Page 57 of Prognosis Incompatible

CHAPTER NINE

––––––––

‘THIS mobile is switchedoff or not in a service area.’

Marcus left another message and pushed the end button on his phone in frustration. He lay on the couch, staring at the darkened ceiling. A baby? His baby? Jesus! He felt an awful sense of déjà vu and quelled his rising panic.

The scene from earlier tonight played over and over in his head. Tabitha dropping her bombshell. Him standing there completely speechless. Maddy looking at him for clarity.

For denial.

And when he continued to look like a stunned mullet, gathering her stuff and leaving with dignity and grace. And him realising in that moment, as she’d walked out of his door, the awful truth.

He loved Madeline Harrington. Had it only been hours ago that she had told him she was falling for him? It seemed like a year. And it seemed like he had gone one better. He wasn’t just falling, he had fallen — all the way.

Hard.

Why had it taken Tabitha walking into his apartment and Maddy walking out of it to finally get it? He loved her. In seven weeks he had gone from being hopelessly intrigued to helplessly in love.

Sure, he had loved Tabitha, about a million years ago now in a starry-eyed kind of way. But what he felt for Maddy bore no resemblance to his long-ago feelings for his ex-wife. He wasn’t a kid playing at grown-ups, as he had been with Tab. He was a grown-up, with a grown-up love so deep and so enormous it had caught him unawares. He couldn’t think how his life was going to be without Madeline.

He just couldn’t contemplate it.

Yes, things were really complicated right now with Tab and the baby, but he had to make it work, he just had to. There had to be a way to be a father to the baby and keep Maddy as well. It had taken him till he was thirty-five to finally fall in love and he wasn’t going to lose it now.

He unlocked his phone keypad again and decided to send her a text. He tapped out the words I love you and then hesitated and deleted them. Why would she believe him now? His one chance to tell her had come and gone. It would just seem like a desperate move by a cornered male. He would tell her, but he was going to do it face to face. So she could look into his face and see his love.

So she would know. So there wouldn’t be any doubt.

He tapped out Ring me and hit the send button. He wanted to hurl the ominously silent phone across the room. He wanted to go and get Tabitha out of his bed, put her on a plane and never see her again. He wanted to go back in time and erase that one thoughtless act.

He cursed himself for his own stupidity as he thought back to that day. He had called round to see her to say goodbye on the eve of his departure to Queensland. They’d chatted and she told him about her split from Tony a few weeks previously and he remembered being surprised because he’d really thought she and Tony belonged together.

They’d had a beer and a laugh and it had been like old times. Good times. He’d remembered what he had seen in her all those years ago. And she had kissed him and looked at him with those big eyes and said she couldn’t believe he was truly leaving and it was like they were saying their final goodbyes.

Finally bringing a close to their relationship.

---