45. The Choice
45
THE CHOICE
“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.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” He offered his hand, as he always did when he wanted her to sit with him. “So, we’re good?”
Tayla shook her head. She wanted to take his hand, let him pull her into his lap, and kiss him until the noise in her head hushed. But if she reached out, letting go would be so much harder. “It’s not only Prue. I thought we could do this, step from fantasy to reality, but…”
He looked puzzled. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“I heard you talking to Luka.”
His puzzled expression remained. “Sorry, I don’t follow.”
“The day before you left. You told him that the contract’s up soon, that I’d be out on my ear. That you’d get your lawyer to sort it out.”
“Shit! Seriously? Why didn’t you ask me about it?”
“What did you want me to ask? Why you pretended to care? Why you led me on? And I shouldn’t have listened in on your private conversation, but you need to hush up when you’re having a boys’ talk with Luka. ”
“I need to hush up? You need to communicate. And now we’re over because you assumed I was talking about you? Is that the gist?”
“I heard you.”
“I don’t doubt it. But my conversation with Luka wasn’t about you.”
“No? Everything you said related to us. Every single word.”
“We were talking about my tenant. Her lease is up soon. She’s behind in her rent, and I can’t wait to get rid of her. Next time, ask the damn question.”
“But—”
“Luka’s friend Mike wants the building for an organic café. I’ll take you there when it opens… if you’re still talking to me.” He stared her down. She’d never seen him angry like this, but maybe he’d change his tune when he saw the photographs. “What’s next on your Naughty Mitch list?”
Tayla went to the bedroom and returned with the envelope. She sat on the sofa and placed it on the coffee table in front of him. Mitch frowned as he opened the flap and removed the photos, and he continued to frown as he flipped through them.
“Her name is Ella Stone,” Tayla said. “She left her jacket and panties at your place. I assumed they were Prue’s or CeCe’s. But, if you look closely, Ella’s carrying the jacket in one of the shots.”
“I know who she is.” Fanning the photos across the table, he shot her a questioning frown. “Are you having me followed?”
“What? Of course not. Do you honestly think I’d do that?”
“So, where did you get these?”
“They were left at the farm gate store for me.” Her tone softened. “Are you sleeping together? You and Ella Stone?”
Tayla waited for Mitch to defend or deny, but he remained silent, one large hand rubbing his designer stubble, and his brows knitted together. Her stomach lurched.
“No. But we do have a history.”
He stood and stared out the window to the outdoor chess set across the green. She stilled, waiting for the blow he was about to deliver.
“We were both eighteen,” Mitch said as he turned and leaned his butt on the windowsill. “Norman grew a few peaches and early apples in those days. I came to stay with him over summer break, so I could work at the orchard.” He smiled at the recollection. “Ned ran the place back then. Norman just sat around in his plaid dressing gown, counting his profits on an old Casio adding machine.”
Tayla remembered that adding machine. She’d seen it sitting in the same place on Norman’s desk every time she went to visit.
“Anyway, I arrived at work one morning, and there she was. Ella McKenzie. The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I dreamed about her for days, but when I showed an interest, she turned me down flat with a swift flick of her lashes. That made me want her even more. I later found out she’d had the same boyfriend since she was fourteen.”
“Chris?”
“Yep.” He returned to the chair. “I couldn’t stand the guy. Even back then, he was a smart-ass jerk with too much of his father’s money to throw around. I didn’t understand what she saw in him. Neither did any of her friends. Anyway, the week before Christmas, a group of us were at a party. He had sex with her cousin in the bathroom, and he wasn’t discreet about it. Ella dumped him the next day.” Mitch’s expression was retrospective.
“We started dating a week later. By the time summer was over, I was so in love with her, I couldn’t think straight. The night we said goodbye, she picked me up in her father’s car, and we drove to the beach. She was an emotional wreck. Crying and saying how much she loved me. And when we made love, I cried too. I wanted to call Mum and Frank and tell them I’d decided to take a gap year. But Norman and I discussed it, and he persuaded me to go to university as planned. If it was meant to be, he said, Ella would still be there when I got back. ”
“And was she?”
He huffed. Smiled. “Turns out I’d unwittingly enrolled in Rebound 101, with Ella as the tutor. She wrote to me three weeks later saying it was over, and while she’d never forget me, she’d gone back to Chris. The guy’s despised me ever since, but not only because of Ella. His family was interested in the orchard before Norman died, but the old man took an instant dislike to the Stones. Chris expected me to walk away once it was mine, so he made me a crazy low offer. I said I wasn’t selling, and he took it personally.”
“So, you and Ella are obviously still friends?”
“Not so much. She’s interested in organics so came to me for advice. We’ve had several meetings.”
“Then who took the photos?”
Mitch shrugged. “Who knows. Someone Chris hired? The guy’s an asshole. But I’m not going to bullshit you and say the opportunity wasn’t there with Ella, because it was. She wants an affair and makes no bones about it.” He moved to sit beside her on the sofa. They sat face-to-face, the distinct inhale and exhale of his breathing audible in her ears; her rehearsed words diluted by his honesty. He reached for her hands, and his touch gave her strength. “But I don’t want her; I want you.”
“We married for the wrong reasons.”
“Maybe we did, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have the right outcome. We fit…make sense. This thing we have, it’s bigger than the both of us. Bigger than Ella and Prue and Hayden. It’s even bigger than Norman and his need for control. Fate brought us together, and fate knows a shitload more than it ever lets on.”
Tayla swallowed back the tears, desperate to stay in control. “This past year… I thought I was doing okay. But the whole Hayden thing. Moving from Sydney, Dad’s illness, even the sale of Cherry Grove. I didn’t want to step up, didn’t know if I could. And now that it’s over, I feel like I’m falling apart. The one thing I wanted the least is now what I want the most.”
“And what’s that? ”
“You.” She shook her head and whispered, “But you didn’t pick me, Mitch.”
“Of course I did.” He reached out to smooth a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “Not traditionally, maybe, but why does that matter?”
She searched for a reason. “Because without that traditional foundation, it’s hard to know what’s real. I need time to get my head around that.”
“I love you. That’s what’s real. And even if Ella and I were both single, she’s the last person I’d want to be with. I can honestly say, there’s been no one else since Prue and I broke up—physically or emotionally. I hope you can say the same.”
He cupped her face with both hands and kissed her. She returned the kiss, putting aside her hesitation from earlier.
Mitch pulled back, his expression one of acceptance. “I’m gonna go now. I’ll see you at home when you’re ready. But take your time. I don’t want you to have any doubts.”