Page 18 of A Winter Wedding Adventure (Adventure Weddings #2)

Fingers of ice grew in front of Kira’s eyes, twists and swirls and little waterfalls, as though a stream had been snap frozen.

The cavern was high and wide and full of ice formations more beautiful than anything a sculptor could create.

Occasional protrusions of rock hinted at the summits that ranged above.

‘Up there would be the randkluft ,’ she whispered, ‘the place where the glacial ice pulls away from the rock. It’s one of the most dangerous parts of a mountain for climbers, but I’ve never seen it from… underneath.’

‘Oh my God, I am bringing every couple here from now on!’ Ginny squealed, interrupting the hushed awe.

‘Alessandra, you and Joe go stand on that platform and Rhys – camera! We only have half an hour in here. Kira, can you take them around to that cave there and I’ll call instructions. These photos are going to be epic !’

‘Urgh, weddings,’ Kira said through gritted teeth, although she appreciated the reminder that she was not here to gaze in wonder at the natural phenomenon – or let the baritone bridesman get to her.

‘Will you be all right?’ she asked Mattia warily.

‘Don’t touch anything and watch your step in those shoes. ’

‘Of course. I’m not going to lick the icicles.’

That comment made her eye him in alarm.

She had no choice but to follow Ginny’s instructions and moments later, found herself juggling Alessandra’s handbag while trying to stay out of the background of the photos.

The ice formations created angles that Rhys would be certain to enjoy capturing, despite the bride and groom also in the frame.

At least he was snapping wide shots and didn’t have to capture Joe and Alessandra’s facial expressions in detail.

She knew how much he would loathe that, given his perfectionist streak.

Ginny obviously found Rhys frustrating, but Kira couldn’t exactly take her friend aside and explain why he was so surly. Ginny should have learned by now that everyone associated with Great Heart had a tough outer shell.

Kira was restless – itchy – from the slow day. If she were honest, she was restless from the day of emotions with no outlet, plus the way weddings inevitably made her face her own life choices. She wanted to climb something and these frozen waterfalls were looking pretty good.

A burst of loud Italian broke into her ruminations, booming and ricocheting off the rock in eerie waves.

Only one person in the wedding party had such a rich, powerful voice.

Kira peeked around the curl of ice in front of her to see him making Alessandra’s mother laugh with his dramatic tone, trying out the acoustics of the ice cave.

‘Yes!’ came Alessandra’s enthusiastic response to whatever he’d said. ‘You must sing something for us in here!’

‘Are you sure it won’t break the ice and bring the whole cave down on our heads?’ Joe joked under his breath.

Kira’s chin jerked up. She wanted to break some ice over his head!

‘Go ahead,’ their guide said with a smile. ‘The sound properties in here are very unusual.’

‘Opera is unusual enough in normal conditions,’ Joe continued.

Kira’s gaze settled on Mattia, standing across the cavern from where she stood, half a smile on his face. There was no way he hadn’t heard, but he didn’t lash out in reply; he straightened, planted his feet and cast a gentle spell into the space.

It was almost no sound at all at first. A low rumble that slowly grew into a melody. From his stance, the way he seemed to tense every muscle in his torso, she’d expected an explosion of sound, but instead it was a shimmer, a disembodied tune that seemed to come from every corner separately.

She barely noticed his voice growing louder, shaking every molecule of air – and rock and ice. The music seemed to have colour and shades of dark and light. Mattia was only a conduit, as though the song came to him from another realm.

Kira heard it through her veins. She wanted to ask him if he did it on purpose, playing his audience’s emotions like an instrument.

The quality of his voice, so unassuming when he spoke, transformed into an act of nature when he sang the heavy climax of the song.

She hoped someone had their ear to the ice kilometres away and could hear the swell and resonance.

He held the final note for long enough that a slight tremor entered his voice and then cut off the sound with a suddenness that made the silence feel violent.

Take that , Joe.

Rhys and Ginny stood frozen, dumbfounded. Alessandra and Carla called out, ‘Bravo!’ and their applause created a high-pitched din that was painful after the shine and colour of the past few minutes.

Mattia propped his hands on his hips and took deep, even breaths, flicking Alessandra’s mother a quick grin when she patted him fondly on the arm.

‘I did not expect that,’ Kira heard Joe commenting behind her.

