Cain's Salvation (Passion in Paradise - The Men of the McKinnon Sisters) (16 page)

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!

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 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.

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.

“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 arms 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.