A Gentle Rain Read Online Free PDF Page A

to her mouth. Joey's eyes went wide. They knew me too well. I popped the lid on a metal tool chest in the truck's bed and pulled out thirty feel of chain about as thick as my arm. A minute later I had the chain hooked to the Jaguar.
    I geared the truck down to low, gunned the engine, and let it have its way. My truck could pull a fully loaded, four-horse gooseneck trailer without a hiccup. Pulling a Jaguar? No sweat.
    By the time J.T. Jackson came running out of the Cold N'Creamy with his cone in a wad, I'd dragged his car across the street. It looked pretty cozy under the frazzled shade of the one old orange tree his crew had left there, surrounded by black silt construction fence.
    I tossed my chain in the tool box then climbed back in the truck. Trying to look more nonchalant than I felt, I propped an arm out the open window. There are times when a man's got to feel the wind on his elbow.
    J. T. Jackson ran up to my elbow yelling a lot of things I wouldn't repeat in front of ladies or long-haul truckers. "Cover your ears, Miss Lily," I said over my shoulder. Lily did. "Joey, don't you pick up any new words." Joey grained. But I could feel Mac's boots shifting behind my seat. Men talking trash i i front of Lily made Mac mad. Me, too.
    J.T. Jackson jabbed a hand at the magnetic sign on my truck's door. "Thocco Ranch? Ben Thocco? I won't forget you, you dumb-hick cowboy. You'll be sorry. You don't know who you're dealing with!"
    "Friend," I told him. "Your mistake is, you don't know who you're dealing with."
    And I drove off.

    By the time we got to the ranch, Elton Arnold, the right honorable sheriff of Saginaw County, was sitting on my front porch drinkin' sweet iced tea and scowl ng at Gator, who dozed by the porch steps. Gator was, after all, a five-foot alligator. I put Mac and Lily to work gettin' Joey out of the truck. I could see the three of `em were scared. "Aw, it'll be fine," I promised `em. But I went to the porch alone.
    "Elton." A tip of my bare head.
    "Bed" A tip of his Stetson.
    "Gonna arrest me for towin' a Jaguar?"
    "Naw, but next time, walk away. J.T. Jackson donated to my reelection campaign."
    "So did I."
    "Yeah, but your check was three figures, and his was five."
    "Aw, shit. Sorry, Elton."
    "I called Glen for help. I knew you wouldn't do it."
    Mac's older brother. "I'd rather go to jail."
    "Glen's a S.O.B., but he don't want his brother's keeper locked up." Elton snorted. "`Cause then Glen might have to look after Mac himself. So he saved your behind. He made a call and smoothed things over. He's buddies with J.T."
    "Like I said, I'd rather do time."
    "Ben, you know better'n that. What would your baby brother and this motley bunch of moon-gazin' ranch hands do without you?" Elton finished his tea, stood and looked at me kindly. "Take help wherever you can get it, son. You know what the Bible says: Pride goeth before a fall."
    "Yeah, but money cushioneth the land n'."
    "Ain't it always so?" The sheriff smiled and clapped a friendly hand on my back on his way past. "You might not be a rich man, but you're a free man. This time. Be happy."
    He left me standin' there.
    A free man.
    Right.
     

Chapter 2
    Kara
    Whittenbrook estate, Connecticut
    Sedge Trevelyan was the reason my grandfather, Armitage Whittenbrook, never disinherited Dad. Grandfather certainly wanted to. Dad was a tree-hugging hippie long before hippies began hugging trees, and it cost him Grandfather's love. Even as a Yale student in the 1950s Dad organized nascent ecology movements. It was lonely work for a Whittenbrook. Uncle William, cheerful and fun-loving, was the favored younger son. Grandfather Armitage openly despised Dad's efforts at being a "nature lover." He routinely cut off Dad's money and threatened to leave him out of his will.
    Sedge, a family lawyer who oversaw Dad's trust fund, quietly circumvented Grandfather's methods and kept some money flowing to Dad's work. Very upper class British and very reserved, Sedge seemed an