Hard as Stone (Passion in Paradise: The Men of the McKinnnon Sisters) (43 page)

“I’ve scouted the
area and it’d make a nice, secluded base of operations for him,” Jake agreed
with a nod.

“Great,” Harmony
said with a sigh, lifting her head to stare at the darkening sky above them. 
“Just perfect.”

“Harmony, let me…”
Jake began only to have Harmony cut him off again.

“There’s a flaw in
Tanner’s plan that he didn’t know about until today, Jake.  One I’m surprised
you didn’t uncover in all that handy information that you have on me and my
family.”

Jake remained
silent and simply stared at her.

“I don’t own that
land any longer.  I can’t give him what he wants because it’s not mine to
offer,” she explained.  “Tanner knows that now because I shared, and I’m going
to take a wild guess and figure that this will put a crimp in Diego’s plans.”

Jake stiffened. 
“Who did you deed the land to, Harmony.”

“My sister. 
Honor.  A few years ago she wanted to give me a stake in the I Don’t Care Café,
but I wouldn’t accept it because I couldn’t afford to buy into the restaurant. 
She threw a fit because she wanted it owned equally between all of us.  I told
her the only way I’d do it is if she took that land.  So, she did.  Grudgingly. 
It’s not exactly a well-known fact, but it’s hardly a secret either.  I’m
pretty sure the only ones that even know about it are us girls and my father’s
old attorney.  I don’t think Honor’s even mentioned it to Zeke, but it won’t
take either Tanner or Diego long to find out who holds that deed if they take a
notion to find out.”  Harmony rubbed a weary hand over her forehead as she
whispered,   “And Jake, there is no way Honor is
ever
going to give that
land to Tanner or Diego.  But most especially not Tanner.”

Jake sensed this
had to do with the undercurrent he’d felt running between Harmony and Honor in
the kitchen at the diner earlier.  “Why, Harmony?  What did Tanner do to
Honor?” he asked, but God help him, he was pretty sure he already knew.

Swallowing hard,
Harmony shook her head.  “I don’t know for certain,” she confided, staring down
at their linked hands.  “We haven’t had time to talk since everything happened
today, but I think Honor remembered more about the day she was taken.  Based on
what Tanner said, what he did when he saw Honor, and the way he acted with her,
I’m pretty sure he was there.  I think he…” Harmony choked on a sob.

“Christ,” Jacob bit
off, cupping the back of Harmony’s neck and pulling her against his chest as
her shoulder shook and the tears flowed.

“I didn’t know,”
she whispered over and over.  “There was so much about that time that Honor
doesn’t remember… that she doesn’t want to remember.  Like I said, I can’t be
positive yet, but…”

“He raped her,”
Jake growled, tightening his arms around Harmony as she nodded against his
neck.

“I think so.  At
the very least, I think he was there and he hurt her,” she whispered back.  “I
wish I’d killed him that night,” she added, crying harder.  “I should have
found a way to kill him.”

“You didn’t know,
baby.  We’ll find a way to handle Suarez,” he promised against her temple. 
“He’ll pay, Harmony.  I swear, he’ll pay.”

“He threatened
Heaven.  He told me he’d take her from me,” Harmony informed him, pulling out
of his arms.  “He said he’d make me suffer and use my daughter to do it, Jake. 
My daughter was at risk today because you kept the truth from me.  I don’t know
if I’m ever going to be able to forgive you for that.”

“Harmony, that’s a
regret that will sit in my gut and eat at me like acid for the rest of my
life.  If there’s one thing I could change about this whole clusterfuck we’ve
found ourselves mixed up in, it’s that.  But I swear on my life,
nobody
…not
Tanner Suarez…. not Diego…. not anyone is going to harm one hair on that little
girl’s head.”

“You don’t know
that and you can’t promise that,” she denied, shaking her head.  “I think maybe
that I should take her and leave.  Just go.”

“No.”

 “But…”

“You run, Diego
will follow.  He’s rich and influential.  He’d eventually find you no matter
where you went.  Especially if he thinks that you and Heaven are the way to
manipulate Honor into signing over that land.  We’re staying here.”