Kira hadn’t expected Mattia either and she didn’t know what she was going to do with him.

* * *

‘When I pointed out I hadn’t spent much time with Joe, I did not mean I wanted to sweat naked with him in a sauna.’

After lunch at over 3,000 metres at the restaurant – with transport by snow groomer – the wedding party had made it back down in the cable car and returned to the relative calm of the Kitzingalm Hütte with a couple of hours until dinner.

Alessandra slapped his arm. ‘I didn’t mean naked! Do you really think Joe would go into a sauna naked?’

‘Good point,’ Mattia grumbled.

‘You can keep your towel on.’

Darn, that was one excuse not to join Joe and the groomsmen in the sauna shot down.

Mattia couldn’t imagine he’d enjoy it, even without his intimate parts on show.

The groom and his mates would laugh deeply and make inappropriate jokes.

With nothing else to do but talk, they’d be deeply uncomfortable.

‘Aren’t I one of the bridesmaids, rather than a groomsman?’ That made him think of Kira again with a sizzle of satisfaction.

‘But you don’t want to get a manicure with us.’

‘Remember at school when I went through that black nail polish phase? I could do that again.’

Then Alessandra brought out the heavy artillery – a pout so pronounced in her wine-coloured lipstick, she reminded him of the Neapolitan ghost stories where a single look could condemn a man to die. ‘For me, Matty? It’s my dearest wish that you and Joe should get to know each other and be friends.’

Mattia thought perhaps the two were rather mutually exclusive, but he couldn’t voice that worry.

‘I’m marrying him and you’re my best friend.’

That reminded him of Kira again and their conversation in the van. He was a little resentful of the change that would take Alessandra away from him, and perhaps that was part of the reason he’d never imagined getting along with Joe.

‘Fine,’ he said with a sigh, giving her a kiss on the cheek in farewell before trudging back to his room to change.

The sauna was a small, wooden hut built onto the far side of the chalet, technically outdoors, which made Mattia grimace as he’d only just warmed up from the trip on the snow groomer.

There were also no changing facilities attached, so he had to slap down the stairs in the complimentary felt slippers, clutching his towel.

But when he stepped inside, he understood why it had been constructed that way. One corner of the sauna was made entirely of glass, framing the glistening, white valley and pine forest groaning under a heavy layer of snow.

‘Shut the door, mate, yeah?’

Shuffling inside and closing the door, Mattia noticed that there was only one person sitting on the wooden slats – someone he rather wanted to talk to, which meant not Joe.

‘Rav, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I won’t offer my hand, because… well, you know.

’ He grimaced inwardly, the fug of warmth in the room spreading out his presence of mind like gas particles.

Great, now Rav would either think he had sweaty hands after two seconds in a sauna or that he was scared of dropping his towel. Both were unfortunately true.

He chose a spot that he hoped was a polite distance away and racked his brain for something to say that wasn’t Why was Kira upset with you last night ?

To his surprise, Rav brought it up. ‘Are you a friend of Kira’s? I didn’t know she liked opera.’ He gave a halting chuckle at his own joke.

‘She doesn’t,’ he replied curtly, propping himself up with his elbows on his knees and hanging his head as sweat gathered on the back of his neck. ‘We bonded over Bon Jovi and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. She’s an old rock soul.’

To his surprise, Rav laughed – properly this time. ‘She’s still the same as she was at school, then.’

Mattia peered at him out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t sure he liked the fondness in the other man’s tone. He certainly didn’t like that he didn’t understand it. ‘You knew her when she was a teenager?’

Rav nodded. ‘We were a close bunch of friends all through secondary school.’

That certainly sounded like ‘just friends’ rather than anything else, but he remembered the catch in her voice when she’d told him she didn’t like to let other people change her.

‘But I haven’t seen her in… oh, it must be more than ten years. We went off to university and she…’ His expression tightened, reminding Mattia of the emotion strung taut on her face whenever he’d seen her speaking to Rav.

‘You left her behind?’

Rav’s eyebrows shot up. Perhaps that question had been too belligerent, but Mattia was desperate to understand the subtext.

‘No— well kind of, yes,’ Rav answered with a frown. ‘To be honest, I was pissed off at Christian for ending it so badly. She’s good value, Kira. It would have been nice to stay friends even though they broke up.’

