Hard as Stone (Passion in Paradise: The Men of the McKinnnon Sisters)

by Sarah O'Rourke

  “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 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 no 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 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-two 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 vacation days that Jacob had banked over the length of his career could be highly useful now.

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

  This was personal, but he’d play by 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. The nearby interstates were an obvious goldmine to the always forward-thinking drug scum.

  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, down to her dark blonde hair. 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.

  He also couldn’t deny that Mother Nature had done a damn good job in designing the Smoky Mountains, which gave a stunning backdrop to the little town nestled in the valley. Main Street ran down the middle of an honest-to-goodness town square, and a real, working clock tower sat on top of the small courthouse, which also housed the local Sheriff’s office and jail. Around ten shops filled the storefronts, from a florist to an attorney and all points in between. Most importantly, it was where the I Don’t Care Cafe was located, which was now his favorite place.

  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 this Main Street 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.

  Luckily, he’d been building a great relationship with all four McKinnon women – but most especially Harmony. For weeks, he’d been slowly getting to know the shy young mother, and every day he found something else he liked about her.

  He just hoped that when all was said and done, he could convince Harmony that not everything about their deepening relationship was a lie.

  Over the last several weeks, he’d spent a lot of time sitting in his now-regular booth at the cafe and talking with the younger woman as she’d worked. Light conversations had evolved into spirited debates on everything from politics to pop culture. He’d found that he liked what he saw and heard from her. Harmony was a genuinely hard worker that loved her daughter and wanted a better life for them both. She came from a loving family that supported her desire to be successful in her new, fledgling wedding and party-planner business. After organizing a wedding for her sister, Faith, a month ago, word had gotten out in the small town about Harmony’s talent for pulling together beautiful affairs on a tight budget. Before she’d realized what was happening, three couples had hired her to plan their weddings and another two couples needed her to organize their anniversary parties. His Harmony was becoming a much in demand fixture in the community and he was proud as hell of her. A couple of classes away from achieving her degree in event management, she was on her way.

  Since her new second career was beginning to demand a larger amount of her already non-existent free time, he’d also began manipulating ‘accidental’ meetings outside the diner. It had been a little difficult finding ways to run into the young woman, but thanks to the grocery store, the local church’s twice-weekly services (even though it wasn’t Catholic; he didn’t care), and last week’s winter carnival, he’d also had a chance to get to know Heaven, Harmony’s daughter. His heart softened as he thought of the precious little girl that Harmony’s body had produced. Smart as a whip and cuter than hell, that little girl had somehow wrapped herself around his heart.

  It was thanks to Heaven that he had an actual date with Harmony scheduled for tonight. When the precocious four-year-old had decreed last night that her mommy needed a grown-up time out so that she could spend the night making cookies with her Aunt Honor, it had been him that she’d put in charge.

  ~~***~~

  “You takes her out and feed her, ‘kay?” Heaven had ordered seriously as she’d munched her plate of French fries across from him inside the restaurant. “But she can’t have any ice cream unless she eats all her veggies and one of ‘em has gotta be green. Dat’s da rule, Mistah Jake.”

  ~~***~~

  Harmony had been so stunned by her daughter’s decree that she’d accepted his invitation automatically when he’d offered to take her off Heaven’s hands for the night.

  Yeah, that kid had earned herself a special place in his heart right beside the one that her mother had filled. He only hoped that when all was said and done, he could keep them there.

  If tonight’s date went the way he hoped, he’d be one step closer to cementing himself in their lives.

  ~~***~~

  “Stone!” a deep, male voice shouted from the gravel parking lot behind him. Pausing in his long strides, Jacob winced. He’d wondered how long he’d had before this confrontation occurred. He’d actually thought he’d have another good week, but it seemed the sand had finally drained from his hourglass.

  Or, in other words, time was fuckin’ up.

  Turning on the heel of his black-buckled motorcycle boot, Jacob pasted what he hoped looked like a benign smile across his lips. He probably looked more serial killer than social butterfly, but he was trying, dammit! He nodded toward the man walking toward him. “Sheriff. What can I do for y
ou?”

  Jacob watched as the other man’s gaze sized him up. He couldn’t blame the lawman’s barely concealed distrust. If he was the sheriff and a guy that looked the way he did wandered into his town out of the blue and set up camp, he’d get suspicious, too. At 6’4”, Jacob towered above most men. The Sheriff almost matched him in height, but that was where the similarities ended. Jacob possessed a lean, hard muscled stature, while the sheriff was a shade wider with thickly muscled arms. Jacob, with wild and unruly long black hair that he kept tied with a piece of leather at the nape of his neck most of the time and a fully-sleeved arm of colorful tattoos, understood that most people thought he was one half thug, one half redneck, and one hundred percent scary. The sheriff, on the other hand, maintained a trimmed, almost-military haircut and projected a good natured, good-ol’ boy personality that instinctively drew people to him.

  The two men were as different as night and day, but Jacob still liked the other man and usually enjoyed his company. They’d shared a few drinks over the last couple of weeks, usually in the early evenings. He’d been at the bar watching Harmony work and chatting with her when time allowed, and Zeke had often stopped by on his way home from work to follow Honor home after she’d put in her day at the café. He’d witnessed more than one skirmish between the two since the youngest McKinnon sister had informed the sheriff on several occasions that she was perfectly capable of seeing herself home. It never seemed to faze the lawman or alter the course he set in the slightest. Given the fact that those McKinnon girls had proven more than once that they were a handful, Jacob could definitely respect the other man’s fortitude.

  Yeah, he enjoyed the mostly-quiet Sheriff’s company just fine, but he’d never felt quite comfortable when people saw them sitting together at the bar or his booth at the back of the cafe. He wasn’t sure it was because of all the false pretenses behind his presence in Paradise or because Zeke made him wish that he’d gone a different route in law enforcement. The only thing he knew for sure was that he wasn’t used to self-doubt plaguing him. Either way, it wasn’t Zeke’s fault that Jacob felt like a whore attending a cotillion when he stood beside the other man.