Page 38 of Outback Reunion

She blushed to the roots of her hair, and her gaze dropped into her glass.

‘Mum and Dad are down south at the moment looking for a place they can retire to in a few years, so I’m in charge of her current guests. There’s only two right now. Roo, who as you can probably guess is a joey, and Maggie, a magpie who Mum has tried to release back into the wild but who refuses to go.’

Gabriela chuckled. ‘So, what changed?’

Mark blinked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘This pub. Why isn’t it like it was when you were little?’

‘Ah, right. Well, that’s all down to Liam. He was surfing his way around Australia ten or so years ago. He arrived in Bunyip Bay just as the grumpy old publican put it up for sale. I guess Liam liked it here, so he just decided to buy it and stay.’

Gabriela smiled again. ‘I don’t blame him. Who wouldn’t love this town? It’s gorgeous.’

Even though this wasn’t a compliment to him, Mark couldn’t help taking it as such. He may have been away for a decade, but his heart had never been far from here. However, since coming home, instead of appreciating how special Bunyip Bay was, he’d been consumed with what he’d lost. Gabriela’s words felt like a wake-up call, or maybe it was more the fact that it was impossible to feel disappointed about anything—betrayal, loss of his football career, where he lived—when the sexiest woman he’d ever met was sitting across from him.

In that moment he almost felt glad that Tahlia had ended things, because how could he be married to her when he felt this strongly attracted to someone else?

‘It’s not a bad place,’ he admitted.

‘Are you just home for the holidays?’

‘No. I’m back for good, earlier than planned thanks to a career-ending injury.’

Her smile faltered. ‘Oh, no. I’m so sorry.’

‘Thanks.’ He took a swig from his beer.

‘Do you mind me asking what happened?’

His injury was his least favourite topic of conversation and he usually shut it down whenever someone asked, but tonight he found himself answering honestly.

‘About eighteen months ago, I tore my ACL for the second time. I was just about to sign a contract for four years, which would have seen me close to retirement, but when I stuffed my knee, that contract was taken off the table.’

‘They dropped you just like that?’ She sounded outraged.

‘Well, they signed me on a one-year deal instead, during which they supported my recovery. It was looking promising. I was feeling fitter than I had in years. I even had some interest from other clubs, but then first game back I collided with another player and...’ His chest tightened. ‘That was it. Game over for me.’

Gabriela reached across the table and took his hand. ‘I’m so sorry. I can only imagine how hard that must have been.’

Her gentle squeeze was very nearly his undoing. A lump formed in his throat, and he felt stupid tears rushing to his eyes. Not wanting to cry in front of her, he focused on the feel of her hand in his instead of her pity.

‘Thanks. Guess I’m lucky I had the farm to come back to.’

‘You don’t sound too thrilled by that,’ she said, slowly extracting her hand and looking at him as if she could see right inside him. ‘Was it a bit of a shock to the system moving home from the big smoke?’

That was one way to put it.

‘Yeah, I guess.’ Gabriela was the first person he’d admitted this to, but then again, no one else had asked. His parents assumed he was just down about his early retirement and the end of his marriage, but if he was truly honest it was more than that. ‘It’s hard to explain. When I was in Melbourne, whenever I came back to Bunyip Bay for a holiday, I’d tell my teammates and city friends I was going home, yet now I’m home for good, I don’t feel like I fit in anymore. Some of the people I grew up with have moved on, left town, but those who stayed got closer to each other, they’ve got new shared memories I’m not a part of, and I feel like the new kid at school trying to fit in.’

‘I never went to school, so I don’t exactly know what that feels like but—’

‘You never went to school?!’ His disquiet was immediately forgotten.

Gabriela smiled at his shock and shook her head. ‘Pretty hard to attend school when you rarely stay in one place longer than a few weeks.’

‘When you put it that way. But... I... How did you learn?’

‘We home-schooled. The circus has a teacher—the one we have now is married to our clown, Desmond. When I was growing up, the teacher was a retired trapeze artist. We did our schoolwork in the morning and then in the afternoon we did performance training, trying all the different acts, seeing what called to us, what we had promise in. You start working pretty early in the circus.’

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