Bring on the Rain (11 page)

His brow rose lazily. “I reckon.” That
half smile was the same.

Madeline exhaled through her nose.
“What people feel as kids, it’s not real life. You should know
that.”

Mitch tilted his head, making the lamp
light reflect off the silver strands. “You dated anyone since old
Bud?”

She resisted the urge to laugh at how
he had said it. “That’s none of your business.”

“
I dated some. A lot. If you
could call it that.” His eyes moved over her. “When it’s right, it
messes it up for everyone else. Like a drug, and a first high. You
keep thinking you’ll feel it with someone else, but you
don't.”

“
I don't need to hear
this.”

Madeline hadn’t forgotten Mitch’s
intimate voice inflection; nor heard it enough over the years. She
silently admitted that it was pretty heady. Being the focus of his
gaze always had been. That part hadn’t altered. The way his deep
voice could seemingly reach out and caress when he
spoke.

He was just one of those men who knew
how to speak and look sexual. It sensitized her skin, sharpened her
awareness. Places tingled on her body that no man had touched in
too long. Obviously, she told herself, she was not immune to him
twenty years later. He had lost none of his ability to do
that.

“
I drove by here a million
times over the years, you know?”

“
No. Nor do I believe
it.”

“
I’d say, one more time, one
more night, like the song by Diamond Rio.” Mitch laughed soft and
bitter. “I can’t even sing the damn thing anymore.”

Madeline moved her legs and sat up. She
couldn’t sit so close with him that way. Lies they may be, but they
tapped into her suppressed hungers, her old vulnerabilities. She
could be tempted. She wasn’t made out of stone, nor was her heart
as hard as she pretended.

Madeline stood and leaned against the
banister needing to put space between them. “Men think of sex as
the answer to everything,”

Mitch snorted. “Hell if that were the
case, I’d have experienced the feeling with anyone. Now wouldn’t
I?”

“
It’s a midlife crises,” she
insisted, “I know men want to recapture their youth.”

His smile was crooked. His eyes a
little hooded and yes, she could see he was turned on. “You have
answers for everything, Madeline. They’re just wrong ones. That's
when men get sports cars, and chase girls half their
age.”

“
Whatever.” She shrugged.
”It’s nothing to do with me.”

He sat up, put the cup down, and stood,
walking over until he was close in front of her. Mitch looked down
into her face a long time.

She felt the warmth of him. He was
masculine in such a virile way. God, he just was too much of
everything. It was difficult to stand still and not edge around him
and run.

Mitch whispered huskily, “Did it hurt
as much when I married Ronda as it did when you married
Bud?”

“
That’s a shitty thing to
ask.” Madeline stiffened. “And cruel.”

Mitch frowned, his tone changing to
bewilderment. “You broke it off, not me.”

“
Don't.” She looked away
angry, her senses too off balance to deal with him. Madeline could
not believe he had asked her that. “Don’t start again,
Mitch.”

He reached out, took her chin in his
fingertips, and turned her face back to him. His pale eyes
shimmered baby blue in the lamplight. Searching, puzzled. “I’d
almost swear you were telling the truth.” His tone held a stunned
incredulity. ”My family did something…”

“
Please.” Madeline moved his
hand away and pushed by him.

She turned and said roughly, “Don’t let
this thing with Coy and Brook give you any ideas, Mitch. I’m
thirty-six. That’s a lifetime away from where we left off. I’m not
that sheltered little girl anymore who thinks you hung the
moon.”

Mitch’s jaw flexed. He put his hands in
his pockets and leaned his hips on the rail. A night breeze stirred
his hair. “I’m listening, if you want to tell me your
version.”

“
It won’t matter.” She shook
her head. “I’m not getting mixed up with you again.”

“
For the sake of me hearing
the truth?”

“
I think you’re lying when
you say that, but ask your family, not me. And don't think it’s
going to make any difference now.” Madeline turned to the door.
“Good night, Mitch. Thanks for dinner. Come by the Tavern and I’ll
repay you.”

~*~

The door closed behind her.

Mitch gradually pulled away from the
rail and picked up the mess, taking it to his truck.

He tossed it in back and climbed in
then sat awhile mulling over her hints and accusations. A part of
him didn’t want to know. He did not want to think anyone but Dovie
messed with his relationships. Dovie, he could handle, he wouldn’t
be surprised. But, Jude, Deena, or anyone else—they wouldn’t have
hurt him, betrayed him. Would they?

Mitch remembered Madeline, as she’d
been, so much his. To think they might have ganged up on her sent a
frisson of anger though him that rolled his guts.

It was worse, looking at the little
house, remembering the nights he’d pick her up when she snuck out.
Painfully too, the times he’d brought her back and she’d cling to
him, touching him as if he was life itself. Madeline had always
touched him in ways no one else ever did or ever would. In those
days, he’d been unable to breathe without her too, not feeling real
until his body was inside hers, and he was drinking her tears
between their kisses, because they moved each other that
deeply.

They had made love so much he could
feel her on him during the day. When it wore off, he would be
hungry for her again, needing her wrapped on him like skin. There
never was a word good enough to describe it.

He had never told her. He’d never had
words good enough for what Madeline was to him. He’d just been so
damned young, and knowing about her mother, he had wanted to give
and give to her, let her take it all out on him and hear her
sounds, taste her hungry wanting…and hold her forever.

In those young years, in her
second-hand sundresses and simplistic, natural warmth, even without
make up, she had outshone everyone in his eyes. He had looked at
those pictures recently, her barefoot with that soft cotton dress
of white and tiny flowers of green, a few buttons undone at the
breast and hem, the ones of him sitting on the porch floor, against
one of the braces.

