Page 19 of A Winter Wedding Adventure (Adventure Weddings #2)

She wasn’t in her room, but after an astonished Ginny had opened the door and finished making a decent impression of a fish, she’d told him about the makeshift climbing wall in the chalet loft.

Taking the stairs with one hand fisted in his towel and the other clinging to the banister, his head felt out of synch with the rest of his body and sparks exploded at the edge of his vision.

But when he imagined Kira turning up at the wedding to be confronted by her ex, the man who had most likely broken her heart and turned her off relationships for more than a decade, another shot of panic fizzed through his chest.

Finding the chipboard door at the top of the stairs in the dim loft, he wrenched it open and tumbled in, faltering when he was confronted with an image he would never have expected.

Kira hung from the ceiling.

If she’d been hanging the way gymnasts did at the Olympics, he might not have been so dumbfounded.

But her hands were not fisted around rings or a bar and her body was not falling straight, at the mercy of gravity.

Her knees were bent, holding her lower body tight to the slope of the roof.

Her hands and feet were anchored by little plastic grips.

The only part of her body that appeared to be obeying the laws of physics was her hair, spraying out from her head in pale-blue strands.

With an expert shift of her legs and arms – and a ripple of muscle through her torso – she swung to the next holds.

Her body stretched and strained, the movements not graceful, but effortless.

Mattia watched her and felt as though he could see all the beauty and utility of the human frame captured in her.

If he’d been an artist, he would have imagined drawing her in pencil, shading the curves of muscle in her arms and back, the arc of her bottom.

As he wasn’t an artist, his brain fired in a much less helpful direction.

He could trace those lines with his hands – his lips.

In his fantasy, he imagined making her feel good – feel everything, including her own stark beauty.

But Kira didn’t want to feel anything so radical. And she probably wouldn’t let him kiss her. Especially not after she heard what he had to say.

Which was what, again? Something about a turd of an ex-boyfriend.

His vision flicked in and out of focus and his mouth was suddenly as dry as terracotta. He managed to feel grateful for the rubber mats lining the floor under the climbing wall as his legs finally buckled.

* * *

When a muffled thump dragged Kira out of her haze of concentration, she did not expect to find Mattia – naked, except for a bunched towel – crumpled on his knees on the landing mats.

The loft room that had been converted into a bouldering wall had a low ceiling, so she relaxed her toes and swung out, hanging from her arms for a moment before dropping to the floor. He blinked up at her as she approached, as though he were the surprised one.

‘What’s the matter?’ She peered into his face, checking pupil dilation out of first-aid habit, noting no signs of injury. The dressing on his forehead was coming off, but there was no fresh bleeding.

He plonked into a sitting position, belatedly remembering the towel and arranging it hastily, a flush spreading up his chest.

‘Don’t worry, I’m getting used to the sight of you in a towel,’ she joked, willing her gaze to stay where it was and not undermine her words by taking a trip down his chest. It slipped to his big, bony shoulders, making a daring slide along his collarbone, but she pulled up just in time.

He opened his mouth to speak, pausing to lick his lips and swallow heavily, as though he’d seen in her gaze how much she wanted to skim her fingers over him. But when he managed to get some words out, she realised she’d misinterpreted. ‘Do you have any water?’

When she handed him her bottle, he drank half of it without stopping and sighed with relief.

‘Grazie, carissima.’ He leaned back on his arms, which unfortunately showcased the great expanse of skin. ‘I don’t think I like saunas.’

That at least explained the towel and his state of undress.

‘You have to keep your fluids up.’

Confident he’d recovered, she stood to fetch her hoodie and slip it on, now the strain of climbing was no longer keeping her warm.

Mattia’s eyes followed the action intently enough to make the hairs on her arms stand on end.

As though realising too late what he was doing, his gaze snapped away again as she joined him, cross-legged on the mat.

‘Did you run up all those stairs just to drink my water?’

He straightened so quickly, the towel shifted. ‘I have to warn you about the wedding!’

‘What? Is there an assassin? Or even worse: a lack of canapés? Ginny seems to think that would be a disaster.’

‘No.’ His hesitation and pained look made her uneasy. ‘There are other guests who are only coming to the ceremony and not staying here with us.’

