Worth Fighting For. Molly O'Keefe

know, but I get tired of asking.”

      “You never ask,” he cried, laughing. “I have more money than I know what to do with and you refuse a penny. I try to take you on trips. I tried to buy you that new car—”

      “My car is fine.”

      “Your car is a mess!”

      “I don’t need your money, or your trips or cars.”

      “Clearly.”

      “I need you. Here. For two weeks.”

      He felt himself strain and push against that promise he’d made. He’d never guessed, being so young and so suddenly on top of the world, that his mother would ever ask for something he didn’t want to give. The one thing, actually, that he didn’t want to give her.

      “Were you unhappy?” he asked, blurting out the question that had been churning in his brain since he saw her smile at Max and Gabe. “All those years with me…did you wish we were with them?”

      Tears filled her eyes, turning them to black pools. He was sorry that he made her cry. He was always sorry for that. But it hurt to think that he was second best all these years.

      “I wanted to be with you,” she said fiercely. “Wherever you were that’s where I wanted to be.”

      He smiled at her. He knew a hedge when he heard one. A half-truth. She’d asked him once if he wanted to know his father and he’d said no. Absolutely no.

      At the time his six-year-old brain thought it might mean sharing his mother. And he hated that.

      His thirty-year-old brain wasn’t all that different. But he did recognize what he did to her when he’d told her no. The wall he’d built. He made it impossible to try to have both—her husband and sons all together.

      Of course those letters Patrick had written telling Iris he didn’t want her, those letters put up quite a wall, too. Jonah didn’t like the idea of her here chasing after the man who’d rejected her. Hurt her so much. There was far too much potential for more pain for his mother here.

      “Mom, why do you want this so bad?” he asked. “The guy told you no.”

      “And then he said yes.” Iris shrugged. “We both made mistakes.”

      It was a terrible answer, in Jonah’s book. Patrick changing his mind about having Iris come back didn’t erase the thirty years that his mom missed the man.

      She’d pretended she didn’t, but Jonah wasn’t blind.

      And it made him very nervous. Mom was walking toward a freight train of pain and he needed to pull her out of the way.

      “If I don’t stay, if I say no, will you go back home?” he asked.

      She shook her head.

      “Will you come to New York for a visit?” he asked.

      And his mom, who knew him so well, shook her head again. “I want to get to know these men,” she said. “I’ll stay for a while.”

      There was a buzzing in the back of his head, a sense of impending doom.

      “Mom,” he whispered, wishing so badly she didn’t feel anything for Patrick.

      “I know,” she said, holding up her hand. “But I wouldn’t change it if I could.”

      He would, he thought. He’d change everything about the damn situation if he could.

      Well, crap. He was going to have to stay. Maybe he could derail the freight train.

      Daphne’s green eyes were there in his head and he slid his sunglasses back on. Perhaps he would be seeing her again.

      “I’m at the Athens Motel tonight,” he said. “I’ll check into the Riverview tomorrow morning.” He saw her relax. Melt a little, as though whatever pins had been keeping her shoulders up around her ears, whatever stress was making her lips tense, her fingers clench slowly faded away.

      He kissed her lightly on the forehead.

      Love, he thought, was just a disaster waiting to happen.

      DAPHNE TOED OFF her mucky galoshes and stepped into her kitchen in her bare feet. The rainy spring had done wonders for her asparagus and between that and her trouble finding reliable delivery guys, her mornings were insane. She woke up at dawn and ran a marathon by 8:00 a.m. Luckily her mother, Gloria, had been coming over in the mornings to help Helen get ready for school.

      “Hi, Helen,” Daphne said, tugging her daughter’s long ponytail and taking in her ensemble. Helen’s fashion sense this morning involved the top of a genie costume that she’d worn in a school musical two years ago. It was pink, sparkly and showed about an inch of her little girl’s belly.

      Damn teen pop stars and MTV and hormones in meat and milk or whatever was making little girls grow up way too fast these days.

      “You’re not wearing that to school,” she said, point-blank.

      “Mom.” Helen groaned.

      “Sorry, kiddo. Go on up and change.”

      Helen cast one more pleading gaze at her grandmother, who only laughed. “I told you, you wouldn’t get away with it,” Gloria said. Helen flounced up the stairs, the spangles on her shirt twitching and twirling.

      “I swear she’s seven going on seventeen.” Daphne sighed, taking the mug of coffee her mother slid across the counter at her.

      “It’s not much different than when you were a kid,” Gloria said, arching one dark eyebrow. Daphne did not take after her petite, dark-haired Italian mother, despite how much she wished she had. Instead, she was the spitting image of her lying, cheating, Swedish father. Blond hair, broad shoulders and a fierce temper. She was a genetic delight. “The clothes are just smaller.”

      Daphne smiled and tried to drink as much caffeine as she was capable in the few minutes she had before driving Helen to school. Mornings were still chilly these days and she warmed her palms around the Del Monte seed mug.

      “She asked for two sandwiches in her lunch again today,” Gloria said and Daphne frowned.

      “Didn’t she have breakfast?” she asked. Helen’s appetite usually hovered around birdlike, except for the occasional growth spurts in which case her appetite approached don’t-get- in-my-way territory.

      Gloria nodded. “She ate all her yogurt. But that’s every day this week she’s asked for an extra something.” Strange. Daphne checked her watch. She’d have to ask

      Helen about it on the road.

      “Helen is also turning into a gossip columnist,” Gloria said, wiping off the last of the breakfast dishes and setting them back in the oak cabinet.

      Daphne nearly choked on her coffee. “I wonder where she gets it?” She cast a look at her mother who, as the resident gossip queen, had given up amateur status and gone pro a few years ago. Gloria took “news” very seriously.

      “Very funny. But she’s all wound up over what’s happening down at the Riverview. Thanks to her friend Josie, she’s an expert on Patrick’s youngest.”

      “Jonah,” Daphne said, trying to hide behind her coffee cup, so her mother wouldn’t pick up the blushes she couldn’t control. Mom was like a drug-sniffing dog when it came to those sorts of things. She could take a wayward glance or a blush and turn it into a torrid love affair in less time than it took Helen to change her clothes.

      “Sounds like quite a guy.” Gloria pretended to be nonchalant but “why don’t you marry him and give me more grandbabies” was written all over her. She did this whenever a young man got within dating distance.

      “That’s one way of putting it,” Daphne hedged. Utterly inappropriate or a low-down scumbag were a couple of others. She checked her watch. “Helen!