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Authors: Eve Asbury

Tags: #motherdaughter, #contemporary romance, #love and loss, #heartache, #rekindled love

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BOOK: Bring on the Rain
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Brook seethed tightly, “I’ll stay away.
It‘s stupid, and I think you‘re being irrational about
it.”

Madeline nodded, closed the door,
heading to her own room. She sat on the edge of the bed, absently
looking around. Since Brook was fourteen, she’d started prodding
her to do the house in shabby chic. She agreed because it didn’t
require new furnishings and the house had been dark growing up.
Unable to keep the lease on the one she’d shared with Bud, Madeline
had grit her teeth and moved into this ghost-filled structure, not
quite ready to face the past. In celery, cream, and rose…it was at
least light.

There had only been her widowed mother
and herself during her formative years. Madeline had lived in the
world of a manic-depressive, and a phobic. Dealing with her
mother’s extreme mood swings and phobias left little time for
herself. Adell vented on her when her medication was off, then
she’d cling to her for dear life.

Mitch Coburn came into Madeline’s
existence when she’d had nothing for herself. He’d been strong,
beautiful, and wild. Mitch embodied the life and freedom she’d
never known. He became the center of her existence.

Madeline pinched the bridge of her
nose, hearing the muffled sounds of Brook playing her bass along
with a CD. She had loved her mom, understood her. But her life had
fallen to pieces here and she’d managed to lock all of it away when
her mother overdosed. The suicide tormented Madeline, because she
had felt emancipated from the constant tumult of Adell’s moods.
Disturbingly, she’d felt released, with the same kind of peace that
mirrored at last on her mother’s still face.

The call she’d made to her aunt and
uncle in Kentucky, the way she’d married Bud Logan, who was fifteen
years her senior—all of it was here, locked up with her last spring
and summer with Mitch Coburn.

Madeline paid dearly for one selfless
summer out of all those years she’d denied herself. She’d paid more
than anyone knew but her aunt and herself...

Reclining on the bed, she studied the
ceiling. Twenty years ago, seventeen, a year behind in school,
she’d fallen fast for the raven-haired, blue eyed Mitch, and was
soon completely wrapped up in his hunger for life and loving.
Deprived of nurturing, the secure kind of love, she’d gobbled up
everything he had given her, and completely lost herself in
him.

One day they had been everything to
each other. The next, she was the object of scorn and mockery by
his family. She’d been his last fling before marrying a better
girl, and he hadn’t cared enough to break it off
himself.

One by one, his grandma Dovie, sister
Deena, and eventually his brother Jude, let her know she had no
reason to return to Copper creek; Mitch was engaged to Ronda
Housewright, the doctor’s daughter. Didn’t she understand he didn’t
love her? He was getting cold feet and seeing all kinds of girls.
He was over it now. They understood it, Ronda looked the other way.
She was a kid and Mitch was twenty-one. He and Ronda were going off
to college and marrying in the fall.

Madeline saw Mitch often now, it was
unavoidable. His hair was silver, his skin dusky, and his eyes
still baby blue and piercing. She could pick his deep husky voice
out of a crowd. His family had been well known singers in the area
from his grandfather’s time.

When he sang…God, it was velvet and
midnight with a touch of rain in it. He had gotten divorced when
his son Jason was eight. Ronda, his ex, had remarried and lived out
of state somewhere. Mitch remained single. A lifetime had passed
between now and seventeen.

Living in the same area of Tennessee as
the man who’d turned her inside out wasn’t always easy. She was not
going to let Brook make her mistakes. Sure, Dovie was old now. One
of her friends was a home health nurse who attended her once a
week, said she was bad off. Nevertheless, she never considered
going back for seconds.

Madeline didn’t read the letter he’d
sent when her mom died. By then, his beautiful wife was pregnant
with Jason and staying with her Daddy while he finished up college.
She wasn’t interested in becoming some shady side mistress. By then
she had made choices, which could never be reversed. He’d waited
too long to prevent it, if that was his intention. She’d have to
live with the heartache the rest of her life.

