Cain's Salvation (Passion in Paradise - The Men of the McKinnon Sisters) (17 page)

“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.

“I’d say that seal is a valuable
thing to have in this town.  You ladies are pretty well known around these
parts,” he noted easily.

“Well, our place is the only joint
you can get a decent meal that doesn’t come out of a paper bag or down a cold
one after a long hard day at work.  I think our popularity has more to do
with the food and drink than with us personally.”

“I think you’re underestimating
yourself, but be that as it may, a man can never have too many friends…
especially the pretty kind.”

There went the blush again.  He
grinned as he watched the color spread.  “So, will you join me for a bite,
Miss McKinnon?” he asked, gesturing to the bench across from him.  “I’d
love your company.”

“I wish I could,” Harmony denied with
true regret shining in her expressive eyes, “but, I need to pick up my daughter
from daycare.”

“You have a little girl?” he asked
innocently, tilting his head, that information already part of his dossier.

Harmony laughed again as she
nodded.  “Yes, she just turned four, but some days I feel like it’s four
going on forty with some of the things that come out of her mouth.”

“Maybe tomorrow then,” he suggested,
keeping his deep voice friendly and inviting.  “I’d love to pick the mind
of a native about the town.  I’m thinking of opening a business in the
area and wouldn’t mind knowing who the good realtors and so on are in the
area,” he offered, telling a half truth.  He did fully intend on starting
his own business once he retired from the DEA, although he hadn’t given much
thought to where it would be.  Paradise was as good a place to start
looking as anywhere else at the moment, though.  It wasn’t like he was
going anywhere until the job was done.  And he did enjoy the scenery, he
admitted silently as he watched Harmony tuck a strand of her shoulder length
ash blonde hair behind her small ear.

“Oh.  What business are you in?”
she inquired curiously.

“Security,” he fibbed, the untruth
rolling smoothly off his tongue.  Not a complete lie, but not the truth
either.  Besides, being an excellent liar was practically a job
requirement for an undercover agent, and he was an excellent agent.

“That’s… interesting,” she murmured,
a tiny frown line appearing between her eyebrows.  She got distracted at
that point as raised voices at the front of the bar had drawn their attention.

“I’m telling you, it’s
unconstitutional!” Patience McKinnon yelled from behind the bar as she’d waved
what looked like a yellow ticket underneath some poor guy’s nose.  “I pay
my taxes, and as such, MY money helped pay for those city streets.  Nobody
should be double-charged like that, Abel Turner!”

“And I’m telling YOU,” the man in a
well-fit business suit shouted back at her, “You have nooooo CASE!”  He
illustrated his bellowed remark by holding his expensive looking leather
briefcase above his head and shaking it. 

“Oh, crap,” Harmony murmured, her
eyes widening on the pair of combatants as Patience loudly threatened to come
over the bar.  “I promised Honor no bloodshed today.  Swore on a
Bible and everything,” she almost whimpered, biting her lower lip as Patience’s
hands both slammed down on the bar and rattled two unsuspecting diner’s
glasses.

“This happen a lot?” Jacob asked with
an amused nod toward a furious Patience and the sneering man standing opposite
her.

“Oh, once a week or so. 
Tensions have been escalatin’ between the two for a few months now,” Harmony
explained, watching the two enemies in front of them as they seemed to pause
and size each other up.  “Last week, a bar stool, a serving tray and a
perfectly innocent blackberry cobbler were casualties of their ongoing
war.  I better go break them up before somebody loses more than their
dessert today.”

Jacob couldn’t help his chuckle as he
heard Patience goad the man in front of her with, “Yeah, well, if you weren’t
such a lousy lawyer, Abel, you’d find a way to MAKE a case for me!”

“Yeah, I think you better go
intercede,” he agreed with Harmony quickly when he saw Patience reach for an
empty glass pitcher with a malicious gleam in her eye.

Nodding, Harmony flashed him a quick
smile.  “I have appointments until 10 tomorrow and work from 11 until
3.  If you want, I can get Honor to pick up my little girl, Heaven, from
daycare tomorrow and help you tomorrow afternoon.”

“It’s a date.” His grin quickly fell
away as her face paled at his statement.

“No, it’s not,” she returned quickly
with a stiff shake of her head.  “I don’t date.”

“You don’t?  Ever?”

“I don’t.  Ever.”  Her
statement was both insistent and emphatic.

Damn, she was serious, he thought to
himself as he listened to that grave little voice of hers.  It was
becoming real clear that the ex-husband he’d read about in her file had done a
serious number on her. 

“Okay, then,” he said
carefully.  “Not a date. How about a friendly afternoon snack between two
new friends?” he amended calmly, watching as she swallowed hard.

“Okay, that would work,” she relented
almost reluctantly.  Then, she tried to smile at him, but it was
half-hearted at best.  “Sorry.  I just didn’t want you to get the
wrong idea.  It’s not you, Jake.  You seem like a nice guy. 
It’s most definitely me.”

“I sense there’s a story here that
you’re not quite ready to share with me,” he surmised astutely, keeping his
gaze steady as he met her eyes.

“Something like that,” she
acknowledged softly.

“Maybe someday you’ll feel like you
can tell me.”

“Maybe,” Harmony murmured uncomfortably
just before Patience shrieked a demand for Abel Turner to vacate the premises
as she held the empty glass pitcher above her head.  Looking over her
shoulder, Harmony groaned.  “Sorry, Jake, but I gotta go,” she apologized
before hurrying toward her sister.

