Page 46 of An Italian Wedding Adventure

‘Oh, Andreas, “not really,” isn’t going to stop her breaking your heart again!’

‘She didn’t break my heart!’ He obviously hadn’t convinced his mother and unfortunately, she had reason: she knew about the blasted emerald, had more of an idea than anyone else of exactly what he’d been through after Miro’s death.

Now they were one big, happy family around the scarred wooden table, but at least his mother had brought a nice bottle of St Magdalener from home. He just had to make sure he didn’t down his glass too quickly.

‘I always thought it must take forever to shred cabbage like this,’ Sophie commented with a tight smile when the silence stretched a little too long for her British sensibilities. She scooped up a forkful of Krautsalat, the cabbage side dish his mother had brought from home. The tangy vinaigrette with caraway seeds was another of his comfort foods, but he nearly choked on it when he caught himself staring at Sophie’s mouth as she took a bite.

‘There is a tool for that,’ his mother explained. ‘The Krauthobel. But I have a machine.’

‘A cabbage-slicing machine?’

‘All the benches in the kitchen at home have machines on them,’ Caro said with a smile. ‘We have a machine for bread, for mincemeat, for sliced meat, for peeling fruit, pitting olives, spraying cream?—’

‘I think she understands,’ Andreas grumbled.

‘So, you’re here doing research for a wedding?’ his mother asked with more than a touch of scepticism.

Sophie nodded. ‘We’ve held a few weddings in the area, but this client wanted something special involving outdoor activities, so…’

‘Ah, that makes more sense. I was picturing Andreas helping you pick out flowers!’

Sophie mercifully kept her mouth shut, although he could tell she was stifling a smile.

‘What areyoudoing down here?’ He tried to keep his voice casual, without much success.

‘We’re going shopping tomorrow in Verona.’

‘Do you want to come?’ Caro asked teasingly. ‘Your last pair of Armani jeans must be about ten years old now.’

‘Twenty,’ he corrected her. ‘I’ll pass. I have to sort out our equipment stores anyway.’

Then his mother opened her big mouth. ‘Wouldyoulike to come, Sophie? Do you have Saturdays off while you’re away?’

‘You know, actually I’d love to.’ She sent him a sidelong glance and then leaned over the table to speak softly to his mother. ‘But we might have to promise not to talk about… him.’

‘You can talk about what you like,’ he snapped.

‘Perhaps you could meet us for lunch?’ his mother suggested, ignoring his grumpy outburst. He should have made an effort to be civil, for Sophie’s sake, but company was not what he wanted right now. He needed to get up a mountain and stop the churning in his stomach at everything that had happened over the past few days.

‘A late lunch, maybe.’ He could do a few climbing routes from Arco in the morning, clear his head. Then see Sophie again on her day off. Damn, he wished they could have got this unexpected crackle of desire out of their systems before his family had appeared.

‘Tell me about the weddings you plan,’ Caro asked Sophie. ‘Are they all over the world? Where’s the most exotic place you’ve organised a wedding?’

‘Most of our clients don’t have an unlimited budget, so European destinations are most common, or holiday destinations in the UK, but I have been to the Caribbean and Australia for beach weddings.’

‘Beach weddings,’ his mother repeated with a nod that he nevertheless interpreted as disapproving. ‘I suppose that’s what some people want. I got married in the same church as my parentsandgrandparents.’

Andreas didn’t look up from his Knödel, carefully slicing into the spongy dumpling and focusing on the simple flavours of onion refined with salt, rather than the unspoken words in the air around the table.

Surprisingly, Caro had mercy on him. ‘I think a beach wedding sounds lovely.’

‘Since when do you like the beach?’ he teased her, hoping to change the subject.

‘It’s true,’ she said, turning to Sophie. ‘Most of Mama and Tatta’s friends have holiday apartments on the coast near Rimini, but our grandparents couldn’t stand the sea, so they bought this one.’

‘How can you not like the sea?’ Sophie exclaimed.

‘Our family,’ Caro continued, ‘gets uncomfortable when their familiar mountains aren’t visible any more – Tatta especially. We have a German word that means home and tradition and comfort, familiarity and history – “Heimat”. Tatta’s big on Heimat. He can name every peak around our house and he likes it that way. When you grow up cut off in deep valleys, you don’t always like to leave.’ She rolled her eyes as she said it, but Andreas knew she was carved from the same wood. ‘But not Andreas, of course,’ she added.

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