She nodded. ‘I think Ginny said there will be about thirty at the ceremony. She’s got it all under control. What are you so worked up about?’ It was killing the buzz she’d just achieved on the bouldering wall.

‘You know Rav met Joe at university?’

‘Mattia! Can you get to the point?’

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, giving himself a shake. ‘I just wanted to tell you gently.’

‘Tell me what ?’

‘It’s Christian. He’s coming. He’s here – in the valley.’

The exact information she’d been trying to process by shoving it out of her mind with physical strain. She gritted her teeth.

‘You were talking about me with Rav.’

He drew back, obviously surprised by her bitter accusation. ‘I’m sorry? I was worried about you.’

She didn’t want to be touched, but everything he did seemed to dig too deep. ‘Worried about me ? You’re the one who required first aid on two occasions today!’

‘I know, but I could see something was bothering you.’

‘Nothing is… bothering me,’ she lied, stubbornly ignoring the fact that Mattia obviously knew she was lying. ‘And I already knew he was coming.’

He winced. ‘Ah, I probably should have assumed… that you would have everything under control and you wouldn’t need my help.’

Her throat was thick when she belatedly appreciated that he’d rushed up here half-dressed for her sake. ‘Why do you even care?’ she blurted out.

A rueful smile touched his lips. ‘I didn’t think it was such a mystery that I like you!’ He punctuated his sentence with a loose hand gesture full of frustration and discouragement.

A hot blush rose to the surface of her skin, even though it was only attraction, this hugging-kissing-closeness kind of ‘like’ that she was also resisting.

With that glint in his eye, he reminded her of a cheeky sprite – a faun or an elf – that lived on a slightly different plane where the world was more colourful. Certainly, he was so beautiful, he seemed to glisten in and out of focus in her world of rock and dirt and violent nature.

As though he sensed he’d disarmed her, he continued in a smooth voice. ‘This guy Christian hurt you when you were still young enough to feel it.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ she insisted, more out of habit than anything else. ‘I was only seventeen when we got together – too young to feel much of anything except confusion.’

‘Is he the reason you choose your friends carefully now?’

‘That’s simplistic.’

‘But not untrue?’

Kira couldn’t bring herself to outright deny it, but she also couldn’t afford to dwell on the memories of that time – her gullible optimism, misplaced loyalty. The realisation that if even her best friend couldn’t love her, how could anyone?

‘What happened?’

There was no way she would admit the whole, sorry story – not at a damn wedding. ‘Relationships end – mine do, at least.’

‘But what do you mean by “relationships”? You don’t have relationships,’ he pointed out, far too insightful for Kira’s good.

She fidgeted, uncomfortable with how much she’d already shared with him.

‘I just meant Christian only wanted one thing from me and that seems to be the way it goes. I’ve always been one of the boys.

I didn’t like to be indoors as a kid and I gravitated towards the boys, no matter how much my mum tried to steer me towards make-up and movies.

Then Christian was the first one to discover his mate had boobs and might be good for a f?—’

‘All right, I get it,’ Mattia said with a grimace.

‘But I’m not going to change the way I am just so I’m not alone.’ She lifted her chin.

‘Of course you shouldn’t,’ he agreed hotly. ‘Especially when you’re…’

‘What? What am I?’ she asked with a snort.

She’d spent adult life determined never to care what men thought of her, but here she was, desperate for his answer.

Mattia broke her established rules just by breathing and she still wasn’t sure why she was sitting here allowing her skin to prickle, rather than running a mile.

‘So… vigorous.’ He gave his arms a shake for emphasis.

She drew back and eyed him. ‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’

He dropped his forehead into his hand. ‘Of course! You are stronger than these bed friends of yours. You can do everything they can – better. They’re scared of you.

Their egos won’t allow them to commit to you because their fragile masculinity needs reinforcement and you have more important things to do. ’

Her jaw dropped and it took her several seconds to find her voice.

Her knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss him, but what he said rang in her head, like the bell struck in the Christmas market during that first performance when he’d thawed the edges of her heart.

He was building her up – possibly too far – not knocking her down. She hadn’t expected it.

‘Perhaps that might be part of the reason,’ she acknowledged. ‘But there’s also the fact that the only thing I can cook is beans on a single gas burner, I leave clothes all over the floor and while I know some guys like the climbing physique, it’s my face they’d have to love.’