“We?”

“You, me, and
Heaven,” Jake said evenly. 

“Did you miss the
part where I told you that I’m not sure I can ever forgive what you did?”

“No, but evidently
you
missed the part last night and just a few minutes ago where I told you that I
loved you
and
Heaven.  You’re angry and confused and scared.  All are
emotions that you’re entitled to have.  I’m responsible for all of that shit,
and I’ll have to live with what I did, but I warned you last night that once I
had you, I’d never let go.  This is me not letting go, Harmony.  It’ll take
time and work, but I’ll earn back your trust.  I’ll work my ass off to do it. 
What I won’t do is walk away or allow you to walk away from me.  We fight our
way through it.”

Harmony shook her
head sadly.  What he was asking was more than she might be able to give. “I
don’t know if I can do that, Jake.” 

“I’m sure enough
for both of us, baby.  And in this, I’m not giving you a choice.  I’m not
letting go of any of you, Harmony.  I finally feel like I found a place where I
belong; I won’t give that up.”

Harmony was
suddenly overcome with exhaustion.  “I can’t fight with you about this right
now, Jacob.  I need to go home, assure my sisters that you aren’t a mobster,
serial killer or stalker, and then I have to talk to Honor.  That’s gonna take
all the energy that I have left.”

“I’ll take you
home, but I’m not leaving you there alone.  Either you and Heaven come home
with me, or I stay with you,” Jake replied evenly.

“I can’t argue with
you about that right now either.  The best I’ll do is to tell you that we’ll
see,” she murmured with a shrug.

“I guess we will,”
he agreed softly.  “Harmony, you know that after you talk to Honor and get all
the facts, you’ve gotta share with Zeke.  That man deserves to know the truth.”

“You’re not really
one to talk about the truth, Jake,” Harmony pointed out a touch bitterly.

“Maybe not, but
that doesn’t change the fact that I’m right.  The Sheriff deserves to know what
she remembered.  He’s loved that woman a long time, darlin’.  You can’t leave
that poor bastard swingin’ in the wind like that.  You might be pissed at him,
Abel, and Cain right now, but at the end of the day, those men would bleed and
die for any of you girls.  Think on that before you make a final decision about
sharing with Zeke, okay?”

Harmony simply
nodded because she couldn’t do anything else.  Offering him a sidelong glance,
she muttered, “Can we go now?”

“Not yet.  Look at
me, Harmony,” he ordered softly, waiting until she turned her head toward him. 
Cupping her jaw, he bent to brush his lips against hers.  “I’m sorry, darlin’. 
Sorry for what you’ve been through already and what I know is comin’.  Sorrier
than hell for my role in it.  But I am
not
sorry for coming into your
life.  You and Heaven are the best thing that’s happened to me in forty-two
years of livin’ on this earth.  I wouldn’t trade or give back a single second
of it.  You understand?”

Meeting his eyes,
Harmony shook her head.  “I hear you, Jake, but I’m not sure I’ll ever
understand.”

“Then I’ll work
until you do, Harmony,” he vowed, brushing her lips with his again before
rising from the bench and pulling her to her feet.  “For now, I’ll take you
home.”

Faith and Cain
Turner

The McKinnon Farmhouse

4:30 pm

Cain Turner watched
from the dining room table as his wife pulled the door to Heaven’s bedroom almost
closed and walked into the kitchen.  “She out?” he asked quietly, well aware by
the look on his woman’s face that he was ranking as one of her least favorite
people in the world at the moment.

“Yep,” Faith
answered tersely, carrying her glass to the sink and rinsing it out.

“It’s awfully late
for a nap, isn’t it?” Cain asked, glancing at the clock ticking on the wall.

“Really?” Faith
snapped, whirling to nail her husband with an icy, malice filled look.  “This
is what you wanna talk about, Cain?  You want to chat about Heaven’s nap?  She
was exhausted after the morning and afternoon she had.  She’s confused and
scared.  She wanted me to rock her and she fell asleep.  I made a decision
without you to let her do it.  Does that
bother
you that you weren’t
included?  I can’t
imagine
how
that
feels!” she sneered.

