That’s how, he thought, pride and respect for Iris washing over him. That’s how you do it.

      IRIS COULD BE a powerful riptide, dragging Jonah places he didn’t want to go. School. Church. Parties. Into the Riverview Inn for lunch.

      “Go,” he told her when she turned to wait for him. Patrick, Max and Gabe had already headed for the front doors. Max and Gabe had practically grabbed the laughing Patrick and ran away with him, as if rescuing him from Jonah. “I’ll be right in.”

      This was not my idea, Jonah wanted to yell. But he didn’t have enough air. He didn’t have enough air to walk to the lodge, much less give those men, his brothers, the fight everyone was itching to get to.

      My chest, he thought, a frenzied panic starting to claw up his back.

      “Mom,” he said when she continued to stare at him with her obsidian eyes, knowing him far too well to believe him. She thought he was going to turn and run.

      “I have to call Gary,” he lied. “A quick call and I’ll be right in.”

      She quirked an eyebrow and he smiled, dug into his pocket and chucked her his car keys, which she caught deftly in one hand the way she used to when he was a teenager.

      Go, he wanted to beg, please just go.

      “Happy?” he asked and immediately knew it was the