Jude had snapped the photos as Madeline
had been looking at him, while he had turned, to answer someone
seated back on the porch. That look, all these years later still
tore him inside out. He thought she’d only worn that expression
after they made love. He had not known Madeline felt half as much
for him as he felt for her.

Mitch finally drove home, telling
himself he’d made the choice to marry Ronda, no matter what. He’d
been a drunk after the break up. Hurt and mixed up. Doing what
Dovie wanted was completely his fault. It was an angry, rebound,
kiss-my-ass reaction. He was sick with pain then and he hadn’t woke
up emotionally until he knew she was pregnant with Jason. By then,
he’d had a hell of reality to deal with.

It didn’t leave him though, when he got
back to the house, the idea the other Coburn’s might have taken
advantage of Madeline’s vulnerabilities.

Mitch lay in the darkness trying not to
close his eyes and dream about her.

He had never stopped having dreams
about Madeline Logan. He’d never stopped needing to see her, watch
her from a distance; it had never stopped hurting when he gave into
it. Sitting in a corner of the Tavern, even when he should have
been out trying to find Ronda when she was stepping out with Tex.
He wouldn’t get drunk after their son was born. Nevertheless, he
had brooded in his coffee enough, trying to settle in his mind the
reality that Madeline wasn’t his anymore, that she was married too
and off limits.

Mitch tried for years to understand
what he hadn’t given her, or what he had done to make her break it
off. He couldn’t believe that either of them had been pretending.
Madeline was just too open and loving for that then.

At daybreak, Mitch stared at the clock
with gritty eyes and a grim set to his jaw. He had to get
answers.

Chapter 7

Madeline allowed Brook go to dinner
with Coy the next day. She worked and tried to ignore flashes of
Mitch on her porch the night before. It had taken years to empty
out images of their time together, years of trying to be a wife to
a man in body and not in spirit or heart, and failing. An empty
place was much better to cope with now than thinking of putting him
there again. She wouldn’t put herself through the
torture.

However, someone wasn’t telling her
mind that, it was determined to go back to him time and time
again.

The following week, for the first three
days, Madeline was worn out. Inventory meant staying late and
hefting boxes and updating computer files. Everyone came in when
they could, but by mid-week, they were all dragging. It showed
under their eyes, and the fact they kept finding a place to sit
down and rest their feet.

“
I’ll need you this weekend,
take Thursday off,” Sunny told her, seated on the edge of his desk,
flipping through his scheduling book.

Madeline nodded, seated tiredly in the
corner chair. She was exhausted so it took her a moment to realize
Sunny was dressed differently than usual. No suit, slacks, crisp
shirt, and bolo tie. Today he wore a casual polo shirt that showed
his brawn and wide shoulders. A pair of trendy Levi’s, and suede
casual shoes.

“
You got a date,” Madeline
said accusingly.

He glanced over, his dark face smiling
and wiggled his brows.

“
Who?”

He kept smiling.

“
C’mon Sunny, everyone knows
you probably date, we never know who.”

He set the book down, unfolded his
six-foot plus frame and stretched. He looked out the window that
had nothing to see, but a parking lot and ornamental pear
tree.

Madeline wrinkled her nose. “You aren’t
going to tell, are you?”

He turned, grinned, and shook his head.
“Nope.”

Grunting, she stood and sighed, “Well
it makes us all the more curious, this silence.”

He chuckled and opened the door for
her. “I know. It’s damned aggravating, isn’t it?”

She stuck out her tongue at him,
muttered something about him playing the mysterious angle way too
long. They all speculated about Sunny’s love life, but she had been
teasing him for years about not bringing a date by, or at least
getting any female phone calls other than Mrs. Dupree. He was
playing it to the hilt, staying mum. His quiet laughter from behind
the closed door was her only answer to that.

He had a date, she would bet on
it.

~*~

Thursday Madeline cleaned house and did
laundry. By noon, she was lazing on the porch with lemonade.
Pathetically overjoyed at having taken a bath, had time to paint
her toenails, tweeze her brows, and shave her legs all on the same
day. She had pulled on a simple cotton pants suit with a square
shirt that was wrinkled but clean. She sat with her hair drying,
enjoyed having nothing to do but watch the birds, or an occasional
dog from the neighborhood come sniffing around her yard. Madeline
mused that it was almost wicked to feel so lazy and pampered. God,
she had been working too many years.

Her gaze idly scanned the view beyond
the porch. She hired a boy to mow the lawn but hers was the last to
get pretty and green. It still had a dull look to it, but at least
it was neat, the fresh air held a tinge of budding trees, damp
earth and sunshine. She eventually closed her eyes, leaned her head
back, and allowed her tired muscles to relax.

The annoying buzz of a distant
motorcycle made her open them. Otherwise, Madeline might have
fallen asleep in the wicker chair. That buzz lifted, fell, and
became louder until she knew it was headed down the street.
Irritated, figuring it was one of the neighborhood kids skipping
school to head in the woods and the dirt trail. She had her eyes
open when it came by. However, it circled and pulled in her drive.
Not a dirt bike, but a big shiny Harley with a full-grown man on
it.

The engine stopped. Madeline stood up
slowly, watching Jude Coburn set the kickstand and take off his
helmet. He shook out his long hair, glancing up at her, brushing a
few wavy strands out of his eyes. He dismounted the bike and laid
the helmet on the seat, walking up her steps, the buckles on his
motorcycle boots jangling.

She sat against the banister, eyeing
the whole get up--leather pants and jacket, and black T-shirt.
Bad-assed Jude Coburn with his streaked Jesus-hair, and eyes of
topaz stone. Yep. Madeline might bear him some resentment, but she
could comprehend what Ruby probably saw in him.