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

by Sarah O'Rourke

  Hearing how much Faith was hurting broke his heart, and thinking of her moving on and finding someone else was enough to make his stomach turn.

  Watching his face turn green, Honor nodded her satisfaction. “That got your attention. I guess you hadn’t given any thought to Faith moving on with her life with someone else. It could and will eventually happen if you don’t pull your head from between your legs,” she warned.

  “Is she seeing anybody?” he asked through lips that barely moved. God, the thought of another man putting his hands on Faith made him killing mad. Which was not a great feeling since he was the reason she was single again. He had no proprietary rights where she was concerned, but he couldn’t help feeling like she still belonged to him.

  “Not yet.” Smiling as Cain’s shoulders relaxed slightly, Honor nudged the swing into motion again with her foot. “If you want to keep it that way, I have a proposition for you to consider.”

  “What?” he asked reluctantly, turning to stare at her impassive face. He could almost see the wheels spinning in her clear blue eyes. That was a dangerous, scary experience when it came to the McKinnon girls. All four of them were fully capable of screwing a man’s world to hell and back. He had firsthand experience with their talents.

  “I want you to come work at the café,” Honor stated calmly.

  “Now look who went and swallowed a crazy pill… or a bottle of ‘em!” Cain exclaimed, shaking his head as he stared at her with confused horror.

  “I’m quite sane,” Honor replied evenly. “We need a bouncer - someone that I trust to keep both Faith and Patience safe at night. Last night was the first brawl we’ve had, but business has picked up considerably since the state ran the interstate through here last year. We’ve been attracting a fair share of truckers and travelers not from the area. Then, of course, there are the students from Rutledge’s campus up the road. Things are getting busier and we could use the extra security. You’ve already told me that you don’t intend to go back to the hospital. At least, not yet. Well, Abel was right; you are qualified for more than medicine. You were a soldier. You can put those skills to good use by protecting my sisters at night.”

  “Honor…”

  “It would also offer you an opportunity to make amends with Faith, Cain,” she pointed out quietly. “Even if you don’t want a relationship with her any longer, you owe it to her to give this thing between you some kind of resolution. Goodness, Cain, she never even got a chance to slap you in the face and call you a jerk. You can give her that much closure, can’t you?”

  Licking his lips, Cain was tempted. It was a chance to be near Faith… to breathe in her scent and watch her move again. He hadn’t realized just how desperately he missed that until Honor extended her offer. “She won’t want me there,” he felt obligated to say, knowing even as he spoke the words that he was making the understatement of the century. Faith would hate seeing him again.

  “No, she won’t,” Honor agreed. “It’s up to you to change that, not me. It’s my job to make certain that nothing like what happened to her last night happens again. That’s all I’m doing – protecting my sister.”

  “The hell you are. You’re trying to play matchmaker,” Cain chided, a small smile curling his lips.

  Shrugging daintily, Honor tilted her blonde head and stared at him. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”

  Cain thought about it for a minute, mulling the possible repercussions over in his mind. What the hell? Faith couldn’t hate him any more than he already hated himself. “Yeah. I’ll try it.”

  “Ha! I’m managing to move Mohammed from his mountain. I should get extra points in Saint Peter’s blessed book for this,” Honor chuckled, pleased at her progress. Her smile faltered, however, as she opened the flap of her purse and pulled out a black velvet box. Passing it to Cain, she sighed. “Maybe someday you’ll be able to give that back to her and put it where it belongs.”

  Staring down at the box, Cain swallowed painfully. “I didn’t ever expect her to give the ring back, Honor,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s hers. Only ever hers.”

  “About a month after Faith got your letter, she asked me to mail it to you. I just… couldn’t. It just seemed so cruel. And final,” Honor confessed softly. “Just do me a favor, don’t offer it to her again until you know you’re ready for it to stay on her finger. Taking that ring off her hand again just might kill my sister.”

  “I won’t,” Cain replied hoarsely, staring down at the box in his hand blindly.

