Page 99 of Outback Reunion

The woman looked Gabi up and down, her nose twitching as if she could smell something terrible. ‘And you are?’

Mark took a step towards Gabi, placing his hand in the small of her back. ‘Thisis Gabriela, my—’

‘Friend,’ she finished for him. Or at least they had been. ‘Nice to meet you.’

And people thought she wasn’t a good liar!

Tahlia did not reciprocate. ‘Do you mind leaving us alone for a few minutes, babe? I need to talk to my husband.’

‘Ex-husband,’ Mark reminded her again. Gabi had never seen his expression so dark.

‘You’re welcome to him,babe,’ she retorted, not bothering with even a faux smile as she hurried away to find Luna.

Moments later Mark caught up to her, grabbing her arm to turn her towards him. ‘Gabriela, please. Don’t walk away like this.’

She pulled free from his grasp and glared at him. ‘I don’t want to talk to you right now, butsomebodydoes. You should talk to Tahlia. She’s come a long way. You should listen to what she has to say.’

With a deep sigh, he looked back at his wife. ‘Okay. I’ll talk to her but only to get rid of her. I’m sorry if—’

Gabi didn’t stick around to hear the rest of his apology.

She wanted to get out of there. Away from all these interfering busybodies who thought it was okay to play with other people’s lives.

Chapter Twenty-five

This was like a scene from a terrible romantic comedy; Mark declaring his love to one woman—badly at that—and seconds later his ex-wife arriving. Could Tahlia have chosen a worse moment to walk back into his life? And as if that wasn’t awful enough, there’d been dozens of witnesses.

He’d definitely be getting a phone call from his mum tonight!

‘What are you doing here? How did you even know where I was?’ he demanded, his body tense as, against his better judgement, he turned his back on Gabriela and looked to Tahlia.

‘Well, I dropped into the café to pick up a slice of your favourite cake—’ she grinned as she held up a small cardboard box, and he had to admit, she had a killer smile; it was one of the first things that had attracted him to her ‘—and this young chick told me this party was going on, but aside from that, I still have a tracker on your phone.’

‘You what?!’ All thoughts of her smile and the fact she’d remembered him talking about Frankie’s chocolate cake vanished. Talk about violating his privacy. Then he registered the second part. ‘What do you meanstill?’

Had she been spying on him their whole marriage?

‘Oh, Mark.’ She laughed and flicked her long, salon-gold hair over her shoulder. ‘You’re a footballer—werea footballer—and you travelled a lot for work; how was I supposed to sleep soundly at night if I couldn’t make sure you were where you were supposed to be?’

Was she for real? Shock rendered him speechless.

She pouted. ‘Don’t look at me like that. All the wives and girlfriends do it. I wanted to know if you cheated on me.’

Mark scoffed. ‘That’s rich coming from you.’

‘I know, babe.’ Tahlia sniffed as she fiddled with one of her platinum gold hoop earrings, a telling sign that her confidence was wavering. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t believe I did what I did. That’s why I’ve come. I hate myself for hurting you. Being with Alex was the worst mistake I ever made.’

‘Trouble in paradise? Or did he ditch you for someone else?’ If this were the case, Mark was surprised one of his ex-teammates hadn’t been in touch about it, but then again, he’d made it clear to them that he didn’t want to talk about his ex.

‘He was nothing but a lapse in judgement,’ she gushed. ‘Your accident freaked me out. Everything changed so fast—one minute you were at the top of your game and the next you wanted us to move to some tiny town on the other side of the country.’

‘That was always the plan, Tahlia. I was honest with you from the start, and you said you were fine with it.’

‘I thought I was, but when I had to face the reality of packing up our lovely apartment, saying goodbye to my friends and family, I panicked.’ She looked right into his eyes, pleading with him. ‘But with you gone... without you in my life, none of those other people matter and our apartment no longer feels like a home.’

Mark stared at her, unable to believe this was happening. ‘Took you a while to come to this realisation. We broke up almost six months ago.’

At the sound of a rustle from the long weeds on one side of them, Tahlia sprang at him and somehow landed in his arms. ‘Shit! Is that a snake?’

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