Page 11 of A Winter Wedding Adventure (Adventure Weddings #2)

Mattia couldn’t look at her without remembering, even though he felt faintly impolite every time he did.

She asked him if he was warm enough and instead of answering, he caught a glimpse of the strap of her white bra and then his brain populated the full image: no-nonsense cotton cups, plunging low.

‘Mmm-hmm,’ he managed, forcing his gaze away again.

‘The shuttle will be here within twenty minutes. The hotel is up in the hills and the road is inaccessible to normal traffic in the winter.’

‘Ah,’ he replied. Manners were too ingrained in him to keep conversing with her while he stared pointedly away and he turned back to her instinctively, this time catching the view of her collarbone in her gaping neckline.

She was tanned, with a handful of freckles, and his eyes traced up along her neck before he’d realised what he was doing and choked.

She didn’t notice. A grimace darkened her features as she fiddled with the ends of material at the neckline of her blouse, eventually twisting them into an elaborate knot that made her look as though someone were keeping her captive and did not achieve the careless chic the design was made for.

He opened his mouth to say something, but she turned away, grumbling under her breath as she grabbed a toiletry bag and climbed back into the driver’s seat.

He felt every swish of material over her body as strongly as the repetitive drip from a leaky faucet, except with a different set of overwhelming feelings.

Was this what happened to him when a strong woman was a little bit kind to him while they were stuck together for twenty-four hours? She thought he was a pain in the arse and he saw sunshine glowing out of her tanned skin.

She’d tipped down the rear-view mirror and swiped on some lipstick before he even realised what she was doing. The shade was too pale for her colouring. Taking a stick of mascara, he flinched when she carelessly applied it.

‘What?’ she asked, her voice short.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re a terrible liar, opera boy.’

That’s what he was afraid of. He might blurt out how much he liked it when she called him ‘opera boy’.

‘I realise I’m doing a bad job with my make-up, but unless you’re willing to apply it for me, you can keep your opinion to yourself.’

‘I didn’t say anything!’

‘You’re vibing at me.’

He forced himself back in his seat, rubbing a hand over his face. ‘I could do your make-up if you?—’

‘No! I realise you’d do a better job, but you’d also kill off my pride, so leave it.’

Forgetting he wasn’t supposed to, he stared at her as she slapped on some beige eyeshadow that was so offensive to his aesthetics, it hurt. ‘I like your pride,’ he said without thinking.

‘You’d better get your coat on,’ was all she said in response.

Of course she wasn’t suffering from the same strange affliction he was, unable to take his eyes off her in the confined space, enjoying every sharp comment she made.

She snapped the lid of her make-up case shut and zipped the toiletry bag violently closed. She didn’t look at him.

‘Can I at least—’ He’d raised his hands before the thought had fully formed in his mind.

She turned to him doubtfully, her brows drawing together as she took in his hands, hovering at the level of her shoulders. ‘What?’

He quickly unfastened the fabric at her neck, ordering himself to keep his touch light and his eyes up. The complex knot took some undoing, which tugged a smile onto his lips.

He was successfully ignoring his own lolloping heartbeat and the tight air around them until he caught sight of her swallowing – with some effort. His gaze slid to the movement of her pulse just below her jaw. Huh .

The backs of his fingers grazed her skin and he wished they hadn’t shared so much at the beginning of the journey about intimacy and sex. It was too easy to imagine drifting closer, twisting his fingers with hers.

But even though her chest rose and fell with unsteady breaths, she kept her gaze averted.

She probably didn’t even want to be friends.

He wasn’t the type to ‘let off steam’ the way she did.

He just liked her eye-rolls, strong hands helping him and steady words keeping him grounded.

He could live with it, if that’s all he’d ever receive from Kira Watling. It was a nice diversion at the wedding.

A little infatuation – that’s all it was.

A distant buzz suddenly sounded in his ears, growing quickly louder, and Kira tore away as soon as she heard it too.

Shoving her arms back into her coat and tugging a neck warmer over her head – smudging her eyeshadow, he noticed with chagrin – she jumped out of the van to flag down the driver of a rapidly approaching snowmobile.

He frowned. A friend of hers?

His confusion only increased a moment later when the gruff, solid man with weathered skin and a plush moustache hauled open the door of the minivan and hefted Mattia’s suitcase out of the back.

Dumping it onto the aluminium trailer attached to the snowmobile, he returned for Kira’s rucksack and proceeded to tie them down with straps.

‘Who is this?’ he asked Kira, stepping gingerly out of the car and grimacing at how cold his feet were, since they’d got damp during his stupid frolic in the icy stuff.

She eyed him as though he had a wheel out of place. ‘That’s Norbert, the concierge from the chalet.’

‘Is he taking our luggage ahead for us while we wait for the shuttle?’