  Nodding, Honor rose from the swing and straightened her skirt. “Alright. Be at the bar by seven. I’ll take care of telling Faith and the rest of the girls about your resurrection this afternoon.”

  “She works tonight?” he asked nervously, gripping the velvet box in one hand.

  “She starts her shift tonight at eight. Usually it’s five, but I left a note this morning telling her that she needed some extra rest. Patience will be there when you begin your shift. I don’t permit drinking on the job, and I require you to be sober when you arrive and when you leave. Other than that, feel free to eat and drink as much as you like. I know you don’t need the money, but I’ll add you to payroll all the same. Patience will give you the paperwork.” Watching him nod jerkily, Honor’s gaze remained steady on his face. “This is your game to win or lose, Cain. I know my sister still loves you, but she won’t trust you again easily.”

  “I realize that.”

  “Good. One more thing, Cain. While I pray that you and Faith find your way back to each other, just know that if you hurt her again, I’ll singlehandedly make your worst day in Afghanistan look like a day at Disneyland,” she threatened ominously.

  Chilled by the look in her eyes, Cain could only nod. “I don’t know what will happen between your sister and me, Honor, but I swear, hurting her any more that I have is the last thing that I want.”

  “Then we understand each other.” Honor smiled and pulled her purse over her arm. “I know you have your doubts about this, but I wouldn’t have offered you the job if I didn’t believe it was the right thing to do. You need to join the rest of the world again, and you also need to fix things with Faith. It’s a small town. The longer these wounds fester, the worse it will be to cure the infection.”

  “I know you’re right. I just hope you know what you’re doing here, Honor,” Cain returned uncertainly, his thoughts jumbled in his already cloudy mind. “I don’t want to be the source of trouble between you and your sister.”

  “Oh, Faith’s going to be spitting, clawing mad. I am suffering no delusions about that. I’m hoping that she’ll also realize that I’d never do anything to deliberately hurt her. Like you, she’ll need time. I can live with it. God knows, I’ve lived with far worse.”

  The sadness in her tone when she spoke that last part had Cain reaching for her hand. “Thank you, Honor. Most people in your position wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire at their feet.”

  “Cain, make no mistake, I’ll light you on fire myself if you screw up this chance to make things right.” Bending, she brushed a chaste kiss against his marred jaw. “Tell your daddy I said hello. I have to go face my own sheet of music now.”

  Watching as the young woman made her way back to her car, Cain sighed. Breathing in the crisp cool air deeply, he silently assessed the way he was feeling. A little lighter…a little freer…almost like there might be hope for him again. Maybe he could actually pick up the threads of his life again. It wouldn’t be the same for him. It couldn’t be.

  But maybe he could find his way to a new normal.

  He just hoped he could do it with Faith at his side.

  Chapter Eight

  “Tell me that I heard you wrong!” Faith shrieked as she stared across the antique kitchen table inside the McKinnon house. Looking from Honor to her other stunned sisters, she asked, “Did y’all just hear the same thing I did?”

  Both Patience and Harmony fidgeted uncomfortably, not quite meeting Faith�
��s eyes as Honor sat motionless at the head of the table.

  “Will somebody please say something?” she yelled, shoving her long blonde hair over her shoulder. Her heart pounded in her chest as she tried to wrap her head around the fact that Honor had not only just told her that the man that had eviscerated her heart was back in town, but that she’d invited the bastard to work with her, too.

  “Faith, you need to see him,” Honor begged quietly. “Just talk to him. Let him try to explain…”

  “Fuck that, Honor!” Faith cursed, exploding from her chair and knocking it over as she faced her youngest sibling. “I’ll gut him on sight! You’ve lost your mind if you think I can handle seeing him every day. Have you been living under some rock for the past six months? You saw what he put me through. You watched it happen! And still, you went to him and offered him a job? How could you? How could you do that to me?”

