Hard as Stone (Passion in Paradise: The Men of the McKinnnon Sisters) (14 page)

“And how long did
he keep that act up?” Jacob asked harshly, knowing that’s what it had been.  An
act.  A sham.  A fucked-up play to lure this sweet, sensitive young woman into
a false sense of security.  Honest to Christ, he wasn’t sure how he was going
to keep himself from killing Tanner Suarez with his bare hands when the bastard
showed his ugly face in Paradise.

“About a month,”
Harmony confided, tightening her arms around her legs.  “And he was
good
. 
So good at playin’ the doting husband.  Convincing as hell.  Even Aunt Orla
thought Tanner had changed during that month after Momma and Daddy’s deaths –
and she is
not
a woman that is fooled easily.  She said that sometimes
life hands us moments that make us grow up and be the people that we were
supposed to become all along.  I was
so
relieved.  I started believing
that maybe I hadn’t made a huge mistake.  Tanner was finally being the husband
that I wanted…no, I
needed
him to be.  I should have known it was too
good to last.”

“He’s a jackass,
Harmony.  He never deserved what he had with you,” Jacob growled. 

“No.  But I
deserved him.  After what I put my parents through… I deserved what I got,”
Harmony whispered, her lower lip trembling.

“The fuck?” Jacob
retorted.  “Tell me that you don’t really believe that,” he demanded angrily,
shifting from his seat beside her to kneel in front of her between the couch
and coffee table.  Gently gripping her arms, he shook her slightly.  “No woman
deserves…”

“You can save the
standard abused-woman spiel, Jake,” Harmony interrupted him hoarsely.  “I’ve
heard it before.  Do you wanna hear the rest of this or not?”

Taking a deep
breath, Jacob ground his teeth together, nodding jerkily.  There’d be plenty of
time to change her faulty view on what she deserved
after
he’d finally
digested the whole nasty story of Tanner Suarez.

“Tanner’s
perfection lasted until about a month after my parents died.  It was the afternoon
the will was read.  We showed up at the attorney’s office with the rest of my
sisters and Aunt Orla.  I don’t
know
what he expected exactly,” she
muttered with a small frown.  “He knew that my parents hated him.  He and my
father got into arguments on more than one occasion when they’d see each other
in town.  I reckon that he thought their love for me outweighed their hatred of
him.  Or, more likely, he just figured that they’d never thought of changing
their will.  I mean, nobody ever thinks of dying out of the blue like that.  My
Daddy, though… he was a planner.  He believed in bein’ prepared for anything. 
Of course, he’d be smart enough to stay a step ahead of my husband.  Either
way, Tanner expected a payday of some kind.  After the will was read and he
learned that he didn’t get one, things turned ugly.”

“What kind of
ugly?” Jacob asked, keeping his voice just below a growl.

“That night, when
we got back to our trailer, we had a horrible fight.  He demanded that I
contest the will.  He’d already made a horrible scene at the attorney’s office,
but it only got worse after he got me alone.  God, I thought I’d seen him angry
before, but he became almost inhuman that night.  When I told him I wasn’t
going to protest anything ... that I believed that it was my parent’s money to
do what they wanted with … he grabbed me by the neck and slammed me into the
wall with enough force to knock the pictures off the wall.  He screamed and
cursed and his hand around my neck just kept getting tighter.  I remember
seeing stars and thinking that this was it.  I didn’t even mind,” she
whimpered, her eyes filling with more tears.  “It meant I’d see my parents
again… that I’d finally be able to ask their forgiveness.”

“Jesus
Christ
,”
Jacob hissed through his teeth.

“When he realized
that I was gonna black out if he kept it up, he let go.  He walked away from
me, but he was still ranting.  When he saw me eyeing the door, that’s when it
really started.”

