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

by Sarah O'Rourke

  “Aunt Orla!” Honor hissed, scandalized.

  “Well, it won’t,” Orla replied reasonably, propping her chin in her hand as she sedately sipped her coffee.

  Longingly gazing at the mug in Orla’s hand for a moment, Zeke turned when the bell over the door rang again. Turning, he watched Abel amble into the café. “And where the hell have you been?” he snapped.

  Blinking as he stared around the dining room at the assembled group, Abel’s eyes finally came to rest on his cowering twin. Bursting out into laughter, he ignored the heated glare his brother leveled on him as he pulled out his cell phone and snapped a picture of his mostly naked brother. “Now, that’s this year’s Christmas card,” he needled his brother, wriggling his eyebrows.

  “If I get out of this alive, you are a dead man,” Cain threatened, his dark eyes promising retribution.

  “Do us both a favor and get dressed before you try kicking my ass,” Abel advised, straight faced. “You’d hate for Zeke to arrest you for indecent exposure before you got your licks in, wouldn’t you?”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Faith murmured as she came out of the ladies room, dressed in her jeans and t-shirt once again. Her cheeks reddened with embarrassment as every set of eyes in the room turned toward her. “Is the whole family here?” she asked faintly, looking around the room.

  “With the exception of Heaven, yes,” Harmony replied, trying not grin from ear to ear.

  “Thank God for small favors,” Honor muttered, narrowing her gaze on Faith but keeping the gun trained on Cain. “Am I shooting him or are you marrying him?” she asked her sister crisply.

  Faith’s soft eyes found Cain’s across the room. Even with a gun aimed at his crotch, he was calm as he met her gaze. “Oh, I’m definitely marrying him,” Faith confirmed quietly, smiling at her fiancé.

  “Soon?” Honor questioned meaningfully.

  “Very soon,” Cain agreed, his heart filling with warmth as Faith beamed at him. “As soon as she says.”

  “Christmas,” Faith declared decisively. “You’ll never forget our anniversary and it gives us a month to plan a wedding.”

  “Fine,” Honor muttered lowering her gun as the entire room breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  “I personally think we should have a Thanksgiving wedding,” Cain countered. “That gives you a solid week to get things in order.”

  “A week?” Faith and Honor balked together. Faith’s bright blue eyes widened as she stared at the man she loved. “Are you sure, Cain?”

  “We’ve wasted enough time,” Cain replied evenly. “I really don’t wanna waste another day.” He winked at her and caught her smaller body when she hurled herself into his arms.

  “Okay, as happy as I am for you two… a week?” Patience worried aloud. “Have you guys thought this through? Cain, you were a doctor in Paradise. Faith, you know three quarters of Paradise. Half the town will expect an invite to this shindig. That means invitations, food, a cake, a dress, a church, a…”

  Slapping a hand over Patience’s still moving lips, Abel smiled serenely. “Ignore the pessimist. I’m sure we can get everything done.”

  “Please note that was said by the attorney,” Patience griped, yanking Abel’s hand from her mouth and shooting him a look that promised a bloody death if he touched her again. “If a lawyer’s lips are movin’, it’s a sure sign he’s lyin’, Faith,” she warned.

  “Oh, c’mon. Where’s your family spirit?” Harmony admonished happily, bouncing on her heels. “The church is going to be fine. One phone call from Honor and the pastor will be putty in our hands. Orla and I can handle the food. You can take Faith over to Nashville for a dress, Faith. Honor, you’ll do the wedding cake, won’t you?”

  “Not unless my walk-in cooler gets sanitized in the next eight hours. I’m on strike until then,” Honor huffed, handing the shotgun over into Zeke’s outstretched hand.

  “I’ll scrub it myself, Honor,” Cain promised. “Hand to God,” he vowed, holding up his right hand.

  “See,” Harmony continued with a smile. “That leaves what? Invitations? We’ll get the printer on it today and Zeke, can’t your deputies help us deliver them?”

  “We’ll do whatever we need to do in order to pull this off,” Zeke assured Faith quickly. “If you want a Thanksgiving wedding, that’s what you’ll get.”