Mattia sat up straight, rubbing a dollop of sweat out of the corner of his eye.

His chest was tight – both from the bubble of pressurised heat and from that hint of what had happened.

Christian . Having a name was enough to set him off.

His stomach twisted, remembering everything Kira had said about relationships.

Rav kept speaking, as though the intimacy of the sauna had given him permission to get this off his chest. ‘Maybe he shouldn’t have gone out with her at all.

Friendships between men and women can be complicated, you know?

Then you add in a history like that – and the way he broke up with her was rotten—’ Ravi looked away with a grimace.

Mattia filled in the rest of the picture: a young, less jaded Kira (just as sporty and hot) wouldn’t have been prepared for the sudden end of the relationship, because she was loyal in every cell of her body. It would have crushed her.

‘Well, you know Kira,’ Rav was saying, making Mattia belatedly tune in again.

‘Hmm?’

‘She gave him one. Not that what he did wasn’t shitty, but she got mad and then he got mad and I think they both said things they might not have with a clear head.’

‘I’ve seen her grumpy, but to make her truly mad – he must have really deserved it.’ Mattia had to snap his mouth shut before he said anything further. Rav’s uneasy look suggested he’d growled rather than speaking those words in a normal voice.

‘Maybe, but I thought we were all friends and after that, she just… I didn’t hear a thing from her. She cut herself off.’

That did sound like Kira ‘I don’t like people to change me’ Watling.

‘I’m a bit worried about the wedding, to be honest,’ Rav continued. ‘I don’t think Joe knows. It happened before we met him.’

What happened? What did it have to do with the wedding?

The door swung open. ‘Hey, mate! You got started without us. Hi, Matty. I didn’t bring you a beer.’ Joe swung a beer into Rav’s hand, tapping his own against the bottle and taking a swig as he sat down between Mattia and Rav, hitching his towel up. The other groomsman, Hugh, followed him in.

‘Hi, eh, don’t worry about it,’ Mattia responded, eying the beer. Given his pores were weeping in the heat, he couldn’t imagine alcohol was a good idea. He’d heard Britons did enjoy warm beer, although perhaps that was only in Asterix .

Mattia leaned forward, trying to catch Rav’s eye to continue their previous discussion. What was worrying Rav about the wedding?

He was uneasy, his heart beating strangely, although he’d lost track of how long he’d been sweltering in the sauna, so that could have been the reason.

‘You coming skiing tomorrow?’ Joe asked him casually, although Mattia was either oversensitive or he detected a hint of competitiveness in the groom’s tone.

He shook his head. ‘I’ve never tried it before. I wouldn’t want to hold you back.’

‘Or cause more problems for the wedding planner,’ Joe teased, making Mattia wonder what Alessandra had said and whether they’d all realised he was following her around like a lost puppy. He swiped another stream of sweat off his brow.

‘Speaking of the wedding planner,’ Rav continued, leaning forward to catch Mattia’s eye. ‘Is she single? Kira?’

Before Mattia could swallow his distaste at the question, Joe and Hugh were wolf-whistling and slapping Rav on the back.

‘You’re going to have a go at that one?’ Hugh teased.

‘You’re just jealous you brought your girlfriend and you can’t try it yourself,’ Joe ribbed Hugh.

Mattia ground his teeth, wanting to leap up and remind Joe with a very stern index finger that this was his wedding and he shouldn’t be suggesting his friend would cheat on his girlfriend – let alone objectifying their wedding planner and ski instructor.

‘Her?’ Hugh scoffed. ‘I’ve seen prettier racehorses, but she does have nice t?—’

‘ Hugh ! Cut it out!’

It was even more distressing that Rav was the one defending her and not Mattia himself. He was struggling for air, discomfort seeping up his spine.

‘I was just wondering if she was single because of the wedding.’ Rav met Mattia’s eye meaningfully. ‘Because Christian and his girlfriend are coming.’

Christian . Coming to the ceremony. Kira’s ex. Did she know? What if she didn’t!

Mattia leapt to his feet, tottering alarmingly. His vision blurred, but he could still see the door. His whole body felt as out of focus as the little wooden hut.

‘E-e-excuse me,’ he stammered and hurtled for the door, even though his head swam. He had to find her.