Page 15 of A Winter Wedding Adventure (Adventure Weddings #2)

‘You’d think he’d never seen a mountain before,’ Kira muttered the following day as she led the group through the snowdrifts to the cable car station.

That day was their excursion to the ice cave with a photo shoot.

As the famous wedding photographer would only arrive for the ceremony, Kira’s boss Willard had convinced Great Heart’s regular nature photographer Rhys Bowen to take the pictures in the cave, which meant there was one person even grumpier about being here than Kira herself – although that knowledge was little comfort to her.

The fact that she was muttering to herself about Mattia should have bothered her, but she had enough other things bothering her that she barely noticed.

Foremost among them the fact that Rav was trying to talk to her, so she couldn’t keep checking back to make sure Mattia made it safely across the ice in his terrible shoes.

Or he might trip because he couldn’t seem to stop craning his neck to gawk at the ragged, snowy peaks just visible above the forested slopes.

Keeping ahead of where Rav was following too close for her liking, she led the way across a small bridge over a creek that was flowing sluggishly. Both banks were piled with snow hardened to ice.

‘It’s ice in that part! And look at the layer of snow on the twigs. It looks like someone put it there on purpose.’

Kira supposed she should be satisfied that Mattia was cheerful and not miserably cold.

‘You sound like Alessandra the first time I took her skiing,’ Joe said drily. ‘It’s not a fantasy world.’

‘But it looks like one.’ His voice was soft, as though he were singing one of those quiet parts of an opera scene that sounded like speech.

He spoiled the reverent moment by slipping on a patch of ice with the flair of a slapstick performer, landing heavily on the seat of his tailored trousers. He yelped and hissed in pain, especially when his bare hand landed in a snowdrift. The boy wasn’t even wearing gloves.

Carla and Alessandra rushed to help him up and he at least looked sheepish and brushed off their clutching hands to push himself to his feet. He slipped and slid a few more times before he’d cleared the black ice, like a lanky baby animal learning to walk.

Rav caught up with Kira while she was distracted and she couldn’t come up with an excuse to stop him falling into step beside her. He obviously wasn’t put off by the thunder in her expression.

‘How’ve you been, then?’ he asked. ‘You dropped off the face of the earth after?—’

‘I just really got into climbing – holding onto the face of the earth.’

He laughed more loudly than her joke deserved. ‘I’m glad things worked out for you. It wasn’t?—’

‘Rav, I’m really sorry, but now isn’t a good time to talk about this.’ There, another guest insulted. Kira should tick them off a bingo card and at least win a prize for her rudeness.

Rav’s expression was pinched. ‘I just wanted to ask if Christian knows you’re here.’

Just hearing his name was enough to make her skin crawl.

‘I haven’t spoken to Christian since… then.’ She swallowed a grimace. Did that sound as though she was still hurt by what had happened? She hated how weak all of this made her.

‘Should I… tell him?’

‘What? Why?’

‘I just wondered whether it would be less awkward than a surprise at the ceremony on Wednesday.’

Kira stilled as the shock ricocheted through her.

Wednesday. Oh, shit . Christian was coming to the wedding.

He must be one of the guests staying down in the valley, not close enough to join the wedding party at the chalet.

She hadn’t believed this occasion could get any worse for her, but it just did.

‘I’m sorry. I thought you’d know.’

I’m sorry… She was pretty sure Rav had said those words to her twelve years ago, when it had become clear that Christian had screwed her over.

‘No, I… Well, um… I need to go and sort out our booking,’ she said, approximating what she hoped was a halfway normal facial expression as she gestured at the ticket booth.

Taking one step away, she turned back when a disturbing thought echoed in her head.

‘Please don’t say anything… about that – to Alessandra or the others. I’m here to do a job and…’

More pity crossed his features and Kira’s stomach turned.

She bolted for the ticket booth, angry and annoyed that she had feelings that wouldn’t stay stuffed down where she put them.

She was officially the worst wedding planner in the history of the profession and if she wasn’t careful, she’d ruin everything.

After confirming their group booking, she trudged back through the snow to where Carla was handing out tiny bottles of something alcoholic. Either it would be sickly sweet or so strong it would numb your vocal chords and Kira really could have done with knocking something like that back right now.

‘Is everything all right?’

Mattia’s low voice behind her, surprisingly close, made her pause.

‘I should be asking you that,’ she mumbled.

Glancing over her shoulder – bad idea, he looked like a fallen angel with his shoulders hunched, curls over his forehead, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his long coat and a silver cross dangling from one earlobe – she waited for him to respond.

‘Is that groomsman?—’

She cut him off. ‘Look, it’s fine and not your concern. Go enjoy the views – with Carla. You’re not going to get any smiles out of me today.’

He was quiet for a long moment while Kira’s curiosity got the better of her once more. That she noticed – and appreciated – the strong cut of his jaw and the contrast with his lips, pouting in thought – was even more concerning.

Turning away, he said, ‘Why do I want to turn that into a challenge?’

* * *

Go enjoy the views – with Carla .

If Mattia hadn’t known better, he might have thought he detected a ring of jealousy in her tone – a prospect that made his heart leap quite inappropriately. But he was also put out at the suggestion that he’d enjoy the company of his ex-girlfriend, after everything he’d told Kira the day before.

‘You two stand right at the glass,’ Alessandra said, nudging him so hard as they filed onto the cable car that he nearly stepped on Carla’s toe. Alessandra had the strong hands of a bossy, Italian nonna – and the same built-in urge to matchmake, it seemed.

