Page 30 of A Winter Wedding Adventure (Adventure Weddings #2)

‘Do I look like I’ve been crying?’

‘Not at all,’ Mattia assured Alessandra, the lie falling smoothly for once from his lips. ‘You look absolutely beautiful, as always.’

She smacked him on the arm. ‘I have got the message,’ she said with a sniff.

He trailed her and Carla out of her room, feeling five years older than the moment he’d gone in, but rather brightly thinking that would make him a year older than Kira.

Bracing himself as they reached the door to the dining room, he was expecting an uproar as the group came to terms with avalanche risk and frozen bodies and no wedding , but what he saw instead made him stop short.

Kira sat at a table with a coffee cup in front of her, a pained grimace on her face, while Tonya clasped an arm around her shoulder and Alessandra’s mother held her hand, stroking it periodically.

‘What’s happened now?’ Alessandra asked.

Kira stiffened, glancing from him to Alessandra. ‘I have to, um, get more wood.’ Her face was flaming as she scooted out of the door to make her escape. He found Rav giving him a pained look and with a lurch in his stomach, he guessed what she was upset about.

He squeezed Alessandra’s arm. ‘Are you okay, now? I just have to—’ He gestured wildly after Kira, his feet already moving in the direction she’d gone.

She gave him a perplexed smile. ‘You have another fire to put out?’

‘I’m a real firefighter today,’ he called over his shoulder as he took off after Kira.

He lost time lacing his complicated boots and once he’d swung open the door, he had his breath knocked out of him.

The valley sparkled and glowed in bright sunlight.

The sky was such a vivid blue, it hurt his eyes.

The air was so still, he heard the muted mumble of running water under ice and the cry of a bird of prey in the distance – and the loud crunch of Kira’s boots in the snow.

There was two feet of it, in lopsided piles with vivid shadows and blinding, untouched white. Studying the surface uneasily, he tried not to think of what might be underneath, which didn’t work very well, and he eventually had to make himself move anyway.

Limbs flailing as though he were a giraffe walking in quicksand, he stumbled in the direction Kira had gone, to a lean-to built against the rock face behind the chalet.

Hunks of wood were stacked against the back wall, under a snow-covered tarpaulin, and Kira stood in front of an old, pockmarked stump, wielding an axe.

Mattia jerked a step back as she hauled the axe over her head and brought it down with a precise thwack, neatly splitting the piece of wood in front of her.

The sound rang in his ears, the violence of the blade meeting rough wood digging into his chest. Picking up one side and setting it back on the stump, she repeated the action – thwack – sending the two smaller pieces flying.

He flinched, but he was more fascinated than concerned by the outward manifestation of Kira’s prickly defences.

‘Wow.’

She didn’t even turn around. ‘Go back inside,’ she snapped. ‘It’s too cold out here for you.’

‘It’s rather nice in the sunshine,’ he responded mildly. ‘But I think after the conversation I just had with Alessandra, I’m the one who should decide what’s too cold for me or not.’

That earned him a wary glance. ‘What conversation? I thought you were going to talk to Carla.’

‘Oh, that too. She’s not as stubborn as Alessandra. But we’re all friends again. Just friends. I’ve got to make my own way through the confusing world of relationships.’

Her only response was another juddering thwack of the axe. Her strength struck him under his skin, like beauty – with awe. But today, it was clearer than ever that she was trying to protect herself – and not quite succeeding.

‘Will you tell me what’s upset you? Did Rav say something?’

She gave a snort and turned to face him. ‘You can ask anyone inside. They all know now.’

Even someone without sensitive hearing would have made out the hurt in her voice. ‘Can I hear it from you instead?’

‘Why?’ She swung the axe again, the sound ringing out through the still valley.

‘I’m not asking because I’m curious – well, not only because I’m curious. I’m asking because, whatever it is, I want to understand.’ I want to protect you.

‘I’m not sure I want you to understand.’ The breathy quality of her voice, the tentative words sent a shiver through Mattia. Not I don’t want , but I’m not sure I want . For Kira, that was like running into his arms.

‘It’s all right, Kira.’ He kept his voice steady. ‘It’s just me.’

Her quick glance from underneath a lopsided brow gave him a spark of hope for – quite a lot. ‘Just you,’ she repeated with a huff. ‘Mattia, you don’t know me very well.’

‘I politely beg to differ.’

