Outback Reunion (Bunyip Bay #6)

Epilogue Six Months Later

Mark was packing footy balls into the tray of the ute when his phone beeped with a message. While Luna and Heidi climbed into the back seat, he pulled it out of his pocket.

Luna’s staying at Stella and Adam’s place tonight. Can you drop her off there when you deliver Heidi, please. xx

Mark grinned as he replied to Gabriela’s text: That depends. Do I still get to come for dinner? And dessert xx

The jumping ellipsis appeared and a few seconds later, her reply landed: You’d better. This roast lamb is far too big for just me and I want to leave room for dessert. xx

At the mention of dessert, he couldn’t get into his ute fast enough. Dinner with Gabriela and Luna had become a weekly routine ever since footy season began. Stella, Adam or Gabriela would drop the girls off at the oval for training and Mark would take them home. It was his favourite night of the week, but as much as he adored Luna—he still couldn’t believe he was lucky enough to have such a fabulous kid for a daughter—a night alone with just the two of them was a rare treat. Most of the time they scheduled their rendezvous when Luna was at school and Gabriela didn’t have a shift at the café. Luckily, he could escape from the farm for a couple of hours.

Occasionally, she came to him. During seeding a couple of months ago, there’d been one very enjoyable afternoon where she’d brought him cake—she was loving having her own kitchen—and that wasn’t the only sweet treat they’d indulged in. She’d even taken a few shifts on the John Deere herself and had volunteered for the chaser bin come harvest.

‘Can we stop at the IGA and get ice creams?’ asked Luna, jolting him from his illicit thoughts.

He glanced into the rear-view mirror to see two angelic little faces smiling sweetly back at him. They’d obviously planned this ambush. It was so tempting to say yes to everything Luna asked him, but he didn’t want to spoil her, and Stella would have dinner ready for the girls. ‘Not today, but let’s take a raincheck for after the game on Saturday.’

‘What’s a raincheck?’ asked Heidi.

‘I don’t want it to rain on Saturday,’ said Luna. ‘I don’t like playing footy in the rain.’

He chuckled as he drove out of the oval carpark. ‘I don’t like it much either, but this has nothing to do with actual rain. It means, yes, we can have ice cream, but not today.’

‘Mummy might have ice cream at home, anyway,’ Heidi said with a grin.

‘I hope it’s cookies-and-cream,’ Luna said, still pouting slightly.

The girls nattered away as he drove to the Burtons’ farm and Mark smiled as he listened to their conversation about Polly Pockets—something he now knew far too much about—and horses. He could listen to them all day.

He still couldn’t believe that Gabriela and Luna had moved to the Bay. He’d been so shocked when she’d arrived at his place one afternoon mid-February that he’d barely been able to register what she’d told him—that she and Luna had done their own midnight runner. Well, not exactly. Gabriela would never do that to her in-laws, but they had left the circus.

One day, Gabriela had told Luna to go get her costume on ready for the evening’s show, but Luna had flat out refused.

‘What do you mean “no”?’ Gabi had asked.

‘I’m not performing. I’m going on strike.’

‘You’re going on strike ?’ Gabi had tried to stifle her laugh. ‘Is there any reason? You don’t like your work conditions? You want to be paid more?’

‘I don’t get paid at all!’

Gabriela had gestured around them at the lot, all ready for opening night with its colourful Big Top, pre-show games and everything else. ‘All this will be yours one day.’

And that’s when Luna had told her. ‘I don’t want it. I don’t want to be in the circus anymore. I know you love it and so did Dad, but I’m not you guys and I don’t.’

In the end, Gabriela had convinced her to do the show and then they’d taken a few weeks to talk things through and make sure Luna really wanted to leave. When she hadn’t changed her mind, Gabriela suggested they take a year-long sabbatical and see how they both felt at the end of it, but they were five months in now and Luna was showing no signs of regretting her decision. She and Gabriela had visited Eve and Lorenzo in the school holidays and even made a couple of guest appearances.

Much to Gabriela’s relief, the circus hadn’t fallen apart without her there. Lorenzo had called in favours from around the globe and the Grand Jimenez Family Circus now had a whole host of new acts.

What had been much harder for them was learning the truth about Luna. Gabriela had been nervous about telling them and when she did, there’d been lots of tears—from all three of them—but they’d also made sure she knew that she and Luna would always be part of their family, wherever they were.

Mark’s parents also knew the truth, but that was it for now. They couldn’t risk telling any of their friends for fear it would somehow get back to Luna. When he and Gabriela believed it was the right time to tell her, they wanted to be the ones to do so. Together.

Adam was waiting out the front with baby Lily in his arms when they arrived.

‘How was footy training?’ he asked the girls as they climbed out and Mark handed over their water bottles.

‘Good,’ they both replied as they raced into the house.

‘You off to Gabi’s place now?’ Adam asked with a wink.

Mark shrugged—‘Maybe’—but was unable to curb his grin.

‘Have a good night then,’ Adam said.

‘You too,’ Mark replied, patting Lily’s cute chubby cheeks.