The background hum of quiet machinery was unfamiliar, unlike the drone of traffic and occasional blare from the engine of a motorino that characterised the soundscape of home. Alessandra’s wedding party was hushed as they crowded into the little gondola making its way slowly around the turning.

Carla shot him an apologetic glance as she was squished next to him at the front, but he was still a little buzzed from the morning – his second snowmobile ride, the landscape that burned beauty onto his retinas everywhere he looked, the short exchange with Kira.

He knew exactly where she stood behind him: in the middle, casually holding the metal stand for balance. It felt as though he would have known that with his eyes closed, the way he knew she wasn’t comfortable around that groomsman, even though she wouldn’t tell him why.

But he couldn’t close his eyes now, not when the world was so enormous around him. The sheer scale of the place made him uneasy, but still, the landscape drew him in and none of his reservations could dull the thrill of anticipation zipping to his toes.

Another gondola rushed into the station, braking gently, and then it was their turn. With a surge of acceleration, the little car whooshed upwards, pressing gravity down onto its occupants.

The breath was squeezed out of Mattia’s lungs as they lifted high off the snowy ground. The mechanical hum was replaced with cotton wool silence. While inside the gondola, he heard muted whispers, the shuffling of feet and swishing coats; outside, the utter quiet seemed to push against the glass.

Apprehension swelled in his chest, not because of the gravity-defying gondola swinging gently high above the ground, but because of the oppressive quiet.

He’d experienced the feeling before in sound-proofed recording studios and performance spaces with engineered acoustics.

It would start with a distant buzz, as though someone had let a single fly into the space.

Gradually amplified between his eardrums, it would become a persistent drone and then a tense vibration, filling his head until the world didn’t exist – only his own spiralling senses.

Sucking in a deep breath through his nose, he pressed a hand to the cool glass in front of him and braced himself.

The landscape that had appeared one enormous wall of rock and snow and pines stretched and opened as they travelled higher, a rocky outcropping on one side, a snowy saddle and a steep ravine on the other.

They reached the first pylon and passed it with a deep whir.

Winter cloud cover painted everything grey, but as they rose and rose, the sun fought to shine through until the sky was a glowing blanket of mother-of-pearl.

There were no straight lines, only rounded lumps of snow, miniature pines and jagged protrusions of rock half-covered in powder.

The town below disappeared; the valley looked tiny. Peaks and ridges emerged before them, rolling out a new world where life was insignificant and yet every breath precious. He could feel his world expanding.

No, wait, that was the pressure in his head. He swallowed discomfort as a light ringing threatened his eardrums. With a pop, the pressure normalised and he took a deep, shaky breath.

A breeze swept along the ridge, showering the gondola with tiny particles of ice and sending the little cabin into a swing. His other hand gripped the railing tightly and his gaze was dragged down – and down.

‘Hold onto him, Carla. He looks like he’s going to keel over.’

He managed to shoot Alessandra a scowl at the hint of satisfaction in her comment, but he had to convulsively swallow again to equalise the pressure.

‘I’m fine,’ he grated out, shocked at the reedy quality of his own voice.

‘Hasn’t he ridden the cable car in Sorrento?’ Joe asked.

‘Not since I was a child,’ Mattia replied as the gondola clattered over the wheels of the next pylon. ‘I vomited,’ he added with a tilt of his head that he regretted a moment later when he noticed spots at the sides of his vision.

Skiers criss-crossed below them as the station came into view and the hum of the giant wheels moving the cables droned more loudly. One down, only two more cable car rides to go until they reached their ridiculously high altitude destination.

Another curse of his sensitive hearing was that he caught every word when Joe murmured to one of the groomsmen, ‘At least he’s one of the girls and isn’t coming skiing with us tomorrow.’

A sharp intake of breath behind him. It was Kira, he knew it was Kira and he could hear her bristling in his defence. Whatever scratch to his pride he’d experienced at Joe’s words was nothing compared to the satisfaction bubbling in his stomach now.

The gondola braked suddenly and inched around the turning, the doors bouncing open. He stepped out on wobbly legs and whoosh , the air was forced from his lungs again, this time by the bitter cold. His hands iced up instantly – at least, that’s how it felt.

‘Do you need a second?’ Alessandra’s hand on his back was gentle. ‘Carla can stay with you. Just take your time and come up when you’re ready. We can enjoy the view at the top while we wait for you both.’

He shot Carla an alarmed gaze, but she only responded with a close-lipped shrug.

Perhaps he did need a moment – away from Alessandra and her machinations, and definitely away from Carla.

‘There’s no need for Carla to stay behind.

You all go ahead. I’ll catch up – please ,’ he insisted.

‘I’m fine,’ he assured Alessandra who was studying him doubtfully.

For one of the first times in his life, her attention chafed.

He waved them off with a sigh of relief, glad to send them on ahead without him.

In the concrete courtyard between the two gondola stations, fog swirled, thick in one place and wispy in another, skiers and pylons and rocks appearing and disappearing in the distance.

His breath crystallised as soon as it left his lungs.

Even if he had taken the cable car near Sorrento recently, he was not in Campania any more. Piles of snow lined the courtyard, with pillows of it clinging to the roofs and more floating down to form a fine layer at his feet. He noticed icicles clinging to the eaves of the station buildings.

Icicles!

Fascinated, he took swift steps to the lowest part of a pitched roof and stepped up onto a metal ski stand, stretching onto his toes and?—

‘What the hell are you doing?’