  “Well?” Cain asked against Faith’s ear, wrapping his arms around her waist and tucking her against him.

  “A Thanksgiving wedding sounds perfect,” Faith replied, leaning heavily against him. “It’s fitting. We have a lot to be grateful for.”

  “I know we’d all be exceedingly grateful if Cain put on some clothes,” Honor informed the lovebirds dryly. “Now,” she remarked insistently.

  “Speak for yourself, Honor,” Aunt Orla interjected with a wink at Cain. “I’m personally enjoying the view. Our Faith is a lucky girl.”

  Clearing her throat, Faith smiled at their extended family. “If y’all will just excuse us for a minute, we’ll slip Cain into something a little less comfortable.” Pushing Cain toward the door, Faith made sure she stayed behind him, blocking the view of his very bare ass as they moved into the kitchen. Pushing him back in the cooler, she couldn’t help giggling.

  Snatching his jeans off the floor, Cain groaned as he shoved one leg inside the denim. “I swear to God, Faith, I don’t know whose family is crazier. Yours or mine.”

  “Mine. It’s definitely mine. You only have one brother. I’ve got three sisters,” she returned with a patient smile, handing him his shirt as he shoved his bare feet back into his boots. “And we’re sort of a package deal. I hope you’re ready for that.”

  Looking up as he finished buckling his belt, Cain couldn’t help his smile. “Ready, willing and able. If I can face down your scariest sister, buck naked, while she pointed a loaded gun at me, I think I can handle the rest of the lot, Sweetness. As long as I’ve got you by my side, I can face anything the world throws at me. Now,” he said, holding out his hand, “Let’s go start the rest of our lives with the people we love.”

  And as the woman he loved slipped her smaller hand in his and led him out of the cooler, Cain realized his salvation had a very apt name.

  Faith.

  The End

  If you enjoyed Cain’s Salvation, we think you’ll love the second book in the Passion in Paradise Series, Hard as Stone! Check out the sneak peak below, and watch for the full novel to be released in late May 2014!

  Hard as Stone – First Chapter Sneak Peak!

  Jacob Stone was going to hell.

  Everybody knew it; it was so far from a secret that it wasn’t funny. Oh, his mother still lit candles for him in the hope that somehow he’d find salvation for his sins. It was a well-known fact around his hometown that his sainted Momma regularly slipped a little something extra into the offering plate to keep his mortal soul in the fervent prayers of his parish priest. She still had a vain hope that her erstwhile son would somehow find the path to true redemption.

  Yeah, that’s right. His mother kept a priest on the payroll in a bid to save his soul from perdition.

  Personally, he thought it was a waste of good money, but hope continued to spring eternal for his momma and old Father Anders. Jake ‘The Widowmaker’ Stone, however, held no such delusions about what his eternal life would hold after he passed from this mortal realm. In all likelihood, fire and brimstone would be his new reality. It wouldn’t be much different from his present.

  The stains on his soul were permanent and dark, but he could live with that. He’d taken down a lot of bad men by being the best asshole he could be. He’d drank with thieves and murderers, caroused with hookers and whores, and snorted coke with some of the slickest drug pushers to ever deal in the United States – all in the pursuit of truth and justice. In short, he did whatever he had to do in order to separate the head of the monster from the proverbial crown. Just ask anybody that had worked with him during his twenty year tenure with the United
States Drug Enforcement Agency.

  Jacob Stone always got his man no matter what it took or what he had to do. In his world, the end did indeed justify the means. Cold and merciless, he’d earned the Widowmaker nickname the old-fashioned way. Many a criminal had met his demise after tangling with the wrong end of Jacob’s Glock, and he’d left a trail of weeping widows in his wake.

  What could he say? If you did bad shit, meeting an ugly end couldn’t be that much of a surprise, could it? He wasn’t a man for which showing mercy came easy.