“Okay, Faith,” Cain
replied calmly, rising from the wooden chair and slowly walking across the room
to face her.  “I get it.  You’re pissed at me.  You wanna let me have it, fine,
but don’t be sarcastic.  It doesn’t suit you, baby.”

Faith pressed her
lips together, silently seething.  “You had
no right,
Cain.  No right to
keep things concerning my family from me.  I thought we had an agreement that
we would share everything with each other.  We said we would never keep secrets
from each other after we worked through everything that happened in
Afghanistan.  You broke your promise, Cain,” she accused, jabbing him in the
chest with her index finger. 

Dropping his hands
to the curve of her hips, Cain nodded solemnly.  “I did, Faith.  I did it
because I honestly believed it was the safest thing to do for everybody
concerned.  All I can say is that I didn’t do it to hurt you or your sisters. 
The rest of the guys and I talked about it and…”

“Are you sleeping
with any of those guys, Cain?  You married to them?” Faith interrupted, her
azure eyes glinting with temper as she felt her patience grow paper thin. 
While she had learned to trust him again before they got married just a few
weeks ago, she was worried...worried that he was slipping into old habits.  Her
former soldier, now doctor husband still had a lot to learn about marriage.

“You know I’m not,”
he replied on a sigh.

“Then your first
obligation should have been to
me
and to us.  This is my family that
we’re talking about here.  I deserved to have all the information that you had.”

“It’s
our
family, baby,” he corrected seriously.  “And you know that I would do anything
I could for any one of them.  I fucked up and kept shit from you, but you know
that I did it with the best of intentions, don’t you?”

 “Good intentions
or not, you pull this crap on me again, Cain, and you won’t like what happens,”
Faith warned grimly.  “You’ve got to remember that we sisters have been taking
care of each other a lot longer than you all have been taking care of us.  We
deserve to know the truth about what’s happening in our own family.”

“I think I got that
now, Faith,” Cain acknowledged softly, pulling her soft body against his. 

“I hope you do,”
Faith returned as she slowly relaxed against him, the warm heat of his body
easing some of the tension from hers.  “I really hope you do,” she mumbled
before burying her face against his strong, wide shoulder.  “Things are about
to get bad, honey,” she whispered, remembering Harmony and Honor’s faces when
they’d arrived in the kitchen this afternoon.  “Really bad.”

Wrapping his arms
around his wife, Cain dropped a kiss against the top of her head and wrapped
her blonde ponytail around his hand.  “Things have been bad before,
sweetheart.  The good news is that they almost always get better.  Look at us;
we survived our fair share of shit and came out of it stronger than ever.”

Lifting her head,
Faith stared into his eyes.  “For all our sakes, I pray you’re right.”  Sadly,
she was pretty sure it would be awhile before any of them felt better about
anything.

~~***~~

Patience
McKinnon and Abel Turner

The I Don’t Care
Café

5:03 pm

Watching as
Patience McKinnon reached for the amber bottle of tequila once more, Abel shook
his head and stared into the sink full of dirty dishes again.  “You know,” he
noted drily, “we’d get done a lot faster if you’d spend a little less time with
Jose and a little more time with the drying towel in your hand.”

“What can I say?  I
like Jose a hell of a lot better than I like you,” Patience admitted with a
shrug.  “He’s the only man I don’t mind spending time with, he keeps the
chatter to a minimum,
he’s
always there when I need him and never lets
me down, and always,
always
remembers what my name is.”

Throwing his soapy
sponge back in the dirty dishwater, Abel turned to glare at her.  “It’s been
three years, Hellion.  You ever gonna let it go?”

Staring at him over
the lip of the bottle, Patience merely lifted an eyebrow at him before slowly
taking a swig and dropping the bottle back to the counter with a thud.  “The
short answer is nope,” she answered him easily.