Madeline had managed to keep them, that
family, those choices, at a distance in her thoughts. Now, the
Coburn's were going to make her strained relationship with her
daughter worse. She may not have done everything right the first
time, but she’d be damned if she would stand by and let them
shatter Brook’s life too. Coy was Mitch’s nephew; he was the
epitome of the big, handsome, masculine, country boy.

A soft tap drew her out of her
reflections. Brook opened the door a few inches and stuck her head
in.


Mom?”

Madeline glanced at the door. “Come
in.”

Brook entered, holding the phone.
“Sunny wants to know if you can fill in for Rocky. Her sister has
chemo treatments Saturday morning.”


Sure.”

Brook relayed the message then hit the
end button on the phone. “I’m going to the carnival with Karla
Saturday, remember. Or am I grounded?”

Madeline didn‘t want to put her on
restrictions since she‘d promised to obey her wishes. “You can go.
Be careful.”


I will.” Brook left,
dialing another number.

Madeline arose and went to the bathroom
to shower and get ready for bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2

Copper Creek...

 

 

 

 

 

Friday evening Mitch Coburn sat on the
front porch of his stone and timber house relaxing. Wearing a white
T-shirt and ragged, soft denims, with his feet propped on the
banister, the rocking chair reared back. Mitch spied the little red
Mazda pulling in the drive.

He sighed, cussed silently, and glanced
down the valley at the roof of his brother’s house, figuring Jude
sent them here looking for Coy.

Mitch watched the strawberry blond exit
the driver’s side. Karla Boggs, he recalled Coy telling him. She
was dressed in baggy carpenter pants and a style of shirt the kids
wore that looked shrunken. It was when Brook exited the passenger
side that he felt a twinge, though— because she favored Madeline
enough to do that to him.

She was taller and thinner than her
mom, wearing jeans too low-slung for any parent to approve of. Her
shirt was white and snug, short enough to show inches of belly and
a twinkling naval stud, hair cropped in a choppy style that was
probably hip. She streaked the russet color with gold.

Brook came up the three steps. Mitch
saw more of her face, angular with arched brows and violet eyes.
She wore more makeup, darker lipstick. Still, there was a lot of
Madeline in her. Madeline had 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 school. She was a person who interacted with the public on
her job, was too polite not to speak to a young man. Those photos
were taken at the old mill and here, riding horses, lazing on the
porch, sitting by the creek. Jude took them, having been his shadow
in those days.

Not the kind they’d taken when Ronda
and he were together. The formal setting in her father’s elegant
home. Jason unearthed it when he’d been packing his own school
things away, getting ready for adulthood. Jason’d brought the album
all the way to the barn and grilled him about it, laughing, and
teasing him for holding some dark secret.

It was obvious the couple were intent
on each other, more often than not touching and looking at each
other.

Mitch sighed and rubbed the back of his
neck. He had told Jason it was a last fling, a summer romance
before college. Jason never bought that explanation. He saw no
point in spilling his guts. Considering he’d wed a woman like
Ronda, it was understandable his son would freak seeing photos of
Madeline and him together. Ronda was high class, a sleek model type
who never rode anything to the point of getting mussed, including
him. She’d been Dovie’s choice and his son knew it.

Jason also knew the older Coburn’s now
suffered the consequences of allowing Dovie to dictate who they
married. She raised them rough and rugged, gave them plenty of
wide-open space and money to play with.

Nevertheless, she tried to marry them
to class and culture, none of which ran in their roots. Coburns
were raised playing music and competing with each other. Every
homegrown sport they played was a damned war zone. They worked
hard, and were part of the land. Coburn's loved their horses,
cattle, pickups, four wheelers, and wide Copper Creek Lake— where
they raced boats, water-skied, and fished. Beer, BBQ, and
cornbread, Mitch often joked. It was true, they were who they were,
and never apologized.

They’d tried it Dovie’s way,
but when it didn’t work, Mitch said to hell with it. The only one
who stuck with it was Deena, their sister, because she was
determined to win at something. Hell, to her staying wed to the
wrong man was a challenge. Of course, she found someone to overlook
her faults and allow her to continue to be the bitchy,
miserable,
wanna-be
she was.

BOOK: Bring on the Rain
2.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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