Bring on the Rain Read Free

autumn in her hair, had always been
warm and earthy. The daughter was more trendy and sleeked up.
However, it wasn’t difficult to see the bloodlines.
    “ Hello.” He moved his feet
from the rail and stood. “That Coy’s homework?”
    “ Yes.” It was Brook who
answered.
    “ He’s coming back next
week.” Mitch nodded toward the front door. “He’s in the den playing
video games, I think.”
    With the platform shoes, Brook stood as
tall as him. Mitch noticed she was searching his face. However,
when he smiled, catching her, she flushed. Mitch shook his head at
that, and led the way. He had a pretty distinct feeling that her
mother had no idea she was here.
    He led them through the great room,
their footfalls echoing because of the high beams. It had a stone
fireplace and cool tiled floors. They went down three round stairs
into the den.
    His nephew, in Levis shorts and no
shirt, was slumped on the dove gray sectional playing video games.
Coy glanced up, paused the game, and smiled at the girls with
enough cockiness to make Mitch grin at his oversized
ego.
    “ Can I get y'all anything?”
He asked the teens before leaving.
    “ No. Thank you.” It was
Brook again. The other girl, Mitch noted with amusement, seemed to
be hypnotized by his nephew’s ridge of muscle lining his flat
belly. Coy of course was aware of it and made a point of tightening
his stomach in a way Mitch would rag him about later. He had too
many damn women chasing him since he was sixteen and had topped six
feet. At eighteen, he was looking twenty-five.
    Mitch nodded, excused himself, and then
headed back outside. He heard laughter from the den and smiled,
remembering how he used to feel when girls showed up at Dovie’s. He
used to feel pretty damn cocky too.
    Until Madeline.
    Mitch glanced down the road toward his
brother’s house. Jude had fought with Coy, that’s how he ended up
sleeping on his sofa. It was the same-old same-old with those two.
They ran a dirt racetrack here in Copper Creek. Jude forbade Coy to
race anymore after a serious accident last year. Coy had ignored
him, raced a friend’s car, wrecked, and broke his ankle. Jude hit
the roof.
    Since his own divorce, Jude had become
hell to live with. In his own bitterness, he and Coy were always
butting heads.
    Mitch thought that Jude and he were
much closer growing up than now. Their wives, their lives, had
changed them.
    They still fought, and as the eldest
Mitch had to deal with all family crises. Jude’s divorce was
fresher. Jude was cynical, a real smart-ass when he wanted to be.
That last summer with Madeline had been the last time he and his
brother had confided in each other. Now Jude was wrestling his own
demons and he was waiting for him to make the first move, to renew
their closeness. They did the family thing, socialized and played
in the band together, but there was a gulf they both knew needed to
be closed.
    Like all the Coburn's, everyone moved
freely from house to house. His own son Jason was building a house.
Mitch suspected it had to do with his sex life more than any
problem between them. He did not have one…and Jason had too much of
one. It didn’t work with them living together. Mitch tended to step
in too much, and his son was an adult who was probably more
sophisticated and worldly than he was.
    Mitch owned the construction company.
Jason was an electrician who worked for him, but took other jobs
too. Jason was a mixture of his mama and Mitch that made him unique
from the clan. Mitch was glad about that. Since Dovie had a hand in
raising most of them and not the younger generation.
    He detected the throb of the expensive
stereo and grunted, moving to sit on the porch edge, gazing down at
the car absently, while he wondered if the girl knew anything about
Madeline and him. Probably not, he decided. He hadn't told Jason
anything, except to explain the one photo album full of pictures
taken that summer.
    His son had seen Madeline in town and
at the