“Maybe not, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m right. The Sheriff deserves to know what she remembered. He’s loved that woman a long time, darlin’. You can’t leave that poor bastard swingin’ in the wind like that. You might be pissed at him, Abel, and Cain right now, but at the end of the day, those men would bleed and die for any of you girls. Think on that before you make a final decision about sharing with Zeke, okay?”
Harmony simply nodded because she couldn’t do anything else. Offering him a sidelong glance, she muttered, “Can we go now?”
“Not yet. Look at me, Harmony,” he ordered softly, waiting until she turned her head toward him. Cupping her jaw, he bent to brush his lips against hers. “I’m sorry, darlin’. Sorry for what you’ve been through already and what I know is comin’. Sorrier than hell for my role in it. But I am not sorry for coming into your life. You and Heaven are the best thing that’s happened to me in forty-two years of livin’ on this earth. I wouldn’t trade or give back a single second of it. You understand?”
Meeting his eyes, Harmony shook her head. “I hear you, Jake, but I’m not sure I’ll ever understand.”
“Then I’ll work until you do, Harmony,” he vowed, brushing her lips with his again before rising from the bench and pulling her to her feet. “For now, I’ll take you home.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Faith and Cain Turner
The McKinnon Farmhouse
4:30 pm
Cain Turner watched from the dining room table as his wife pulled the door to Heaven’s bedroom almost closed and walked into the kitchen. “She out?” he asked quietly, well aware by the look on his woman’s face that he was ranking as one of her least favorite people in the world at the moment.
“Yep,” Faith answered tersely, carrying her glass to the sink and rinsing it out.
“It’s awfully late for a nap, isn’t it?” Cain asked, glancing at the clock ticking on the wall.
“Really?” Faith snapped, whirling to nail her husband with an icy, malice filled look. “This is what you wanna talk about, Cain? You want to chat about Heaven’s nap? She was exhausted after the morning and afternoon she had. She’s confused and scared. She wanted me to rock her and she fell asleep. I made a decision without you to let her do it. Does that bother you that you weren’t included? I can’t imagine how that feels!” she sneered.
“Okay, Faith,” Cain replied calmly, rising from the wooden chair and slowly walking across the room to face her. “I get it. You’re pissed at me. You wanna let me have it, fine, but don’t be sarcastic. It doesn’t suit you, baby.”
Faith pressed her lips together, silently seething. “You had no right, Cain. No right to keep things concerning my family from me. I thought we had an agreement that we would share everything with each other. We said we would never keep secrets from each other after we worked through everything that happened in Afghanistan. You broke your promise, Cain,” she accused, jabbing him in the chest with her index finger.
Dropping his hands to the curve of her hips, Cain nodded solemnly. “I did, Faith. I did it because I honestly believed it was the safest thing to do for everybody concerned. All I can say is that I didn’t do it to hurt you or your sisters. The rest of the guys and I talked about it and…”
“Are you sleeping with any of those guys, Cain? You married to them?” Faith interrupted, her azure eyes glinting with temper as she felt her patience grow paper thin. While she had learned to trust him again before they got married just a few weeks ago, she was worried...worried that he was slipping into old habits. Her former soldier, now doctor husband still had a lot to learn about marriage.
“You know I’m not,” he replied on a sigh.
“Then your first obligation should have been to me and to us. This is my family that we’re talking about here. I deserved to have all the information that you had.”
“It’s our family, baby,” he corrected seriously. “And you know that I would do anything I could for any one of them. I fucked up and kept shit from you, but you know that I did it with the best of intentions, don’t you?”
“Good intentions or not, you pull this crap on me again, Cain, and you won’t like what happens,” Faith warned grimly. “You’ve got to remember that we sisters have been taking care of each other a lot longer than you all have been taking care of us. We deserve to know the truth about what’s happening in our own family.”
“I think I got that now, Faith,” Cain acknowledged softly, pulling her soft body against his.