Jacob ran a hand
down his face as Harmony started to tremble.  “Baby…”

“When I started to
make a move for the door, that’s when he grabbed me by the hair.  He was
careful, though… he didn’t leave a single mark that anybody could see.  He
kicked and punched and…” Harmony swallowed, unable to continue as her body
began to shake more violently.  “I don’t know why he finally stopped hitting me
that night,” she whispered as Jacob grabbed the afghan draped across the back
of the couch and wrapped it around her quaking shoulders.  “Maybe he got
tired.  Maybe he realized that he was on his way to killing me.  All I know is
that he finally stopped.  I can still remember the way he stood over me as I
was sprawled on the floor, his sweat dripping on my face as he caught his
breath.  He told me if I said a word to
anybody
, he’d kill me.  And,
dear God, staring in those crazy eyes of his, I believed him.”  Lifting an
unsteady hand, Harmony brushed at the wet tracks on her cheeks.  “I stayed on
the floor until I heard the front door to the trailer close behind him when he
stormed out of the house.  Then, I managed to pick myself off the floor and get
myself cleaned up.  That was the first beating Tanner ever gave me, but it
wasn’t the last.  It wasn’t even the worst.”

Shifting to sit on
the coffee table in front of her, Jacob reached out to take one of Harmony’s
cold hands in his.  “Listen to me, Sweetness.  You can stop now if you want to
stop.  I don’t wanna push you into a corner where you feel you can’t get out. 
If you never wanna say another word about that sack of shit, I won’t push.”

Meeting his
concerned eyes, Harmony shook her head.  “I can’t stop now.  If I do, I’ll
never make you understand….you won’t see…”

“All I see… all I’m
ever
gonna see is a woman that’s had the shit end of a miserable stick
for entirely too long.  I’m looking at a beautiful woman that should have been
loved and protected, but was verbally and physically abused to the point where
she can’t even recognize that these sins belong to one person.  And that person
isn’t you, Harmony.  It was never you, baby.  I know this story gets worse and
if you wanna share it, I’m here.  I’ll listen.  I’m here for you however you
need me to be,” he promised, chafing that chilled hand in his as he did his
best to bring her some warmth.  God as his witness, if it was the last thing he
did on Earth, he’d find a way to exact some justice for the woman in front of
him.

Breathing hard, Harmony
bit her lip.  “I wanted out, but I was afraid of him from that night onward. 
It was like he was two people.  One for anybody watching us and another behind
our closed door.  After a while, he stopped making noises about contesting the
will.  No matter how bad those whippings got, I never caved… I never gave him
that satisfaction.  In public, he was still doing his best to show folks that
he was a changed man.  He started steadily working at the café, helping Aunt
Orla manage the place.  She didn’t exactly trust him, but with raising three
girls, she needed the help.  Uncle Jethro oversaw the farm, and life went on as
best it could.  Looking back, I can see what he was doing, trying to drill a
path to the family money through the back door.  Then, though, I was so
confused that most days I couldn’t tell you if it was day or night.  He still
continued to go into his rages once we got home, although even those lessened
because he wasn’t around much.  He’d started really stepping out on me by
then.  It was okay,” she said quickly when Jake’s face turned thunderous.  “If
he wasn’t there, he wasn’t hurting me.  Occasionally, he still wanted to… you
know … but at least he wasn’t using force.  As long as I laid there…”

“Harmony, I’m
beggin’ you, darlin’, unless you want me to find a gun and hunt this bastard
down tonight, leave that statement where it lies,” Jacob warned tightly, unable
to bear the idea that this asshole had regularly raped his wife.  There were
some places that he couldn’t allow his mind to go and that was definitely one
of them. 

“Okay,” Harmony
agreed huskily, licking her dry lips.  “I let the Jekyll and Hyde act go on for
about three more months,” she explained tightly.  “Until he let something so
awful happen that I couldn’t… I
WOULDN’T
ignore it.  Not ever.” 

Jacob knew he could
stop her and tell her that he already knew what happened… that she didn’t need
to put herself through this emotional torture, but something in her glistening
eyes stopped him.  She was purging the poison.  It was a violently explosive way
to do things – letting her do it all at once like this, but he had to hope that
once the toxins permeating her memories were released, she’d begin to heal. 

“It was October
27.  That was the day I knew I was done with him… that was the day he hurt somebody
that I loved a lot more than I loved myself.”  Glancing at Jake, Harmony
withdrew her hand from his and gripped the soft afghan he’d draped around her
body in a hold that whitened her knuckles.  “You know what happened to my baby
sister, Honor, don’t you?”

