Page 77 of Big Island Neighbors
Piper shot her a proud smile over their heads, and Tara made herself smile back.
Cody pulling her away didn’t concern them; there was always some minor emergency happening on the farm. Injuries, downed fences, midnight births… fatalities.
She looked back to Cody. “Stay with them, will you?”
He looked like he wanted to argue with that, but he stopped himself and nodded. She patted his shoulder and let herself through the gate.
Her temper seethed just beneath her skin as she strode up to the house. She was furious with Mitch for showing up unannounced, but she wanted to keep things civil for the kids’ sake.
Did he think he was going to sleep there?she wondered.
Her bed was out of the question, but even the thought of him sleeping on the couch made her skin crawl.
How dare he?
He left them without warning, spent their meager savings on an affair, and still thought that he could just show up at the house without even asking her? Without so much as a text to warn her that he was flying back to the island?
And of course he would arrive when she had twenty extra kids in the backyard.
She laughed at the absurdity of it, but it came out as an angry huff.
One of her young goats nosed at her, looking for attention, and she allowed herself to be distracted. She paused and petted the spotted kid behind its ears.
She couldn’t go in there already furious. She shouldn’t assume. Maybe he was just there to get his stuff. Or see the kids.
But to show up without eventellingher first…
She took a shaky breath and fought to rein in her temper all over again. It was no use, standing there and trying to get her heart rate under control. She had to dosomethingwith her hands.
She was still outside, mechanically running through farm chores, when Mitch found her.
He pulled off the ball cap that he always wore, literally coming to her with his hat in hand.
“Hi Tara.”
“Mitch.” She met his eyes for a millisecond before looking away. The pleading expression that she saw there turned her stomach.
“We need to talk.”
“We do, but now isn’t a good time. I have my neighbors and twenty kids in the back pasture visiting the lambs.” She turned to look at him, but her eyes slid away again. “You didn’t even call.”
“I couldn’t stay away another minute, so I got the first flight out… I called when I landed an hour ago to see if you could pick me up from the airport.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “You didn’t call to say that you were coming! Not even a text message.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” he said weakly.
“You don’t get to do that anymore!”
His eyes narrowed, and he pulled his hat back on with an angry jerk. “I didn’t know that I needed your permission to come home!”
“This isn’t your home!”
“That’s not what the deed says,” he growled.
Her jaw dropped. A second later, she snapped her mouth shut and walked past him into the house. The lambs wouldn’t hold the kids’ attention forever, and the last thing that they needed was an audience.
“Tara,” he said, following her through the back door, “I was only gone for a few weeks.”