Turning, she looked him square in the face and the flash of longing that shot down his spine took him by surprise. ‘You know all that stuff I said in the van on the way here? About how I don’t do commitment?’

‘You don’t get attached to people who could hurt you.’

Her eyes narrowed and he was glad he had a vivid memory of that conversation – of every conversation he’d shared with this prickly, colourful woman who possibly didn’t realise she held everyone else at a safe distance because she felt too deeply .

‘This is about Christian, yes? Why everything changed for you after you broke up with him?’

Another snort. ‘I did not break up with him.’

‘That’s a yes,’ he said on a sigh. ‘What happened? Why don’t you want me to know?’

Crossing her arms in a gesture she’d probably meant as combative, but only made her look vulnerable, she said, ‘Because it makes me a liar and a hypocrite.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sure?—’

‘I was about to marry him! I was wearing a long, white dress covered in lace, my hair done up, in heels and a lace garter, for fuck’s sake. They were playing Pachelbel’s fucking Canon.’

Oh. Mattia’s eyes swung shut, blinking open again as he tried to make sense of what she said. Oh . He sucked in a deep, shaky breath, blowing it out again on a cloud of moisture particles in the cold air.

‘He didn’t show up,’ she said with a caustic smile. ‘Lucky near miss for my marital status.’

But a lasting blow to her pride. ‘How old were you?’ He grimaced even before she answered him, knowing the answer could only be: too young .

‘Nineteen. I thought I was in love. I was an idiot.’ Her jaw set, she turned back to the stump and swung the axe again. She didn’t quite find the middle that time and a smaller piece splintered off the wood. She cursed under her breath.

Her words echoed in his mind. She thought the story made her a hypocrite, but he could picture it so clearly. Kira head over heels in love – bravely, faithfully, loyally.

‘Christian was the idiot.’

She dropped the axe. ‘Don’t say that. You can’t possibly mean it.’

‘Why not? Because we’ve only known each other for four days or because you’re trying so hard not to let me see who you really are?’

The breath left her mouth on a sharp exhale and then she shoved him half-heartedly on one shoulder. ‘You play all innocent and weak, but you have superpowers,’ she said accusingly. ‘You can make people feel things, even when they don’t want to.’

He shook his head. ‘I’m only telling you what I see, what everyone would see, if they looked more closely.’

‘If you look closely, you’ll find crooked teeth and brown hair growing back under the bleached bit.’

He stared at her, marvelling at the vibrant image of her imprinting on his mind – his heart – in real time.

‘I am curious about the natural colour of your hair, but I like the blue. I love how you rebuilt your pride even bigger and stronger than before. I wish more people saw what I see when I look at you, but I can also understand why you protect your soft heart, why you make people earn the real you. I hate how the memory of this one mistake colours your world still, but I love how you hold onto things so tightly.’

Her smile died. ‘I don’t have a soft heart. I can’t . Maybe I did once, when I was reckless and too trusting, but now… It won’t do you any good to believe I’m like you.’

She wasn’t like him. She’d been brave and loved as she found, while he floated with the dreams and ideals of a child. She’d been more grown up at nineteen than he was at twenty-seven.

He gave a single nod. She’d been right, the way he thought about her had changed with the knowledge that she’d nearly married someone once, but not the way she’d feared.

From a disjointed bundle of instincts and impressions, she’d come into focus.

No matter what happened – or didn’t happen – over the next few days, forming that image had been important to him, proof that the mess of real life could be just as gripping as art and ideals.

He gestured to the axe, its crude blade lying harmless on the snowy ground. ‘Will you show me how to do that?’

‘What?’

Her doubtful expression pinched, but he wouldn’t give up yet. ‘I’m not asking you to just hand me the axe so I can try to swing it. You’d have to actually teach me. But I’m asking you to.’

He waited, imagining Alessandra laughing off a similar request with a joke about the wisdom of handing him an axe. Kira didn’t laugh.

‘All right,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Come here.’

* * *

Hot blood tingled under Kira’s skin and every cell in her body felt warm and alive and the sensation was so different from what she’d been feeling twenty minutes ago that she kept asking herself if it was real.

After the mortification of everyone discovering her wretched history and the reason for her infantile resentment of weddings, after the relentless confusion of her feelings about Mattia, now she was smiling, her chest floating and expanding – like the shock of sunlight after yesterday’s blizzard.

‘Allora, okay, I line it up.’