Page 3 of Outback Reunion

Gabi couldn’t help noticing his Adam’s apple as he did so, and it was all she could do not to brush her thumb across his upper lip to remove the froth that lingered there like a milk moustache as he put the glass back down.

‘Where’s home?’ she asked to distract herself.

‘Place called Bunyip Bay.’ He wiped his lip himself. ‘A little town in Western Australia, about four hours north of Perth, just south of Geraldton.’

‘So you’re a country boy?’

He smiled broadly. ‘Yeah. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy. Don’t get me wrong, I love Melbourne and the blokes on the team are mostly cool, but it’s a world away from where I grew up, and it feels like I’m stalled here at the moment, so...’

She frowned. ‘Can’t you just go home while you can’t play?’

‘I go back for a weekend here or there, but I need to be here for my rehab—it’s a full-time thing—and to stay connected with the team.’ He raked a hand through his lovely hair. ‘Anyway, enough about me. Areyoua local?’

His hair looked so thick, yet also soft as if he’d only recently washed it, and Gabi couldn’t help wondering how it would feel between her fingers. She shook the crazy thought from her head. What waswrongwith her tonight?

‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

‘Do you live in Melbourne?’

‘No. I just arrived this afternoon.’

Mark grinned that mesmerising smile that reached right up to his eyes again. ‘For work or pleasure?’

The way he said ‘pleasure’ made her spine tingle. ‘Work,’ she confirmed.

‘And what is it you do for a crust, Gabriela?’

No one called her Gabriela—not even her mother when she’d been angry with her. She wasn’t sure why she’d even told him that was her name, but she liked the way it sounded on his tongue.

For reasons she didn’t understand, she didn’t want to lie to this stranger, but she was reluctant to tell him the whole truth. She recalled how she was feeling when she left the caravan and decided that for just one night, with just one person, she didn’t want to be ‘circus’ Gabi—one of Australia’s best aerial performers. She simply wanted to be a normal girl having a drink with a normal guy.

‘I’m in the entertainment industry, dancing mostly.’

He unashamedly glanced up and down her body. ‘That accounts for why you look so hot.’

Her stomach twisted. Yep, he was definitely flirting, and she couldn’t deny, she liked it. A hot flush of guilty pleasure shot through her. If he thought she looked good in her daggy, build-day clothes, she could only imagine the way his gorgeous eyes would boggle if he saw her in one of her sparkly leotards as she hung and twisted into all sorts of shapes on a long rope dangling from the top of the tent.

She tried to laugh that thought off. ‘You’re quite the sweet talker, aren’t you?’

‘Sorry, that was a really pervy thing to say.’ His gaze dropped awkwardly to his drink before he looked up again. ‘Believe it or not, I don’t usually approach beautiful women in pubs. I’m actually quite shy and until recently, there hasn’t been much time for dating anyway.’

She should put him straight—tell him she was unavailable, and this wasn’t a date or the prelude to one, but he looked so crestfallen and almost lost that she didn’t want to make him feel worse. ‘You’re nothing like I imagined a pro-footballer to be.’

‘Really?’ He cocked his head slightly to one side, his lips stretching into a bemused smile. ‘Whatdoyou imagine pro-footballers to be like?’

‘Well...’ She smiled back at him. ‘Cocky, confident serial daters who leave broken hearts in their wake.’

He laughed at that. ‘I guess some footballers I know are exactly like that, and some people back home might call me arrogant, but being a small fish in a massive pond put me in my place.’

‘So tell me,’ she said, unable to reconcile the word ‘small’ with the man in front of her. ‘Did you always want to play footy?’

‘No, not really. When I was little I just assumed I’d take over the family farm, like my father and grandfather before him, but as with every country kid, Mum and Dad signed me up to Auskick. I loved it and turned out I was pretty good at it. My dad played for Bunyip Bay until his early twenties and he’s a diehard footy fan. It’s in our blood. Wasn’t long before I knew I wanted to take it further. That I wanted to play professionally.’

‘Congratulations on making it happen.’

‘I won’t lie—it wasn’t always easy. I had to go away to boarding school so I could join a team with better coaches and training than I was getting back home, and there were a few knockbacks before I got drafted, but I’m pretty determined when I want something.’

Gabi got the feeling that maybe he wasn’t just talking about football, and once again she felt that tingle down her back. ‘And were your parents upset you chose football over the farm, or do you have other siblings who can take it on?’

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