Page 49 of An Italian Wedding Adventure

‘I thought you liked commitment? You plan weddings. You married Rory Brent.’

‘I keep my hopes and dreams for other people these days,’ she responded drily. ‘And you can shut up about Rory. I did a lot of stupid things when I was younger.’

He got the message, but the idea that Sophie had no hopes and dreams for herself didn’t sit right with him either.

She flopped back onto the bed. ‘But if you want to apologise for something, then apologise for your mum’s terrible timing. They couldn’t have arrived an hour later?’

He met her gaze across the pillow, his eyesight now adjusted enough to make out her lips, curved into a smile. The valley air pressure, the feeling that he couldn’t breathe properly eased and his chest rose and fell with deep breaths.

‘An hour?’ he responded, his voice pitched now. ‘You’re optimistic. Don’t you know climbers are shit in bed?’

‘For someone who believes he can climb any mountain on earth, you are remarkably humble about some things – that or you’re just scared.’

It was his turn to hop up on an elbow. ‘Scared? Of what?’

‘Great sex,’ she replied cheekily, draping her arms around his neck. ‘Good enough to keep you in bed in the morning instead of heading out to scale a rock face.’

He lowered his head until he was a breath from her lips. ‘I am terrified of you,’ he admitted, safe in the knowledge that she didn’t understand how deeply he meant the words. ‘Terrified of wanting you so much that I could ignore the presence of my mother in the other room.’

Pressing a kiss to her mouth, he lingered for a long moment, savouring the softness, but he didn’t push deeper.

‘It’s better if we don’t, isn’t it?’ she asked with a gratifying note of frustration in her voice.

‘They won’t stay long.’ He would make sure of it. ‘I don’t think I’d be able to keep you quiet.’ A grin stretched across his mouth when she rolled her eyes. But his smile faded as he studied the shadowed lines of her face. ‘I don’t want to be thinking about my family if we… cross that line again.’

She nodded, threading her fingers in his hair until he wondered if he’d melt from the affection. ‘Then I do hope they don’t stay long.’ She pressed a light kiss to his lips. ‘Because as soon as they leave, we’re crossing that line.’

With a groan, he collapsed back onto the bed and tugged her close. Her head settled on his shoulder, the past and the present mingling in him with that simple action. Despite the heightened emotions of the day, he drifted off easily. Even his final thought before sleep claimed him couldn’t disrupt the warmth of wellbeing glowing in him:You struggle with how much you love them.

19

Sophie woke up disoriented and sweaty – and squashed. Andreas had curled his limbs around her in the night like a giant squid and his leg was heavy. But when she glanced across the pillow and caught sight of his face, lax with sleep, a glow spread through her.

His lashes were dark and thick, his lips broad and lopsided. And he thought he disappointed everyone. He felt unsure of himself in the valley. He came alive on the mountain, but there was trauma in him too, that he clearly hadn’t processed.

Trauma, she recognised, although he knew nothing about hers and it was probably better that way, especially given his odd reaction every time Rory came up in conversation and his own attitude to marriage and families.

But Sophie wasn’t a psychologist. She couldn’t advise him – she could only accept him, for a little while at least. She knew this time, she couldn’t tie him down. His family took their worry out on him and it only did damage. If he needed to shake off gravity and commitment occasionally, then she couldn’t change that.

Which meant they had a week. A safe timeframe – far too short to fall in love again. In a week, she would go back to her normal life and he would go back to his and if they didn’t keep in touch, she might be able to get over him enough to one day find someone else, as much as that thought felt distasteful when she was awash with gratification to be tucked up against him. Lying next to him, snuggling like a puppy, it felt as though she’d missed him every day for the past eight years.

Including the days she’d spent as Rory’s wife.

The disturbing thought made her ease away as gently as she could. How he turned her from a sensible person into this sentimental mush of a human being, she didn’t know, but it was dangerous how good it felt to touch him.

She draped her cardigan around herself and tucked her feet into Andreas’s enormous Birkenstocks, to shuffle into the kitchen, where she found Petra putting the moka pot on the stove, already dressed for the day.

‘Buongiorno— I mean?—’

‘Buongiorno,’ Petra replied reassuringly. ‘And griaß di. Would you like some coffee? We can go soon. We live farm hours and might have the city to ourselves before anyone else leaves the house. I assume Andreas left to go climbing already? I didn’t hear him.’

Sophie realised with a start that Andreas usually did get up with the birds on his free days to enjoy the sacred hours on a rock face somewhere. ‘Actually, he’s still asleep,’ she said with a frown.

He wasn’t for long, emerging wearing only his loose boxer shorts and a scowl. He filled a glass of water at the sink and Sophie tried not to stare. He was more dishevelled than usual, groggier than he’d been the other mornings, even though she didn’t think he’d drunk too much wine the previous evening.

Dishevelled was unfortunately a good look on him, as though his hair was mussed from her fingers and they’d stayed up late last night doing more than just talking.

Sophie rushed to wash and get ready so she didn’t hold up Petra and Caro and Andreas waved them off, still looking oddly disoriented.

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