“I know enough to
know that she’s suffered more than any woman should,” Jake replied evenly.

“Yes, she has.  Of
all us McKinnon girls, Honor has always been the sister that we wanted to
protect.  She’s the youngest, the smallest... the kindest.  She possesses the
gentlest soul of anyone I’ve ever known.  And thanks to Tanner and me, she now
bears the burden of a past filled with memories she’ll never be able to
forget.”

“Harmony, what
happened to Honor was
not
your fault,” Jacob rumbled.  “You’re trying to
take the blame for events that were beyond your control… that were beyond
anyone’s control except for those monsters that hurt her.”

“You have no idea,”
Harmony countered achingly.  “It was my husband that was supposed to pick her
up and take her safely home after that football game.  Tanner!  My fucking
husband!” she shouted in his face.  “I brought him into my family.  I allowed
him near my sisters.  And I’m the one ultimately responsible for what happened
to her that night.”

“Damn it, Harmony! 
That’s just not true,” Jacob countered quickly, his own voice rising to match
hers.

“While my baby
sister was being gang-raped in the woods and left for dead, he was out getting
trashed.  He wasn’t where he was supposed to be because he was out partying and
drinking and, in all likelihood,
fucking
some whore.  We’d had a fight
that afternoon and as usual, he’d stormed off and I forgot, Jacob!  I
forgot
that he was supposed to pick her up!” Faith shrieked, her voice cracking
completely as she burst into sobs that wracked her entire tiny body.

But she didn’t stop
talking.  Jacob almost wished she had.

Because what she
said next broke his heart.

 Harmony’s breaths
were choppy and labored, but she powered through the panic etched on her face. 
“A-after we found Honor and my mind realized just how those b-bastards had
gotten to her,” she choked, her pretty face scrunching up in a grimace of pain
and disgust, “I wanted to kill Tanner.  Have you ever been so furious that you
can feel all that anger consuming you, Jake?  Have you ever felt so, so much
that you thought those feelings would swallow you whole?  I hadn’t.  Not until
that night.”

“Once,” Jacob
acknowledged softly without elaborating.  He couldn’t allow his mind to go to
that moment where he’d been out of control with grief over his sister’s death. 
Harmony was already buckling under the strain of her emotional baggage.  He
wouldn’t add the weight of his own luggage to hers for anything in the world. 

“Then you know that
when you feel like that – that completely overwhelming need to act… to fight -
the only thing that centers you…the only thing that will bring order to your
fucked up little world that’s spun so far out of control you feel like you’ll
never stop reeling is focusing your wrath on the person responsible for it
all.”

“Yeah,” Jacob
assented softly, keeping his eyes glued to his woman’s pale, wet face.  “I
understand that need, baby.  It’s a lead weight that sits in your gut, shoving
you down until you find a way to push past it.  It’s like acid, eating through
you until it reaches your soul.”

Nodding, Harmony
inhaled shakily, trying to pull some much needed oxygen into her aching lungs
while she stared at him with huge, disillusioned eyes.  “Yeah, and I only knew
one way to shove that lead weight sitting on my chest off of me that night.  I
waited as long as I could - until we received word that Honor was as stable as
she could be, considering her injuries.  I remember every second that I sat in
that ER waiting room, holding my breath and praying that they’d come and tell
us that she’d live.  I bargained with God, and I seethed.  I promised Him that
if he’d just let her live, I’d get justice for her.  I’d make sure that Tanner
never hurt her or another living soul again.” 

Sinking her teeth
into her lower lip, she worried her delicate flesh while Jacob watched her
face, silently worried that he’d finally pushed too far.  Maybe he’d been
wrong.  Perhaps she hadn’t been ready to share these memories yet.  It was too
late now, but it didn’t stop him from second guessing himself.  That, in
itself, was an anomaly.  It was rare that he ever doubted himself, but seeing
that shattered innocence reflected in her eyes was enough to make him wish he
could hit the rewind button on the evening.