Cain's Salvation (Passion in Paradise - The Men of the McKinnon Sisters) (5 page)

Honor shouldn’t have been surprised to
see Sheriff Zeke Monroe leaning against her car when she walked out the back
door of the café later that morning.  After her conversation with Abel
earlier, she really should have known that her day was doomed to go from bad to
worse.

Fate had a way of kicking you when you
were already down; she’d learned that lesson all too well.

“Hello, Sherriff,” she evenly greeted
the grim-faced man as she approached her car.  Dressed casually in jeans
and a flannel shirt that had the cuffs rolled back to his elbows, the only
signs of his status were the gold star badge strapped to his belt and the big
gun that was holstered at his side.  “Is there a reason why you’re leaning
against my vehicle and disturbing my peace this morning?”

The last thing she felt like doing was
having an argument with Paradise’s sheriff, but it appeared that the man had
taken root in front of her car.  She’d either have to deal with him or run
him down.  Unfortunately, the good Christian in her wouldn’t allow the
latter option. 

Offering her a slow sardonic smile, Zeke
slowly straightened.  “You’re not going out there alone, Honor,” he stated
in a low voice, peeling off his tinted sunglasses to level her with a
penetrating stare.  “I know what you’re planning, and I’m all for it, but
you’re not going out there by yourself.”

Tightening her hand around her purse
strap, Honor narrowed her gaze on the tall man.  Almost a foot taller than
her, he loomed over her when he stood at full height.  Shading her eyes as
she tried to stare up into his unreadable face, she frowned.  “What do you
think you know, Sherriff?”

“I know Abel Turner paid you an early
morning visit here at the café.  I’m also aware of the favor he asked of
you.”

“You mean that you already knew Cain was
back in Paradise?” Honor questioned sharply, perching one hand on her hip as
she glared at him.  Of course he did!  The insufferable pain in her
backside knew
everything
before she did.

“Honor, there’s not much that goes on in
this town that I
don’t
know about,” the older man countered
bluntly.  “Abel wants you to go out to the Turner home place and try to
talk sense into his brother. That’s fine.” He nodded.  “You just can’t
waltz out there alone, though, and face a man haunted by more demons than
you’ll find in Hell all by yourself.”

“Cain would never hurt me,” Honor
retorted, flashing Zeke a horrified look.  “You ought to be ashamed of
implying such.”  Over the years, both Turner boys had taken turns playing
the role of hell raiser in their community; she knew that.  She’d been a
child, but she could still recall her parents talking about some of the
hair-raising skirmishes the two men had found themselves embroiled in during
their younger days.  None of it, however, had ever involved violence
toward a woman.  Abel would have never asked her to intercede if he’d been
concerned for her safety.

“Cain isn’t himself,” Zeke insisted in a
voice that hardened with authority.  “And no, I don’t think he’d ever lay
a hand on you, Honor, but I don’t trust him not to be a raving asshole,
either.  Especially if he’s been drinking – which he
does
– a
lot
.”

Honor considered the wisdom in what he
said.  While she despised that he made a good point, she could recognize
smart advice when she heard it.  Besides, if Ezekiel Monroe had already
made up his mind, there was nothing she was going to say to change it. 
The man had a head harder than Aunt Orla’s cast iron skillet.  Honestly,
the skillet probably had more give to it.

Pulling her yellow sweater tighter
around her slim waist as the cool November wind ruffled her hair, Honor
nodded.  “Alright.  We’re driving separately though.  I have
errands to do after I finish at the Turner homestead.”

Nodding, Zeke tipped his hat toward
her.  “Mind the speed limit, Honor.  I’d hate to pull you over,” he
warned before ambling toward his own SUV.

“Mind the speed limit.  I’d hate to
pull you over,” Honor mimicked under her breath as she listened to the Sheriff
chuckle behind her.  Opening her car door, she climbed behind the wheel
and started the engine, pausing only long enough to fasten her seat belt. 
Her gaze lingered on the tall sheriff for a long moment.  Irritating male
chauvinist, she thought to herself even as she smiled slightly.  Sheriff
Monroe was a trial she had learned to endure, and it helped that she knew the
man meant well.  She simply hated that he’d made her his pet cause.

And she hated the reason
why
he’d
done it even more.

But those were thoughts for her to dwell
on another time, she told herself sternly.  Right now, she had a wayward
sheep to rustle back into the flock.

She just hoped she was up to the task
the Almighty had laid before her.

Suddenly, she wished she possessed a
really long stick.

