Page 35 of An Italian Wedding Adventure

Sophie froze as well. They looked wooden and miserable, Sophie cringing and Andreas recoiling. With a sigh, she flicked to the next picture and her brow furrowed. Andreas appeared to be staring at her mouth. In the next one, they were standing closer, and the deep twist in Sophie’s stomach had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with longing.

The picture cut them off at a strange spot just below their entwined hands and the whole image was slightly on an angle, but it was so clearly aweddingphoto that she couldn’t help herself. She zoomed in until their faces were in sharper detail – Andreas’s eyes glinting, his mouth slanted and tight, but not with disgust this time. It was the expression he’d had on his face in Weymouth when they’d talked about everything that had gone wrong in their relationship.

Sophie clicked ahead quickly, wanting to give each picture only a cursory look so she knew where to file it – under ‘never again’, she decided – but each one contained some kind of truth she didn’t want to see but nevertheless found enthralling.

In the next shot, Sophie was laughing, Andreas watching her wryly. Then they were even closer.

‘God, it really looks like you were about to grab me and kiss me!’ she attempted to joke, but her voice squeaked. He made a choking sound next to her. When she glanced at him, his head was bowed and he was leaning heavily on the table. Her gaze returned to the picture and she felt the prickle again, the merging of past and present. ‘I don’t know if these photos are marvellous or… kind of incriminating.’

Sophie snapped her mouth shut. How exactly would the photos be incriminating? There was nothing between her and Andreas and hadn’t been for eight years.

‘I mean… I don’t know what I mean. You don’t really?—’

Andreas lifted his head, his expression vivid with frustration. ‘I don’t really what? Want to kiss you?’

Her mouth dropped open and her ribs felt as though they were pressing on her lungs. His gaze fell to her mouth and the hiss of air out of his lips made her brain check out for the evening.

‘Where have you been all day?’ he muttered, his voice rasping.

‘Erm, with you?’

He eyed her with a quick grin that turned into a chuckle. ‘Yeah, I noticed that.’ He stretched his neck as though something pained him. ‘I’m going to bed.’

‘Already?’ Clearing her throat, she quickly changed tack. ‘I mean, oh, right, yeah. Buonanotte.’ Of course he didn’t want to stay up to chat.

But instead of disappearing through his bedroom door, he paused with one hand on the frame, his posture tight. Then he turned abruptly with an audible grumble and stalked back to where she was sitting, hauling her out of her chair with insistent fingers on her upper arm.

‘Do you truly believe I don’t want to kiss you? Do I have to prove it?’

Her head swimming, the only response she could manage was a nod, but that was enough for him.

His hands lifting to either side of her face, he kissed her – reallykissedher – hard on the mouth, then pulled away immediately. As Sophie gasped for breath, reeling and off-balance, he turned and stalked off just as quickly as he’d come.

‘What was that?’ she blurted out after him.

‘A kiss!’ he snapped, throwing an arm up for emphasis. But he paused again, his shoulders rising and falling and a moment later, he was incoming again.

Slinging an arm around her waist, he pulled her in close. ‘No, that was a poor excuse for a kiss,’ he said. Then his eyelids fluttered closed and he stooped to bring his mouth back to hers. He paused for a breath, as though waiting for her to pull away, and when she didn’t, he kissed her again.

14

Sophie’s chest was too small for her heart as it leaped and raced. She was light-headed, but she didn’t want to breathe; she wanted to keep kissing. The languid, aching rasp of his mouth over hers turned her knees to liquid and her brain to porridge.

She’d forgotten it was like this when they kissed: the world ceased to exist, only sensations and emotions, heat and connection. Although, perhaps it had never been quite so charged in the past. The rawness, the insistence in the way he kissed her triggered more than just memories and when he leaned in, almost bending her back over the table in his attempt to draw even closer, she fisted her hand in his top, angled her head and deepened the kiss.

He stumbled, throwing an arm out to stop them from toppling onto the table. The action wrenched his mouth from hers and his eyes flew open, wide and a little haunted. He was about to pull away – Sophie could see it. Her hand slipped around to the back of his neck, unconsciously trying to hold him where he was.

But that was the action that made him stiffen and slowly draw back. His chest rose and fell heavily. Emotion rippled across his expression, so much that she couldn’t hope to interpret it. Then with a deep breath, he turned and left the room without a word, the door to his bedroom closing with a muffled click.

Sophie stifled a groan. ‘God damn you, Andreas Hinterdorfer.’

* * *

She didn’t say a word about the kiss the following day. Of course she didn’t. Even though he could see it in her eyes when she was thinking about it – a glint of panic – she wouldn’t bring up the subject. She was here to plan a wedding, not kiss her ex-boyfriend. Or colleague – or whatever the hell he was. Andreas had been surprised to realise he didn’t care about their current professional relationship. She would always just be Sophie in his mind and apparently, he would always want to kiss her.

He wanted to kiss her again in the morning when she emerged from her room in loose pyjamas and peered doubtfully out of the window. The pane was streaked with droplets and the cobbles outside were dark and slick with rain.

He wanted to kiss her when she settled into the passenger seat of his old Panda and pulled out her tablet. She was wearing a grey skirt and a white blouse with a cropped jacket. The sleeves weren’t short, but they weren’t long either, leaving a stretch of wrist and forearm that he couldn’t stop looking at. A fine silver bracelet would look distractingly attractive right there – especially if he was the one to give it to her.

---