The baby giggled, and as he climbed back into the ute, he dared to hope that maybe one day he and Gabriela would have another child too.

Gabi grinned as she slipped on the oven gloves she’d made at the last CWA Belles meeting and pulled the lamb leg out of the oven. She was getting good at this roasting business. In fact, she’d been cooking almost non-stop since she and Luna moved into the cottage Adam’s mum, Esther, had renovated on their farm.

It was the perfect place for the two of them and she’d been over the moon when, after a week or so at the caravan park, Adam and Stella had spoken to Esther who had offered it to her for next to no rent. Gabi had taken a job at Frankie’s café, which was still named after her despite its new ownership, and she was also giving dance and circus classes on Wednesday arvos at the town hall, but she appreciated Esther’s generosity so she could save a bit of a nest egg.

Although they were only renting, for the first time in their lives they had more than a mere six-by-three metres to share and they were loving it. It was such a treat not to have to pack up and move on every few days. The best part about it was the bookshelf Mark had made for her books, and she’d been ordering all her favourites so she could reread them again and again. Pretty soon he was going to have to build her another. As well as the books and baking, Gabriela had planted a veggie garden and found nothing more relaxing than being outside tending it. Meanwhile, Luna had embraced having her own bedroom—decorating it with photos of her and her new friends and posters of female football players she’d become massive fans of since starting to play herself—and the four dogs loved all the space that living on the farm afforded them.

Lorenzo had wanted to keep them for the circus, but Luna wouldn’t hear of it, and even though he now knew she wasn’t his biological granddaughter, he still didn’t know how to say no to her. They’d compromised by letting him keep Loud Mouth, who really did enjoy the attention he got from the audience. Farm life would bore him to tears and he’d end up driving Gabi to distraction. She did miss him, though, and she missed Eve and Lorenzo too, but she didn’t miss the highwire, and Luna was thriving at school. In addition to her bestie, Heidi, she’d made lots of other local friends, but her absolute highlight of the week was footy training with Mark.

Gabi wasn’t sure which one of them loved it more; Mark had certainly thrown his heart and soul into coaching, despite his initial reservations.

As she started to make the gravy, five barks of different tones—Rookie had come to live with them and the other dogs—sounded from out the front, telling her that Mark had arrived. She whipped off her apron and gloves, took a quick glance at the little table she’d set up for their date, then went to greet him.

‘Honey, I’m home!’ he called as Gabi flung open the front door and saw him striding towards her, Rookie and Princess dancing around his feet. Russell, Basset and Cruella merely lifted their heads from where they were lounging on the porch.

Gabi laughed; she would never tire of the way his eyes lit up when he saw her.

Making it past the dogs, he dropped his mouth to hers and gave her a proper hello.

‘Hope you’re hungry,’ she said when they finally came apart.

He winked. ‘I’m always hungry when it comes to you.’

‘I meant for dinner.’

‘You’re right. We should eat. We’ll both need our strength for what I have planned.’

She whacked him playfully and then took his hand. ‘Get your head out of the gutter and come inside.’

Mark washed his hands and helped her set the table as she finished the gravy and then they sat down to plates of tender roast lamb, crispy potatoes, honey carrots from her garden and creamy cauliflower cheese.

‘This is so good,’ he said, swallowing a mouthful. ‘Don’t tell Mum, but I think you cook a better lamb roast than she does.’

Gabi beamed at the compliment. ‘I’ve tasted your mum’s cooking, you’re full of shit. But enough about the food, I want to talk to you about a couple of things.’

Mark cocked his head to listen.

‘I was wondering if you might be able to pick Luna up from school on Tuesday afternoons or if she could take the bus to your farm and I can collect her a bit later. I could ask Stella and Adam but—’

‘Of course I’ll do it. She’s my daughter. Are you going to be doing a later shift at the café or something?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve been accepted into TAFE in Geraldton to do vet studies, and classes run later on Tuesdays.’

‘Gabriela!’ Mark grinned. ‘That’s brilliant news. Congratulations.’

‘Thank you. I’m excited. But nervous too. I’ve never done any formal learning before.’

‘You’ll be brilliant,’ he said, reaching across the table to take her hand. ‘There’s nothing to be nervous about.’

She smiled and nodded. ‘I hope so, which brings me to the other thing.’ She paused a moment. ‘I want to tell Luna about us. I think it’s time.’

Mark’s fingers went loose around her hand and his eyes widened. ‘You want to tell her the truth?’

‘No. Not everything. She’s still too young, but I want her to know that you are important to me, that we’re more than just friends and that sometimes you might stay over even when she’s here. I want her to know you’re my boyfriend. What do you say?’

He shot her a lopsided grin. ‘I think boyfriend makes it sound like we’re in high school, but you know I’ll be anything you want me to be.’ Then he stood, yanked her up into his arms and kissed her hard. And just like that very first kiss in the pub all those years ago, it made her heart race and her insides go all warm and gooey.

This was a moment she would happily live over and over again for the rest of her life.