Hard as Stone
By Sarah O’Rourke
Book Two
Passion in Paradise: The Men of the McKinnon Sisters Series
Hard as Stone
Copyright © 2014 by Sarah O’Rourke
All rights reserved. No part of this publication or cover design artwork may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods in current use or to be developed in the future, without the prior express written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law (US. Copyright Act of 1976).
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and settings are fictitious, and are the sole property of Sarah O’Rourke. Any resemblance to actual events, names, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Any real setting is used in a fictitious manner with literary license.
This work of fiction is intended for mature audiences.
Additional books by Sarah O’Rourke: www.sarahorourke.info and Amazon
Certain characters in this work of fiction recount experiences of domestic violence and sexual abuse. These sections are NOT graphic and are NOT detailed, and this information is provided only as a warning for those readers who may experience memory triggers. Readers are encouraged to reach out to the organizations listed below if they have been the victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline
1-800-799-7233
www.thehotline.org
(Do not contact through internet if you feel that your computer usage is being monitored. Please call the toll-free Hotline on the phone.)
Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
Each caller & chatter receives confidential, one-on-one support, and is offered crisis intervention, options for next steps and direct connection to sources for immediate safety.
The National Sexual Assault Hotline
1-800-656-HOPE
http://www.rainn.org/get-help/national-sexual-assault-hotline
Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
At any given moment, more than 1,100 trained volunteers are on duty and available to help victims at these sexual assault crisis centers across the country. Completely confidential; no personal information required.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Playlist
Acknowledgments
SNEAK PEEK - Ready, Willing, and Abel
Chapter One
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 excha
nged 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 restaurant 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, all of whom owned the bar/restaurant together. 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 should 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.
“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 are me and Honor. I always wondered what Momma 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.
“Darlin’, I could listen to you babble all day long,” Jacob replied, shocked to recognize that he was telling her the truth. Before he consciously realized he’d moved, he had settled one of his large hands over hers where it rested on the scarred table and squeezed gently, trying to convey his silent support. He tried not to let it sting when she withdrew her hand quickly and took a step back. She wasn’t the first woman that he’d made uncomfortable with his size and demeanor. The fact that he looked like a thug with his tattooed arm and overgrown hair hadn’t escaped his notice; he’d just hoped she’d see past it. Strangely, he found himself wanting to comfort her though. She looked lost. And sad. And he didn’t like seeing the unhappiness shining in her eyes. Not one bit.
“So, you’ve brought me a reward for my good deed, huh?” he asked, trying to put her at ease again by distracting her from her thoughts.
“What?” Harmony questioned blankly, wincing when Jacob merely nodded down at the saucer she’d placed in front of him a few minutes ago. “Oh! Yes!” She agreed with a quick smile. “It’s the least we could do. Honor made that fresh this morning especially for you. It’s one of her signature desserts. Lucky Lemon Lush. She only makes it on special occasions and for special people. You really endeared yourself to us last night and that there,” she said with a nod at the airy looking dessert, “is Honor’s way of saying how much she appreciates what you did. We all do. You, sir, just got the McKinnon family seal of approval whether you wanted it or not.”
Oh, he had wanted it. Desperately. Their approval, or more specifically Harmony’s approval, was vital to his endgame.
Hard as Stone (Passion in Paradise: The Men of the McKinnnon Sisters) Page 1