  Some philosophized that ending a life weighed heavily on a man’s conscience. Mourning, however, was not in Jacob’s nature. More often than not, he found himself questioning the decisions he’d made to leave some of the scumbags alive rather than dead. Sure, they’d been spared his bullet, but they faced the criminal justice system’s prosecution. And hell, prison would seem like a day at Disneyland for some of the creeps he’d put behind bars – hardly a fitting punishment for some of the filth he’d dealt with. He found himself nostalgic for the days when punishment could be meted out with a simple bullet to the head at a lawman’s discerning discretion. To his credit, he was well aware that this was not exactly the attitude God was looking for when admitting souls into the Promised Land.

  Not even close.

  He simply didn’t give a fuck. Not anymore. If the price of bringing his late sister’s murderer to justice was his soul, he’d pay the cost without question. No sacrifice he’d have to make was too great to see that fucker go down in flames.

  At any rate, he was well aware that his final eternal destination would most likely be plenty warm.

  He could live with it.

  Or, he thought he could.

  Until the day he actually exchanged words with Harmony McKinnon.

  That was the day everything changed for him. That was the day that he lost his soul-deep certainty that he could continue to masquerade as a monster in order to slay the bigger beast.

  Now, he’d never been one of those pansy-asses that waxed poetic about love at first sight. Hell, no. But even he couldn’t deny that something inexplicable happened the instant he’d first laid eyes on the special woman that was Harmony McKinnon, and he couldn’t help the foolish grin that spread across his face as he recalled that first conversation.

  ~*~

  He was sitting on the cracked leather bench seat of the booth closest to the back wall - the same spot he’d claimed every afternoon for the past ten days - when he first saw her. For nearly two weeks, he’d waited for this moment to catch a glimpse of the woman that might prove the key to bringing down one of the largest drug cartels in the nation and putting some of the worst criminals he’d ever run across behind bars. Most importantly to him, though, the woman he watched just might be the pawn he needed to nail his sister’s killer.

  He was pleasantly surprised; she definitely wasn’t what he’d thought he’d find when he finally located her. In fact, she was the exact opposite of everything he’d expected, he thought to himself as he watched her womanly body move toward his table at the back of the restaurant. Sure, he’d reviewed the pictures that were in the file that the DEA had put together on her, but none of those snapshots had done her an ounce of justice. In photographs, you couldn’t tell just how touchable her peaches-and-cream complexion looked or how her long blonde hair shimmered. A man couldn’t see just how gently her rounded curves caressed the light pink tee shirt and faded blue jeans she wore like a second skin. And that smile of hers… let’s just say that those full, rosy lips of hers would make the wet dream he knew he’d have tonight a bestselling box office attraction if it was ever filmed. Fuck, seeing that smile up close and in real time was enough to make even a monk’s cock stand up and pay attention.

  Harmony McKinnon was one mouthwateringly delicious fucking temptation – especially to a man that hadn’t had his dick wet in over a year. Back-to-back cases had kept him off the dating front for far longer than he was comfortable with admitting, and at his age, one night stands no longer appealed to him. The simple truth was that the woman facing him sent his too-long ignored libido sailing into overdrive, and his stiff dick was insistently reminding him on the state of affairs beneath his leather belt.

  His personal penis problems not withstanding (there were worse problems to have than a hard dick, after all), there was an upside to his current situation. After many hours spent searching for a way into the McKinnon family fold, evidently, he finally managed to find the inside track he needed with the closely knit clan last night. In the bar fight last night, he’d protected Harmony’s sister. It’d been dumb luck; he hadn’t orchestrated the brawl – not that he was above doing that. He just hadn’t thought of it. No, instead, he’d merely been in the right place at the right time and lent a capable hand in breaking up the scuffle. Those actions had endeared him to at least two of the four McKinnon sisters. Judging by the dazzling smile Harmony had aimed his way when he’d walked into the restaurant a few minutes ago, it was a good indication that this could be his first big break since arriving in Paradise.

  Now the woman he was here to watch was steadily making her way toward him. One plate was held aloft above her head as she weaved her way through the tables dotting the floor of the somewhat busy restaurant.

  He just needed to sit there and wait.

  “Well, hi there, stranger,” Harmony McKinnon greeted him as she reached his side. “I was hopin’ you’d come in this afternoon so that we could thank you properly for your help yesterday evenin’.” She offered him another friendly smile as she bent and deposited the plate in front of him.

