Hard as Stone (Passion in Paradise: The Men of the McKinnnon Sisters) (13 page)

Swallowing the
painful lump of emotion clogging her throat as she heard her Daddy’s voice
whisper through her mind, Harmony blinked hard.  “I chose wrong,” she
whispered, her voice thin.  “Really, really wrong.  Every day, I wish I could
go back and tell Tanner to go to hell when he told my daddy to go screw himself
and for me to get my skinny ass in the car.”  She barely noticed the tears
running down her cheeks now, but felt Jacob’s gentle fingers blotting the wetness.

“That’s enough for
now, Harmony.  You don’t need to say anything else, baby,” he murmured.

If she’d looked up,
she’d have seen his intense eyes burning with anger, but she kept her head bent
as she shook her head.  “No, you wanted to know what happened, and I haven’t
even gotten to the
really
good parts,” she informed him in a cracking
voice.

“Baby, don’t do
this to yourself.  I know enough now,” Jacob argued, his hand gentle as he
tilted her head so that she’d look in his eyes.  “You don’t have to say
anything else.”

Oh, he could
not
be serious, Harmony thought, beginning to steam through her sorrow.  He
couldn’t leave well enough alone and now he wanted her to
stop
?  Fuck
him.  He could just sit there and suffer.  After trying so hard to avoid this
conversation, there was no way in hell she was going to allow him to escape the
hard, cold facts surrounding her fucked-up decision making abilities.

“Fucking typical,”
she spat, her damp eyes flashing dangerously as she glared at him.  “A man always
wants what he wants until you fucking give it to him.  Then, when they don’t
get what they expect, they want you to shut it down.  Well, screw you.  You
wanted
me to talk.  I’m talking!” Harmony yelled angrily through her tears.  “You
pushed and pushed and pushed.  This is what you get!  The unvarnished truth,
Jacob.  You can damn well sit there and listen to what you just had to hear!” 
Taking deep breaths as she turned her anger at herself on him, she clutched her
wineglass like a lifeline.  How dare he try to stop her now?  After bullying
her into sharing her pain, he could damn well sit there and swallow it.

Jacob’s jaw
clenched, but he nodded.  “You’re right,” he softly agreed.  “Keep going.  I
think maybe you let the poison fester inside you too long as it is.”

Swiping an agitated
hand against her cheek, Harmony narrowed her eyes on the man sitting next to
her.  “Oh, do you think so?  Haven’t you ever had something hurt you so badly
that you knew the best thing you could do was lock it up tight in your mind and
leave it the hell alone?  Tanner is an open wound that never goes away for me,
Jake.  I’ve learned, though, that as long as I don’t pick at the sore, I can
bear the pain. 
You
just rubbed it raw.”

“Good.  Maybe
before it’s done, the scab will start formin’ and you can
heal
.”

Harmony wanted to
scream at him in frustration, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good.  He had
that same determined glint that she’d seen in Abel’s, Cain’s and Zeke’s eyes
when thought they knew best for one of her sisters.  

“What happened
after your Daddy made you choose, Harmony?” Jake questioned softly.

“Six months of cold
silence happened,” she whispered woodenly.  “Oh, every once in a while I’d see
Momma at the grocery store or somewhere in town.  She’d walk past me and nod
her head like we were just acquaintances, but every once in a while I’d look
down and find some money in my purse that hadn’t been there before I’d seen
her.  She was helping where she could.  I know she wanted to mend the rift
between us, but my Daddy was a stubborn man.  I know he loved me, but he wasn’t
a man you crossed and I crossed him in a big way.  My sisters were trapped in
the middle, trying to see me on the sly.  It was a mess for all of us.  Tanner
and I were living out in a little trailer in the middle of nowhere on land my
granny had left me when she died.  That nasty, leaky tin box that should have
been demolished when Reagan was in office.  I was working at a convenience
store and Tanner worked as a mechanic – when he decided to work, that is. 
Mostly, he just drank and ran around with his lowlife friends, coming in at all
hours of the night if he decided to come home at all.  I didn’t know it then,
but he was also whoring with half the female population of Paradise.  I was
miserable, and I know both my parents would have welcomed me back with open
arms.  All I had to do was give up Tanner and go home.”

