Dead by Midnight - Beverly Barton [136]
Mike glanced away, finished off his sandwich, and then stacked his dirty dishes and carried them to the sink.
She shot up out of her chair. “Damn it, Mike, don’t you dare ignore me.”
He dumped the dishes into the sink, the silverware clanging against the stainless steel, and then he gripped the edge of the sink with white-knuckled strength.
She came up behind him, determined to make him answer her. “I can’t stand this. Having you here is tearing me apart. I want you to go.”
He spun around so quickly that he nearly knocked her down. As she wavered unsteadily, he reached out and grabbed her, his hands clutching either side of her head. Staring into his blue-black eyes, she held her breath as he lowered his head and took her mouth in a hungry, devouring kiss.
Heath Leroy despised the devil and all the sinners who worshipped him by committing evil. His father had once been the vilest of sinners and well on his way straight to hell, but praise be to God, Grant Leroy had found Jesus. The Son of God had spoken personally to his dad and called him to preach the Gospel. Heath counted himself blessed among men that his father had shared that special anointing with him, bringing him also into the glory of the Almighty. He had been a boy of seventeen when he had been reunited with his father, a man he’d seen very little of for most of his life. His parents had divorced when he was seven, and his only memories of his family together were of his mother and father screaming at each other.
Working side by side together, his dad and he had shared God’s message with the people of Kentucky, his father’s home state. They had started out small, going from town to town sharing the Good Word with anyone who would listen. Within a year, they had been able to rent a building in Louisville to house the Redeemer Church. His father’s charismatic personality combined with the Lord’s helping hand had quickly catapulted their small congregation into a group so large that they had been forced to rent a larger meeting place.
His father had sent him to college and two years ago, at twenty-one, he had become an accountant and now managed the Redeemer Church’s finances. He was proud to say that their net worth was in the multimillions. With that kind of wealth, they were able to reach so many more people, people who needed to be saved.
Heath knew he had been saved by the grace of God and not through any action on his part. He himself was not without sin, but he fought the good fight every day of his life. A man could not give in to temptation, especially when that temptation was his own father’s wife. Avoiding Renee wasn’t possible. As long as he worked with his father, he couldn’t escape her or the burning desire he felt whenever she came near.
He treated her with the greatest respect and he understood that her affection for him was that of a stepmother for a stepson. But how he wished she wouldn’t hug him or give him sweet kisses on his cheeks or smile at him with such tenderness. Whenever he caught himself staring at her, longing no doubt obvious in his expression, he chastised himself for his evil thoughts and stayed for hours on his knees begging for God’s help.
Just as his father had been able to overcome the evil inside him, the evil that coerced him into a life of depravity, Heath struggled to overcome the wickedness his father had passed down to him, an evil born and bred in the pornography business. If it were within his power to completely erase such evil from the world, he would. But for now, he had to settle for what he could do to save others from that most vile of all depravities.
Heath entered the Redeemer Church office complex, having come directly from a business lunch where he had interviewed Larry Williamson, a local contractor who had a spotless reputation as a God-fearing family man. The Redeemer Church had bought land down in LaRue County,