  Jacob held his breath as her full breasts hovered just in front of his face and the light feminine floral scent of her perfume teased his nose. Reminding himself that this woman – no matter how sweet she smelled -- could very well be part of the criminal enterprise directly responsible for his sister’s death, he kept his face impassive as she straightened.

  “So, you’re the motorcycle ridin’ knight in chafed leather that rescued my little sister from a hell of a fall last night, huh? I’ve been hearing an awful lot from my sister, Patience, about the leather-wearing stud that stumbled into Paradise a few weeks ago. Now, my other sister Faith is singing your praises, too, after saving her the way you did last night. I told them both that I needed to meet the guy willing to go to bat for two women he didn’t even know.” Harmony spoke softly, her soft cornflower blue eyes meeting his own with a steady gaze.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” he scoffed, shaking his head slowly while he silently cursed the purity and innocence shining in her eyes. It was going to be a damn shame when he watched that light get extinguished by the disaster heading in her direction. “I’m sure that pretty head of hers had to have at least a couple of stitches. A real knight would have made sure the damsels came out of the fray unscathed, wouldn’t he?”

  “Trust me, Faith’s got a hard head and Patience went to sleep in her bed last night instead of a jail cell. Better still, they both came out of that fray breathin’ and whole,” Harmony replied firmly. “I’m gonna count it as a win all the way around and so will the rest of our clan. We have you to thank for that, Mister…,” she trailed off, realizing that she didn’t know his last name.

  “Name’s Jacob Stone, ma’am,” he supplied, offering her his much larger hand over the worn wooden table.

  “Nice name.” She grinned as she slowly took his hand in hers. “I think I’ll just call you Jake,” she declared with a wink as he felt a current of electricity skitter through their connected palms.

  Never in his life had he allowed anybody to call him Jake. He’d always thought it sounded juvenile, but the way it rolled off her pretty lips sent a surge straight through his groin. “You could call me Mud and I’d answer, darlin’,” he replied truthfully.

  She rewarded him with a giggle…an honest to God, straight from the heart giggle. And it had made his night. “I think I’ll stick with Jake.”

  “And what shoul
d I call you, Pretty Lady?” Jacob asked, doing a bang-up job at playing completely clueless as he charmed her. Watching a rosy blush fill her cheeks, he waited for her to answer.

  “H-harmony,” she replied softly, stuttering a bit as she tripped over her name and looked at him through her lowered lashes. “Harmony McKinnon.”

  “A pretty name for a pretty woman. It fits you, darlin’,” he returned quietly as her blush deepened. Surprisingly, he meant his words. He’d been alive a long time and could honestly say that he’d never seen a woman half as beautiful as she was. It wasn’t that she was movie star gorgeous. No, her beauty was more understated than that. It was like she had some bright inner light burning at her core, drawing him toward her and making him wish for things he had no business wanting.

  Like a home. A family. A future.

  He’d wondered what the fuck was happening to him.

  It was like she was a witch that had cast a spell over him… one that he had no desire to try and break.

  Jesus, he was turning into a dickless sap.

  It was clear that his compliment had stunned her and he wondered just what kind of men she’d been hanging around if she could be so easily tongue tied by a little light flirting. He couldn’t possibly be telling her anything a hundred men before him hadn’t shared.

  Maybe she was a prude, he had reasoned to himself. The problem was that she didn’t seem like one. He’d met prudes. Usually, they were uptight, holier-than-thou types that seemed like they had a stick firmly implanted up their asses. He could already tell that wasn’t Harmony’s gig. She’d been open and friendly when she’d greeted him. Nope, this seemed like more of an ingrained and deeply seated shyness.

  Shyness, he could work with…

  “Thank you. I’ve always thought it was corny the way my parents named me and my sisters. There are four of us. You know Patience and Faith by now. Then, there’s me and Honor. I always wondered what mama was thinking when she christened us. Unfortunately, I never got around to askin’ her before she passed away.” She shook her head sadly, looking almost forlorn, before blinking quickly several times and lifting her gaze back to his. “Listen to me babblin’ on like a fool,” she sputtered as more color flooded her cheeks, embarrassed.