“So, why didn’t you
leave, Harmony?” Jacob asked gently a minute later when she lapsed into tense
silence.  Eyeing her little hand as it formed a tight fist against her thigh,
he privately suspected they’d reached the part where her story was going to
take a fucking ugly turn.  Hell, he knew he wasn’t good at this part…. highly
emotional moments with a woman were scenes he’d avoided at all costs.  For the
first time in his life, however, he wanted to be the good guy… the white
fucking knight that the damsel could depend on to save the day.  He wanted to
be the safe harbor where Harmony could ride out the emotional storm pummeling
her.  Jesus, he wondered if he needed to have his testosterone levels checked. 
He was pretty sure he might be turning into a woman.  “Babe?” he murmured,
jostling her arm slightly when she still didn’t speak.  “You still with me?”

 “I’m here,” she
muttered.  “I was just thinking about how I could answer your question in a way
that didn’t make me sound like a complete idiot, but that’s hopeless.”

“Harmony, I don’t
think you’re an idiot.  Not by any stretch of the imagination.”

She knew he meant
to reassure her, but his words only served to infuriate her more.  “Then you’re
as foolish as I was.  Only a moron would have stayed with Tanner for the reason
I did.  Pride, Jake.  I stayed with that bastard because of one thing!  Stupid
pride!!  I was determined that I wouldn’t let anybody know how
much
I
regretted the first fully adult decision that I’d ever made in my life because
of fucking
pride
.  Do you know how much I want to beat my own ass for
that nonsense?”

Jaw clenching, Jake
demanded roughly, “Exactly what good does beating yourself up over something
that is ancient history do?”

“Because it’s a
decision that served to shape the rest of my life… my daughter’s life,” Harmony
bit back sharply, her fingers clawing into her knee.  “My own ego kept me in a
marriage that was awful almost from the moment that he slipped the ring on my
finger.  It was my need to prove my parents wrong that kept me in that trailer
with him, Jake.  By the time I realized that I was only hurting myself by being
stubborn, my parents were
gone
.” 

Tears rolled down
Harmony’s face as she remembered the rainy night when her Aunt Orla had shown
up at the trailer door to deliver the horrifying news that her parents were
dead.  As usual, she’d been there alone; Tanner had been off doing whatever
Tanner did behind her back every chance he’d got, and she’d been watching a
re-run of Friends.   She’d known the second she opened the door and seen her
elderly aunt’s face etched with misery that something awful had happened.  Never
could she have been prepared for the words that came out of Aunt Orla’s mouth.

~~***~~

When she’d heard
the tinny doorbell ring on the trailer, she dropped the potato chip that had
been on her way to her mouth back into the plastic bowl in her lap.  Glancing
at the clock and seeing it was just after seven, she knew it wouldn’t be any of
Tanner’s friends.  They never rang the bell.  They just barged through the
door.  Perplexed, she’d muted the television and opened the door without
looking out the window, silently wondering if her visitor had taken a wrong
turn on the highway.

Seeing her Aunt
Orla standing on the worn welcome mat outside the door had stolen her breath. 
None of her family ever visited her here.  Not even her sisters.  She always
met them in town.  Pushing the screen door open quickly as she noticed the wet
trail of tears sliding from her aunt’s faded blue eyes, she grabbed the woman’s
cold hand in hers.  “Aunt Orla?  What’re you doin’ out here?” she asked,
glancing at her Uncle Jethro’s old rusted Chevy truck sitting behind her beat
up Volkswagen Bug.  Her uncle wasn’t inside the vehicle and Aunt Orla rarely drove
alone.   “Are you okay?”

“I’m so sorry,
honey.  I didn’t have your phone number, and I had to tell you myself before
you found out some other way,” Orla rambled, her lower lip trembling as she
stared up into Harmony’s face from the rickety front step of the porch.  “You
needed to hear it from family.”

“Tell me what?”
Harmony questioned, tightening her fingers around the woman’s wrinkled hand.

“Oh, Harmony,
child I hate to do this to you, but they’re gone, sugar.  They’re both just
gone.  You and Tanner need to come with me, darlin’, to your Momma and Daddy’s
house,” Aunt Orla said through her own river of tears. 

“Who’s gone?”
Harmony asked, panicking.  “What happened?”