  “I did what I thought was best. You haven’t seen him, honey. He’s already gutted. I just wanted…”

  “I don’t care what you wanted,” Faith screamed, wiping the tears flowing down her pale cheeks with the back of her hand. “Undo it! Call him and tell him that you’ve changed your mind,” she demanded. Betrayal burned in her stomach as she glared at her sister. Of all the people in the world that she ever imagined would stab her in the back, she never once thought it would be Honor.

  “No.” Honor shook her head. “You have to face him, Faith. If after you’ve seen him you still want him gone, we can talk about it, but he stays for now.”

  “You only own a quarter of the business,” Faith retorted angrily. “We could outvote you,” she threatened, glancing toward their shared sisters. “You guys can’t possibly think this is fair!”

  “Faith, I know you’re upset,” Harmony, the eldest of them, murmured quietly, “but you’ve got to calm down. You’re going to scare Heaven,” she warned, glancing into the living room where the four year old sat at the coffee table coloring while cartoons played on the television.

  “I’m sorry,” Faith apologized quickly, wincing as she peeked in the other room at her niece. Looking at her older sister, she whispered, “You can’t think this is right, can you, Harm? Patience?” God, she needed somebody to take her side here. “He didn’t just break up with me, guys,” she groaned. “He sent a fucking letter. He broke my goddamn heart in half a page of scrawled words. He couldn’t even bother with the courtesy of a phone call. You can’t tell me that any of you think that’s forgivable.”

  “I think his head got rattled over there,” Harmony said truthfully, crossing her arms over the pink I Don’t Care Café t-shirt she wore. “You just heard Honor say that he was injured, Faith.”

  “He’s well enough to come back and fuck with my life again, though,” Faith retorted bitterly, glaring at Honor.

  “No. He isn’t. It was at my urging that he’s doing this, Faith. For that, blame me. Not him. It was my idea. He said the kindest thing he could do for you is to stay the devil away from you. He thinks he’s damaged. He’s convinced that he can’t be the man that you deserve,” Honor explained in a low voice.

  Blinking, Faith rubbed her bare legs. Already dressed for work in her denim shorts and pink shirt, she’d been just about ready to head into the restaurant when Honor had arrived home and called together this little pow wow to blindside her. What her younger sister was saying just didn’t make any sense. Faith had never given Cain a single reason to feel like she wasn’t more than satisfied with him. In every way. God, he’d been her everything. She’d been planning their future, for God’s sake. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, cringing as she lifted a hand to cradle her aching head. She’d had a headache to begin with, but it was now rapidly approaching migraine magnitude.

  “He was at war, Faith,” Harmony said, moving closer to the table while Patience leaned, unspeaking, against the counter. “War changes a soldier. It messes with his mind. That’s not an excuse. It’s a fact of life,” she noted, tucking strands of her chin-length blonde hair behind her ears.

  “But to blow up our life together?” Faith breathed, looking at her oldest sister with tear-filled eyes. “Because he was confused? I was arranging our wedding, Harmony.”

  “It happens,” Harmony replied gently. “I’m not saying to forgive him. That’s up to you. I do think you should at least give him a chance to explain to you where his mind was at when he wrote that letter, though. If nothing else, you deserve to know how it all came to this.”

  “What about you?” Faith asked, looking at Patience. If there was one sister in the room that could hold a grudge, it was Patience. Maybe the middle child would stand up for her. “I know you’ve got an opinion, Patience.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not saying that Honor was right to do what she did, but I do know her heart was in the right place,” Patience returned slowly after a pregnant pause. “I guess it all comes down to one thing. Are you still in love with him?”

  Faith felt her throat swell with emotion. What kind of question was that? How was she supposed to answer it? Of course, she loved him. He’d hurt her. Hell, he’d butchered her heart, but, yes, she still loved him.

  “Faith?” Harmony questioned gently as she watched her sister’s face dissolve into tears.

