Page 57 of An Italian Wedding Adventure

‘No!’ He got as far as the denial, but then he hit problems. The conversation teetered on a precipice and gravity was tugging at him. ‘A week hasn’t been long enough. You’re…Sophie.’

‘Yes, I’m Sophie,’ she repeated doubtfully when he couldn’t get any further.

He ground the heel of his hand into his forehead. He wasn’t built for these conversations. He should have done it on a mountain. God, if he ever got married – which he wouldn’t – it would have to be at the top of a mountain where his head was clear.

‘I’ve never— You’re the only one I?—’

Her shoulders sagged and he saw as though in slow motion that there was no way for this conversation to end well. ‘You can’t finish that sentence,’ she said – too gently. ‘You couldn’t eight years ago and you can’t now. At least this time, I understand why you can’t but continuing to see each other is only delaying the inevitable. My feelings for you are real, too, but we want different things and maybe a clean break would be best for both of us.’

With a flash of memory, he saw her giddy smile, felt her arms draped around his neck and heard her soft voice. ‘I’m in love with you.’

His world had tilted when she’d said it, as though his centre of gravity had tried to shift. He’d almost felt himself falling – desperately falling.

Sophie hadn’t noticed. She’d just smiled widely, hopefully – naively – and continued, ‘When you get back, will you marry me?’

He’d never felt panic quite like that – until today. So, he’d laughed, as though her brave statement of feelings was something insignificant, when the opposite had been true. He’d covered his pounding, panicking heartbeat with the most casual tone he’d been able to muster and dashed her hopes to nothing.

‘You asked me to marry you eight years ago, but this time, you’re suggesting a clean break?’

Perhaps that pointed reminder was unfair of him, but it had the desired effect. She glanced up with resentment. ‘I was stupider – and stronger – back then. Can you imagine if you’d said yes out of responsibility – or guilt? How long do you think we would have been married? A year? A month?’

Ouch, they were both throwing punches. ‘Maybe we would have worked things out.’ He didn’t know where those defensive words had come from – or what he was defending. God knows, she was probably right.

‘Maybe we would have, except you would have been miserable. Either I would have asked you to stay home more often because the months were so long without you or you would have been distracted and guilty while you were away. You warned me of the consequences of that! You don’t belong in the valley.’

You make the valley more tolerable. ‘It worked the year we were together. I was away a lot, but you were always there when I got back.’ Until that last time, when he’d finally had to accept that it wasn’t fair to keep her in his life.

‘We weren’t much more than a year-long fling.’

He tried not to flinch.

‘I’ve been married. Marriage is a whole lot more than climbing lessons and going on holiday together. I spent all of my time and money that year chasing you and you never made a step in my direction. Afterwards, I thought the relationship had been all in my head. You didn’t exist in real life, no matter how much it felt like you did.’

His vision tunnelled, memories from that year tarnishing as he appreciated just how badly he’d screwed up back then.

‘I never imagined… I hurt you that much.’

‘I’d asked you to marry me! Of course it hurt. And then you never contacted me again!’

‘I…What?I contacted you – and you never replied, you never came. I understand that’s fair, now, butyou’rethe one who had the last word.’

* * *

Sophie gripped the tabletop tightly as the world seemed to start spinning. He thought she’d been the one to break contact?

‘I never came where?’ she asked, clinging to her understanding of what had happened before she lost her orientation.

His gaze snapped up, his eyes blazing. ‘To the airport – to Heathrow.’

‘To wave you off? You’d just suggested we go on a break. Why would I think you wanted to see me? I didn’t even know which flight you were on!’

‘I mean after the trip!’ he said, still staring at her as though she were being purposefully dense. ‘When I texted you – from Pakistan.’

Sophie’s muscles went slack. She managed to prop her elbows on the table and catch her head, but her body was rubber. His information didn’t compute, contradicted everything she’d convinced herself of over the past eight years.

‘You texted me?’ she managed to say, her voice mostly breath.

It was his turn to freeze. ‘Twice. Are you saying you didn’t get them?’

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