Sinner (Shelter Harbor #1)(2)

Again, I shouldn’t be here. Sandaled feet, white sundress — father-approved of course in both length and modesty — the silver cross my mother gave me three years ago for my eighteenth birthday hanging by a small chain around my neck.

‘Out of place’ doesn’t quite cut it.

But again, I’m here for a reason, and it isn’t to stand outside here wrinkling my brow at all the reasons I’d never be caught dead in a place like this. I slip the key into the door lock, turn it with a click, and step into the dim interior of the bar.

And I thought the outside was dirty.

The inside is a dump. I gingerly step over another smashed bottle, side-stepping a puddle of something that smells like rubbing alcohol as I glance around the empty bar.

“Hello?”

There’s no response, so I call out again.

“Hello? Hi, Rowan? I’m here for the key?”

The key to the rental house. That’s all I need here and then I am getting myself away from this place as quickly as possible. I pocket the key that the Reverend Jacob Hammond — friend of my father’s and the whole reason we’re here — gave me to his son’s bar.

I shake my head. A reverend’s son who owns a bar? One that looks like this?

Now that’s an interesting one.

“Hello?” I sigh as I call into the silence again, glancing around the room. Turned off neon signs, framed posters and jerseys for some sort of sports team, a paper flyer advertising live music every other Friday night.

Reverend Hammond assured me that his son knew I was stopping by to get the key to the rental house of his where my family and I will be staying while we’re in Shelter Harbor these next couple of months.

Months, yikes.

It feels weird, thinking of it like that, even if I knew it was happening for a while now. I’ve known about it ever since my father’s old friend from seminary school asked him if he’d like to relocate up to Massachusetts for a few months to help oversee the opening of a ministries outreach and homeless shelter in the next town over. And seeing as my father’s church was still closed due to damage from the fire over the summer, he’d jumped at the chance.

“Where there is sin, so shall be I. For His flock is my duty to tend.”

And so we’re here. Me, my mother, my father, and Chastity, a girl my age and the daughter of one of my father’s parishioners, ready to roll up our sleeves and help.

“Months” does seem like a while, but then, a few months here will be exactly what I need after the breakup.

Well, “breakup” is what my father and mother keep calling it, even if I’d prefer to call it “Joseph leaving me for someone else while I was off doing missionary work”. I might not be very experienced when it comes to fiancés, but apparently, it’s hard to keep one when you’re off doing outreach in South Korea.

Even if father’s been firm that I should have done more to make sure things were “copacetic” with my future husband.

But now I’m back. Back with a very useless degree in theological studies, short a fiancé — and a job for that matter — and living with my mother and father in a strange new town for the next few months while he works on this project with Reverend Hammond. On the plus side, Shelter Harbor, north of Boston, does seem like a very sweet town, however different it is from Christ Redeemer Township, Georgia.

A nice town, that is, aside from this place.

“Hello?” I call out again, wrinkling my nose at the smell of stale beer. I step further into the dim, empty interior. I glance behind the bar before ducking down the back hallway.

“Hello? Rowan? It’s Evangeline.” I frown as I step down the hall towards a half-cracked doorway. “I’m supposed to get the key to the rental house from you?”

For a moment, I think I hear something, and I stop. “Hello?”

I frown at the silence again. Where is this guy? And what on earth is a minister’s son doing in a place like this?

The sound comes muffled again from behind the half-cracked door, and I curiously move down the hallway towards it.

“Rowan?” I push the door open and start to step inside when I suddenly freeze.

Oh. My. God.

The man is completely naked, sprawled across a sofa against the wall of what must be an office of some kind.

My eyes go wide, somehow unable to even look away as my hand flies to my mouth

He’s on his stomach, thank the Lord, but it doesn’t stop my eyes from being pulled into the sight of him. His shoulders and his arms are covered in swirls of tattoo ink over thick muscles. Brown hair flops over part of his face — turned towards me but with his eyes closed. One hand dangled off the sofa, still half-clutching a mostly empty bottle of something.