~***~

Cain cursed when he
heard the first vehicle turn off on the gravel road leading to his family’s
farmhouse.  He reached for the beer he’d dropped on a tree stump when he
heard a second car pull in behind the first.  Taking a deep pull from the
longneck bottle, he swallowed quickly.

“Shit,” he muttered,
casting a look over his shoulder and recognizing the grey Buick slowly making
its way up the road.  A car length behind, Paradise’s sheriff
followed.  Wiping his lips with the back of his hand and gripping the axe
he’d been using to chop firewood in his other palm, he strode back toward the
fallen tree he’d just felled.  With any luck, the two people approaching
the house were here to visit his dad.

It was unlikely, but a
guy could hope. 

He sat the beer on the
ground by his feet.  Lifting his arms, his muscles flexed as he viciously
swung the axe and split the log.  Shirtless and sweating, the cool autumn
air felt good on his skin.  Ignoring the sound of opening and closing
vehicle doors, he kept swinging, praying that the company would bypass him and
leave him to his solitude.

Pausing when he heard
gravel crunching behind him, he grimaced.  Fuck, he thought, squeezing his
eyes closed, he’d known they were here for him.  “I guess Abel told you I
was back, huh?” he commented without turning around, bending instead to pick up
his beer again and tilt the bottle to his lips.

“Don’t you think it’s a
little early for that?” Ezekiel asked dispassionately, watching as Cain gulped
the remainder of the beer down his throat.

“It’s five o’clock
somewhere.” Cain shrugged and straightened, silently garnering his strength
before he turned to face a replicate image of the woman he loved.  “Hello,
Honor,” he greeted the younger woman softly as he faced her, turning his body
so that the scarred half of his face was plainly visible to her.  “Fancy
seeing you here,” he added with a small sneer, tipping his now empty bottle
toward her.

He smiled as Honor’s
eyes widened on his face and she audibly inhaled.  “I see my good twin
didn’t tell you how pretty I look these days.  He’s an asshole like
that.  Dad’s in the house.  Don’t let me keep you,” he growled,
dismissing them with a cold look in their direction.

“Abel mentioned that
you’d been in an accident before you left Afghanistan,” Honor said softly,
refusing to be so easily ignored.  Following him back to the tree on the
ground, she watched as he bent to lift another chunk of wood and move it to the
tree stump.

“Accident?” Cain
laughed harshly.  “That’s rich, sweetheart, and entirely fucked up. 
An accident is what happens when you run a stop light, Honor.  The word
you’re looking for is
ambush
.  You know what that is?” he
questioned tightly as his fists balled at his sides.  “That’s when a bunch
of fucking terrorists that want to kill your ass surround you and open
fire.  I was ambushed in the middle of fucking Hell and lost the entire
squad I was accompanying, Honor.  Unfortunately, all they managed to give
me were these pretty new beauty marks when they launched an IED at the humvee I
was riding inside at the time,” he bit out, holding his scarred arms out to his
sides.  “I think I’d rather have had the bullets with the rest of my
guys.”

Pressing her lips
together, Honor stared fearlessly at the bitter, angry man in front of her.
 He didn’t frighten her. In spite of how enraged his was, she angled her
body closer to him.  He was hurting.  Better than anyone, she knew
that when you were in that much pain, striking out at those closest to you was
almost standard operating procedure.  How many of her family had she
shunned in those early days after she’d been raped? “Yes, Cain, I’m familiar
with what an ambush is.  I experienced one myself.  Firsthand. 
Like you, I wished I’d died after it was over, too,” she acknowledged with a
quiet kind of dignity, no judgment in her soft voice.

“Fuck!” Cain cursed,
running a hand over his face as his heart clenched tightly in his chest. 
Hell, he hadn’t meant to tear into Honor like that.  No woman deserved to
be treated to the way he was acting.  Most certainly not somebody as sweet
and kind as Faith’s sister – someone who had already survived the kind of
animals he despised.  “Abel should have told you that I was in no
condition for company,” he railed, meeting Zeke’s flashing ominous eyes over
Honor’s head.  “What the hell were you thinking bringing her out here?” he
asked the other man angrily.  “Take her and go,” he demanded roughly,
avoiding Honor’s unsettling gaze.  The youngest McKinnon saw entirely too
much.  She always had.

“The lady was coming to
see you whether I joined her or not,” Zeke informed Cain in a cutting
voice.  “For her safety, I tagged along.  As much as I respect the
job you did for our country, I don’t trust you right now as far as I could
throw you, Cain.”

“Wise man,” Cain
grunted, rubbing a hand over the healing burns on his chest. 