Kira patted him condescendingly on the arm. ‘Norbert is the shuttle.’ She locked the van and stalked to the snowmobile, her boots crunching snow. ‘Are you coming? You’d better do your coat up tight.’

Her voice travelled in a muted fashion through the thick snow, threatening to disappear and leave him stranded in this strange, white land. Even when he’d toured Japan years ago with a youth opera company, he’d never felt as far from Naples as he did in that moment.

Hurrying after her, his lifeline in this overwhelming – beautiful – place, he stopped short when he saw her throw her leg over the leather seat and settle behind the driver.

‘Eh…’ he said stupidly.

‘Come on!’

Fumbling to close the buttons on his coat – it was double-breasted – he hoisted himself awkwardly onto the back of the machine.

His shoes slipped on the footrest as the driver revved the high-pitched engine, the noise roaring in his ears.

Mattia squeezed his eyes shut, hoping the sound would be the worst part of this journey.

When the snowmobile leaped forward in a shower of ice particles, Mattia unfortunately did not travel with it, flailing his arms as he fell. A moment later, he was swallowed up by a snowdrift, his hip smarting as he hit the pavement.

‘Porca miseria e cazzo di merda!’ he bit out, snow sliding down the back of his neck.

Kira’s footsteps sounded and then her hands were fisted in his coat, helping him rise and regain his balance. ‘Whoops,’ she said, brushing snow off his shoulders. Pulling off one of her thick gloves, she reached up to his head.

It was worth the sacrifice of his dignity have her fingers sweeping through his hair. He ducked his head in a silent plea for her to keep going.

‘Thank you for not laughing,’ he said softly when she finished, lifting his gaze tentatively to her.

She bit her lip. ‘It’s taken a lot of effort.’ She gave a sigh. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.’

As long as she did something .

Mattia grimaced as she led him back to the snowmobile where Norbert was grinning beneath his moustache, no qualms about tearing down his pride.

‘Festhalten, hmm? Hold,’ he said, miming with his fists.

‘You could have told me,’ he muttered, not sure if he was talking to Norbert or Kira.

When he took his place behind her, he didn’t find anywhere to hold on, so he slung his arms around her – and then leaned in and tightened them. It was nice to have an excuse. This time, when the machine took off, he yelped – but stayed in place.

After crossing a narrow bridge over the rushing creek, its banks piled with snow, Norbert bore them up into the pine forest, eerie contrasts of dark branches powdered with white in the fading dusk. The light from the snowmobile’s headlamps created the impression of hurtling through a tunnel.

The world was bigger here – or people were smaller. The steep slopes were wild because they were unconquerable except by ambitious and expensive feats of human engineering that nevertheless felt precarious in comparison to the stalwart mountains.

The familiar bustle of Naples – blinding colours, crammed balconies, fast-talking locals, palms and fresh fruit, puttering motorini and the ghosts of a thousand generations – was a world away. Here, the rugged land changed the people and not the other way around.

But right now, a human invention was bringing them through the deep forest, throwing him around hairpin curves and chewing up the altitude with a thunderous growl from the engine.

The speed stole his breath. Yes, he was besieged by noise, flooded with anxiety, but he had his hands clutched in Kira’s jacket and the icy wind in his face, a sparkling, foreign world around him and… he was enjoying himself?

A glow of light ahead signalled the end of their journey and when the trees gave way to a clearing, a wooden chalet came into view, tucked under the mountain, a marshmallow cap of snow on its peaked roof.

It was something out of a dream: carved wood, pale-green shutters and wrought-iron detailing, big enough to house their small group for the wedding week, as well as a few luxuries, he guessed.

And beyond the cabin, a valley opened up, flawless under a covering of snow, with jagged, stony peaks rising in the distance beneath a smouldering moon.

The scene was dramatic, breath-taking, yet also inviting, and it suited Alessandra perfectly.

When Norbert cut the engine of the snowmobile, Mattia was swallowed up by the silence. Distant hints of sound – dripping snow, scurrying animals, wings flapping – were so muted, he couldn’t tell if they were real.

‘Uh, Mattia?’ Kira’s voice cut through the dampened quiet. ‘You can let go now.’

‘Oh!’ He pried his fingers open – with some difficulty, as the cold had penetrated to his bones. Unlike his awkward hop, Kira swung her leg over in a graceful dismount and eyed him.

‘You’d better go inside before you get frostbite. Please tell me you have gloves – and some better shoes – in your suitcase.’

‘I have gloves,’ he confirmed, ‘and… other shoes.’ He hesitated, wishing for a debrief or a shared look or some acknowledgement of the end of their strange twenty-four hours together – some gesture of friendship.

But she didn’t even look at him as she said, ‘Go! I’ll see you at dinner.’