He laughed as he watched Harmony
quickly disarm her sister and mediate a truce at the bar.  He barely made
out what her soft voice was saying, but he watched as her body had slowly
relaxed as she diffused the tension between her sister and the lousy
attorney.  After she made sure that the last angry embers of their
altercation were extinguished, he saw her quickly gather her jacket and purse
from beneath the long counter and press a kiss to Patience’s cheek.

With a cheery wave at him and smile,
she left.

He sat in that booth a long time,
replaying their conversation in his head and slowly drawing more than one
conclusion about Harmony McKinnon.

First, that woman was no
criminal.  Over the years, he’d gotten damn good at reading a person’s
eyes and seeing what kind of individual he was dealing with. When he’d stared
into her gaze, he’d seen nothing but a woman that had both known pain and
survived it without allowing it to taint all that was good in her.  There
was no deceit… no subterfuge.  Just the crystal clear blue eyes of a woman
that a man like him did NOT deserve to share air with, let alone her company.

Second, Harmony McKinnon had been
hurt.  He didn’t know how or how deeply the pain ran, but he was sure that
whatever had happened had left a scar.  Her self-confidence was almost
non-existent and compliments that other women would have eaten with a spoon
made her uncomfortable.  Not only that, but she didn’t believe him. 
That knowledge pissed him off and made him want to find the fuckwad that had
made her feel less than perfect and put him in the ground.  No woman as
kind and beautiful as her should ever be made to feel as small and
insignificant as he figured she felt.

The third and last conclusion he’d
drawn was that lying to Harmony was going to suck.  He was going to hurt
her.  Maybe not physically, but he suspected what he was going to do would
most likely cause her a lot more pain.  Because he was going to earn her
trust.  And ultimately, he was going to destroy it.

There was no choice.

In his world, the end always
justified the means.

~*~

Sliding off the back of his
Harley-Davidson motorcycle, Jacob sighed heavily as he swung one heavy leg over
his hog.  This job – which he was overseeing on his own time – was always
intended to be a means to an end.  The key was that he had to remember
that. 

All the pieces were finally in motion,
damn it.

Another of his fellow agents was
overseeing the day-to-day operations regarding the systematic destruction of
the drug pipeline that Diego Fuentes’ cartel was currently trying to build
between Miami and Tennessee.  His former partner, Luis Vega, or ‘Dante de
la Cruz’ as he was known to Diego, had even spent the last two years
infiltrating Fuentes’ operation, becoming an invaluable asset to the head Mexican
honcho while keeping his DEA colleagues well-informed of every move the wannabe
drug czar made.  All the parties were in place to finally destroy the man
that had ultimately been responsible for the death of Jacob’s sister
twenty-five years ago.

Jacob, however, had been given his own
set of orders -- keep his hands off this case.  His Unit Chief had been
real clear about that.  He had a tendency to obey the old man that had
mentored him during his first years at the agency after he’d been plucked out
of the Army and recruited as an undercover agent with the DEA.  But his
boss had also casually suggested that the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in
Tennessee seemed like a real nice area to check out for Jacob’s upcoming
retirement – what with all the hunting and fishing he could do.  He’d also
added that those six months of vacations days that Jacob had banked over the
length of his career could be awfully useful now.

It had taken Jacob all of thirty seconds
to make his decision.

This was personal, but he’d play be the
agency’s rules as much as he could.  Hell, as long as Diego’s operation
was taken down and the man was brought to justice, Jacob didn’t care who got
the credit for doing it.  Technically and as far as the DEA was concerned,
he was just a guy on vacation - a man staring retirement in the eye and
scouting for the location where he’d eventually retire in a few months and
start his own business.  So what if he’d decided he liked the atmosphere
the little laidback town of Paradise offered?  It was mere coincidence
that this tiny country hamlet was the location that Luis had reported would be
the hub for distribution into Eastern Tennessee.  It seemed one of
Fuentes’ other lackeys, Tanner Suarez, had connections to this town and had
indicated it would be the perfect low key location to dole out the coke and ice
they smuggled in from Florida.

And it just so happened that Tanner’s
‘connection’ to the area came in the form of one finest pieces of ass he’d ever
encountered and one of the cutest kids that Jacob had ever laid eyes on. 
It was hard to believe that little Heaven McKinnon was the offspring of a man
as slimy as Tanner.  Thankfully, the little girl took after her mother in
the looks department.  The only indication that she was even Tanner’s kid
was her slight olive complexion. 

Yeah, he definitely wouldn’t complain
about the scenery surrounding Paradise.  Heaven, Harmony, and Harmony’s
three sisters were lookers that he wouldn’t mind staring at for a good long
while. 

And if he was honest about it, he liked
the town and enjoyed its citizens.  Mostly, they were good, decent folks
trying to earn honest livings in tough times, all while managing to keep their
humanity in a time when most people were consumed with getting ahead in life no
matter who got hurt.  In Paradise, when someone was in trouble, the entire
town turned out in force to offer support.

He liked that.  A lot.

After spending the majority of his last
ten years on the hardcore streets of Atlanta, Paradise was a welcome respite.

Now, he just needed to do what he could
to keep the drug trade off the streets and the people of this small corner of
the world safe from harm.

And now that he was certain that Harmony
had no knowledge of anything to do with Diego and Tanner’s plan to coat the
Smoky Mountains in blow, that mission began by protecting the McKinnon family.