Page 40 of A Winter Wedding Adventure (Adventure Weddings #2)

‘I must add this place to our files,’ Sophie was muttering after dinner, tablet and stylus in hand. ‘This rustic style is right on trend and the municipality was so helpful organising this. Do you think the manager has a second to?—’

‘No,’ Andreas grunted from the other side of their table. ‘You’re not supposed to be working right now. If we’re missing out on the ski tour I had planned for us over New Year’s, the least you can do is dance with me.’

‘Aw, so romantic,’ Ginny gushed as Andreas snatched the tablet out of Sophie’s hands and hauled her to her feet.

Kira rolled her eyes.

‘Excuse me,’ Sophie said indignantly. ‘If you left me for six weeks to climb some mountain after we’d only just got engaged, you can wait five minutes for me to finish what I was doing.’

‘Aw,’ Kira repeated with a pointed look at Ginny. ‘That’s romance.’

The wedding planner shrugged. ‘What do I know about romance?’ Her eyes drifted to the dance floor, where Alessandra and Joe were swaying to ‘At Last’ – the Beyoncé version. Kira caught sight of Rhys hunched in the corner, his camera to his eye – pointed right at Kira.

She flipped him the middle finger and he lowered the camera to return the gesture with a smile.

Alessandra’s mother Francesca chose that moment to appear at their table and Kira flushed to the roots of her hair. She didn’t expect that particular hand gesture was approved by Italians. But if Francesca had seen it, she didn’t mention it.

‘I think it’s time for tarantella!’ she declared with a clap. ‘And you all must join in.’

Andreas’s stifled groan wasn’t quite stifled enough.

‘Come, you are Italian!’ Francesca said with enough enthusiasm for all of them.

‘Technically,’ Andreas mumbled. ‘But I’m not tarantella Italian,’ he continued as Francesca ignored him, getting the rest of the team from Great Heart and I Do up on their feet.

‘What is it?’ Kira asked warily as she followed the others into the back room that had been cleared to make a dance floor.

‘You’ll see,’ Ginny said brightly.

As the entire wedding party, as well as all the guests and the planners, formed a circle around Alessandra and Joe, holding hands, Kira was glad of the excuse of queuing the music and escaped into the corner with Rhys.

Sophie’s strong grip on Andreas dragged him into the circle as the jaunty accordion music started.

But he obviously knew how to do the dance, kicking his feet out and moving in time to the music. The tipsy, happy group made a wonky circle and Kira smiled, unable to resist the sheer goodwill in the room.

There was something about weddings.

As the team from I Do came around again, Ginny broke ranks, holding out her hand to Kira and shaking it.

There was no time to hesitate. Kira took the outstretched hand and allowed herself to be pulled in.

As though she belonged. As though they all wanted her there, despite her blue hair and her scepticism, her bluntness and rude gestures.

When she looked up, Mattia was smiling brightly at her from across the circle. Christian was somewhere there too, but she’d finally dropped the memories – and her embarrassment – off the back of a proverbial truck.

She was reminded of her unconsidered words a moment later when Joe kneeled to tug off Alessandra’s garter to a soundtrack of raucous laughter as he fumbled under her skirt. But when Ginny winked at her, she couldn’t feel embarrassed about that incident either.

As the accordion music finished, Kira was pleasantly out of breath and high on the experience shared with her new – and old – friends. When Mattia approached with tentative footsteps, she didn’t quite pull up her defences in time.

‘Dance with me,’ he said softly, drawing her close.

She was too weak to resist, even though the song that came on next was ‘Make You Feel My Love’ and they weren’t so much dancing as holding each other awkwardly in a slow sway.

They moved in silence through the first bars of piano. Kira kept her eyes averted, her hand gripped in his white, formal shirt, unwilling to give herself over to the intimacy, but also unwilling to let go of him.

He held her loosely, the embrace ridiculously formal in comparison to the way their bodies had moved together in the bedroom.

But as though he knew she couldn’t handle anything more, he simply held her solicitously, not too close, but near enough to keep the beat.

When she risked a glance at him, he was gazing into the distance.

Only as the song was coming to an end did he take a deep breath, pausing, despite the obvious words on his lips.

‘Do you… Would you rather be alone tonight?’

Her stomach clenched as though a tower of beautiful bricks were crashing down inside her. She’d forgotten they’d shared a hotel room the past two nights. Her new toothbrush sat next to his. The yoga mat where they’d bantered this morning was still rolled out by the window.

‘It’s all right if you do,’ he continued. ‘I don’t expect anything.’

He expected a soulmate – just not her. It made sense. ‘What do you want?’ she managed to ask.

He hesitated for so long that she had to peer up at him. His expression was so twisted, she was alarmed. Lifting a hand out of instinct, she smoothed her fingers over his brow.

‘What is it?’

He caught her hand in his, lowering it from his face. ‘I want you to stay – one last night.’

His words shivered down her spine. ‘Okay,’ she replied with a measure of relief she didn’t want to analyse.

A smile tipped up his lips, but it wasn’t his usual bright one. ‘That’s what you said that first time. I don’t think I’ll ever forget.’

Her eyes stung and she wasn’t happy to discover it wasn’t only his singing voice that could make her cry.

‘How soon do you think we can wrap up this party?’

* * *

Mattia slept fitfully and awoke often, usually to find his hand patting the bed frantically to reassure him that Kira was still there.

His thoughts spiralled between the certainty that she’d started pushing him away last night and the realisation of exactly how close she’d let him come over the previous days.

She was a heavy sleeper, so he wrapped his body around hers like an octopus, soaking up the subtle scent of her and wallowing in the sensation of her skin pressed to his.

He studied her blue hair, pale in the dim moonlight penetrating the curtains, the crescent-moon scar on her cheek.

The line of her shoulder was unbearably beautiful, the musculature an outward sign of her strength of character.

Stirring, she moved instinctively closer and he pressed a light kiss to the side of her neck. Nothing about how he felt was casual, but he knew her layers of armour would not be removed easily and they didn’t have any more time.

She felt something – he was certain of that – but it wasn’t his place to work out how much.

He must have slept eventually, because he awoke suddenly to find the room brighter and Kira at his neck, using her mouth to bring him out in goosebumps and draw a deep moan from his chest.

His hands threading in her hair, he brought her up for a kiss, long and drowsy and deep.

Pausing for a moment, he opened his mouth to say something, but she shook her head and tapped her finger against his lips, kissing him again instead.

Then she stole his thoughts completely, moving her body against his and eventually fetching a condom and taking him in.

His agreement not to say anything felt binding, so he showed her instead, with gentle touches to her throat, an urgent clasp on her thighs and finally, tangling his fingers with hers as they tumbled together.

‘ Kira .’ He couldn’t quite stop the gasp of her name. She was silent, her chest heaving, where she propped herself up on top of him. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, but her mouth wobbled in a frown.

Then she hauled herself off him and left the bed, swiping her clothes up from the floor, flinging them on and disappearing into the bathroom. Five minutes later, she’d gathered up her meagre belongings and, without a backward glance, she left.