“You wouldn’t hurt me
even if I’d come alone, Cain.  We both know that and so does Zeke, despite
his posturing,” Honor objected calmly, keeping her uncomfortable eyes averted
from him as she spoke.  “I’m not leaving here until I say what I came to
say to you,” she warned.  “Put on a shirt so that we can talk like
civilized adults.”

It was on the tip of
his tongue to tell her that if she didn’t like the scars on his body to look
somewhere else.  That was, right up until he realized that it wasn’t his
injuries that offended her.  It was the fact that he was standing half
naked in front of her.  She’d have had that reaction to any man that faced
her in a state of partial dress.  In fact, she was handling it much better
with him than he knew she would with anyone else.  It was remarkable
progress considering the violence that had been done her several years ago at
the hands of two brutal animals masquerading as men.  That single thought
was enough to make him move his ass, quickly reaching for the black shirt he’d
worn outside and shrugging it over his broad shoulders.

Honor waited until he’d
fastened several buttons to look at him again.  “Thank you.”

Shrugging his
shoulders, Cain shoved a hand through his too long hair.  Since he’d come
home, he hadn’t bothered cutting it.  He knew it must look shaggy and
unkempt, and he felt a brief moment of embarrassment.  The man he used to
be had taken pride in his appearance.

Of course, that man no
longer existed.

Those thoughts weren’t
what he wanted to dwell on, though.  Pursing his lips, he muttered,
“Honor, I don’t know what Abel could have said to you that got you out here,
but I’m fine.  You’ve done your Christian duty and checked on me. 
You can go.”

“What do you think he
said to me?” Honor asked, wrapping her arms around herself as she faced him,
ignoring his curt dismissal.

“Am I my brother’s
keeper?” Cain retorted irritably, stomping to the small cooler he’d brought
outside with him and extracting another beer.  The logical part of his
brain knew he didn’t need it, but he’d been doing a damn good job at ignoring
all things rational lately.  Why stop now?

“Cute, Cain.” 
Honor raised a brow as he began to pace anxiously in front of her, gripping the
longneck he held tightly between his thumb and forefinger.  “Biblical
quotes won’t curry favor with me when they’re sarcastically used.  I have
it on good authority that God doesn’t like smartasses.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled
around the lip of the bottle, quickly swallowing a pull of the bitter
ale. 

“Cain and I would like
to speak alone, Sherriff,” Honor remarked, keeping her eyes trained on her
sister’s former fiancé.  “Please give us some privacy.”

Zeke offered Cain a
long, assessing look before he moved slowly toward the other man.  “You
heard the lady, Doctor.  Can I trust you not to be any more of an ass than
you already have been?”

Shooting the Sheriff an
irritated look, he clenched his jaw.  “I’m not a doctor anymore,
Zeke.”  Why the hell couldn’t these two leave him alone with his
misery?  If he got drunk enough, he didn’t have to remember all the things
he’d seen in the past year and a half.  He could briefly forget how much
he’d hurt the people he loved the most. 

“Yeah, so I hear. 
Listen, I’m going to go in the house and say hello to your father.  Do
anything stupid out here, Cain and I have no problem hauling your ass in to
jail.  Public intoxication is still a crime out here in the sticks,” the
Sheriff threatened gravely. 

“Private property,
Sheriff,” Cain retorted, gesturing around the spread.  “I’m having a drink
on my own land.”

“Technically, the land
is still in your father’s name.  You’re a guest,” Zeke corrected
resolutely.  “I’m pretty sure that I could get Seth to see things my way,
too.  He doesn’t like what you’re doing to yourself any more than Abel
does.  A few nights drying out in a jail cell might be just what you need,
if you ask me” he added meaningfully. 

“Nobody did,” Cain
returned lightly, lifting his beer to his lips again and pointedly taking a
drink.

“Keep a civil tongue in
your head, Cain.  I mean it,” the Sheriff warned, his eyes conveying the
fact that if he insulted Honor in any way, a jail cell would be a great
alternative to the coffin he’d put Cain’s body inside.

“Cain and I will be
fine,” Honor interrupted before one man could take a swing at the other. 
Usually, she wouldn’t be concerned.  Cain had never been particularly
combative, but then, the man she’d known hadn’t ever drunk like a fish
either.  As for Zeke, she could see his temper was fraying.  She
needed to intercede quickly.  “Go talk to Seth and leave us to chat. 
Please?” she murmured, lightly touching Zeke’s arm.

Nodding stiffly, Zeke
took a step back.  “All you need to do is sing out if you need me,” he
told Honor gently.  “I’ll be close,” he added as much for her ears as for
Cain’s.