Free Cain's Salvation (Passion in Paradise - The Men of the McKinnon Sisters) by Sarah O'Rourke Page A

head
around the fact that Honor had not only just told her that the man that had
eviscerated her heart was back in town, but that she’d invited the bastard to
work with her, too.
    “Faith, you need to see
him,” Honor begged quietly.  “Just talk to him.  Let him try to
explain…”
    “Fuck that, Honor!”
Faith cursed, exploding from her chair and knocking it over as she faced her
youngest sibling.  “I’ll gut him on sight!  You’ve lost your mind if
you think I can handle seeing him every day.  Have you been living under
some rock for the past six months?  You saw what he put me
through.  You watched it happen!  And still, you went to him and
offered him a job?  How could you?  How could you do that to me?”
    “I did what I thought
was best.  You haven’t seen him, honey.  He’s already gutted.  I just wanted…”
    “I don’t care what you
wanted,” Faith screamed, wiping the tears flowing down her pale cheeks with the
back of her hand.  “Undo it!  Call him and tell him that you’ve
changed your mind,” she demanded.  Betrayal burned in her stomach as she
glared at her sister.  Of all the people in the world that she ever
imagined would stab her in the back, she never once thought it would be Honor.
    “No.”  Honor shook
her head.  “You have to face him, Faith.  If after you’ve seen him
you still want him gone, we can talk about it, but he stays for now.”
    “You only own a quarter
of the business,” Faith retorted angrily.  “We could outvote you,” she
threatened, glancing toward their shared sisters.  “You guys can’t
possibly think this is fair!” 
    “Faith, I know you’re
upset,” Harmony, the eldest of them, murmured quietly, “but you’ve got to calm
down.  You’re going to scare Heaven,” she warned, glancing into the living
room where the four year old sat at the coffee table coloring while cartoons
played on the television.
    “I’m sorry,” Faith
apologized quickly, wincing as she peeked in the other room at her niece. 
Looking at her older sister, she whispered, “You can’t think this is right, can
you, Harm?  Patience?”  God, she needed somebody to take her
side here.  “He didn’t just break up with me, guys,” she groaned. 
“He sent a fucking letter.  He broke my goddamn heart in half a page of
scrawled words.  He couldn’t even bother with the courtesy of a phone
call.  You can’t tell me that any of you think that’s forgivable.”
    “I think his head got
rattled over there,” Harmony said truthfully, crossing her arms over the pink I
Don’t Care Café t-shirt she wore.  “You just heard Honor say that he was
injured, Faith.”
    “He’s well enough to
come back and fuck with my life again, though,” Faith retorted bitterly,
glaring at Honor.
    “No.  He
isn’t.  It was at my urging that he’s doing this, Faith.  For that,
blame me.  Not him.  It was my idea.  He said the kindest thing
he could do for you is to stay the devil away from you.  He thinks he’s
damaged.  He’s convinced that he can’t be the man that you deserve,” Honor
explained in a low voice.
    Blinking, Faith rubbed
her bare legs.  Already dressed for work in her denim shorts and pink
shirt, she’d been just about ready to head into the restaurant when Honor had
arrived home and called together this little pow wow to blindside her. 
What her younger sister was saying just didn’t make any sense.  Faith had
never given Cain a single reason to feel like she wasn’t more than satisfied
with him.  In every way.  God, he’d been her everything.  She’d
been planning their future, for God’s sake.  “I don’t understand,” she whispered,
cringing as she lifted a hand to cradle her aching head.  She’d had a
headache to begin with, but it was now rapidly approaching migraine
magnitude. 
    “He was at war, Faith,”
Harmony said, moving closer to the table while Patience leaned, unspeaking,
against the counter.  “War