“Your Momma and
Daddy, Harmony,” Aunt Orla had informed her as gently as she could, grabbing
Harmony’s arm when she stumbled in the doorway.  “They died this afternoon in a
wreck out on Severs Road.  Ezekiel said they were hit head-on by a drunk
driver.  It was quick, honey.  They didn’t suffer.  Ezekiel and your Uncle
Jethro are with your sisters now.  I told them that I needed to be the one to
tell you, but you need to come with me.  Your sisters need you now.”

“No,” Harmony
denied in a thin voice, vaguely feeling her long hair slap her cheeks as she
shook her head from side to side as the truth sank into her bones.  Her
parents?  Dead?  This couldn’t be happening.    “No!” she screamed, falling to
her knees on the worn carpet just inside the front door.

“I’m so sorry,
darlin’,” Aunt Orla whispered, catching Harmony against her as she’d fallen to
her knees in front of the other woman.  “I’m so, so sorry.”

“They can’t be
gone,” Harmony begged, burying her face against her aunt’s chest as she
clutched the older woman’s waist.  “I never said I was sorry!  I never told
them I loved them!  It’s a mistake.  Tell me it’s a mistake, Auntie!”

Aunt Orla
dropped one hand to Harmony’s head, cradling the younger woman against her as
though she was a baby.  “Shhhh…. They knew, sweet girl.  They knew you loved
them.  Where they are now, they see everything now.  Don’t you worry.  Your Momma
and Daddy know how much you love them, but we need to go now.”

~~***~~

Somehow, Aunt Orla
had gotten her off that nasty floor and into the truck with her.  Those hours
following the blow of her parents’ death were still a blur.  Vaguely, she
recalled Tanner showing up a few hours later, but she’d been so entrenched in
grief, that she didn’t really remember anything he’d said or done.

Not until the day
after their funeral.

That she remembered
vividly.

“The first time
Tanner ever hit me was the afternoon after my parents’ funeral,” Harmony’s
deadened voice informed him tonelessly as she stared into space.

Jacob’s gut
clenched at that stark confession.

“I never told
anybody that,” she said matter-of-factly, no emotion in the words any longer.

Staring at her,
Jacob couldn’t disguise his anger in that moment and spared a moment of
gratitude that she seemed to be lost in her memories.  He knew if she looked at
him now, she’d see unfiltered rage burning in his eyes.  “What?” he breathed,
the single syllable spat from his mouth with the force of a gun blast.  That
motherfucker had laid his hands on her during what had to be then the most
traumatic day of her life?  What kind of animal did that? 

Nodding, Harmony stared
straight ahead.

“I was standing in
my mother’s kitchen.  I remember that I had just pulled a meatloaf that I’d
been warming up for the guests out of the oven and I’d scorched the edges.  I
can still smell the burned meat.”

“He hit you because
you burned a fucking meal?” Jacob barked softly, barely concealing the urge to
begin throwing things against the wall.

“No,” she denied
simply.  “He backhanded me because I refused to ask the family attorney
mourning in the living room about reading my parents’ will early.  He hit me so
hard that I tasted blood.  I remember that I hid outside the rest of the
afternoon.  The others thought I was just caught up in my grief and wanted to
be alone… and that was partly true.  Mostly, I was just trying to hide the handprint
he’d left on my cheek.”

“Jesus,
fuck
!”
Jacob hissed through his teeth as Harmony seemed to fold in on herself,
shrinking before his eyes as she pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her
arms around her legs. 

Resting her
forehead on her knees, she shook her head slowly.  “You’d think that would have
set off a thousand warning bells for me, but he came after me.  He held my hand
in the garden all afternoon until the sun started to set in the sky. 
Apologized over and over again.  He said it would never happen again… that he’d
never lift his hand against me like that ever.  He fed me some bullshit about
just being caught up in the emotion of the day and acting out in haste,” she
explained, her fragile voice distant as she closed her eyes.  “I bought every
single word.  I think at that time I just needed someone to hang on to for dear
life… even if it was a man that had done nothing but put me through hell since
I married him.  At any rate, for the next few weeks, he was the model of a
perfect husband.  He was kind and gentle.  He helped out everywhere he could. 
He dropped Honor and Patience off at school, helped out at the diner, worked on
the farm…”