  “Of course I love him,” she admitted, choking on a sob. “I don’t want to. I’ve tried to hate him. I just can’t!” Her shoulders heaved as she fell apart. She felt someone’s arms slip around her and she leaned against them.

  “It’s okay, Faith,” Honor murmured against Faith’s ear. “Cry it out, honey,” she encouraged softly, rocking her sister back and forth in her arms while she wept.

  Faith pulled back when the emotional storm passed. Taking the napkin that Honor pressed into her hand with numb fingers, she wiped her nose. “I’m still pissed at you,” she mumbled to the woman kneeling beside her.

  “I know,” Honor acknowledged quietly. “You have to believe that I’m not trying to hurt you, Faith. At some point, you knew you’d have to face him.”

  Faith pushed a shaky hand through her hair. “Yeah. On my terms. In my time. I didn’t think my baby sister would hand him a company t-shirt and invite him to join our family business.”

  “Would you rather he stayed out at the Turner place and drank himself to death? Because that’s what was going to happen if somebody didn’t do something. I hate how much he’s hurt you, Faith, but that man saved my life. Literally saved my life,” Honor stressed, squeezing her sister’s hand.

  “I know,” Faith responded, her voice cracking. “You’ll never know how grateful I am to him for that. It was one of the reasons I fell in love with him. I watched him with you. He was so determined that you’d live. No matter how hard you tried to leave us, he hung onto you for us.”

  “So, do you see, maybe just a little, why I felt obligated to try and help him?” Honor asked hopefully.

  And in that moment, there was a minor break in the dam that surrounded Faith’s heart. Closing her eyes, Faith nodded stiffly. “I do. No matter what happens in the future between Cain and me, I don’t want anything bad to happen to him, either.”

  Patience sighed as she patted her sister’s shoulder. “Faith, I’m pissed at him, too. I just think that if you still love him – and you just admitted that you did – that you owe it to yourself to hear him out. You don’t want to look back on your life years from now and regret not giving him a chance to explain things.” Twirling a highlighted pink strand of hair around her finger thoughtfully, Patience continued, “Even if you don’t work things out, this would at least give you some resolution to the relationship. Sorta like a period at the end of a sentence.”

  “I know you’re right,” Faith agreed with a tired sigh. “I just need to do this in my own time. I don’t need to talk to him to work with him. He’s a bouncer. I’d only need him if I have any more problems. Since I don’t intend for that to happen, we should be able to steer clear of each other until I can think clearly where he’s concerned
.”

  Harmony nodded. “That sounds fair.”

  “I’ll make sure he gets the message, Faith,” Patience promised her sibling. “Loud and clear,” she added with a smirk.

  “No!” Faith denied, shaking her head furiously. “I will talk to him when I decide the time is right. I love you guys, but from this point on, I want you to let me handle things with Cain. This is my life here. There is to be no meddling.” She gave each sister a fierce look and waited for them to nod.

  “You take the fun out of everything,” Patience complained with a tiny smile.

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t torture him a little,” Faith replied, her blonde brow arching slightly in jest.

  “Oh, sis. You just made my night.” Patience winked while Honor and Harmony shuddered. Of all of them, Patience was the most devious. She’d make it a mission to get under Cain’s skin.

  “Go on to work, Patience. The rest of you enjoy your night. I’m gonna go fix my face,” Faith murmured huskily as she rose from the table. She needed a few minutes alone to compose herself before she faced the man that had broken her heart.

  Alone in her room a few minutes later, she sagged to the bed and clutched a pillow to her chest as she stared at the wall. In just a few short minutes, her life had yet again been sent careening wildly out of control.

  Cain was home, alive, but hurt on both the inside and out. Her sister had been brutally honest about the horrors Cain had faced, sparing nothing in the story.

  Part of her wanted to run to him, throw herself back in his arms and forget the past six months had happened. But the sane, rational woman she was knew that wasn’t possible. Too much had happened to each of them to simply go back to the way they’d been. There’d been too much pain and distance between them.