Page 105 of Lime Tree Hill

“Hey, beautiful,”Mitch said down the phone. “Where are you? I thought you’d be home by now.”

Beautiful?Tayla stilled. She normally loved the sound of Mitch’s voice. The way he enunciated his words with such deep clarity. Today, it had the opposite effect. She swallowed hard. “I’m still at Mum and Dad’s. Are you home already? How was your trip?”

Her question stemmed from nervousness rather than genuine inquiry. She knew he was home.

“Great. Didn’t you get my text? We caught an earlier flight. I tried to call you.”

“Yes, sorry. I couldn’t find my phone, so I went to work without it.” Tayla flinched as she uttered the little white lie.

“What time will you be home?”

As her nerves tightened, she let her hesitation last a little too long. “With everything that’s been going on, I might stay in town for now.”

“Why?” He sounded genuinely puzzled. As if the phone call with Luka, his meetings with Ella Stone, and the G-string had never existed. “Is everything okay?”

“I went to see Simon Harrow on Thursday.”

There was no reaction to her words. No pause, no sharp intake of breath. “Oh, okay. So you know about the will?”

“I do. What I don’t understand is why everyone kept it from me until now.”

“That’s Norman playing master controller again. The guy liked to be the one pulling the strings.”

She swallowed hard. “Anyway, don’t worry, the money’s all yours.”

His hesitation told her he was catching her drift. “Tayla, what’s going on?”

“It’s not a conversation for the phone. Text me a time and place, and I’ll meet you.”

“I’m coming over.”

“Mitch, no?—”

“You’d better be there.” He cut the call.

The drive from Lime Tree Hill took at least twenty minutes in rush hour traffic. As Tayla showered and changed into jeans and a longline sweater, she rehearsed what she’d say when he arrived. That she knew about Ella Stone, and Prue, and his phone call with Luka, and that she pulled her own strings.

But as he stood at the doorway, fresh from the shower judging by the way he’d combed his hair off his forehead, the need to reach out and hold him was so strong, it caught her off guard.

He followed her inside. “What’s going on?”

“Would you like to sit down?”

“No, I would not like to sit down. What happened while I was away? It’s that Hayden jerk, isn’t it? He’s back in the picture. You’ve decided to join his little threesome after all.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This has nothing to do with Hayden. How can you even think that?”

He threw his arms in the air. “What then? I go on a trip I’ve been planning for months, and I come home to an empty house and no wife.”

“You were the one who said I should move out. Told me it was for the best.”

“What the actual fuck, Tayla! I meant for a few days…so you didn’t have to be alone at the orchard. Did you honestly think I wanted you to move out for good? Why didn’t you talk to me?”

Tayla wrung her hands as she avoided eye contact, her rehearsed words lost in his confusion. “Prue texted me when you were away, asked if we could meet up.”

He huffed. Nodded. “And let me guess. She told you she’d stayed when you were in Sydney?” Mitch sat in her father’s chair, his head in his hands. He looked up. “Nothing happened,” he said softly. “If it did, I wouldn’t be here. But she’s going through some personal stuff and needed support. She asked me not to tell anyone where she was. I still care for her, even after what she did, but I’d never go back there.”

“You should have told me.”

---